The Global Compact Forum, an initiative of the Brazil Network of the United Nations Global Compact, was held on 16 May, in São Paulo. The event gathered an audience of about 400 people and registered more than 1,000 views over the internet. The WFP Centre of Excellence against Hunger participated in the event.
The panels discussed the advances and perspectives of corporate responsibility in addressing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in companies. National and international speakers highlighted the role of the private sector in combating corruption, water management, women’s empowerment, and human rights issues.
“We are one of the largest corporate citizenship initiatives in the world. The network in Brazil began with the participation of 28 companies and today has 751 signatories, the third largest Global Compact network. For our sustainable development, it is essential that the SDGs and the 2030 Agenda form part of the business activity. Companies represent a large part of our society and therefore need to be part of the movement in pursuit of a better society for all, with no one falling behind,” said Global Compact president Denise Hills.
The Global Compact wants to contribute to Brazilian companies advance in creating more sustainable results for society and for their businesses and for that reason it has launched a new strategy for the implementation of the SDGs. These guidelines provide for a cycle that goes through several stages. One of them is the SDG Prize, launched during the Forum, which will recognize initiatives of business leaders who are incorporating the SDGs into their activities in Brazil. The restructuring of the Global Compact also means raising the resources that will sustain this process.
The event launched the Portuguese version of the first document assigning indicators to the SDGs, the publication An Analysis of the Goals and Targets, result of a partnership between the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and PwC. The document shows how companies can report data for each of the SDGs and thus take another step to inserting the 2030 Agenda into their businesses. The document was presented by the director of the Global Compact for the Americas, Javier Cortés, by the executive secretary of the Global Compact Brazil Network, Carlo Pereira, and by GRI Global CEO Tim Mohin.
Highlights
One of the highlights of the event was the discussion on women’s empowerment. The journalist and writer Eliane Brum brought an overview of the Brazilian woman’s reality, with numerous examples of violence, and thrilled the audience. The manager of the UN Women’s Empowerment Principles Adriana Carvalho showed, among other data, that Brazil occupies the 5th place in the world ranking of murders of women and that only 10 percent of elected positions are occupied by women.
In the panel “70 years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: the role of companies”, the highlight was the presence of executive Rachel Maia and transgender lawyer Márcia Rocha, who emphasized the invisibility of black women in companies, especially in executive positions.