Tackling human rights in business is no longer just an internal process of supply chain compliance. With transparency reaching an all-time premium, it has become a major market and industry priority. Consumers are bearing their teeth around the globe, taking action online and offline against companies with poor human rights records and questionable sourcing ethics, spurred on by media-savvy activist groups fulfilling their own brand of jihad against unscrupulous companies.

The struggle for business is that getting human rights right, throughout the value chain, is vastly complex and requires the supplier ecosystem and wider industry to come together over many years. Even companies with strong, long-term strategies are open to the risk of exposure, prompting many corporate leadership teams to keep the issue out of public view and bury it within the policies of sustainability and procurement teams. But the difficult reality is that the longer a company keeps its human rights skeletons in the closet, the greater the potential risk of exposure becomes.

When UK superstore Tesco took the bold decision to be the first retailer in the world to publish its food waste data in 2013, it disclosed a shameful level of wasteful practices and rightfully drew criticism from consumers, activists and the media alike. But in putting its head above the parapet it also distinguished its own voice in the issue. Consumers and special interest groups were, for the first time, seeing transparent and honest data instead of hearsay and alleged reports.

Read the full article about transparency and human rights by Laura Quinn at TriplePundit.