More than eight years have passed since the United Nations Humans Rights Council unanimously endorsed the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in June 2011, yet uptake has in the main been slow. In order to both ascertain the extent of their adoption and promote their growth in Indonesia, The Foundation For International Human Rights Reporting Standards (FIHRRST) has recently utilized its Business and Human Rights International Standard for Certification (BHRISC 2011) to complete a study and ranking of 100 Indonesian Public Companies.

Although a Baseline Study on Business and Human Rights in ASEAN was published by the Human Rights Resource Centre in 2013, this marks the first occasion that a comprehensive national study of such scope has been carried out within ASEAN....

The companies chosen for the study, entitled Growing Respect for Human Rights, were those listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) and included in the Kompas 100 Index, based on the consideration that these have strong liquidity and large market capitalization and are thus likely to be more open to the adoption of respect for human rights in their operations.

...[J]ust four companies reached the "pioneering" status, scoring between 51% and 86%, while a sobering 90 scored less than 41% - certainly room for future improvement.

What also stood out was that companies scored well in areas that have been highly regulated over the years such as workplace health and safety, and elimination of discrimination in the workplace, while almost all have a grievance mechanism in place. Sadly, such matters as upholding indigenous rights, security, and supply chains all failed to register even 10%, while there is still to be full commitment to the implementation of gender equality.