After over two decades of incomplete but overall significant progress on corporate respect for human rights, we are at a crossroads. With the global rise of authoritarianism, narrow economic nationalisms, and corporate capture, and a rapidly changing US context, we’re facing real risk of roll-backs by business on their longstanding human rights commitments.

But our analysis of top US companies’ policies and commitments across five sectors revealed that, beyond well-documented roll-backs like DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) and some climate commitments, companies are largely maintaining their human rights policies and commitments on paper.

A closer examination of actions by US companies amidst shifts in policies, regulations, and rhetoric in the US and across the globe, however, reveals a more complex and concerning picture. In accompanying analysis, we find that the current context brings heightened risk, which brings heightened responsibility.

Using this index

This index shares overviews of the human rights policies, commitments, memberships and disclosures (as of 31 August 2025) for 54 US-headquartered companies across the technology, apparel, extractives, automotive, and agrifood (food/beverage and agriculture) sectors. We hope that civil society organizations and investors will use these reviews in their advocacy and efforts to better understand the state of these companies' human rights commitments and any changes over time. The Resource Centre will periodically update these reviews.

Our reviews are not evaluations of the quality of companies’ policies and commitments, nor do we offer commentary on whether a company's statement meets a threshold to “count” toward an indicator. Rather, our objective is to capture companies’ statements related to a topic at a particular moment in time and to monitor any changes over time.