On March 17, 2014, the MSI Integrity Board announced its adoption of the core recommendations that resulted from the 2013 Global Consultation and review process.

The complete statement detailing the developments announced by the Board can be downloaded here: MSI Integrity Board Announcement March 17 2014.

This announcement followed careful review of the Advisory Group Recommendations and Considerations Report (“Report”), conducted between November 2013 and February 2014. The report was based on a thorough review of the comments and feedback received during the consultation process.

Summary of Actions to Implement the Core Recommendations

The consultation feedback demonstrated very strong support for MSI Integrity’s mission and work. The recommendations from the Advisory Group focused on further developing MSI Integrity’s proposed methodology and mandate, and also suggested some minor modifications to our evaluation methodology. The full list of recommendations is available in the Report. To implement these recommendations, the Board announced the following:

Evaluations of MSIs
  • MSI Integrity’s Board realigned our mandate to focus more on sharing MSI evaluation tools and methodologies for public use. As a result, MSI Integrity decided that it will conduct only a limited number of comprehensive evaluations of select MSIs each year, which will help to continually refine the criteria and methods as well as build data to understand the impact and value of MSIs.
  • For future evaluations, MSI Integrity will enhance engagement with MSIs and stakeholders during evaluations by striving to create terms of reference with MSIs prior to conducting evaluations, where possible. The terms of reference will encourage direct input from MSI members.
  • MSI Integrity’s revised MSI Evaluation Tool and Evaluation Methodology incorporate feedback related to indicator criteria and clarify assessment procedures. The criteria known as “minimum standards” have been re-named “essential elements,” selection criteria for MSIs has been clarified, and scoring of evaluated MSIs will be postponed until further research and empirical data can inform appropriate methods to calculate and present useful scoring.
  • To compliment the MSI Evaluation Tool and assessment methodology, MSI Integrity will publish a report analyzing key findings and general trends from the pilot MSI evaluations of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, Fair Labor Association, Global Network Initiative, Kimberley Process, and 4C (Common Code for the Coffee Community).
Research & Engagement

MSI Integrity will respond to the growing demand for research and learning opportunities for MSIs and affected stakeholders. This includes:

  • Planning dialogues among stakeholder groups across MSIs to facilitate greater sharing of lessons and good practice, and identification of common concerns.
  • Identifying existing business and human rights-related MSIs and compiling initiatives in an accessible online database.
  • Exploring research into specific issues of concern to MSIs and rights-holders. This could range from suggesting an aspect of an MSI that is considered particularly innovative and worthy of examination for a “Good Practice” case note, through to requesting that MSI Integrity examine a particular aspect of an MSI, or an issue affecting many MSIs, that has proved challenging.
Research into Impact

In the long term, MSI Integrity will continue to focus on developing methodologies to understand the on-the-ground impact of MSIs from a human rights perspective. MSI Integrity recognizes the challenges of assessing impact and has begun to build research networks to combine existing expertise regarding impact assessment. Targeted research projects (discussed above) will also allow for controlled experimentation of impact assessment methodologies.