The first Corporate Human Rights Benchmark (CHRB) ranking for 2017 is finally out. This next big thing in global human rights tracking is well on its way: it hasn’t pulled any punches or run scared of big names. Earlier this week, CHRB unveiled its first formal ranking of 98 publicly-traded companies in three industries that usually contain many of the worst human rights offenders: agricultural products, apparel and extractives. Early plans called for extending this to 500 companies by mid-2018 and to include finance, engineering, pharmaceuticals and the information and communication technology sectors, though I suspect there will be a delay in taking the range that far that fast.

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