Commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the CSR Risk Check was developed by MVO Nederland and Concept 7. The German version of the CSR Risk Check is commissioned by the German Agency for Business & Economic Development and the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs. MVO Nederland is the legal owner of the CSR Risk Check and is solely responsible for collecting and processing data. Read more about this in the privacy statement.
The CSR Risk Check makes use of the most up-to-date external sources on CSR risks in international trading. At present there are 3526 data sources processed which have been translated into 5420 different risks and 633 recommendations for countries and products/services.
The risks and advices in the CSR Risk Check are based on public sources and are in line with the themes from the OECD Guidelines and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. In the CSR Risk Check, gender-neutral descriptions are used where possible in describing risks. If risks are not applicable to both men and women, gender specific terms will be used.
All companies and organisations are expected to abide local laws and regulations of the countries where their business takes place. If local laws are absent, inadequate, or not upheld, international guidelines such as the OECD Guidelines and the ILO conventions are normative. This means that, despite all the present legislation on CSR issues in a given country (such as criminal environmental offenses or a ban on child labour), CSR risks still occur. Moreover, the CSR Risk Check does not provide information on the presence or absence of local laws and regulations, unless this creates specific CSR risks (e.g. law that facilitates discrimination or prohibits trade unions).
The list of countries and territories that is used the CSR Risk Check is the ISO 3166 standard, which is based on the official list of country and territory names as defined by the United Nations Statistics Division. For the world map Google Maps is used, this means that land borders and country names mentioned on this map are not the responsibility of CSR Netherlands For the product classification in the tool, the SITC codes were used, also established by the United Nations Statistics Division. The product list is complemented by services that are derived from the UN ISIC system.
MVO Nederland cannot be held responsible for the accuracy of the information supplied since it entirely bases itself on external sources and merely makes those more accessible. MVO Nederland and its project partners are constantly working to supplement and update this database. In case you are aware of any sources (websites, reports) that are interesting to record in our database, please let us know via csrriskcheck@mvonederland.nl. The method we use to check the reliability of sources can be obtained using the same email address.
CSR risk information is not (yet) available for all countries and products, but this does not imply there are no CSR risks. In some cases, we have not yet found a proper source to describe a certain risk. In addition, MVO Nederland does not state the severity of an identified risk, nor the chance of it occurring in relation to a specific business endeavour. As a company, you are responsible for 1) the interpretation of the severity of risks in relation to the activities of your company; and 2) the formulation and implementation of appropriate measures to reduce or mitigate these risks.
Undertaking the CSR Risk Check is voluntary and has no legal consequences, for example when applying for government grants.
In case you use information from the CSR Risk Check, for example in your annual report, please include MVO Nederland in your references.
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