Children’s Rights And Business Principles:Empirical Evidences From Italy

The goal of this thesis is to analyze the sensitivity of Italian companies toward children and their rights, under the guidelines provided by the ten Children’s Rights and Business Principles, developed by UNICEF, UN Global Compact and Save the Children and released in March2012. Due to the absence of a universally valid reporting framework and evaluation model for child-sensitivity, I redact a list of nineteen indicators that include both area of respect and support for these Business Principles, on the basis of UNICEF’s guidelines and GRI Sustainability Reporting Framework. According to this comprehensive set of indicators, I conduct a content analysis of the sustainability reports of a sample of58Italian large companies. The analysis of the results follows a three-step approach:by business impact area for children, by single Business Principle and finally by business sector. Italian companies give a particular attention to children in the workplace (as workers, family members of employees and in relation to business facilities and staff) and commit to reinforcing community and government efforts to protect and fulfill children’s rights. However, further steps should be taken toward children in the marketplace area and toward support initiatives to advance children’s rights through proactive, tangible, long-term efforts. Finally, I observe that larger companies, with a high application level of GRI Sustainability Reporting Framework, show a higher degree of sensitivity toward child-friendly business practices. A similar result, although with less statistical evidence, holds true for companies with a relatively high level of international activities.