Shabnam Siddiqui is Executive Director at the United Nations Global Compact Network India.  An academic practitioner with twenty-five years of experience, Shabnam specialises in developing and executing strategic intervention through multi-stakeholder networks, is skilled at training and research and has several national and international publications to her credit.

Shabnam is a great believer and practitioner of Collective Action, and believes that the private sector plays a critical role in the attainment of Sustainable Development Goals. She has made significant contributions to creating an active community of changemakers committed to accelerating positive change and innovation to achieve SDGs. Academically, Shabnam has a Masters in Sociology from India, a second Masters in International Peace Studies from USA and embarked on a PhD in Public Policy at Singapore. Additionally, every couple of years Shabnam is engaged in academic pursuit so as to be abreast of new knowledge and thought leadership. Her most recent foray was to the University of Oxford as a Chevening Rolls Royce Innovation, Science, Policy and Leadership (CRISP) Fellow based at Said Business School, St. Cross College.

Shabnam is also an amateur wildlife photographer, a biodiversity conservationist, passionate about wildlife and forests and intends to work towards their holistic development.

In an exclusive interview, Shabnam Siddiqui tells Marie Banu about United Nations Global Compact Network India and its role.

Your tryst in the social sector?

I started my professional career in 1990s working on women issues.  I went to a girls educational institute right from school to post graduation, hence was in touch with women’s issues. While conducting a session with a Jhuggi group in Delhi, one lady said, “we understand what you are trying to say and are in  agreement, but please explain the same thing to our men. If they change, we will change.”  That was such a basic thing that we needed to do and I realised that it is not only a ‘women’ issue, but a ‘gender’ issue – as that is the way our society is programmed. Being a sociology student, that understanding was more clearer. From there on, I adopted a systems approach to understating and solving societal problems.

In my current position at United Nations Global Compact Network India, I have been working for over 10 years now and it has been the longest period that I have stayed with an organisation.  Still, there is so much do on the SDGs and much to do with the organisation.

About United Nations Global Compact Network India and your association?

United Nations Global Compact Network India (UNGCNI) is a voluntary initiative for corporates to join in the change that’s happening in the world. It was founded two decades ago when Kofi Annan at one of the World Economic Forum meetings got together business houses and said that because businesses are part of the problem of the society they need to also be a part of the solution.

Currently, we are working in 63 countries where we have established the Global Compact Networks. This Network is based on 10 principles around the issues of human rights, environment, labour and anti-corruption.

Our role is to facilitate businesses in understanding, inculcating and transforming their actions based on these 10 principles. For instance, we are working on the issue of anti-corruption and looking at the issue of public procurement.

When we met business houses, the public sector thought that the private sector were more privileged as they had more independence while the private sector thought that the public sector was more privileged because they were close to the government. After hearing their individual stories, we got them together in a room and businesses realised that the issue was the same and it was just that they were not speaking with each other.

In what ways does UNGCNI promote networking?

We have both corporates  and non-corporates (civil society organisations, academic institutions, and think tanks) as UNGCNI members.  We try to engage a dialogue with them as both come from different angles.

We have been promoting collective action to a large extent. The idea is to do internal reporting and share it with the external world. You then work together on different issues – for instance in your CSR programmes. No company can sustain any particular CSR initiative for a long time as their role is limited only for few years. So, Company B can take over the responsibility after Company A’s period to ensure continuation of the programme, thus sustain its impact for the future.  This Collective Action can be based on geography or social issues like health, water, or education. The more stakeholders work together the greater the impact will be; otherwise everything will be like a drop in the ocean.

Businesses have evolved nationally and globally in the last decade. If you see the issues of child labour that were in a lot of manufacturing companies, it has substantially come down because people wanted to be seen on the side of progress. So, labour issues are now been tackled and human rights issue is no more an exclusive issue. 

Presently, we are dealing with a case of human rights abuse of an Indian company in Myanmar which is being tackled by lawyers in Australia along with our headquarters. We are living more and more in a global situation now and  we need to see how we can connect together – both for progress and accountability. The challenge though is in communication.

My colleague was recently part of a dialogue between a US company and local government officials. The US company  were waiting for government to engage with them for their CSR activity while the government was waiting for the company to approach them. In such a situation, there is a need to facilitate the dialogue and this requires an external neutral non-profit agency. That’s the role of UNGCNI, to act as neutral facilitators. We speak the universal language of the 10 principles, hence facilitating dialogue becomes important.

For instance, during the COVID phase, many companies did substantial work and published it in their individual reports which was meant for a limited audience. We asked our members to share with us and we reported the work of the 35 members that we managed to gather in the limited time frame. The collective contribution of UNGCI members was valued at millions of rupees – right from philanthropy to  setting up hospitals and opening community radios for awareness. The scale of their work was tremendous and the global audience was appreciative of the work done by our members. 

How does UNGCNI ensure transparency and accountability?

When the Global Compact was found in 2000, initially we had only 9 principles. In 2004, we realised that not much has not been achieved hence we added the 10th principle of anti-corruption to ensure that all the gaps/loop holes were tightened. Ant-corruption reporting and transparency and accountability systems were ensured in the organisation’s internal and external reporting systems and we also have a team of  compliance and  vigilance officers on board.

I was attending a meeting in Mumbai where we were talking about values and giving examples of Tata and Birla when a participant asked “at what point of profit do you start becoming transparent?” That was an interesting question for us to mull over as small agencies do not have the wherewithal or resources to focus on transparency and accountability.

As UNGCNI works with big corporates, we have ensured that their entire value chain and their vendors also follow the principles and when we get reports of any ill doing, we take suo motto action.

What are the efforts taken by UNGCNI for corporates to report on  SDGs?

The UNGCNI has come a long way. Since September 2015, when the Sustainable Development Goals came in, our work was to ensure that the corporates and governments follow the SDGs and take priority in setting their goals in their respective areas of work. 

UNGCNI is assisting companies to align their CSR work with SDGs and report to the nodal ministry for SDGs and CSR as they are both different.

In the last year, beyond SDG, ESG has come in and is taking a dominant position, especially with the entire focus on climate.  From CSR to SDG to ESG – this has been the journey for corporates and CSR reporting.