Disclaimer

The CSR Risk Check was developed by MVO Nederland and Concept 7 (a Dutch strategic digital agency) and is commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development who is joined by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, and is financed by these three parties. The underlying database is compiled by MVO Nederland and the German agency UPJ, i.e. the “Network for Corporate Responsibility and social commitment”. The CSR Risk Check is available in the Dutch, English and German language. The German version of the CSR Risk Check is funded by the German Ministry for Business & Economic Development (through the German Helpdesk on Business and Human Rights at the Agency for Business and Economic Development) and the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs. Together, the 6 underlined organisations mentioned above are hereinafter referred to as the project partners.  

MVO Nederland  is the legal owner of the CSR Risk Check and is together with UPJ solely responsible for collecting and processing data under the conditions as referred to herein. Read more about the collection and processing of data in the privacy statement. 

The CSR Risk Check makes use of the most up-to-date external sources on CSR risks in international trading which are believed to be reliable. At present there are 3642 data sources processed which have been translated into 5612 different risks and 670 recommendations for countries and products/services.  

The risks and advice 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. 

The risks, identified by the CSR Risk Check, and information described and contained in the (underlying) database have been compiled from public online sources, which are subject to a reliability check based upon a reliability scheme before they are used. Neither the information contained in the public online sources, nor the reliability of these sources are guaranteed by MVO Nederland or UPJ or their representatives. MVO Nederland, as the owner of the tool, takes the utmost care (together with UPJ) to verify the reliability of the public sources used and may rely thereupon using and processing that information for the CSR Risk Check. MVO Nederland or UPJ or their representatives do however not warrant or represent the correctness, accuracy, up-to-dateness, and completeness of the information processed, or wording of the risks used. The database is constantly supplemented and updated. In case you have any questions or feedback on the CSR Risk Check, or are aware of any sources (websites, reports) that are interesting or imperative to record in our database, please let us know via csrriskcheck@mvonederland.nl. The method that is used in order to check the reliability of sources can be obtained using the same email address.  

All companies and organisations are expected to abide local laws and regulations of the respective 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 or indicative. 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 (may) 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 availability of relevant information on CSR issues also highly depends on the local context of a respective country. 

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 MVO Nederland and may change resulting from international border disputes. For the product classification in the tool, the SITC codes are used, also established by the United Nations Statistics Division. The product list is complemented by services that are derived from the UN ISIC system. 

CSR risk information is not (yet) available for all countries and products, but this does not imply nor mean that no CSR risks will be present or occur. In some cases, it may occur that a proper source to describe a certain risk has not yet been found or identified. In addition, MVO Nederland does not state nor indicate 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.  The information of the CSR Risk Check and its database, the results of use and all other communications is of general nature and cannot be considered a substitute for legal or other advice, and cannot be qualified as an opinion on certain risks related to the user of the CSR Risk Check. 

Undertaking the CSR Risk Check is voluntary and has no legal consequences, for example when applying for government grants. The project partners or its representatives do not accept any liability for damages arising from the use of the CSR Risk Check, nor for any malfunctioning of the CSR Risk Check. 

The CSR Risk Check and its database cannot be used for commercial activities, and no automated systems or software is authorized or allowed to extract data from the CSR Risk Check or the respective designated websites, to make the CSR Risk Check available, for commercial purposes. You may not scrape, scan, screenshot, snapshot, copy, archive, or store any content from the CSR Risk Check or its designated websites used without our permission.  

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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