This conversation was recorded for Peace Day Live 2023, days before the UN General Assembly. Sanda Ojiambo leads the United Nations Global Compact, and she starts from a simple proposition: without peace there can be no progress. The commercial version of the same point is one the Global Compact says often. Business cannot succeed if society is failing.
The organization was founded in 2000 by the then Secretary-General, with the aim of bringing a human face to the global market. It is membership-based, joined by chief executives who commit to a set of principles for responsible business.
Key findings
- The Global Compact began with around 40 companies in 2000 and now has about 18,000 companies across more than 100 countries, with local networks in over 60 of them.
- The commitments cover environmental protection, respecting and promoting human rights and labor rights, and eliminating corruption in all its forms.
- A survey of close to 2,000 chief executives, conducted the year before this conversation, found their largest challenges have nothing to do with their products. They are existential issues: conflict, the climate crisis, inequality, inflation, and access to capital.
- Ojiambo reports that the debate has moved. Business leaders no longer argue about whether to act responsibly, only about how.
- She states that companies adopting these principles do better financially, and attributes the claim to statistics rather than to advocacy.
Why peace is the precondition, not the cause
Ojiambo treats peace as infrastructure rather than sentiment. A peaceful environment is what allows stakeholders to convene and multilateral dialogue to happen, and without it none of the rest of the agenda advances. Narrowed to the private sector, the point is concrete. Peace is what allows jobs to be created and sustained, and goods and services to be produced and traded.
The reverse dependency is the line the Global Compact uses with its members. Business cannot succeed if society is failing. Ojiambo extends it to rights: dignity, equality, and gender equality all depend on a peaceful setting.
What the organization is, and how far it has grown
The founding logic in 2000 was to bring a human face to the global market. The role of capitalism was under examination at the time, and there was an opportunity to engage business in the UN’s agenda. Membership requires a chief executive to sign up to principles covering the environment, human rights, labor rights, and corruption.
The scale has changed by orders of magnitude. Around 40 companies signed on at the start. There are now roughly 18,000 across more than 100 countries, with local networks in over 60. Ojiambo is not triumphant about it and says there is considerably more to do on membership.
The case for business as a participant
Her first argument is employment. Most jobs are created in the private sector rather than the public one, and a living income does more than pay wages. It drives access to healthcare, to education, and to more sustainable food and agriculture.
Her second is appetite. Business leaders want to be part of finding solutions, and thousands were arriving in New York that week to sit alongside policymakers. What business brings is specific: technology, market access, consumer insight, and the ability to finance initiatives differently.
The framing she prefers is not a trade-off. Profit, purpose, and people can coexist, and she points to evidence that companies embracing these principles perform better financially. The interviewer notes in reply that the ESG label itself has become contested in some places, which is a reason leaders look for the weight of a larger body behind them.
The problem chief executives were not hired to solve
The survey of nearly 2,000 chief executives produced the sharpest observation in the interview. Their biggest challenges now have nothing to do with their products. Ojiambo puts it plainly: a chief executive hired to sell widgets is now dealing with the climate crisis, widening inequality, and hyperinflation, and is not necessarily equipped for any of it.
She treats that admission as progress rather than failure. Business leadership is now much more than leading a business, which is a large burden and also an opportunity to shape direction for economies and industries.
What the Global Compact offers a leader who asks how
The answer has four parts: learn, connect, lead, and report. Learning comes first because this material is not taught in business school, so the tools and platforms cover what climate action means in practice and how to make human rights frameworks relevant to a business.
Connection is the claim she makes most strongly, describing the largest single connecting platform in corporate sustainability, spanning multinationals and smaller firms across regions. Leading means giving member companies and their chief executives a platform to advocate. Reporting closes the loop through the Communication on Progress, which asks companies to state publicly what is working and where the difficulties are.
Scope and limitations
This is a short interview with the leader of the organization being described, conducted by a partner of it. The account of what the Global Compact provides is its own. The claim that principle-adopting companies perform better financially is asserted with reference to statistics that are not named or sourced in the conversation.
Membership figures and survey numbers are given in round terms and from memory in a live conversation. The survey of close to 2,000 chief executives is described without its method or publication. The source is an automatic caption track of speech, with no speaker labels and mistranscribed names.
Source
This page summarises Sanda Ojiambo and Marc de Swaan Arons – Interview – Peace Day Live 2023, by Sanda Ojiambo, Marc de Swaan Arons.