Quick Take

How to Conduct Business and Human Rights Research in 2026 – Making the Case For Relevance and Rigor

January 6, 2026

Global companies rely on human rights data as a key element of their political risk assessments of countries where they do business. For half a century the US government has produced some of the most reliable, detailed and accessible source of such data. Since the 1970s it has done so principally through the State Department’s annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, which detail human rights conditions in more than 190 countries. Last year, the US government radically reduced the scope of those reports, systematically cutting core sections on a range of topics affecting the rights of women, LGBTQ persons and other vulnerable populations and injecting a political bias which has seriously undermined the credibility of those reports. On a parallel track the United States became the first government in the world to decline to submit a self-assessment of its human rights record through the UN’s Universal Periodic Review. This is an 18-year-old process through which every government is obligated to assess its own record, and subject itself to questioning from other governments.

The downstream consequences of this retreat are significant. Authoritarian governments are further emboldened, normative standards are eroding, and the operating environment for human rights defenders has become measurably more dangerous. As a result, information asymmetries deepen, limiting the capacity of policymakers, investors, and civil society to assess risk and assign responsibility.

Against this backdrop, the role of researchers in the field of business and human rights (BHR) needs to expand. Researchers are increasingly being called on to document rights violations, especially in environments where government restrict access to information that is critical of official actions. Researchers also are being asked to identify and substantiate corporate involvement in rights violations, and to analyze the structural and political-economic drivers of abuse. Finally, they are being called on to evaluate the effectiveness of remedial and preventative interventions.

Meeting these demands in 2026 requires a recalibration of research practice. Business and human rights researchers must adopt approaches that prioritize real-world relevance while maintaining—and strengthening—methodological rigor. The credibility of the field -and its capacity to inform regulation, corporate conduct, and international accountability – depends on this balance.

As policymakers navigate complex trade-offs between economic interests and human rights protections, the demand for methodologically sound, business-informed research has never been greater.

Three Ways to Advance Relevance and Rigor in Business and Human Rights Research

Engage with stakeholders
Meaningful stakeholder engagement should not be a requirement for companies alone; it should also be central to academic research. We are living in turbulent times, and reliance on existing academic publications—often drafted three to five years prior to publication—risks missing what is currently at stake for companies and their stakeholders. Engaging with a diverse range of stakeholders to identify salient research questions is therefore indispensable for understanding what is most relevant at a given moment and what matters most for addressing concrete human rights challenges.
Conduct field research
Previously trusted sources have become less reliable due to government interference, the weakening of civil society, and the manipulation of digital evidence through AI technologies. As a result, human rights data increasingly require ground-truthing and independent verification. At our centers in New York and Geneva, we have long emphasized the value of firsthand observation; in the current context, field research has become indispensable rather than optional for producing credible and rigorous knowledge.
Critically assess the quality of existing data
Corporate self-reporting and self-assessment under human rights due diligence (HRDD) regimes have generated vast amounts of data. However, all too often this data captures performative compliance rather than substantive human rights performance. While such datasets may appear attractive for quantitative analysis, researchers should exercise caution. Overly simplistic regression analyses risk obscuring, rather than illuminating, whether companies are genuinely making progress in respecting human rights in practice. Rigorous scholarship therefore requires careful scrutiny of what existing data actually measure—and what they fail to capture.

The centers for Business and Human Rights at the Geneva School of Economics and Management and the NYU Stern business school stand ready to support researchers, policymakers, and practitioners in this essential work of rebuilding trust in human rights data and analysis.

Business & Human Rights Leadership