Partnership for Global LGBTIQ+ Equality (PGLE)

Background

The Partnership for Global LGBTIQ+ Equality is an initiative of Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), a San Francisco-based consulting and advocacy organization; the World Economic Forum (WEF), a business league notable for organizing annual meetings of international business and political leaders in Davos, Switzerland; and the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The organization is organized as a project of Business for Social Responsibility, which provides it with executive leadership and secretariat support. ¹

The organization’s launch was officially held at the WEF annual meeting on January 22, 2019. Its founding members (as opposed to co-initiators) were Accenture, Boston Consulting Group, CISCO, the Coca-Cola Company, Deloitte, Deutsche Bank, EY, Edelman, Johnson and Johnson, Mastercard, Microsoft, Proctor and Gamble, PepsiCo, PwC, Salesforce, and Scotiabank. ¹

The Standards of Conduct

The Partnership for Global LGBTIQ+ Equality promotes the United Nations Human Rights Office’s Standards of Conduct, a set of five standards developed in collaboration with the Institute for Human Rights and Business, an international left-of-center think tank, for businesses designed to coordinate their practices with left-of-center aligned objectives regarding the treatment of individuals with minority sexual and gender identities. ^{2 3}

To that end, the Partnership for Global LGBTIQ+ Equality also promotes the United Nations LGBTIQ+ Standards Gap Analysis Tool, which was developed by the organization with support from Boston Consulting Group, its parent organizations (Business for Social Responsibility, the World Economic Forum, and United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights), and the United Nations Global Compact. The tool, a free online platform for which interested businesses can sign up, is designed to assess compliance with the United Nations Human Rights Office’s Standards of Conduct. ⁴

Policy

On May 25, 2023, the Partnership for Global LGBTIQ+ Equality issued a statement opposing Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill, a piece of legislation then being considered in Uganda’s parliament that was signed into law later that month. The legislation imposed a range of penalties for same-sex sexual conduct and required individuals to report participants in such activities to government authorities. ^{5 6}

Membership

In addition to the Partnership for Global LGBTIQ+ Equality’s founding members, as of June 2023, other members of the organization include GLAAD; the Human Rights Campaign Foundation; International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Intersex Association; Kerry, McKinsey and Company; Medtronic; Nestle; Novartis; Randstad; Stonewall; and WPP. ⁷

Leadership

Beck Bailey

Beck Bailey is a co-chair of the Partnership for Global LGBTIQ+ Equality’s steering committee as well as the managing director of Global Inclusion and Diversity at Accenture. Formerly, Bailey was the director of the Workplace Equality Program at the Human Rights Campaign, one of the largest LGBT-interest activist organizations in the United States. ⁸

Clare Iery

Clare Iery is a co-chair of the Partnership for Global LGBTQI+ Equality’s steering committee as well as the leader of Proctor and Gamble’s Ethics and Corporate Responsibility foundation of citizenship and the development editor of its respecting human rights program. ⁸