Social Accountability Foundation

SAN5000 lays down five, universally endorsed norms. In effect, they sum up the virtuous aspects of 5000 years of mankind's history.

Employment Norms

To specify minimum wages, list disciplinary and discriminatory practices, prevent abuse of child labour, and prohibit forced labour practices

Workplace Norms

To determine working hours, develop high safety and hygiene standards, minimize occupational risk of all employees, and promote healthy working conditions.

Freedom of Expression Norms

To recognize and protect each individual's right to freely express his/her views, and safeguard the means for doing so.

Environmental Norms

To safeguard the right to a clean and healthy environment, by developing standards to check against pollution, to regulate the use and disposal of hazardous substances, to phase out toxic chemicals and to ensure compliance with all existing statutes and environmental conventions.

Development Norms

To create mechanisms to continuously assess and upgrade the level of compliance, encourage training of all associated personnel in the enterprise, improve benefits to all workers, and overall promote the qualitative aspects of the lives of workers and their families, in both urban and rural areas.

The qualitative aspects of these norms are based on international conventions such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, International Labour Organisation principles, the Convention on Biological Diversity and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, among others.

For country-specific quantitative aspects, each country's relevant laws form the basis of compliance.

There would also be industry-specific norms - where applicable.