Human Rights Outlook Report 2017
Verisk Maplecroft
Verisk Maplecroft is an internationally recognized source of human rights data, research and consultancy services who have been working in the field for 10+ years.  Recently they published a Human Rights Outlook Report for 2017.  Following is the link to that report

Verisk Maplecroft Human Rights Outlook Report for 2017
Earlier this year they requested an interview from APSCA to understand what we believed to be wrong with social audits, what we were trying to do as an organization and how our auditor certification program will work.  Please see the results of that interview in Section 1 of the report.
APSCA aims to certify the first round of auditors in January 2018, beginning with three to five major countries.  Our Working and Consultation Groups have been making great progress in defining the prerequisites, skills and competencies that a social auditor should hold and the relevant auditor level to which they will be accredited. 

Working Groups’ Update
The three working groups have made great progress since work began last year.   The published project plans had us going to Public Comment for the various working groups independently (with Working Group 1 due to go to Public Comment this month), but as we were nearing the completion of this work and obtaining feedback, it was determined it would be more effective if we held back and went to Public Comment with a complete package.
 APSCA are now moving to engage experts in the human resources field to take the information completed thus far by the working groups and to consolidate.  Then we will start the process of socialising this work and calling on the Working / Consultation Groups for feedback.   This will then be shared with the Executive Board in early May.
 We are currently working on our modified High Level Milestones for each of the working groups and this will be uploaded to our website shortly.  APSCA is still moving ahead at a great pace to meet our longer term desired outcome to formalise the accreditation process for APSCA registered auditors and ensuring we develop a framework to professionalise the social compliance auditing industry.