12.28.2006 - 02:00pm ET

(CSRwire) NEW YORK, NY - December 28, 2006 - On 1 January 2007, the Global Compact Office will remove an additional 203 companies from its list of participants for failure to meet consecutive Communication on Progress (COP) deadlines. To ensure the quality of the initiative, all companies participating in the Global Compact are expected to develop an annual COP which describes the ways in which they are implementing the initiative’s ten principles.

“We are disappointed each time a company is delisted from the Global Compact, but this is a necessary measure to uphold the value of the good efforts being made by the majority of our participants,” said Georg Kell, Executive Director of the Global Compact. “As a voluntary initiative, the Global Compact can only achieve its objective of a more sustainable, inclusive global marketplace if our participants are committed to the ten principles. Fortunately, we have thousands of participants that are working to bring meaningful change to society.”

In October 2006, the Global Compact took an important step to ensure the quality of the initiative by removing 335 "inactive" companies from its participant list. In the future, companies will be delisted on a daily basis instead of on a quarterly basis. With the addition of over 1,000 new participants in 2006, the Global Compact initiative continues its strong growth pattern and remains the world’s largest voluntary corporate citizenship initiative.

The delisting of Global Compact participants is in accordance with the initiative’s Integrity Measures which state that any company that has missed two consecutive annual deadlines to submit a COP will be regarded "inactive" and marked accordingly on the Global Compact website. Companies listed as “inactive” are not permitted to participate in Global Compact events, and are barred from using the Global Compact name or logo.

Companies that are labeled "inactive" can regain their status as active participants by submitting a Communication on Progress.

For more information visit UN Global Compact on http://www.unglobalcompact.org .

For more information please visit the Communication on Progress section on the Global Compact Website: http://www.unglobalcompact.org/CommunicatingProgress/index.html.

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