Making Children Count – Sustainability Reporting across Emerging Asia
How many of Asia’s listed companies can actually show they are protecting children’s rights?
Until now, there has been no clear way to answer this question. Protecting children in businesses is vital and it happens on many levels. It is not only a question of policies on child labour, but also of issues such as supporting working parents, managing supply chains, and assessing the social impacts of the business. Without material data, companies cannot course-correct, nor can investors advocate for meaningful change.
UNICEF’s new report, “Making Children Count – Sustainability Reporting across Emerging Asia”, fills that gap. The report reviews the sustainability disclosures of 1,399 listed companies across nine emerging Asian markets to understand one simple issue: where do children appear in corporate sustainability reporting? Rather than looking only at child labour, the report examines how companies address children across governance, workplaces, supply chains, marketing, environmental and community impacts, access to remediation, and sector-specific issues such as digital rights and nutrition. The result is the first regional picture of how businesses disclose their impacts on children and where the largest gaps remain.
Broad human rights commitments still leave children out
Across the sample, many companies disclose human rights commitments, but far fewer translate them into child-specific reporting. In fact, the report finds that 74% of companies report formal human rights commitments, while only 5% explicitly identify children as stakeholders and just 1% include child rights in materiality assessments. If children are not analyzed as distinct stakeholders, and rather bucketed into broad categories such as communities or vulnerable groups, companies miss how their business affects young workers and children of workers, as well as consumers, digital users and community members in this age group.
The gap becomes even clearer in supply chains. Seven in ten companies publicly commit to ending child labour, but only 2% address remediation, and just 3% report support to suppliers on child rights. A child labour commitment alone provides only part of the picture. To understand how companies manage risks, it is important to understand how risks are found, how suppliers are supported, or what happens when harm occurs.
That same evidence applies to other parts of business where children are often affected less visibly. Company reports frequently mention flexible work or parental leave, yet less often connect these measures to living wages, breastfeeding support or job security during family leave. The result is a wider reporting problem: children are touched by many parts of business operations, but companies still rarely show enough evidence of how those impacts are identified, managed and addressed.
What does this mean for investors?
For investors, the report provides a more targeted way to integrate child rights into existing ESG analysis and stewardship practices. If a company commits to eliminating child labour, investors should ask how risks are identified, what happens when cases are found, and whether suppliers receive support to prevent harm. Similarly, if a company reports family-friendly policies, investors can examine whether those protections reach workers beyond direct employees and whether the company can show outcomes, not only policies. This can inform their risk management analysis, and enhance active ownership strategies.
This matters because the report identifies an intent-action-impact gap. Across 20 of 26 indicators, reported impact sits at least 50% below stated commitments. For investors, that gap can support screening, due diligence, engagement and stewardship. It can also help identify where strong commitments are not yet matched by evidence. This can point to possible weaknesses in systems and hidden risks when it comes to regulations, operations, reputation or supply chains.
What does this mean for regulators and exchanges?
For regulators and exchanges, the report shows that disclosure rules can make a real difference when they are specific enough to guide company reporting. The focus is not on creating a separate child rights framework, but on embedding child-specific expectations into the sustainability disclosure frameworks and systems companies already use. Regulators can clarify that children should be considered in materiality assessments, while exchanges can translate that expectation into listing guidance and examples of what good disclosure looks like.
The report also shows that stronger reporting rules are associated with stronger child rights disclosure. On average, companies in markets where reporting is fully mandated and metrics are prescribed receive a score of 101 out of 260 points in the child rights disclosure assessment. In markets where reporting is voluntary or lacks guidance, the average score is 45.4 out of 260. These data show that mandatory reporting helps raise the baseline, but it works best when companies also receive child-specific indicators, training, and practical guidance. Without that specificity, companies may still report broad social commitments without showing how they address child rights in practice.
