We Have Submitted to the UN Global Compact. Here Is Why.

On 10 April 2025, Veynuus Firm became a signatory to the United Nations Global Compact, the world's largest corporate sustainability initiative. The commitment is to align the firm's operations and strategy with the Ten Principles covering human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption.

Why a firm this size signs

Signing the Compact is more commonly associated with large corporations, and a small advisory practice could reasonably decide it has nothing to add to a register of multinationals. Veynuus took a different view. The firm operates across Somalia and neighbouring countries in environments where responsible business is not optional but necessary. Institutions in these markets are being rebuilt, and the norms of commercial conduct are being set now, by the companies currently operating in them. A firm working in that setting either contributes to the standard or erodes it; there is no neutral position available.

The SDGs and Africa's Agenda 2063 are not frameworks the firm references from a distance. They speak directly to the futures its clients and its communities deserve, and they shape how Veynuus thinks about the work it does day to day — which sectors it takes on, how it treats the people who appear in its research, and what it is prepared to do to move a file through an office.

What signing commits the firm to

Participation carries a reporting obligation. Every signatory must publish an annual Communication on Progress describing what it has done against the Ten Principles, and the obligation is public: a participant that stops reporting is delisted, visibly. That mechanism is a substantial part of why the commitment is worth making. An internal standard can quietly lapse. A published one lapses in front of everybody.

In March 2025, ahead of signing, the firm adopted its Integrated Ethical, Environmental & Workforce Responsibility Policy, which translates the Ten Principles into standards attached to specific decisions — procurement, conflict of interest, safeguarding on field assignments, data collected from research subjects, environmental practice and terms of employment. The policy is the instrument; the Communication on Progress is the account of how it was applied.

What it does not mean

Signing is not certification, and Veynuus is not presenting it as one. The Global Compact is not an audit body and does not verify a participant's claims. Participation is a commitment to adopt the principles, report honestly on progress and continue improving. The value lies in the discipline of publishing, in the fact that failure to publish is visible, and in having a shared framework against which a small firm's practice can be described in terms a client, a partner or an employee already understands.

The firm's participant record is published on the Global Compact register and is open to anyone who wants to check it.