GENEVA, SWITZERLAND — The United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) has been named a winner of the prestigious 2026 ISAR Honours International Award by UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

The accolade provides global recognition for UNRISD’s pioneering Sustainable Development Performance Indicators (SDPI) and its online platform, celebrating them as a transformative breakthrough for corporate and organizational accountability. The award was officially presented on 1 October 2026 during the 43rd session of the Intergovernmental Working Group of Experts on International Standards of Accounting and Reporting (ISAR) in Geneva.

The ISAR Honours celebrate initiatives that successfully advance the integration of sustainability reporting into corporate practice. The SDPI framework and its accompanying online platform stood out for their unique, context-based approach to measurement.

While traditional Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) frameworks typically focus on “incrementalism”—measuring relative performance gains like reducing water consumption by 10%—the SDPI platform allows users to measure authentic sustainability. It evaluates an organization’s socio-economic and environmental impacts against actual ecological thresholds (such as planetary boundaries) and normative standards (such as living wages and human rights).

This international recognition arrives at a time of rapid growth for the platform. To date, the SDPI online portal has surpassed 1,339 registered users worldwide, spanning multinational corporations, small and medium enterprises (SMEs), and Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) organizations.

The indicators are also gaining major institutional traction. Key SDPI metrics have already been adopted for real-time sustainability tracking on the Vienna Stock Exchange website, proving that context-based sustainability is highly viable for modern financial markets.

UNRISD shared the 2026 international category honours alongside other leading regulatory and standard-setting bodies, including the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG) and the International Public Sector Accounting Standards Board (IPSASB).

“This award from UNCTAD ISAR is a powerful validation of the work we have done alongside our pilots and partners to build both the indicators and the digital infrastructure to track them,” said Dr Ilcheong Yi, Head of Partnership and Senior Research Coordinator, who has been leading the SDPI project from the beginning. “It proves that the global sustainability ecosystem is ready to move past greenwashing and embrace honest, threshold-based reporting that protects both people and the planet.”

The SDPI platform remains fully open-source and publicly accessible, allowing organizations of all sizes to measure what matters, accurately.