Global Child Forum partners with Cleartraced to support AI-assisted benchmark data collection

Global Child Forum has announced a new collaboration with Cleartraced to support AI-assisted screening and data collection within its benchmark scoring process. The partnership combines Cleartraced’s proprietary AI workflows with Global Child Forum’s rigorous methodological oversight — improving both efficiency and traceability across one of the world’s most comprehensive corporate children’s rights datasets.

About Global Child Forum

Founded in 2009 by the Swedish royal couple, King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia, Global Child Forum is an international platform working to advance children’s rights in business and society. The organisation convenes companies, investors, policymakers and civil society to promote responsible business practices and improve outcomes for children worldwide.

Through its benchmarking work, Global Child Forum evaluates how major global companies address children’s rights across their operations and value chains. The benchmark focuses on companies within the SDG2000, identified by the World Benchmarking Alliance as the businesses most influential for achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals. To date, Global Child Forum has assessed nearly 3,000 companies, with its most recent global benchmark analysing 1,806 of the world’s most influential companies, making it one of the most comprehensive global datasets on corporate performance related to children’s rights.

The Collaboration

The partnership strengthens Global Child Forum’s ongoing work to assess corporate disclosures and benchmark performance. Through the collaboration, Cleartraced will act as a data provider, supporting the identification and collection of publicly disclosed benchmark data used in the organisation’s methodology.

Cleartraced is a Stockholm-based technology company specialising in AI-powered ESG data retrieval from corporate disclosures. Using proprietary AI workflows, Cleartraced identifies company reports, policies and disclosures across jurisdictions and converts them into structured, source-traceable datasets. The collaboration enables Global Child Forum to streamline the identification and structuring of relevant corporate disclosures while maintaining robust methodological oversight.

“Credible benchmarking depends on two things: methodological integrity and high-quality data. By working with Cleartraced, we’re strengthening our ability to identify and structure publicly available disclosures efficiently — while keeping robust human review at the centre of our process. That means better consistency, better traceability, and ultimately more actionable insights for companies and investors working to respect and support children’s rights.”

Ekin Ergün Björstedt, Secretary General, Global Child Forum

How the Collaboration Supports the Benchmark

Under the collaboration, Cleartraced’s AI-powered service supports the screening and collection of Benchmark Data, which then feeds into Global Child Forum’s scoring process. Cleartraced’s AI workflow identifies corporate disclosures such as annual and sustainability reports, webpages, policies and public statements, and converts the information into structured, source-traceable data.

All collected data is then reviewed by Global Child Forum’s analysts through guided quality checks and a final methodological validation to ensure alignment with the benchmark indicators and scoring framework. This combined approach improves efficiency in data collection while safeguarding accuracy through expert review.

“It is truly an honour to work with such a globally credible benchmark as Global Child Forum. This collaboration shows what becomes possible when mission-driven research is paired with the latest technology and innovation: highly efficient data retrieval, optimised human efforts, and a clearer audit trail back to the original source — while preserving human quality assurance at every step.”

Christian Patay, CEO & Founder, Cleartraced