International governance concerns everyone, individuals, businesses, local and territorial authorities, nations and alliances.

For years, theUN has been an engine for the development of a planetary human culture, centred on values and rights, proclaimed in treaties and declarations that not everyone has chosen to sign:
From human rights to children's rights, from tax evasion to issues of corruption, there are numerous issues of a general nature that are dealt with on a daily basis by international bodies, and which are not always welcomed by States and businesses.

Sustainable funds have a responsibility to carry forward this culture of legality and to demand compliance with minimum quality standards from all issuers of their investments, acting proactively through engagement actions.

Sustainable funds set themselves qualitative and quantitative targets in order to guide the behaviour of Society and the countries where they invest so that it does not harm their reputation and result in major money losses.

The use of the UN sanctions list, the banning of fiscally non-transparent countries, the use of international corruption rankings or "not free" states, these are some of the courses of action that funds can use and monitor over time to assess the performance of countries. Indeed, the adoption of ESG standards to assess international investment opportunities is a powerful weapon to convince laggard states to sign the most important international treaties and make concrete action plans in favour of sustainability, otherwise they will find it difficult to raise capital on international markets.

On the positive side, mutual funds can also set themselves Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and support their achievement by following the guidelines of the action plan approved by the 193 UN member countries.

Sustainable investors use different management strategies:
The Normative approach: verification of compliance with the main international treaties and regulations is the basis for action to improve the behaviour of individual countries and multinationals (conventions on the environment and climate, labour (ILO), human and children's rights, transparency and governance (PRI, Global Compact, convention on corruption, Freedom House).
Engagement: the best way to change behaviour is to demand through direct dialogue that countries and companies comply with the most relevant international treaties. Even better if it is through action coordinated by foundations and specialised observatories.
Best practice: Some funds carry out ESG performance assessments of the countries in which they intend to invest or are members of organised associations committed to greater transparency in investments (GIIN, ILG, GRI).

We use more than 70 criteria to evaluate the action of funds with regard to good governance :
Assessments are mainly divided into Impact and ESG risk assessment strategies, with the most common strategy being alignment with international treaties and stakeholder engagement to ensure sustainability of funded projects.

Adherence to and active participation in UN programmes such as the Global Compact, PRI and PRB are particularly significant, as is the verification of full compliance with the main international agreements in the fund investment process.

Numerous good governance principals are required of funds that claim to promote or invest in sustainability. However, this is a recommendation and not a true assessment requirement.

The areas to be checked are as follows:

• Lack of anti-corruption and anti-bribery policies.:
  Share of investment in entities without anti-corruption policies consistent with the UN Convention against Corruption.
• Cases of insufficient actions taken to address violations of anti-corruption and anti-bribery regulations:
  Share of investments in Society investees with identified insufficiencies in actions taken to address violations of anti-corruption and anti-bribery procedures and standards.
• Number of convictions and amount of fines for violation of anti-corruption and anti-bribery laws:
  Number of convictions and amount of fines for violations of anti-corruption and anti-bribery laws by Society investees.
• Lack of due diligence.:
  Share of investments in entities without a due diligence process to identify, prevent, mitigate and address adverse human rights impacts.
• Lack of human rights policy.:
  Share of investment in entities without a human rights policy.
• Number of identified cases of serious human rights problems and incidents:
  Number of cases of serious human rights problems and incidents related to Society participated based on a weighted average.

In summary, a sustainable fund must make sure that the companies where it invests are engaged in a fair business process with a risk control system, in the form of company policies, that is sufficiently extensive to prevent inappropriate behavior by the company, its suppliers, and its distributors.