Pluto advisory
CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY · PUBLIC POLICY
For decisions that aren't straightforward.
We work where business, human rights, geopolitics and public policy meet — helping organisations navigate difficult decisions and shape the frameworks that govern them.
From policy to practice — and from analysis to decision.
Explore our work →
HOW WE WORK
Principled. Pragmatic. Independent.
Grounded in international standards, focused on the decisions they are meant to inform.
01
Severity first
We focus attention where it matters most: on impacts that are severe, potentially irreversible or insufficiently understood.
From analysis to decision
02
Analysis is useful only if it improves decisions. We translate findings into choices, escalation thresholds, governance triggers and practical courses of action.
Policy and practice
03
We know how standards are developed and what happens when organisations have to implement them. We bring business realities into policy discussions and policy developments into organisational decision-making.
Diverse perspectives
04
Good decisions require more than one institutional viewpoint. We bring the experience and concerns of affected people, civil society, business, investors, governments and international institutions into our analysis.
Built for scrutiny
05
Our advice is designed to withstand regulatory, legal, investor, stakeholder and public scrutiny — without allowing compliance or reputation to substitute for addressing impacts on people.
where we come in
Advise.
Assess.
Shape.
Think.
ADVISE
Navigate hard decisions
We advise boards, executives, investors, governments and international organisations where human rights, commercial, legal, political and operational considerations intersect: severe impacts, complex business relationships, limited leverage, political uncertainty, crises and contested operating environments. This includes readiness for mandatory due diligence requirements — the CSDDD as amended, the German Supply Chain Act, the EU Forced Labour Regulation — and what they demand of operations in high-risk contexts.
Our role is not to explain what standards say. It is to help determine what they mean for the decision at hand.
Strategic business and human rights advisory · Conflict and fragile contexts · Responsible investment
ASSESS
Understand impacts, risks and relationships
We conduct human rights due diligence, impact assessments and targeted reviews across operations, projects, value chains, investments and business relationships. We identify impacts on people, examine how organisations may cause, contribute to or be directly linked to them, and assess severity, context, leverage and available responses. In conflict-affected environments this means heightened due diligence, conflict analysis, scenario analysis, escalation frameworks, and what exposure under international humanitarian and international criminal law means for governance, decisions and risk — working alongside legal counsel where legal advice is required.
An assessment that changes nothing is a document. Ours are built to end in a decision.
Human rights due diligence and impact · Heightened due diligence · Stakeholder engagement and remedy
SHAPE
Develop policy that works in practice
We work with governments, international organisations, businesses and investors to develop policies, standards, guidance and governance approaches for responsible business conduct. Because our experience spans both development and implementation, we can test emerging approaches against institutional reality and identify where apparently straightforward rules produce difficult consequences on the ground.
A requirement nobody can meet produces compliance, not change.
Public policy and standard setting · Guidance development · Independent review and evaluation
THINK
Work on the questions that come next
We research, convene and contribute new thinking on emerging issues at the intersection of business, human rights, conflict, investment, technology and public policy.
Some of the most important questions do not yet have established answers. Those are the ones worth working on now.
Research · Convening · Emerging issues
WHO WE WORK WITH
Pluto works across institutional boundaries because many of today's most difficult business and human rights problems cannot be understood from a single perspective.
Companies — Senior leadership working on both systems and individual decisions, particularly where impacts may be severe, information incomplete and the available options imperfect.
Investors and lenders — Human rights impacts across portfolios and transactions, and how responsibility, leverage, engagement, escalation and investment decisions should respond.
Governments and International organisations — Policy development, guidance, research, implementation and the evolution of international approaches to responsible business conduct.
Civil society — Research, accountability, policy development and engagement with business and public institutions.
Different institutions. Same hard questions.
SELECTED WORK
ADVISORY · ENERGY · SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA
THE QUESTION
Whether a project could proceed responsibly after an armed insurgency displaced the surrounding population, and what "responsibly" would have to mean.
WHAT WE DID
Heightened due diligence and conflict-sensitivity assessment covering security arrangements, resettlement legacy and the humanitarian environment, drawing on local civil society, humanitarian actors and international expertise.
WHAT WE DELIVERED
Conditions and escalation triggers tied to named decision-makers, rather than a report.
PUBLIC POLICY · MULTILATERAL · GLOBAL
THE QUESTION
What companies and investors should be required to do differently in conflict-affected contexts, and how to express it so it could be implemented.
WHAT WE DID
Led development of guidance for the UN Development Programme and the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights, tested against operating realities with companies, investors and civil society.
WHAT WE DELIVERED
The reference text now used by companies, investors, states and development finance institutions.
ADVISORY AND POLICY · COMMODITY SUPPLY CHAIN
THE QUESTION
Whether an industry's existing control systems could meet a new European due diligence standard, and what would have to change on the ground if not.
WHAT WE DID
Assessed sector systems against the incoming requirement, working with both the regulated actors and the institutions setting the expectation.
WHAT WE DELIVERED
Recommendations addressed to both sides at once — the reason clients come to us rather than to one specialist or the other.
Pluto Advisory is a strategic advisory firm operating at the intersection of geopolitics, public policy and corporate responsibility. Our work is defined by a clear principle: from policy to practice and from analysis to decision.
Independent advice for difficult decisions
Experience behind the frameworks
Pluto Advisory works with companies, investors, governments, international organisations and civil society on issues where commercial realities, public policy and societal expectations intersect.
Pluto Advisory is led by Gerald Pachoud, who has helped design some of the initiatives and frameworks that have shaped responsible business over the past two decades.
As Special Adviser to Professor John Ruggie under the UN Secretary-General's Special Representative mandate on business and human rights, Gerald contributed to the conceptual, political and operational development of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and to the international process that led to their endorsement in 2011. More recently, he was lead author of the UNDP and UN Working Group guidance on heightened human rights due diligence in conflict-affected contexts, translating the UNGPs into practical guidance for companies and investors operating in some of the world's most challenging environments.
Before that, Gerald led the programme on business and human security at the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, where he worked on initiatives that anticipated some of the major developments in responsible business. He funded and helped shape the IFC/UN Global Compact initiative behind Who Cares Wins, the 2004 report that brought leading financial institutions together around environmental, social and governance considerations in investment analysis, laying the foundations for the mainstreaming of ESG. He also conceived and launched the Swiss government initiative on private security and human rights that led to the International Code of Conduct for Private Security Service Providers and the creation of the International Code of Conduct Association.
Following the Ruggie mandate, Gerald served as Principal Officer in the Executive Office of the UN Secretary-General, working on strategy, partnerships and private-sector engagement, including in fragile and conflict-affected contexts. He founded Pluto in 2015.
We combine a deep understanding of international standards and policy with practical experience of how organisations make decisions and operate in complex environments. Our role is not simply to identify risks or explain what frameworks require, but to help clients determine what those risks and requirements mean in practice — and what to do next. Some of that work begins before a decision is taken; much of it begins after.
Independent by design, we bring together senior expertise around each mandate, working across sectors, disciplines and geographies without the constraints of a large consulting structure.
ABOUT us
IN MEMORIAM
John G. Ruggie, 1944–2021
Pluto exists because of him. Gerald joined his team in 2005, at the opening of the mandate that produced the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and worked alongside him through to their adoption.
What we took from that period was not a framework but a way of working: start from the harm, prioritise by severity, and insist that analysis end in a decision someone has to take.
INSIGHTS
Some of our public writing and contributions
On business and human rights, responsible investment, conflict and public policy. Most of this was published elsewhere; the links go to the original.
ISSUE PAPER · FEB 2026
Why businesses ignore international criminal law — and why they shouldn't.
Why international criminal law belongs inside corporate governance and human rights due diligence in conflict-affected and high-risk contexts.
Gerald Pachoud · Global Business Initiative on Human Rights
01 · JUN 2022
02 · OCT 2024
Analysis of systems to combat child labour in Côte d'Ivoire in the context of European Union regulations
03 · MAR 2026
04 · MAR 2022
The Future of Business and Human Rights