Global Compact was announced by then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in an address to the World Economic Forum on January 31, 1999,[5] and was officially launched at UN Headquarters in New York on July 26, 2000.The Global Compact Office works off of a mandate set out by the UN General Assembly as an organization that "promotes responsible business practices and UN values among the global business community and the UN System."[6] The UN Global Compact is a founding member of the United Nations Sustainable Stock Exchanges (SSE) initiative along with the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP-FI), and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).