"International Human Rights Day: How Companies Are Fighting To Get Human Rights Rights", 8 Dec 2017

To celebrate International Human Rights Day, we are taking a look at the best practices leading companies that champion equality, justice and human dignity are focusing on to make the most impact...

[C]ompanies like Coca-Cola and Unilever are investing time and resources into engaging internal and external stakeholders to identify their most salient human rights issues – using a lens of risk to people in the supply chain in addition to risk to the business. They are also committing to regularly reporting progress against these issues, with both [...] recently launching their first standalone human rights reports...

[B]usinesses are engaging in transparent, honest dialogue that takes stakeholders along the journey... For example, Paul Lister, head of Primark’s ethical trading team, recently spoke about the company’s approach to combatting modern slavery in its supply chain... By openly discussing areas of strength as well as highlighting room for improvement with Tier 2 and Tier 3 suppliers...

Mars recently joined forces with Oxfam to create the Farmer Income Lab, a new collaborative research platform to tackle endemic poverty among the world’s 500 million smallholder farmers...

By identifying the issues that are most salient and developing protocols and action plans needed to address them, companies can tackle issues they can have the greatest impact on. Additionally, business should embark on a journey of continuous improvement by being transparent about progress while acknowledging shortcomings and engaging stakeholders along the way.