KnowTheChain: Good Practice Guide 2024
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Companies across all sectors can play a vital role in advancing human rights. By promoting decent work, upholding living wages, championing gender equality, and ensuring safe and heathy workplaces, they are uniquely positioned to generate shared prosperity through respect for basic rights and fair negotiations in operations and supply chains. Legislative developments globally, alongside shifting consumer and shareholder expectations, increasingly require companies to take on an active role and ensure that, in bringing their products to market, they do not exacerbate or benefit from existing human rights risks or vulnerabilities – at any stage, from the extraction or cultivation of raw materials to the final product.
This Guide is a resource for companies and investors seeking to understand what strong corporate practice and disclosure looks like with respect to a range of key elements of upstream supply chain human rights due diligence. It draws on data collected by KnowTheChain over eight years of benchmarking global multinational companies across three sectors: Apparel & Footwear, Food & Beverage and ICT. With a focus on risks related to supply chain forced labour and abuses of workers in supply chains more broadly, this Guide responds to the need for clear guidance and examples of the steps companies could take on some of the most critical aspects of due diligence to address forced labour risks in their supply chains.
Explore the sections below or download the full PDF briefing.
That a company’s approach is highlighted as an example of good practice on a specific issue does not imply a broader endorsement of the company’s efforts to address forced labour in its supply chains. Practices highlighted represent positive steps towards the expected performance, rather than an indication that they represent a gold standard or that there is no room for improvement. Furthermore, it does not mean the company has “slavery-free” supply chains, as KnowTheChain operates under the assumption that forced labour is endemic in large global supply chains. For information on each company’s human rights impacts and past responses to allegations, see the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre website.
Further reading
2023 KnowTheChain Apparel & Footwear Benchmark
KnowTheChain's latest assessment of 65 of the biggest apparel and footwear companies' efforts to address supply chain forced labour reveals companies remained largely reactive to human rights violations rather than evidencing robust, embedded human rights and environmental due diligence practices designed to prevent abuse.
2022 KnowTheChain ICT Benchmark
KnowTheChain assessed the world's 60 largest ICT companies and found widespread failure to tackle forced labour in supply chains due to insufficient due diligence processes. The median score was just 14/100 and the sector performed poorest on responsible purchasing practices and worker voice.
2023 KnowTheChain Food & Beverage Benchmark
KnowTheChain assessed the world's 60 largest Food & Beverage companies and found the largest companies in the sector are failing to tackle forced labour risks in their supply chains, with an average score of just 16/100. After six years of benchmarking, progress is stagnating in the sector - cause for concern against a backdrop of geo-political and climate crises.