With an annual turnover of over EUR 94 billion, the Carrefour Group is one of the world’s largest supermarket brands – operating over 14,000 stores in 40 countries. Headquartered in France, the company operates in the Middle East, Africa and Asia via its franchisee Majid Al Futtaim, with between 2,000 and 3,000 staff in Saudi Arabia – roughly a third of whom are contracted via outsourced labour supply companies…

The Carrefour Group is far from the first company to be faced with serious labour abuses in their value chain in Saudia Arabia. Indeed, an investigation conducted by Amnesty International in 2023 into conditions faced by migrant workers contracted to Amazon warehouses in the country highlighted numerous grim accounts of exploitation…

In the course of Amnesty International’s investigation into Amazon, researchers discovered at least one of the company’s contractors also supplied migrant workers to Carrefour Group’s facilities in the Saudi Kingdom. Interviewing 17 men from India, Nepal and Pakistan who had worked at Carrefour’s facilities in Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam – and analysing other evidence such as employment contracts and audiovisual material - Amnesty International identified similar patterns of labour abuse amongst workers employed by four third-party contractors used by Majid Al Futtaim in Carrefour stores. Like with Amazon, this included cases likely amounting to forced labour and human trafficking for the purposes of labour exploitation….