Human and labour rights
Respecting human and labour rights
COFCO International is committed to upholding human and labour rights across our operations and supply chains. Our first priority is keeping our employees safe and healthy, particularly within our industrial operations. Across our supply chain, we work closely with supply chain actors to promote fair labour practices and respect for human rights.
All our policies are based on internationally recognised standards and best practice, such as the International Labour Organization (ILO) Core Conventions and the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP). We continue to strengthen the way we identify and address potential risks, as we improve our human rights due diligence system.
Our Human Rights and Labour Policy helps to ensure that we fully comply with applicable laws and regulations, while performing due diligence assessments and developing corrective actions, as appropriate. Our Code of Conduct outlines the standards of behaviour required of employees, in particular that we treat people fairly, with dignity and respect.
We do not accept or tolerate any form of child, forced or involuntary labour, and we expect our suppliers and business partners to adhere to these principles. Additionally, we do not tolerate violence or harassment of any kind.
Within our supply chain, we use our Supplier Code of Conduct to communicate our expectations for suppliers, including for human rights, complemented by our Responsible Agriculture Standard.
We invite our stakeholders to use our Integrity Hotline to report potential cases of non-compliance.
Case studies
Improving our human rights due diligence performance
As we strive to raise our performance on respecting human rights in our business and supply chains, we are taking action to improve the way we manage human rights due diligence (HRDD) and how we identify and address risks. Together with Article One Advisors, we gained a full understanding of upcoming legal requirements and assessed the risks we face, particularly in certain regions of Brazil, Argentina and India. In particular, we have focused on strengthening our due diligence processes for higher-risk commodities such as soy, cotton, and coffee, aiming to improve standards across our supply chain.
We also complete operational risk assessments, conducting interviews with employees to gain a better picture of human rights-related risks in our own operations. We will also build the capacity of our leaders to understand and act on relevant regulations and deliver employee training, while further integrating human rights considerations into our policies. These efforts provide a strong foundation from which to make progress and engage with our stakeholders, complementing our existing grievance mechanism, as we continue to assess and mitigate any human rights risks and impacts.
