Human rights and the supply chain
Download a PDF of this articleA shorter version of this article was originally published in the South China Morning Post.
As the world marked Human Rights Day on 10 December, never before has this key defining and global principle been more relevant or more of a threat to businesses in Asia Pacific.
Sharply rising scrutiny and expectations of companies’ Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) performance is attracting growing activist attention triggering customer and government action that is impacting the business bottom line.
With the region at the centre of the global supply chain it is vulnerable to human rights abuses, particularly deep in the supply chain where factory owners and their customers can even be unaware of what is happening.
There are an estimated 48 million international migrant labourers in Asia Pacific[1] , many working in the ASEAN corridor or Australia and New Zealand, with countless million more migrant workers within their home country – 286 million in China alone[2]. They have been most impacted by the economic and social strains and stresses of COVID-19, isolated from their families and the first to feel the consequences of falling economic performance.
Companies are quickly finding out that what was acceptable in the past is no longer acceptable now. Hard evidence comes from the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) which has stepped up its import bans for forced labour, from the Asia Pacific region.
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