BRIEFING NOTE 3 - ADDRESS AND EMBED

Define and implement actions to address human rights issues

Contents

IIIIIII 1 Concept of address and embed 
IIIIIII 2 Understanding the relationship with the harm 
IIIIIII 3 How can human rights issues be addressed and embedded into company processes?  
IIIIIII 4 Considerations about vulnerable groups  
IIIIIII 5 Challenges and recommendations  
IIIIIII 6 Checklist
IIIIIII 7 Library of Tools

Objective of the briefing note

This briefing note presents information on how to plan actions to address human rights risks and impacts in your own operations and in the supply chain. The briefing note provides guidance on how to understand the company's relationship and leverage on human rights impacts, and how to establish and implement an action plan 

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Concept of address and embed 

Once the risks and impacts on human rights have been identified, and the impacts to be addressed have been prioritized, the next step is to think about how to take action on what has been identified. This includes remediating actual impacts, if necessary, and integrating human rights considerations into existing processes and systems in order to reduce the possibility of a recurring risk/impact. This means:

1. Develop actions to address the identified root causes of the most salient issues – ADDRESS

In short, ADDRESS consists of defining action plans to prevent, mitigate and remedy identified risks and impacts on human rights, including planned activities, implementation timelines, responsibilities, indicators for monitoring the implementation of actions and their effectiveness, and allocation of the necessary resources. Action plans can be organized into a document, a series of documents or a roadmap. The plans can be integrated into a broader action plan, or be specific to human rights.

2. Review and improve existing internal systems to prevent and mitigate the most salient issues – EMBED

EMBED consists of the company incorporating respect for human rights into all aspects of its governance and operations in order to address the main gaps identified and to prevent the occurrence or recurrence of human rights risks and impacts.

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Understanding the relationship with the harm

To think about the action plans themselves, the company needs to consider its relationship with the harm, which can occur in different ways:

  • Causing the harm, either as a result of the company's direct action or its inaction. Generally, the company is solely responsible for the harm.

  • Contributing to the harm, together with other companies or actors. In this case, the company plays the role of facilitator, encouraging or motivating the harm.

  • Being linked to the harm. In this case, another actor is causing or contributing to the harm, but has a commercially beneficial relationship with the company.

Each type of relationship with the harm generates a different need for action, as shown below.

ATTENTION - It is important to remember that the root causes identified indicate what is actually causing that risk/impact and therefore help to understand the scale of the problem, whether the impact is one-off or systemic, and to define the type of action and engagement to be carried out.

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How can human rights issues be addressed and embedded into company processes?

A. Planning the action

Firstly, it is assessed whether the impact identified violates existing operating procedures or contractual clauses between the mill and the supplier. This guarantees the reliability of the plan or policy, as well as the company's commitment to the harm. In this case, the company must follow what is defined in its internal procedure for action, taking into account internal responsibilities.

If it is necessary to go deeper into addressing the human rights risks and impacts identified, it is important to think about the appropriate scope for action with the potential to bring more effective results:

a) within the company's own operations, implementing it more directly;

b) within the supply chain, either by demanding action from one or more suppliers or by supporting them in resolving the issue;

c) within a scope of greater coverage and collaboration for more systemic issues, in some cases beyond their supply chain.

Often, for an impact or risk to be addressed effectively it will be necessary to act across different scopes!

a)   Actions in own operations

These are actions related to the company's internal systems and processes, including actors directly involved in the operation of the business, such as employees and subcontracted workers.

Sugarcane mills, normally, have very structured internal procedures for issues related to agricultural and industrial production, identification of occupational risks and promotion of workers' health and safety, and good environmental practices (such as waste disposal and treatment, water resources management etc.). This type of knowledge can be used in Due Diligence to integrate other human rights issues. Furthermore, the process of structuring and implementing such internal procedures and systems is also encouraged by the various certifications that exist in the sector, many of which address human rights issues. For example:

  • Bonsucro: includes criteria related to the assessment and management of social risks; respect for labour rights and occupational health and safety standards; continuous improvement processes

  • SMETA: includes work, health and safety, environmental performance and ethics standards in own or supplier operations (depending on the scope of the audit). This helps to protect workers from unsafe conditions, excessive working hours, discrimination, low wages and forced labour.

  • ISCC: includes criteria related to safe working conditions; human, labour and land rights and responsible community relations; compliance with applicable laws and relevant international treaties; and good management practices and commitment to continuous improvement.

Additionally, Brazil has a relatively robust legal framework, which contributes to the promotion of better working conditions in the sector, as is the case with Regulatory Norm (NR) no. 31. This law is applicable to agricultural activities and deals with the “legal and regulatory provisions on safety and health in rural work, in order to guarantee adequate working conditions, hygiene and comfort, and adopt prevention and protection measures to ensure that all activities, workplaces, machines, equipment and tools are safe”. Therefore, companies must ensure that their procedures and activities comply with the standard in question.

Internal procedures and systems, certifications, and legal frameworks help reduce risks related to impacts on human rights, by encouraging better incorporation of these issues within the company. Still, they have some limiting factors:

  • Not always all the most salient human rights issues in the mill's operational context are covered by these tools.

  • Commonly, they are more focused on their own operations or only cover part of suppliers' areas, which may then lead to less visibility of impacts on human rights for suppliers.

  • May not effectively include a consultation process with all relevant interested or affected parties, and may not provide visibility to specific vulnerable groups.

The aforementioned limiting factors (among others) must be addressed through the broader and continuous approach of Human Rights Due Diligence.

b)   Actions within the supply chain

These are actions that aim to support improvements in the supplier's human rights practices and/or in their risk management systems and impacts on human rights. The company can, for example, demand action from the supplier with clear deadlines for resolution and support them in resolving the issue.

When a company is linked to or contributes to an impact in its supply chain, it needs to assess the influence it has on the other party (e.g. the supplier). The company must also consider the supplier's risk level, both in terms of geographical risks (referring to where the supplier is located/acts) and risks arising from immature or non-existent systems for managing human rights issues. Finally, the types of engagement with the supplier need to be considered.

This information, elaborated in more detail below, can be used to define the appropriate set of actions.

Your relationship with the actor responsible for the harm: determine how relevant this supplier is to your purchasing strategy (geographical location, quality of the product supplied, being the main buyer of the supplier's product, etc.); history of commercial relations (length of relationship, types of contracts - short or long term, etc.); among other factors.

Consider the primary characteristics of sugarcane suppliers and their relationship with mills. For example:

  • Types of existing contracts between the mill and the supplier:

Longer-term contracts typically indicate a closer relationship between mill and supplier, accompanied by a greater leverage. Spot or short-term contracts are more susceptible to change and therefore may indicate less power of leverage from the mill.

  • Relevance of the total volume purchased in relation to the total volume produced by the supplier

The larger the volume purchased by the company relative to the total volume produced/marketed by the sugarcane supplier, the greater the company's leverage over that supplier. In such cases, commercial ties tend to be stronger.

The supplier's risk level: determine what the supplier's risk level is, as explained in Briefing Note 2 - Identify

Existing types of engagement: understand what types of engagement with suppliers and other stakeholders already exist and determine whether adaptations to existing engagement are necessary or whether new forms of engagement/leverage mechanisms need to be established.

Below are some examples of different types of engagement with suppliers:

ATTENTION - Contractual clauses cannot be used as a legitimate claim of non-responsibility. The due diligence process for companies was built to address human rights abuses throughout the supply chain, and companies that are contributing to or linked to the harm, often through a business relationship, have a clear and shared responsibility for these issues.

Examples of companies' own programmes for engaging suppliers in the sugarcane sector in Brazil:

These programs work with sugarcane producers to encourage continuous improvements in their management systems and performance on social and environmental sustainability issues.

Raízen's ELOS Programme[1]: this programme addresses relevant human rights issues - hiring its own workforce and employees, labour issues, service providers, risk and accident prevention, among others. It supports sugarcane producers through events, lectures and capacity building, incentives to use technologies, and technical support.

Czarnikow’s VIVE programme: covers the entire sugarcane supply chain, including the farm, mill, refinery, and transporters, and has brought about significant improvements in human rights issues, such as:

  • Employment contracts: formalizing the contracts of outsourced service providers; establishing clear and fair contracts; including important contractual clauses, such as monthly payments.

  • Child labour: inclusion of minimum age for employment in child labour prevention policies.

  • Health and Safety - Noise in the workplace: adoption of adequate hearing protection measures and incentives to reduce noise at the source, with the use of Personal Protective Equipment being a last resort (if the previous solution is not sufficient).

  • Health and Safety - Personal Protective Equipment (PPE): training to improve the handling, storage, and use of agrochemicals; development of a plan to increase the future use of PPE; provision of suitable PPE.

In addition to companies, there are other actors, such as producer associations or workers' unions, that establish their own programmes to engage suppliers, supporting them in defining more robust human rights commitments, monitoring the implementation of these commitments and in the processes of continuous improvement.

c) Acting beyond the supply chain

For more systemic issues in the sector, it is also important to consider broader actions and collaboration, beyond the supply chain. This includes actions in a production area, at a landscape, jurisdictional[2] or sectoral level, and/or engagement with governments or public bodies (national or regional). These are actions that generally involve a diverse group of actors to address issues that require the efforts of different actors to achieve the desired change. It is important to emphasize that these actions must be complementary to efforts within the supply chain.

To address specific human rights issues in the sugarcane sector, it is important to work collectively and join forces with existing initiatives, especially those already being worked on by civil society, which can be harnessed to address systemic issues. If these spaces do not adequately address such issues, new spaces or initiatives can be promoted.

Examples of specific actions for sugarcane mills in Brazil

B. Engagement of relevant stakeholders (internal and external)

It is important that the process to develop the action plan engages the necessary internal teams and relevant stakeholders within specific themes. See examples below:

    • Are there procedures in place to ensure that the rights of indigenous peoples and traditional communities are heard and respected, and that Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) is implemented?

    • Is there an adequate procedure for consultation with stakeholders to identify risks and impacts on people?

    • Have environmental and social impact studies been carried out and are they regularly reviewed by a reputable and reliable company with no conflict of interest?

    • Are recruitment practices in line with ethical recruitment? For example, no fees are paid by workers, hiring is gender-neutral; including prevention and mitigation of risks related to forced and child labour; free of discrimination.

    • Are the mechanisms available for worker consultation and participation (regardless of gender, colour and race, nationality, age, etc.) effective?

    • Do the mechanisms available for consultation and participation of workers and other stakeholders take into account relevant cultural and linguistic differences (especially in the case of migrant, immigrant or illiterate workers)?

    • Do purchasing and pricing practices guarantee sufficient income for them and their family to subsist?

    • Are production targets realistic?

    • Are the rights of smallholders' workers respected?

    • Are there secure and inclusive communication channels between these actors and the company?

    • Are there structured two-way communication channels to identify and act on risks in advance?

    • Do crop management practices protect workers' health and the surrounding natural resources (watercourses, soil, vegetation, biodiversity, etc.)?

C. Implementing the action plan

The actions to be taken are organized in a time-bound implementation plan. At the very least, the plan should cover which actions will be carried out, who is responsible for implementing them, and when they will be carried out.

Defining actions involves planning measures to correct, prevent, mitigate, and remedy the harm, prioritizing those that pose the greatest risk to people, as well as indicators and methods for monitoring their implementation. Assigning responsibilities aims to foster the building of internal support within the organization and connect the decision-making process with other team members. Finally, the development of the implementation schedule includes the definition of internal and external targets with defined deadlines and long-term objectives, based on the knowledge of the company's operational context and its supply chain.

An efficient use of resources is fundamental and must consider the root causes and the expected impacts in order to prevent and mitigate the harm or risk through a set of actions. The action plan must be approved by the company's management and passed on to those responsible for its implementation. In the event of serious actual impacts, immediate action must be taken to remedy them immediately and avoid further violations to those affected.

D. Integrating respect to human rights

In many cases, a company’s impact on human rights can be related to the non-existence or immaturity of the company's internal systems and procedures (such as ethical recruitment practices, health and safety procedures, etc.). Issues can therefore be addressed by developing or improving these systems and procedures to ensure that respect for human rights is integrated into the company's internal systems and governance. Some measures to be adopted are:

  • Building an ethical business culture. This includes integrating respect for human rights into the company's policies, systems, processes, and mechanisms, as well as in departments such as purchasing, supply chain management, legal and other departments.

  • Integration of actions and indicators into existing processes, including those developed to monitor environmental risks, for example.

  • Promoting shared responsibility for respecting human rights and delivering on commitments in all departments, promoting the adoption of a more comprehensive approach in their actions. For example, the sustainability department establishes actions and initiatives to support suppliers to provide better working conditions, but the commercial team continues to buy volumes from suppliers with a history of poor working conditions and that show no commitment to fostering better working conditions.

[1] More information about the ELOS program can be found on page 77 of Raízen's Integrated Report 2022/2023

[2] The definition of jurisdictional or landscape initiatives can be found at ‘Introduction to landscape or jurisdictional initiatives in commodity agriculture’

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Considerations about vulnerable groups

How can it be ensured that invisible or vulnerable actors are given adequate visibility within the Due Diligence process?

Consultation with affected or at-risk actors is a requirement of the Human Rights Due Diligence approach. However, it is very common for certain vulnerable groups not to be properly included in these participatory stages. It is therefore necessary to:

  • Map out the potentially invisible actors in this process, considering specific aspects such as gender, nationality, age, race and colour, among others.

    • For example, if most of the workers at a mill are men with families, it is possible to think about how working and housing conditions affect their family members. For example, do work shifts allow for a balanced division of domestic responsibilities, avoiding an overload on women in the family? Do children have access to and attend educational environments at nursery and primary level? In the case of migrant women, are they more susceptible to moral, physical and/or sexual violence?

  • Consider possible existing power dynamics that could "silence" or "inhibit" the effective participation of these groups.

    • For example, foreign workers are less likely to communicate their interests effectively because of the risk of reprisal, stigmatization, or the difficulty of understanding and being understood.

  • Think about specific strategies for including these actors in stakeholder consultation processes, ensuring that these groups are more representative. Inclusion here must go beyond participation in numbers, but understanding which dynamics prevent certain groups from actively participating in the process.

    • For example, the times at which the consultations are held may prevent women from participating more, as they may be busy with domestic and family work. Transportation and access to meetings could also be reviewed, considering that there may be limiting factors for some groups to get to or from the indicated location.

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Challenges and recommendations

Uncooperative suppliers: what to do?

A lack of supplier collaboration can be a limiting factor in addressing human rights risks and impacts. Therefore, a primary measure to minimize the risks of potential lack of supplier collaboration is to ensure that they are duly included in the due diligence process.

The fact that suppliers are closer to the beginning of the supply chain facilitates access to affected and at-risk actors, bringing important visibility to the due diligence process on risks and impacts at production level to which these actors are subject. This allows for a more accurate assessment of what is actually happening at the production level, which will inform the process of defining actions.

During the process of defining actions, it is important to guarantee a space for jointly building the action plans, opening up a listening space for the supplier and other affected or potentially affected actors. This allows for greater stakeholder engagement and ownership of the defined action plans.

In addition, it is important to identify situations in which the supplier does not have the capacity needed to address a certain impact and therefore needs greater support from the company to implement the necessary actions or its support in identifying and liaising with other potential partners.

The importance of actions taken at the sectoral level is also highlighted, as they have the potential to reach all the links in the supply chain. When the sector adopts measures to protect human rights, it increases the power of influence and support among its members, strengthening their individual capacity to adapt.

ATTENTION - Even in cases of uncooperative suppliers, excluding the supplier from the supply chain should always be the last course of action, in extreme cases of lack of interest and collaboration in resolving the problem and having exhausted all other possible options for engagement and collaboration. The intention is for the harm to be addressed properly, not ignored. Furthermore, the exclusion of a supplier does not absolve the company of its responsibility to resolve the harm and can make it more difficult to resolve it, if its leverage is reduced.

Service providers: lack of control and visibility of human rights practices

The contracting company has the responsibility to be aware of the risks in its supply chain, and a lack of knowledge cannot justify its inaction in light of these risks and impacts.

This includes identifying human rights impacts and risks in own operations and in operations of suppliers and service providers in order to prevent, mitigate and remedy (where necessary) such impacts. The company needs to ensure, for example, that outsourced workers have their labour rights respected, that they have decent working conditions, free access to workplace safety, including mandatory free access to and use of the necessary Personal Protective Equipment, among others.

Therefore, it is necessary to establish processes and mechanisms that allow for more detailed and constant monitoring of these actors, giving visibility to the practices of respect for human rights implemented by contracted suppliers and service providers.

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Checklist

✓ Has the company identified its relationship with the harm ?  

    ✓ If the company has caused or may have caused an impact: 1) has it
    ✓ stopped the harmful action; 2) has it prevented or mitigated the impact; and 3) has it remedied the harm (if necessary)?  
    ✓ If the company contributed to an impact: 1) did it stop the harmful action; 2) did it prevent or mitigate the impact, or use or increase its influence to prevent or mitigate it; and 3) did it remedy the harm (if necessary)?  
    ✓ If the company is directly linked to an impact, has it used or increased its influence to 1) prevent or mitigate the impact; and 2) remediate the harm or contribute to remediation (if necessary)?  
✓ Was the action plan based on the results of the risk identification and prioritization stage? Has a root cause analysis been carried out?  

✓ Does the action plan...  

    ✓... have clear and realistic deadlines? 
    ✓... define the responsibilities for each action? 
    ✓... is integrated with the company's internal systems and processes? 
    ✓... include consultation with stakeholders, when necessary? 
    ✓... consider the risks of invisibility for vulnerable groups and address them adequately? 
    ✓... include a set of actions to adequately address the risk/impact, considering its root cause(s)? 
    ✓... define the set of actions required in different applicable scopes: own operations, supply chain, collaboration spaces? 
✓ For actions in your supply chain, have you considered the type of relationship with the supplier, their level of risk, and existing types of engagement?  

✓ Have the resources for implementing the action plan been allocated efficiently?  

✓ In addition to taking specific actions to stop the harm, has the company defined actions to incorporate respect for human rights into all aspects of its governance and operations to prevent and mitigate future or recurring harm?  

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Library of Tools

In this section, you will find some tools that can help you in the address and embed process.

NEXT - Briefing Note 4, Monitoring, where the theme of monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of actions implemented to address human rights issues will be explored.

Labour self-diagnosis - Brazilian government: a free tool that aims to provide information and technical advice to employers, workers, and society in general on the most effective ways of promoting decent work based on responsible business conduct. It has versions for the rural sector, micro and small companies, and large and multinational companies.

Gender Gap Analysis of the Women's Empowerment Principles (WEPs Tool) - UN Global Compact: designed to help companies assess their performance in terms of gender equality in the workplace, marketplace, and community.

Human rights indicators for companies - the Danish institute for Human Rights: a self-assessment tool that helps you evaluate and improve the level of maturity of your corporate policies, procedures, and practices.

Gender Due Diligence Assessment (available in English only): a self-assessment tool developed by Win Win Strategies for companies to evaluate the level of maturity of their internal policies and processes and supply chain for gender issues.

Programme “Slave, Not a Chance” – Repórter Brasil: a programme dedicated to training educators, local leaders, and knowledge management on how to deal with and interpret situations that can be classified as forced labour.