Respect human rights

Violence against women and girls, whether at home or at work, is a fundamental violation of human rights. It undermines dignity, equality and safety, values no society or business can ignore. To more deeply understand the impact of gender-based violence in the Assam tea industry, we joined with partners to commission a study.

Unilever is working to strengthen respect for human rights in Thailand’s sugarcane supply chain through risk assessment, corrective action planning, policy advocacy and industry collaboration – driving ethical recruitment and improved working conditions.

Unilever aims to strengthen respect for human rights in its palm oil supply chain through due diligence, supplier support, smallholder empowerment and industry collaboration driving sustainable and inclusive impact.

We're collaborating with implementation partners to support our business partners strengthen their human rights due diligence through worker-led surveys and management maturity assessments. Insights from workers are informing action plans to address issues including harassment, discrimination and unsafe working conditions. We're scaling the programme deepen impact and expand to new geographies through a supplier-led cascade model.

Unilever's Responsible Sourcing Programme helps prevent harm, drive improvements and ensure accountability for human rights across our global value chain. Through risk assessments, on-site audits and corrective action plans, this programme aims to strengthen policies and practices that protect workers and support suppliers in meeting our standards.

Unilever’s rightsholder engagement guidance supports inclusive, trust-based engagement, helping teams identify, prioritise and engage rightsholders. It is at the core of our approach to human rights due diligence.

We explore technology solutions and experiment with new approaches that may help in tackling human rights issues. We piloted a new prototype over a 5-month period that aimed to create a more systematic and automated way to identify and classify potential impacts.

Our goal is to have 50% of our procurement spend with suppliers who signed the Living Wage Promise by 2026. Since launching our Framework for Fair Compensation, we became living wage compliant and were accredited by the Fair Wage Network in 2021. We are extending this commitment to our supply chain.

Collaboration is essential to drive industry change. As part of the Palm Oil Collaboration Group, we are working together to simplify human rights due diligence management systems in the palm sector and identify areas for improvement.

Unilever is a co-founder and member of the Fair Circularity Initiative, aiming to improve working conditions for waste pickers in our global plastics value chain.

Engaging with workers helps us to improve our approach to detecting, preventing, and resolving issues. We recently commissioned an independent review of a supplier recruitment fee remediation process which included extensive engagement with migrant workers to understand their experiences.

Unilever participates in multistakeholder platforms to collaboratively address discrimination and harassment in key commodity supply chains, including through the Women's Safety Accelerator Fund (WSAF), which aims to create safer workplaces for women in our tea supply chain.