Human Rights and Supply Chains: A Consumer Co-operative Contribution

In a globalized economy, businesses source goods and services from complex chains of suppliers that often extend over multiple countries with profoundly different legal, regulatory, and human rights practices. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), more than 450 million people work in supply chain-related jobs. While composite global supply chains can offer important opportunities for economic and social development, they often present serious human rights risks that many companies fail to successfully address.

Consumer co-operatives are enterprises which base their operations on a set of well-known and recognized values and principles, among which social responsibility and caring for others. It is then only natural that they are in many cases at the forefront of action when it comes to making their supply chains more socially sustainable

Consumer co-operatives grouped in Euro Coop are well aware of the magnitude of the challenge and have engaged since long in a breadth of different initiatives aimed both at reforming internal operational procedures and teaming up with different institutional and non-institutional stakeholders to make the change more systemic.

A snapshot of such initiatives is described and discussed in the Euro Coop position paper "Human Rights and Supply Chains: A Consumer Co-operative Contribution"