27.01.2021
A year in review. Human rights at the centre of AIM-Progress strategy

The year 2020 marked an evolution in focus for AIM-Progress in that we intend to increasingly demonstrate our initiative's positive impact on people's lives. We therefore evolved our strategy to put greater emphasis on respect for human rights, supported by relevant member and supplier capability building, and convergence of tools and best practices in responsible sourcing. 
 
This strategic direction will be overseen by our new Human Rights Steering Group, comprising Phyllis Kong, Ferrero, Sarah Smith, Kellogg, Whitney Mayer, The Hershey Company, Ranja Gupta, adm Group, Rachel Cowburn-Walden, Unilever, Shubha Sekhar, Coca-Cola, and facilitated by our Executive Director, David Lawrence. 
  
During 2020, we started work on six priority areas:

AIM-Progress was instrumental in developing a brand contribution to the EU discussion on mandatory HRDD legislation, which was adopted by the Board of AIM, our umbrella organisation. AIM is now taking further the EU advocacy on this topic, while AIM-Progress will focus on supporting members in implementing HRDD.

In support of the Consumer Goods Forum’s resolution and Priority Industry Principles, and through our APAC regional hub; we organised a number of learning and discussion webinars on the topic, including on the KTC benchmarking report, prison labour in Malaysia and labour agency vetting.

Briefing webinars were organised with Living Wage Coalition, Fair Wage Network, IDH, PMI and Mars, to learn from their experience and help us chart out our own path towards implementing relevant provisions in members' supply chains.

Helping members develop these, is a priority for our Mutual Recognition work stream in 2021.

The KPIs of our Worker Wellbeing Assessment Tool were confirmed by external advisers as being the most relevant ones to measure impact on people, and in 2021 we will be developing a dedicated collaborative project to enable member companies to measure the impact of their responsible sourcing activities on their workers and communities.

We identified salient climate-related topics which are relevant in the human rights debate and will be providing more thought on how these can be incorporated in a human rights due diligence approach.

 

 

Keeping up to date with legislations

 

Regarding the landscape of human rights and corporate responsibility legislation, AIM-Progress continues to partner with the law firm Ropes & Gray, to provide regular updates on the legal landscape evolution around the globe. The fourth edition is now available for download here.