Our Human Rights Approach
Roughly a 2 minute read
Our tea and coffee supply chains are dependent on millions of people around the globe and we recognise the need to protect the rights of the people and the communities impacted by our business.
Many of the people in the countries we source from face multiple risks and challenges every day — such as rural poverty, climate change and a lack of access to education and healthcare. All of which can lead to workers, farmers, their families and communities becoming more vulnerable to exploitation.
We base our sourcing approach on strong relationships supported by long-term contracts, high levels of supply chain transparency and regular face-to-face contact. We aim to address significant social and environmental risks to our suppliers with investment in sustainable development projects, and since 2014 we’ve required all of our core tea and coffee products to have an approved third party certification as a baseline standard.
We know certification only provides limited protection, so it is important that we go beyond this baseline and have developed, and are rolling out, a broader approach to human rights that will strengthen what we already have in place. The approach is based on the UN Guiding Principles which sets out best practice for businesses and human rights.
The Guiding Principles are founded on three pillars:
1. Protect – states have a duty to protect, promote and support human rights
2. Respect – companies have a responsibility to respect human rights and “do no harm”
3. Remedy – both must ensure that victims of business-related abuses have access to effective remedy.
Our six-step approach will help us to implement the guiding principles throughout our supply chain. It is our intention to identify and confront the risks of human rights abuses, wherever they occur. To do this, we need to increase the visibility of abuses and deepen our understanding, to provide more effective remedy and work towards fully equitable supply chains.
Our first route to resolving social and human rights issues is to work both directly with our trade partners and through wider collaborations to promote change across the sector. We aim to understand underlying causes and address the challenges, rather than take the decision to trade elsewhere. This is reflected in our six-step approach. However, if a trade partner is unable or unwilling to take necessary action then we have no choice but to stop working with them.
You can find more information and policies related to our human rights approach on our Bettys & Taylors Group site here.
Last updated 25th January 2023