Nestlé in society Creating Shared Value and meeting our commitments 2015

Nestlé in society:
Creating Shared Value
Nutrition, health
and wellness
Rural development
Water
Environmental
sustainability
Human rights
and compliance
Our
people
G4-LA15, Child labor G4-DMA, G4-HR5, Supplier human rights assessment G4-DMA, G4-HR11
Child labour
Nestlé is firmly opposed to all forms of child exploitation. We are committed to preventing and eliminating child labour
wherever it occurs in our supply chain. To achieve this, we work with a range of different stakeholders to develop and
implement meaningful solutions. Together, we have set up mechanisms to provide comprehensive monitoring,
implemented effective remediation activities and provided targeted support where needed to local communities.
Applying a comprehensive strategy
Our Nestlé Corporate Business Principles clearly state our
opposition to all forms of child exploitation, and uphold the
elimination of forced and compulsory labour. In addition, the
Nestlé Supplier Code includes a strict prohibition on child
labour and requires that all our direct (Tier 1) suppliers are
independently audited. It builds upon definitions from the ILO,
Nestlé’s Corporate Business Principles and experiences from
Nestlé’s own operations.
Our commitment
Eliminate child labour in key categories
In 2015, we maintained our commitment to fight child labour
as a member of the Child Labour Platform. The Nestlé
Commitment on Child Labour in Agricultural Supply Chains
– drawn up in consultation with expert external stakeholders,
including the FLA, the DIHR and the International Cocoa
Initiative (ICI) – is our strategy to tackle child labour in
agricultural supply chains. Key elements of the strategy, which
covers suppliers in all tiers of Nestlé’s raw material supply
chains, include:
• Oversight: we operate a Child Labour and Women’s
Empowerment Steering Group, chaired by Executive Board
member Magdi Batato, to identify measures, take decisions
and monitor progress;
• Responsibility for management of the issue: overall
management responsibility by a named business unit for
each high-risk category of raw material, and management
of the situation at the country level;
• Targeting high-risk commodities and children at risk:
assessment of the risk to children’s rights, which include
protection from economic exploitation and work that may
be dangerous to their health, safety or morals and that may
hinder their development or impede their access to
education; a clear strategy to address the issue and its root
causes, a focus on vulnerable groups (the children of
migrant workers, girls, orphans and trafficked children),
proactive work with suppliers, and termination of all
business with suppliers unwilling or unable to comply;
• Improving understanding and competence: engaging
specialist partners, providing staff training and guidelines to
tackle child labour, and dialogue with civil society
organisations; and
• Delivering transparency: communicating our
commitments to suppliers and stakeholders, operating a
complaints mechanism, monitoring progress, and reporting
on actions and progress.
Our objectives
By 2015 – Complete action plans to reduce child labour
in our cocoa, hazelnut and vanilla supply chains, with
60 000 farmers trained on child work/labour practices,
60 schools built or renovated and 80% of co-operatives
covered by a child labour monitoring and remediation
system (100% by 2016).
By 2018 – Child labour risk assessments done for all
12 high-priority categories of raw ingredients and
responsible sourcing strategies deployed to monitor and
mitigate occurrences of child labour.
While our new objective for child labour risk assessments
covers all 12 high-priority categories, child labour has been
identified as a particular issue in our hazelnut, vanilla and
cocoa supply chains. With low levels of income – about USD 2
(CHF 1.98) a day – vanilla farmers cannot always meet their
basic needs, and often turn to children (usually from within the
family unit) to help with farming. Child labour in our cocoa
supply chain is a complex issue and gathering reliable
evidence about attitudes and perceptions, as well as what’s
happening on the ground, is vital, but challenging. Therefore,
we invited the FLA to help us examine our cocoa supply chain
in Côte d’Ivoire, where child labour is still a reality. The FLA
believes that the Nestlé Cocoa Plan and our participation in
other initiatives provides a good foundation, but also sees a
need for increased monitoring and accountability throughout
the various tiers of the supply chain.
Our priority categories of raw material and countries of
origin are currently cocoa in Côte d’Ivoire, hazelnuts in Turkey
and vanilla in Madagascar. We regularly review priority areas
to ensure we are focusing on those countries and supply
chains most at risk. Where cases of child labour are found, we
expect suppliers to consider each instance on an individual
basis and always seek to solve the problem in the best interest
of the child or children involved. To help suppliers in their
assessments, we have developed an online e-learning tool to
create greater awareness about which situations constitute
child labour and how best to counteract it.
We have also introduced a new objective specifically to
address the issue of child labour in the vanilla supply chain.
Read more in the Rural development chapter.
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