Verité is active on many fronts to bring our labor rights experts together with those protecting the natural environment. We believe strongly that supply chain “sustainability” is best pursued holistically with the needs of people, communities, and ecosystems considered and approached in complementary ways. One significant effort has been our participation in the Accountability Framework Initiative (AFi).
Typically at the end of a year, we at Verité ask ourselves two questions: 1) What did we do to further our vision of a world where people work under safe, fair, and legal conditions?, and 2) How did we fulfil our mission to provide the knowledge and tools to eliminate the most serious labor and human rights abuses in global supply chains?
This year, we answer these questions considering both how we have met the issues the pandemic presents and how we have fulfilled our mission despite the pandemic. Please join us in a review of selected notable projects from 2020.
The time for ethical supply chains is now.
Leading NGOs call on companies to follow the Accountability Framework to end ecosystem destruction and human rights violations in the production, trade, and finance of beef, palm oil, pulp, timber, soy, and other commodities.
Verité is pleased to announce the launch of a new web resource, www.verite.org/africa, to help users understand the risk of human trafficking associated with global supply chains operating in sub-Saharan Africa. The African region has acted as a supplier of labor and raw materials to the rest of the world for centuries, often under terms that have resulted in harm to African people and nations. Companies and governments have both an ethical and a legal responsibility to minimize the risks to human rights associated with global economic activity in Africa, including the risk of human trafficking.
The U.S. State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons has contracted Verité to expand and enhance the Responsible Sourcing Tool over the next five years. The Responsible Sourcing Tool is a free web platform created to help visualize and understand the risks of human trafficking in supply chains. The website contains a model compliance plan with downloadable templates and other tools based on Verité’s deep experience helping leading companies combat trafficking in their global supply chains. Verité launched the tool in 2016 with a series of meetings in the Washington, DC area opened by Ambassador Susan Coppedge, who directs the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.