Skip to content
Site search

E-learning

  1. Home
  2. Topics

Human rights

The Accountability Framework helps companies produce and source commodities that fully respecting the rights of Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and workers. It guides the development of effective policies and implementation systems to achieve supply chains free from human rights abuses.

Review the Framework’s positions and guidance on this topic, and find user tools to apply the Framework. 

Download the Topic Summary

Worldwide, the production and expansion of agricultural and forestry commodities can have severe negative impacts on Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and workers. Respecting human rights is a global responsibility of all companies, grounded in international law, increasingly required under national and regional regulations, and central to responsible business conduct. These rights must be upheld even when national laws fall short or are not effectively implemented or enforced.

Rights violations are also closely linked to deforestation and land conversion, while securing the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities has been shown to help protect forests and ecosystems. In this way, respecting human rights is also essential to achieving broader sustainability goals.

The Framework calls on companies to make human rights commitments aligned with international instruments. These include the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), the Fundamental Conventions of the International Labour Organization (ILO), and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises. Core Principle 2 specifies what these commitments should include, with a focus on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and workers.

Following a due diligence approach, the Framework also supports companies to:

  • embed these commitments into their management systems
  • identify and assess actual and potential adverse human rights impacts
  • take action to cease, prevent, mitigate, and address risks and impacts
  • track and communicate implementation and performance
  • provide or cooperate in providing fair and just remedy where harms have occurred

Several guidance documents offer best practices for these actions, which are relevant to all actors in the supply chain:

Related Core Principle

2

Respect for human rights

Indigenous Peoples and local communities

Core Principle 2.2 outlines the rights held by Indigenous Peoples and local communities. Among others, these include rights to land, culture, self-determination, self-governance, a healthy environment, non-discrimination. Indigenous Peoples and local communities also have a right to full and effective participation in the decisions that affect them, including through the process of free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC).

Learn more about collective land rights from our webinar Protecting land rights in commodity supply chains.  It features AFi Coalition members Forest Peoples Programme and Proforest, and experts from the Foundation for Sustainable Forest Communities and Landesa.

Workers' rights 

Accountability Framework Core Principle 2.3 describes what it means for companies to commit to respecting the rights of all types of workers throughout all levels of their supply chains. 

Learn more about managing commodity production and trade in ways that respect the rights of workers from our webinar on Integrating workers’ rights into commodity supply chains. It features AFi Coalition members Rainforest Alliance and Proforest, and experts from Nestlé and Oxfam.

Sign up now to get the latest updates from the AFi straight to your inbox

* indicates required