Human Rights Risk-Analysis of the Supply Chain

As the client's need was to perform a human rights risk assessment of their direct supply chain and the the aim was to identify suppliers with an increased risk of potential human rights violations, Deloitte developed a scalable analysis approach. It was tailored towards the company-specific circumstances, performed the risk assessment and recommended further management action items.
German Electrical Equipment Supplier

3 min read

Heinz Wustmann, Thomas Krick i.a.

Challenge

As a recent signatory to the UN Global Compact, the client had committed itself in safeguarding human rights. According to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, a risk analysis is one of the core elements of due diligence in the field of human rights. Deloitte was engaged for conducting such an assessment.

Solution

We developed a company-specific analysis approach by defining appropriate risk factors such as production country and sector. Moreover, we identified global suppliers, which accounted for around 60% of the client's purchasing volume and collected data from selected suppliers by means of a questionnaire. Deloitte executed analysis and identified high risk suppliers, which were further screened based on publicly available information. Due to a large amount of Chinese high-risk suppliers, they were screened for their presence in the province Xinjiang, which is particularly prone to human rights violations of ethnic minorities. Lastly, we defined risk mitigation measures, which were presented to the executive management team.

Impact

Executed a human rights risk-analysis of the direct supply chain to identify suppliers with an increased risk of potential human rights violations.

Deloitte enhanced the client's understanding of their own supply chain, identified high-risk suppliers and thus established important first step in a holistic human rights' due diligence process. Moreover, we prepared the client for potential upcoming German and EU legislation on supply chain due diligence.

Contact

Jörg Engels

Leadership Team Deloitte Sustainability & Climate GmbH
Chief Strategy Officer Deloitte Deutschland

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