The International Migration Initiative works to improve protections for refugees and vulnerable migrants, to tackle the exploitation of migrant workers, and to build stronger ties between host communities and newcomers. In support of these goals, we make grants, build partnerships, and pursue advocacy with policymakers. We work with a wide range of actors around the world, including civil society groups, national and local governments, international organizations, faith groups, and the private sector.
Region: North America
Seafoodmatter (Crew welfare and labor conditions assessments for Fisheries, Aquaculture and Processing)
It was founded in 2014 in the Netherlands. Seafoodmatter is an independent international advisory company, specialized in integrated quality management (e.g. ISO 22000, HACCP, BRC, SA8000, BSCI, MSC CoC, ASC farms, etc), tracking & tracing, sustainability, human rights in seafood supply chain management. It has more than 20 years experience now in the Seafood supply chain; Seafoodmatter has been advising large retail companies, tuna fleet, seafood processing suppliers, NGOs and government in application and improvement of responsible sourcing & sustainable matters creating a change that will drive the global seafood supply value chain. It has carried out more than 200 combined assessments and audits of traceability, chain of custody, labour risk assessment, crew welfare in the seafood supply chain in more than 60 countries. It helps companies to set up management system to comply with international market requirements and also with local legislations looking at human rights and working conditions. Guidance like ILOC188, and standard like SA8000 are the base of the assessments.
Ulula
Ulula’s worker voice platform connects businesses to the workers they affect to create a more transparent, accountable and productive supply chains. By leveraging diverse and accessible information communication technology (ICT) to connect businesses with their stakeholders in real-time, companies gather information in real-time directly from stakeholders and enhance social dialogue between the stakeholders.
Workers can interact with the system through voice calls, text message, custom apps, WhatsApp, as well as the web to adapt to local context and needs. The Ulula platform works anywhere in the world, across languages and scripts to ensure stakeholders can easily participate.
Workers submit information anonymously and data is analyzed to provide companies a comprehensive living report on conditions inside factory walls. Not only does this aim to mitigate risk but also ensures complete transparency across the supply chain anywhere in the world to better manage working conditions.
The integrated platform for data collection and content management enables:
– Automated surveys to continuously monitor working conditions and community perception. Source questions from Ulula’s question bank or create custom questions to meet institutional and certification standards;
– Send mass broadcasts for continued engagement of target population;
– Set-up grievance management systems to manage stakeholder feedback and reconcile issues
Using Ulula’s tool, clients and partners can continuously monitor labour conditions, enabling them to address issues proactively and invest in remediation programs. Suppliers benefit from a more engaged workforce, reducing turnover, thereby increasing productivity and demonstrating compliance. Workers are continuously engaged and have the ability to contribute insights and anonymously to raise grievances across the entire supply chain.
SGS-4th
SGS is the world’s leading inspection, verification, testing and certification company. SGS is recognized as the global benchmark for quality and integrity. With more than 97,000 employees, SGS operates a network of more than 2,600 offices and laboratories around the world. As the leader in providing specialized business solutions that improve safety, quality and sustainability, SGS helps customers navigate an increasingly regulated world. SGS’s independent services add significant value to our customers’ operations and ensure business productivity whilst managing risk. Specific to the field of social accountability, SGS helps customers implement a Code of Conduct, and develop supply chains characterized by transparency and a long-term, systematic approach. This approach includes risk assessments, ongoing compliance assessments, data management and training to ensure that your business partners abide by your company’s commitment to corporate social responsibility. Around the world, SGS is improving trust between seafood trading partners. Whether in multi-stakeholder initiatives, or for specific clients and governments, SGS uses the combined resources of its safety, quality and sustainability/responsible business professionals. SGS’s follow-up assignments help close out the violations, and often through training, provide stakeholders with the tools and understanding to meet global and local compliance expectations. Through its Transparency One solution, SGS is helping brands map supply chains, and provide supply chain transparency and traceability. Additional work flows may add blockchain technology to secure the data. In the coming year, we expect to add mobile technology platforms and IoT to deliver information more efficiently and effectively thereby reducing risk completely.
International Union of Food and Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF)
The International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF) is an international federation of trade unions representing workers employed, among other sectors, in aquaculture, fish and seafood growing and processing. The IUF is composed of 421 affiliated trade unions in 128 countries representing over 10 million workers. It is based in Geneva, Switzerland. From its founding in 1920, international labour solidarity has been the IUFå«s guiding principle. This principle is implemented through: building solidarity at every stage of the food chain, international organizing within transnational companies (TNCs) global action to defend human, democratic, and trade union rights.
SGS
SGS is the world’s leading inspection, verification, testing and certification company. SGS is recognized as the global benchmark for quality and integrity. With more than 97,000 employees, SGS operates a network of more than 2,600 offices and laboratories around the world. As the leader in providing specialized business solutions that improve safety, quality and sustainability, SGS helps customers navigate an increasingly regulated world. SGS’s independent services add significant value to our customers’ operations and ensure business productivity whilst managing risk. Specific to the field of social accountability, SGS helps customers implement a Code of Conduct, and develop supply chains characterized by transparency and a long-term, systematic approach. This approach includes risk assessments, ongoing compliance assessments, data management and training to ensure that your business partners abide by your company’s commitment to corporate social responsibility. Around the world, SGS is improving trust between seafood trading partners. Whether in multi-stakeholder initiatives, or for specific clients and governments, SGS uses the combined resources of its safety, quality and sustainability/responsible business professionals. SGS’s follow-up assignments help close out the violations, and often through training, provide stakeholders with the tools and understanding to meet global and local compliance expectations. Through its Transparency One solution, SGS is helping brands map supply chains, and provide supply chain transparency and traceability. Additional work flows may add blockchain technology to secure the data. In the coming year, we expect to add mobile technology platforms and IoT to deliver information more efficiently and effectively thereby reducing risk.
Assent Compliance
Assent Compliance is the global leader in supply chain data management, providing companies with SaaS solutions that manage third-party data to protect corporate brands, increase market accessibility, and reduce operational and financial risk. By combining leading-edge technology with extensive supply chain expertise, we deliver solutions to help companies identify and assess risk in their supply chains, and manage their data with increased efficiency. We provide thought leadership on regulatory issues and best practices through our involvement with a variety of industry bodies, associations and organizations. Through our work with the Social Responsibility Alliance, we are helping to create open-source tools that facilitate the collection of responsible sourcing data, and provide the resources and support companies need to create socially responsible supply chains.this is wide test
Labor Safe Screen (Sustainability Incubator)
The Labor Safe Screen is designed to help seafood companies identify and reduce the risk of slavery in their supply chains. It is a 5-part framework for seafood buyers, sellers and traders to use to reduce risks in work in the seafood sector. It includes supply chain mapping, risk identification based on findings by competent authorities, surveys to collect proof of protective conditions in the workplace, and support for implementing the minimum requirements in international law (code of conduct, universal contract, grievance mechanism, and disclosure of efforts). It includes a tiered approach for screening a large number of products. Combining data from suppliers and workers is a key feature. Users of the Labor Safe Screen manage risks with quantitative scoring and produce positive coverage for their goods and the people making them.
Tools for Ethical Seafood Sourcing (TESS)
Tools for Ethical Seafood Sourcing (TESS) is a web tool that points you to a whole host of useful (and free) resources which can help businesses address social responsibility challenges in their seafood supply chains. TESS launched in March 2017 as a one-stop-resource-shop. It starts with an overview of the social issues impacting on the seafood supply chain. Seafish recognised that with so many different sources of information available on ethical issues, which range from identifying issues through to international standards and ‰Û÷on the ground‰Ûª initiatives working on the issues, it can be challenging for seafood businesses to understand this complex landscape and then decide what they need to do to identify issues and make improvements. This is where TESS can help. TESS charts a straight-forward business improvement cycle. All the featured resources (presented as interactive records) are linked to one of six steps in this cycle which has been designed to help systematically tackle issues in seafood supply chains. All the information is publicly available on external websites, so you are taken to the source of the information. The benefit of TESS is that it brings all these resources together in one place. As well as following the six step approach there is a fully searchable database so that you can find all this information on initiatives, standards and organisations very simply.
Conservation Alliance for Seafood Solutions
The Conservation Alliance for Seafood Solutions is a global community of stakeholders working together to improve the sustainability and responsibility of seafood supply chains for our ocean and the people who depend on it. The Alliance envisions a world with an abundance of seafood in an environment where workers, communities, and our ocean thrive. Its goal is that by 2030, at least 75% of global seafood production is environmentally sustainable or making verifiable improvement, and safeguards are in place to ensure social responsibility. The Alliance finds efficiencies in the sustainable seafood community and makes sure that diverse voices from across seafood supply chains are included, so that we can accelerate and increase our collective impact.
Seafood Slavery Risk Tool
The Seafood Slavery Risk Tool (SSRT) was designed to Inform businesses about the risks of forced labor, human trafficking, and hazardous child labor in fisheries. The Risk Tool‰Ûªs methodology is being revised to identify the risks of forced labor, human trafficking, and hazardous child labor in seafood systems, including the fishing, farming and processing sectors.
The Pew Charitable Trusts
The Pew Charitable Trusts‰Ûª ending illegal fishing project is working to ensure a sustainable future for our oceans by combatting illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing. As unscrupulous operators seek to maximize profits by exploiting fish stocks or loopholes in management they frequently pay little attention to the safety and working conditions for vessel crews. Fortunately, the seafood industry can implement tools that help tackle these issues together. Pew is bringing together stakeholders from governments, authorities, and the seafood industry, to change behaviors and significantly reduce IUU fishing by improving the oversight and knowledge of fishing activities. An element of this includes entry into force of the International Maritime Organization‰Ûªs Cape Town Agreement (CTA), an international treaty which sets minimum safety standards and inspection criteria for fishing vessels. Harmonized implementation of the CTA, alongside the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations‰Ûª Agreement Port State Measures, which aims to prevent illegally caught fish from entering ports, and the International Labour Organization‰Ûªs Work in Fishing Convention, which establishes the base requirement for decent working and living conditions on board ships, will reap rewards. The seafood industry is in a unique position to help, it can advocate for governments to put such policies in place. By mandating that vessels can be uniquely identified and tracked, catch subject to port controls and transshipment activity monitored, tracking and tracing the people and product in supply chains should be possible. By doing this opportunities for the exploitation of fisheries and fishers will be reduced.