Learn
Build knowledge and internal champions
Watch your company’s leadership and impact evolve by growing internal expertise and taking actions to improve.
ACTION
01
Learn about human rights abuses in seafood
Learn
- Learn about documented human rights abuses in seafood.
- Watch films like Ghost Fleet, which shows stories of trafficking and redemption in Thailand’s seafood industry.
- Review high-profile investigative reports in prominent media outlets—examples of high profile reporting on seafood, human trafficking, and forced labor:
- The Guardian: Revealed: Asian Slave Labour Producing Prawns for Supermarkets in US, UK.
- Associated Press: Seafood from Slaves.
- New York Times: Outlaw Ocean.
- Bloomberg: The Fishing Industry’s Cruelest Catch.
- Review credible and well-researched NGO reports:
- Greenpeace: Choppy Waters – Forced Labor and Illegal Fishing in Taiwan’s Distant Water Fisheries.
- Environmental Justice Foundation: Fear, Hunger, and Violence: Human Rights in Ghana’s Industrial Trawl Fleet.
- International Labor Rights Forum: Time for a Sea Change: Why Union Rights for Migrant Workers are Needed to Prevent Forced Labor in the Thai Seafood Industry.
- Solidarity Center: The Plight of Shrimp Processing Workers of Southwestern Bangladesh.
- Learn about corporate research and benchmarks:
- Business and Human Rights Resource Centre: Out of Sight: Modern Slavery in Pacific Supply Chains of Canned Tuna.
- Seafood Business for Ocean Stewardship (SeaBOS): Reporting and benchmarking of human and labor rights reporting.
Explore
- Explore lessons learned from case studies, pilots, and other relevant projects, including experiences from other sectors.
UN
International Labour Organization (ILO)
Conservation International
- Driving Commitments to Social Responsibility in the Seafood Sector – The Monterey Framework, Pillar I.
ACTION
02
Identify high-level opportunities for improvement within your company
Identify Opportunities
- Identify areas in which your company’s values, goals, and customer expectations align with opportunities to improve human rights policies and procedures.
- Assess your company’s policies and practices against human rights guidance, law, and regulation, including the UN Guiding Principles and national human trafficking and forced labor laws.
- Compare current seafood policies, practices, and expectations against national human rights, corporate responsibility, and disclosure laws.
- Review implications of trading goods associated with forced labor.
- The U.S. government currently prohibits forced labor-associated products from import. Multiple distant water fishing products have been blocked upon entry in the past three years. See U.S. Customs and Border Protection article one (December 31, 2020), article two (August 18, 2020), article three (May 11, 2020), article four (February 6, 2019).
- Companies should closely consider the reports issued by NGOs. U.S. government agencies have stated that these reports may be a reference source used to initiate and investigate cases of forced labor.
Consumer Goods Forum
U.S. Government Accountability Office
U.S. Customs and Border Protection
ACTION
03
Build internal support for advancing social responsibility
Educate, Engage and Identify
- Educate and engage corporate leadership on the risks associated with human rights abuses, particularly forced labor, in seafood supply chains. Discuss specific opportunities to strengthen social responsibility practices and the business benefits of doing so.
- Engage other internal decision-makers (e.g., seafood sourcing departments or directors) to identify the resources and expertise needed to improve social responsibility practices across the business.
- Over time, build social responsibility improvements into employee performance metrics (e.g., benefits for buyers who incorporate social responsibility into seafood purchasing decisions).
- Identify champions and empower them to establish initiatives that improve social responsibility practices throughout the company.
KPMG: Resources for Addressing Human Rights in Business
World Business Council for Sustainable Development
FishWise
United Nations Global Compact
ACTION
04
Train employees on social responsibility expectations
Train
- Train employees within your company and, where possible, provide training for or share training materials with other companies and decision-makers within your supply chain. These might include:
- Management staff (e.g., supervisors in processing facilities, captains on vessels).
- Distribution workers such as truck drivers.
- Procurement teams.
- Subcontracting companies.
- Recruitment agencies.
- Workers who harvest, farm, or process seafood.
- Other stakeholders within your company’s manageable interest.
- Training topics may include:
- Applicable legal and regulatory requirements.
- Expectations of downstream customers.
- Salient human rights issues.
- Data collection to support risk assessments.
- Workplace rights, including freedom of association and collective bargaining.
- Grievance mechanisms.
- Recruitment practices.
- Remediation policies.
- Share guidance with suppliers on human rights topics, such as:
- Best practice for recognizing and remedying human and labor rights issues, and for protecting workers who share grievances from retaliation.
- Company expectations related to human and labor rights, including working conditions, living conditions, and payment systems for seafood workers.
RISE Resources
Optimize Your Company's Path
Discover how companies can apply the RISE Roadmap to improve their social responsibility practices.
Retailers/Brands
- Use RISE to learn how to take a human rights due diligence approach to improving supply chains.
- Participate in pre-competitive efforts and multi-stakeholder initiatives that support industry-wide adoption of aligned goals and practices, reducing the likelihood of divergent human rights objectives.
- Consider hiring third-party experts to conduct training or identify due diligence improvements.
- Join a growing community to support industry-wide adoption of improved social responsibility practices.
Suppliers
- Use RISE to learn how to take a human rights due diligence approach to improving supply chains.
- Participate in pre-competitive efforts and multi-stakeholder initiatives that support industry-wide adoption of aligned goals and practices, reducing the likelihood of divergent human rights objectives.
- Consider hiring third-party experts to conduct training or identify due diligence improvements.
- Join a growing community to support industry-wide adoption of improved social responsibility practices.
Processors
- Use RISE to learn how to take a human rights due diligence approach to improving supply chains.
- Participate in pre-competitive efforts and multi-stakeholder initiatives that support industry-wide adoption of aligned goals and practices, reducing the likelihood of divergent human rights objectives.
- Consider hiring third-party experts to conduct training or identify due diligence improvements.
- Join a growing community to support industry-wide adoption of improved social responsibility practices.
- Inform vessel, processing facility, and other seafood workers about their human and labor rights in the workplace and the company policies and practices related to these rights.
- Assign one or more staff members to learn about, inform improvements to, and lead social responsibility efforts to positively impact workers across company operations.
Producers
- Inform vessel, processing facility, and other seafood workers about their human and labor rights in the workplace and the company policies and practices related to these rights.
- Assign one or more staff members to learn about, inform improvements to, and lead social responsibility efforts to positively impact workers across company operations.
Build the Foundation
Responsible Recruitment
- Understand policies and practices that contribute to unethical recruitment, including the recruitment fees and related costs charged to workers.
- Train employees on Employer Pays Principles, recruitment risks, and ILO General Principles and Guidelines for Fair Recruitment.
Worker Engagement
- Train staff and supply chain partners on core labor rights—including the right to collective bargaining and freedom of association—and the importance of access to effective grievance mechanisms.
- Share the business benefits of worker engagement, such as staff retention, increased morale, and improved productivity.
- Ensure that workers have access to information on their rights and conditions of employment from recruitment to employment.
- Empower workers with training and resources to enable meaningful participation in monitoring labor conditions and engaging in improvement processes once on the job.
Decent Work at Sea
- Learn about unique challenges to achieving decent work at sea, including the hazards of fishing, the potential for long periods at sea, and the challenges of at-sea communications.
- Dedicate additional resources to improvements for at-sea operations.