Human Rights

Our Approach to Human Rights

Our commitment and approach are informed by leading international standards and frameworks developed by the United Nations (UN) and the International Labour Organization (ILO). Our strategy to deliver on these commitments to human rights has four pillars: developing strong policies, embedding human rights into our business, addressing risk through mechanisms, and transparency and stakeholder engagement.

Strong Policies

Our efforts are anchored in policies that apply across all aspects of our business – from our own operations, to our supply chain, to the communities in which we operate. In a commitment to continuously raising the bar, in 2019, we codified our long-standing commitment to human rights in the form of Amazon’s Global Human Rights Principles, which reflect the foundation of how we embed respect for human rights throughout our business.
Embedding Human Rights Into Our Business

We are committed to embedding human rights considerations into decision-making across the company and into our policy and governance framework. This governance starts with Amazon’s Board of Directors, which appoints committees for oversight on specific issues. Among other duties, the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee oversees Amazon’s global environmental sustainability, corporate social responsibility, and corporate governance policies, practices and initiatives. The Leadership Development and Compensation Committee oversees Amazon’s global human capital management strategies and policies. As a global company, we recognise the responsibility and opportunity we have to raise awareness among our employees on human rights issues. In 2020, we enhanced our training on human trafficking and forced labour for employees in our logistics network.
Mechanisms to Address Risk

We are committed to identifying, preventing, and mitigating adverse human rights impacts, and are continuously working to improve our approach. At Amazon, every business deploys a variety of mechanisms to help us inspect our business and make decisions at various points of product and process development and in the execution of our day-to-day operations. Social Responsibility teams review the performance and impact of our own programs and inspect activity in our global supply chains. We know we have more to do, and we are committed to widening our lens to better understand the potential human rights impacts of our business.
Transparency and Stakeholder Engagement

We are committed to driving industry-wide best practices in human rights due diligence through increased disclosures about our approach and by expanding our stakeholder engagement. Each year, we publicly share the most up-to-date information about our programs, including external partnerships with organizations that share our core human rights values.

We publish an interactive supply chain map that provides details on suppliers of Amazon-branded apparel, consumer electronics, food and beverage, and home goods products. We expanded the map in 2020 to include suppliers’ factory locations, additional suppliers and product categories, more information on capacity building programs completed by individual suppliers, and gender data, where available.

In 2020, we disclosed additional information about our supplier assessment process and audit results, our approach to worker engagement, and the goals we have set for ourselves on such topics as forced labor training and women’s empowerment. In this report, we provide an update on our goals, the results of our mapping to understand our salient human rights risks, the results of our devices human rights impact assessment, and year-over-year supplier audit results. We report annually in line with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights Reporting Framework and we annually update our Modern Slavery Statement.

Amazon Policies and Standards

We set a high bar for ourselves and our suppliers.

Human Rights Principles

From the associates in our fulfilment centres, to the drivers delivering packages to our customers, to the factory workers making the products we sell – people are critical to our mission of being earth’s most customer-centric company. These values have been long-held at Amazon, and codifying them into a set of Human Rights Principles demonstrates our support for fundamental human rights and the dignity of workers everywhere we operate around the world. We are committed to embedding respect for human rights throughout our business.

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Supply Chain Standards

Our Supply Chain Standards detail the requirements and expectations for our suppliers, their supply chains and selling partners who list products in our stores. They are grounded in principles of inclusivity, continuous improvement and supply chain accountability. We engage with suppliers that are committed to these same principles; suppliers are subject to these standards as a condition of doing business with us.

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Mechanisms to Address Risk

At Amazon, every business deploys a variety of mechanisms to help us inspect our business and make decisions at various points of product and process development and in the execution of our day-to-day operations.

Responsible Sourcing

In our supply chain, we assess and respond to risk by leveraging internal and external data and guidance from external stakeholders, including industry experts, civil society groups and non-governmental organisations. One way we do this is through independent audits to verify compliance with our Supply Chain Standards though regular on-site inspections and confidential worker interviews.
Supply Chain Commitments

We recognise that audits alone are insufficient to drive long-term change across industries. We, like many companies in similar industries, are exploring new ways to encourage improvement in worker protections, including supplier capacity building programmes, worker trainings, and collaborations with other brands and civil society. We currently invest in capacity building programmes across five key commitment areas.
Employee Engagement

Within our own operations, we have teams dedicated to assessing and addressing risk to our employees. Those teams focus on establishing open communication with our employees around the world and providing them with meaningful grievance mechanisms and avenues for dialogue with leadership.
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

We are dedicated to building a diverse and inclusive workplace, where every employee feels comfortable sharing their unique perspectives and is supported in growing their career.
Safety, Health & Well-being

We are obsessed with keeping our employees safe while on the job. We work relentlessly to innovate and create new industry benchmarks for health and safety.

Responsible Sourcing
Supply Chain Commitments
Employee Engagement
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
Safety, Health & Well-being

Amazon’s Salient Human Rights Risks

The guidance provided by the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights recommends that companies identify their most salient human rights risks as the first step in a comprehensive human rights due diligence strategy. Since 2020, we have worked with sustainability and human rights consulting company Article One Advisors to identify salient human rights risks across our business. In conducting this assessment, we consulted a diverse group of external human rights experts and incorporated their feedback into the results. We benchmarked the results against internationally recognised human rights standards. This assessment identified a set of priority human rights values and key salient human rights risks for Amazon.

Our existing policies and programmes currently address many of these risks, however, we will use the assessment results to build on current practice and prioritise our human rights due diligence efforts. One important due diligence tool is a human rights impact assessment (HRIA). HRIAs are an effective mechanism to identify and address adverse impacts business activities might have on individuals such as workers, local community members or consumers. The process involves meaningful engagement with external stakeholders to gain a full understanding of potential impacts.

Human Rights Impact Assessment: Amazon Devices

In 2020, we conducted our first HRIA to assess the raw and recovered materials supply chain for Amazon-branded digital devices (Kindle, Fire TV, Fire Tablet, Ring and Echo), including the manufacture, assembly and return of those products.

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Human Trafficking Awareness

Amazon does not tolerate the use of child labour, forced labour, or human trafficking in any form in our operations or value chain. We have detailed the components of this commitment to combating human trafficking (also referred to as modern slavery) in our annual Modern Slavery Statement, our Supply Chain Standards and our Global Human Rights Principles.

We’re raising awareness via employee training and partnerships. Our human trafficking awareness programme provides ongoing training to employees around the world to recognise indicators of human trafficking and report concerns to appropriate authorities in a way that puts the interests of victims first. To develop the training, we incorporated videos and materials from the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority (GLAA), a UK public agency focused on investigating labour exploitation. Our global security operations team has immediate response protocols in the event of a suspected human trafficking-related issue, regardless of where the issue arises.

We are also an official corporate sponsor of Truckers Against Trafficking (TAT), an organisation dedicated to combating human trafficking in the trucking industry, and began using TAT training modules to train our internal fleet of drivers, teaching them how to identify and respond to potential victims of human trafficking. As of January 2021, we trained 100 % of Amazon employees who are behind the wheels of trucks in our middle-mile business.

Modern Slavery Statement

Amazon does not tolerate the use of child labour, forced labour, or human trafficking in any form in our operations or value chain.

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Partnerships

Amader Kotha

In 2020, Amazon began working with the Amader Kotha Helpline, which provides workers with a mechanism to report and resolve safety and other concerns in the ready-made garment sector in Bangladesh. The Helpline was initially established as a project of the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety following the Rana Plaza tragedy. In 2018, the Helpline became an independent initiative available to all garment workers with the support of factories and brands.
Amfori

In 2018, Amazon became of a member of Amfori, a leading global business association for open and sustainable trade. Amfori brings together over 2,500 retailers, importers, brands, and associations from over 40 countries to drive social performance and improvements across global supply chains.
Better Buying

In 2019, Amazon began partnering with the Better Buying Initiative as part of their commitment to reimagining supply chain sustainability and leveraging data to strengthen supplier-buyer partnerships by improving purchasing practices. Better Buying's cloud-based platform enables suppliers to anonymously rate the purchasing practices of their buyers, providing data-driven insights which can be used by retailers, brands, and suppliers to continuously improve purchasing practices, and achieve mutually beneficial sustainability outcomes.
BSR HERproject

In 2019, Amazon began partnering with BSR's HERproject, an initiative that brings together global brands, their suppliers, and local partners to create and implement workplace-based interventions on health, financial inclusion, and gender equality. Through our partnership with HERproject, we engage suppliers in China, Bangladesh, Vietnam, and India. As of December 2021, we have reached nearly 12,000 women with HERproject programming, including training on health and financial skills, and building the capacity of workers and factory management to combat gender-based discrimination in the workplace.
Business for Social Responsibility

Amazon is a member of the Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), an organization of sustainable business experts that works with its global network of leading companies to build a just and sustainable world. Amazon participates in BSR initiatives such as Future of Fuels (a collaboration with a mission to build demand and promote adoption of clean energy technology for trucking), Clean Cargo Working Group (an initiative to reduce the environmental impacts of global goods transportation), and Tech Against Trafficking (a coalition of technology companies collaborating with global experts to help eradicate human trafficking using technology).
Nest

In 2020, Amazon partnered with Nest, a nonprofit supporting the growth and development of the artisan sector to build a world of greater gender equity and economic inclusion. Through programs that improve worker wellbeing for those working outside the four-walled factory, Nest is bringing radical transparency and opportunity to the informal handworker economy globally. Amazon is proud to serve on Nest’s Steering Committee.
Public-Private Alliance for Responsible Minerals Trade

Amazon joined the Public-Private Alliance for Responsible Minerals Trade (PPA) in 2020. The PPA is a multi-sector initiative among leaders in civil society, government, and industry to support projects in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the surrounding Great Lakes Region of Central Africa that improve the due diligence and governance systems needed for ethical supply chains. In 2021, Amazon will provide additional funding towards these efforts and participate in work groups devoted to enhancing local data collection.
Responsible Business Alliance

Amazon is a member of the Responsible Business Alliance (RBA), a nonprofit coalition of companies committed to supporting the rights and wellbeing of workers and communities worldwide affected by global supply chains.
Responsible Labor Initiative

Amazon is a member of the Responsible Labor Initiative (RLI), a multi-industry, multi-stakeholder initiative focused on ensuring that the rights of workers vulnerable to forced labor in global supply chains are consistently respected and promoted. The RLI is run by the Responsible Business Alliance and focuses on ensuring that the rights of workers vulnerable to forced labor in global supply chains are consistently respected and promoted.
Supplier Ethical Data Exchange

Amazon is a member of Sedex, a global membership organisation that empowers companies to implement responsible business practices and policies in their business and supply chain to build responsible supply chains. Sedex provides businesses with the tools, technology and insights needed to operate ethically, source responsibly and work with their Suppliers to create fair working conditions for the people who make their products and services.
Sustainable Apparel Coalition

Amazon joined the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC), an industry-wide group of more than 250 leading apparel and footwear brands, retailers, manufacturers, non-governmental organizations, academic experts, and government organizations working to reduce the environmental and social impacts of apparel products around the world. We encourage our Amazon-branded suppliers to evaluate their practices using the Coalition’s Higg Index, a tool to help manufacturers measure the social and environmental performance of their facilities.
Tech Against Trafficking

Tech Against Trafficking is a coalition of companies collaborating with global experts to help eradicate human trafficking using technology.