The Centre can assess your company’s supply chain, or specific areas within your supply chain, in terms of child rights and human rights due diligence. The aim of this service is to give you a comprehensive understanding of where your operations have a direct and indirect impact on children and to present you with recommendations on how to manage potential and identified risks. 

To date, our teams have conducted on-site assessments across a wide range of agriculture, minerals and manufacturing settings. Our experienced local teams on the ground are experts in conducting assessments on site in factories, farms, plantations, forests, gardens, small workshops, homeworking sites, raw material sites including mines and sub-contracting factories. 

We offer targeted assessments that focus on a specific child rights impact area including, but not limited to, child labour and forced labour, education, childcare, income, gender issues, health & safety and young worker protection. We also link our assessments to other potential key risks such as recruitment practices and environmental impact. Our assessments are always customisable to ensure they meet your changing needs.

We have developed a standardised approach and methodology that gives a clear overview of where actual and potential risks may be found, with concrete suggestions on how to make changes in a way that creates positive impact while respecting the need for long-term business-friendly solutions.

Our assessments do not look at child rights as a separate entity, but are always considered in the context of overall production and working conditions, gender, human trafficking and forced labour. 

HOW WE CONDUCT THE ASSESSMENTS: 

Our proven risk assessment methodology provides an overview of the supply chain and provides a clear outline of where actual and potential risks may be found. Rather than merely presenting a list of vulnerabilities, our risk assessment provides clear and practical recommendations on how to make changes in a way that creates positive impact while respecting the need for long-term, feasible and viable business friendly solutions.

Our assessments involve all stakeholders including young workers, parent workers and the children themselves, as well as management of production facilities and other employees, to get the fullest, most accurate picture. Assessments typically draw on all or a combination of the following methodology:

• Desk research, with references to international and national laws & regulations, compliance standards and data and review of key company policies and guidelines

• On-site visits and observations

• Quantitative surveys with e.g. workers and managers (depending on the scope of assessment)

• Face-to-face interviews with key informants

• Focus group discussions and participatory exercises including with children 

• Preparation of assessment report including data compilation and analysis, development of recommendations and next steps

• Awareness-raising webinars

WHAT OUR ASSESSMENT REPORT COVERS: 

• Child rights risk indicators based on severity (scope and scale), actual or potential, linkage (caused, contributed by, or linked to the brands) and leverage (the brands’ level of influence)

• The likelihood of violations

• The significance of identified risks and what that means for your company

• Recommendations presented on three levels, with each level rated by five key dimensions: resources, impact, complexity, sustainability and scalability. Our recommendations also map out a long-term strategy for improving child rights footprint and supply chain resilience

The Centre has performed numerous child rights and human rights risk and impact assessments within the following industries and areas:

MANUFACTURING: 

• Toy industry (conducted in China, India and Vietnam)

• Garment & textile industry (conducted in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Ethiopia, India, Myanmar, Türkiye and The Philippines)

• Homeworker settings (conducted in Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Türkiye and Vietnam)

• Electronics industry (conducted in China, Malaysia and Hungary)

  
  

AGRICULTURE AND RAW MATERIALS: 

• Forestry industry/plantations (conducted in Brazil, China and Laos)  

• Agriculture products and processing (conducted in the US)

• Small-holder cacao farms (conducted in Indonesia to date)

• Small-holder tea plantations (conducted in Sri Lanka and Indonesia)

• Natural fibre industry (including sea grass and rattan in Indonesia and Vietnam) 

• Coffee plantations (conducted in Brazil, Papua New Guinea, Uganda, Vietnam)

• Small-holder hazelnut gardens (conducted in Türkiye)

• Rice (conducted in Cambodia)

• Rose gardens (conducted in Türkiye)

• Jasmine flowers (conducted in Egypt)

• Cotton (conducted in Côte d'Ivoire)

• Palm oil (conducted in Indonesia)
  

• Pepper plantations (conducted in Vietnam)

• Spices (conducted in India)

• Mining (cobalt mining in the DRC, mineral supply chain in China, natural stone in Vietnam and China; mica in Madagascar; construction in Vietnam)

• Sugarcane (conducted in India)

• Crop farming and aquaculture (conducted in Vietnam)

The Centre also offers smaller factories and production-area-specific child rights risks assessments with a focus on child labour, juvenile workers and/or migrant parents. Please contact us to learn more about our child rights and human rights risk assessments in supply chains.