Labour rights assessment: Nestlé’s palm oil supply chain in Indonesia

The aims and objectives of this labour rights assessment were to:

• Identify and describe actual and potential human rights risks and impacts in Nestlé’s palm oil supply chain, with a particular focus on labour rights.
• Propose actionable recommendations to Nestlé on how to improve its Responsible Sourcing program to further mitigate and avoid negative labour rights impacts.
• Jointly build an understanding of the challenges in the palm oil supply chain.

Background

As the world’s largest food and beverage company, Nestlé buys 460,000 tonnes (2016) of palm oil annually to manufacture its products. A large percentage of this palm oil comes from Indonesia.

In order to better understand the actual and potential labour rights impacts in its palm oil supply chain in Indonesia, in 2017 Nestlé commissioned the Danish Institute for Human Rights (DIHR) and The Forest Trust (TFT) to conduct a labour rights assessment, the findings of which are shared in this report.