Uncovering human rights abuses in tea supply chains
13 million people work in tea supply chains but until recently there was no way to know where major brands and retailers were buying their tea from. This lack of transparency from the sector made it very challenging to hold brands accountable for human rights abuses endemic to the sector.
That’s why in 2021 the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC) and Wikirate worked together to create the Tea Supply Chain Tracker and show where major tea companies are buying their tea from.
Following a BHRRC-led disclosure request to the companies, Wikirate mapped 5000 tea supply chain relationships and turned them into open data on the Wikirate platform.
This project marked the first time that relationships between tea brands & retailers and tea estates were made public on a centralized database.
The Labour Rights team at BHRRC uses this data to:
- Connect specific tea companies to human rights abuse allegations in their supply chains. So far, over 70 allegations have been linked to major companies
- Publish reports highlighting these links and outlining BHRRC’s recommendations to tea companies, trade associations, and investors to better protect tea supply chain workers.
“By mapping the supply chain data BHRRC has gathered from tea companies onto its accessible and easy-to-use platform, Wikirate has made a huge contribution to BHRRC’s work to hold tea companies to account for human rights abuses along their tea supply chains. There is no excuse for the lack of transparency that has characterised the sector – the industry includes some of the largest and most profitable companies in the world. This database represents a significant step forward and I hope we can continue to build it in collaboration, as pressure grows on companies to disclose their suppliers as a prerequisite to tackling human rights abuses along supply chains” - Kate Jelly, Labour Rights Researcher, Business & Human Rights Resource Centre
Outputs
- Tea Supply Chain Tracker | Business & Human Rights Resource Centre
- Tea Supply Chain Relations Data | Wikirate
- Trouble brewing: the need for transparency in tea supply chains | Business & Human Rights Resource Centre
- Boiling point: Strengthening corporate accountability in the tea industry | Business & Human Rights Resource Centre