Anti-Slavery Day 2017: Adding our voice

As a global organisation, with far-reaching business processes, we are fully committed to conducting our business in an ethical way, free of exploitation and modern slavery. That’s why, at the occasion of this year’s Anti-Slavery Day, we are exploring our approach to tackling modern slavery, looking at our Code of Conduct with commentary from Mark Cutifani.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates that there are more than 40 million people in modern slavery today, a quarter of whom are children.

In 2015, the United Kingdom introduced the Modern Slavery Act (MSA), the first piece of legislation of this kind dedicated to the prevention of modern slavery and the protection of its victims. Commenting in the Anglo American response to the Act

We want to add our voice to a global commitment to prohibit, and take a zero tolerance policy in respect of, all forms of modern slavery in our organisation and our supply chains.

Mark Cutifani Chief Executive

The MSA includes a provision on transparency in supply chains, making companies such as ours accountable for slavery or labour abuses right across their operations. We welcome the MSA as a key tool in providing transparency across global supply chains.

Mark Cutifani commented: “As a global mining company, our business touches the lives of many people, including our suppliers. In a world that is ever more interconnected – often with complex value and supply chains – modern slavery is one of the human rights risks that we must all work to address. We are fully committed to an ethical value chain that respects human rights and is free of modern slavery.”

Conducting business responsibly

With more than 21,000 suppliers providing us with everything from raw materials and tech services to labour and transport, the transparency of our global supply chain is a priority - as a values-driven organisation, we understand our obligation to make sure our supplier relationship practices are transparent and fair. This means managing the purchase of goods and services without causing harm to people or the environment, and in many instances, proactively working with local suppliers and communities through enterprise development programmes.

To that end, in 2016 we introduced our Responsible Sourcing Standards for Suppliers. These standards include requirements under six headings or ‘pillars’ that must all be met by any supplier that wants to work with Anglo American, see below.

We acknowledge the importance of identifying, assessing and minimising any adverse impact on a person’s human rights that may be associated with our business. To help us do that, we developed a human rights framework and our approach to managing modern slavery risk is part of that wider framework.

All of these efforts are supported by our Code of Conduct, which gives employees guidance on what to do when they have difficult choices to make in their work environment; our business integrity training programme; and our Social Way, which governs our relationship with our host communities around the world.

As a company that affects the lives of people all over the world, we take our responsibilities to them very seriously. We will continue to work to improve standards and our performance across every aspect of human rights, including modern slavery, in every part of our business.

Cross-industry collaboration

On 9 October, Home Secretary Amber Rudd chaired the first meeting of the Business Against Slavery Forum, where Mark Cutifani was one of eight business leaders, including representatives from Barclays, HSBC and BT, invited to take part.

The Forum will act as a platform to help the founding members identify, tackle and prevent slavery in their supply chains, to encourage them to share intelligence and best practice, improve public and private cooperation, and to help boost the quality of transparency reporting under the MSA.

Follow #AntiSlaveryDay on Twitter for more information.

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