OUR COMMITMENT TO HUMAN RIGHTS

Human Rights are a core value embedded in our company’s purpose: to refresh the world and make a difference.

Our vision is to craft the brands and choice of drinks that people love, to refresh them in body and spirit, and do it in ways that create a more sustainable business and a better shared future that makes a difference in people’s lives, communities and our planet.

The Coca‑Cola Company is committed to the improvement and achievement of human rights everywhere we operate. We respect our role in society and strive to operate in a way that creates an overall positive impact.

Respect for Human Rights is Fundamental to our Global Community

Human Rights Overview

Our 2022 Human Rights Overview provides a summary of the company’s human rights policies, processes and practices that are all aimed at ensuring that we respect human rights everywhere we operate. It also outlines the requirements for our suppliers and system partners to embrace responsible workplace practices.

Read our Human Rights Overview

Respect for social & environmental factors

Our social license to operate is grounded in our ability to understand and mitigate social and environmental risks within our company and the Coca‑Cola system. This includes our vast distribution system, suppliers, agriculture and extended value chain. Across everything we do as a system, one inalienable right we must work to instill in every associate is respecting and promoting human rights in the business actions and decisions we collectively take.

Read our Human Rights Principles

Human Rights policies & practices

We have and continue to develop comprehensive policies, principles and processes to help ensure human rights are respected and promoted, and work to identify and address any gaps at every point of our business and along our supply chain – from the driver delivering our products, to the technician ensuring product safety, to the mill workers refining sugar, to the small farmers growing the crops we rely on every day.

Read our Human Rights Policy

UN Guiding Principles & stakeholder inputs

The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights provide authoritative guidance on these topics. Our commitment to human rights has been steadfast over the years, and our policies and practices are aligned to them.

Our Human Rights Policy is based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Labor Organization’s Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, and the UN Global Compact. It is a living document that is reviewed and updated. We consulted widely with NGOs, civil society groups, trade unions and key experts to ensure our policy meets the expectations, concerns and demands of stakeholders and salient human rights risks. Our Board of Directors reviews and approves our policy.

Read our Human Rights Report

Committed to addressing globally & systemically

Respect for human rights is fundamental to the global communities in which we operate. In our company, across our system and in our supply chain, we are committed to working to ensure that people are treated with dignity and respect.

Our Human Rights Policy applies to The Coca‑Cola Company, owned entities, entities where it holds a majority interest, and facilities it manages. The policy is available in 17 languages.

Explore Human Rights policies

Framework for Policies and Programs

GLOBAL ISSUES

Internal and external consultation processes identified these 12 salient human rights issues associated with the company’s activities and business relationships:

Safety and health of all workers, security, right to life
Equality nondiscrimination and related issues/risks
Child labor
Forced migrant labor/forced labor of seasonal workers
Freedom of association
Access to water, environmental pollution, wastewater
Working hours
Healthy lifestyles
Land rights
Product safety/quality
Rights linked to sponsorships
Right to privacy

These issues are not new for us. Although the company has engaged in all these topics throughout our human rights journey, our extensive mapping and consultation process confirmed that much of our human rights focus is appropriate, equipping us to move in a more strategic and prioritized direction in addressing these issues. In addition, the regional consultations gave us a deeper view into regional risks profiles.

ACTIVE STEPS

We continuously strive to demonstrate our commitment through our sustainability and community initiatives, as well as our efforts to identify and remedy human rights impacts. This starts with our own people, making sure they have safe, supportive and respectful workplaces where the dignity of every associate is recognized and honored. Although respect for human rights starts in our company, it extends throughout the system and in the communities in which we operate.

The Coca‑Cola Company formally endorsed the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in May 2011, prior to them being officially adopted by the United Nations Human Rights Council. Since the beginning, we have focused on three components that must be put in place in a corporate context under the UN Guiding Principles:

Policy commitment: To meet the responsibility to respect human rights
Due-diligence process to identify, prevent, mitigate and be accountable for human rights abuses
Processes to enable the remediation of any adverse human rights impacts the company causes or to which it contributes

This framework is the foundation of our policies and programs related to workplace and human rights. We expect our company, bottling partners and suppliers to avoid causing or contributing to human rights infringements as a result of business actions. Furthermore, our company, bottling partners and suppliers are responsible for preventing or mitigating adverse human rights impacts directly linked to their operations, products or services by their business relationships.

This expectation is expressed with our bottlers and in our Supplier Guiding Principles (SGP), which align with our Human Rights Policy and are part of all contractual agreements between The Coca‑Cola Company and direct and authorized suppliers. We expect our suppliers to develop and implement appropriate internal business processes to ensure compliance with the Supplier Guiding Principles.

GOVERNANCE

On an annual basis, the director of Global Human and Workplace Rights reports in person to the Board of Directors to address human rights progress, risks and our compliance rate for workplace-related human rights. Data is captured by third-party audits.

If anyone in the system suspects a violation of our Human Rights Policy or Supplier Guiding Principles, they are encouraged to report grievances through the EthicsLine, a global online and telephone information and reporting service. Calls are toll-free, and the EthicsLine is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with translators.

The Coca‑Cola Company takes a collaborative approach to identify and mitigate human rights risks. Collaborative action is key to advance implementation of the UNGPs. Examples of these partnerships and collaboration can be found in our Human Rights Report.

SUPPLIER GUIDING PRINCIPLES

We expect our suppliers and system partners to embrace responsible workplace practices in line with our Human Rights Policy and our commitment to social justice. We communicate these expectations through our Supplier Guiding Principles (SGP). The SGP program is a vital element of the Company's overall sustainability platform and reflects the belief that our responsibility to respect human rights extends across our value chain and is essential to long-term business success.

The SGPs are part of all contractual agreements between The Coca‑Cola Company and our direct and authorized suppliers. We expect our suppliers to develop and implement appropriate internal business processes to fulfill the expectations. We closely monitor the implementation of our Supplier Guiding Principles by utilizing independent third parties to assess supplier and bottler sites. To do this, we partner with a select number of accredited audit firms and conduct training on a regular basis to ensure they understand and align to our program requirements.

Key SGP topics include:

Freedom of association and collective bargaining
Prohibit child labor
Prohibit forced labor and abuse of labor
Eliminate discrimination
Work hours and wages
Provide a safe and healthy workplace
Protect the environment
Business integrity
Grievance procedure and remedy
Management systems for ensuring lawful compliance and respect for all human rights

Agricultural Supply Chain

AGRICULTURE & INGREDIENTS

A huge focus in our supply chain work is related to our agricultural ingredients. This is an area where we have assessed greater risks as we work to gain a higher level of transparency across our supply chain. We rely on more than 5 million farmers to deliver our agricultural supply. Therefore, The Coca‑Cola Company has developed specific Principles for Sustainable Agriculture (PSA) to set expectations of our agricultural ingredient suppliers to address sustainability challenges specific to agriculture.

SUGAR SUPPLY CHAIN

As part of progressing our human rights work, in 2013 we committed to completing sugar supply chain studies focused on child labor, forced labor and land rights in key markets.

To date, 21 studies have been published and can be found here: Country Studies.

Of all studies published, Mexico and India (2019) have proven to be the most complex in terms of forced labor and child labor and will require a more prolonged, multi-stakeholder approach. To follow up on findings from certain studies, we developed and rolled out guidance on the principle of Free, Prior and Informed Consent with our land rights knowledge partner Landesa and, in 2019, published our Country Study Summary Report.