A report detailing case studies that show challenges of workers in global supply chains struggling to achieve Decent Work due to lack of social and economic upgrading. The section on electronics, Study 4, gives an outline of the outsourced industry to Asia and the challenges workers face particularly in lower tiers of the global supply chain, from forced labour in Malaysia to exploitation of interns in China. The report describes how social upgrading does not often follow economic upgrading, especially in countries not adhering to ILO labour standards, and therefore calls on multiple governance mechanisms, for example simultaneous public and private measures, to put pressure on companies to change this.

Co-authored by ex-Director of the London Universities Purchasing Consortium and Dr Olga Martin-Ortega of the Business, Human Rights and the Environment Research Group at the University of Greenwich. Published by the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply specifically for public procurement practitioners as encouragement and practical guidance to understand the importance of promoting human rights in supply chains, develop human rights due diligence strategies and work in collaboration with other organizations to increase knowledge and promote good practice. It details what modern slavery is, how it is measured and why it is a critical issue in public procurement and what can be done about it by those practitioners.

The EU Legislation on conflict minerals in supply chains.

This report seeks to provide a preliminary road map of ways in which the procurement process can be used to leverage the U.S. government's immense purchasing power to push government suppliers to respect human rights. Its goals are: (1) to strengthen implementation of existing procurement standards, including those outlined in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Right (UNGPs), to protect human rights and (2) to require suppliers to respect human rights through the same due diligence steps that are becoming the norm in the private sector. In addition to fulfilling international obligations, the fulfilment of these goals would bring U.S. federal procurement into alignment with existing U.S. labour, trade, investment, and assistance policies—all of which provide helpful precedents and models for the strengthening of procurement rules.

The inaugural study of the Learning Lab on Public Procurement and Human Rights, it provides an overview of key standards, issues and policy or practitioner initiatives concerning the relationship between public procurement and human rights. It also supplies recommendations needed to bring public procurement into alignment with human rights and sustainable development where it is currently lacking legally, practically and in policy.