The Ethical Trade Forums is a multi-stakeholder collaborative initiative established in 2015 in response to a recognised need to promote better working conditions within the Spanish agri-food sector. As labour and human rights are shared challenges, collaboration is key.
For this reason, The Forums take a holistic supply chain approach, bringing together retailers, importers, exporters, suppliers, growers and other external stakeholders, key to improving working conditions in the sector.
The Forums mission is to improve the welfare of workers and their families and the way to do this is through increasing the professionalism and sustainability of the sector.
Therefore, the Forums exist to transform and improve the sector and aim to do this by:
- Providing guidance and support by representing the sector, serving as its voice and assistance on issues related to working conditions, ethical trade and the protection of Human Rights.
- Collaborating aligned offering resources and establishing channels that serve to the dialogue with different stakeholders and working with them on solutions for the labour challenges and developing appropriate tools.
- Building capacity by bringing experts, sharing news, best practices, different tools and guides, to address the challenges and implement practical solutions, while developing our members knowledge about the issues in the sector, via our Capacity Building Plan.
- Connecting realities by delivering events for the agricultural sector with the participation of its stakeholders to discuss labor challenges and share solutions to these challenges.
In 2018 in order to ensure that companies took ownership of labour issues, the Forums launched three initial Working Groups. Created to deal with regional specific issues, helping local producers learn more about labour and human rights and ultimately take ownership of the Forums by creating tools to tackle these issues.
Step by step, the Ethical Trade Forums have grown and opened the doors to a wider range of stakeholders who, with their knowledge and constructive participation, joined this initiative.