The Seafood Ethics Action (SEA) Alliance Commitment to Progress initiative is a pioneering new framework to support the progression of corporate human rights due diligence in seafood supply chains. The initiative was launched at the Global Seafood Expo in Barcelona in April 2024.

The Commitment to Progress framework delineates the essential actions businesses must undertake, and monitor progress against, to enhance human rights due diligence within seafood supply chains.

Background

In April 2023 the SEA Alliance began the journey to develop a charter of commitments. A group of seafood stakeholders – including retailers, seafood businesses, trade union representatives, and NGOs – convened to launch the development phase for a set of powerful, co-designed commitments, all focused on improving the rights of seafood workers.

The commitments focus specifically on advancing human rights and labour standards in seafood supply chains. The aim is to provide a clear anchor-point around which retailers and seafood businesses can coalesce in a joint mission to play an impactful role in safeguarding the rights of fishers and other workers in their seafood supply chains. The commitments will provide a clear framework for ongoing action and progress reporting across the SEA Alliance membership, and beyond.

The Commitment to Progress initiative incorporates four key areas or pathways: Transparency, Rightsholder Engagement, Human Rights Due Diligence (HRDD) and Purchasing Practices, each with a cycle of actions for businesses to monitor progress against.

It encompasses commitments related to policy formation, risk assessment and mitigations strategies, data collection and monitoring, establishment of accountability targets, transparent communication of progress, and remediation expectations.

The four pathways

• Transparency. The transparency pathway is pivotal encompassing two vital aspects. Firstly it compels businesses to share data regarding their supply chains, labour force and public commitments, and secondly, it accentuates the critical role of traceability in achieving transparency.
• Rightsholder Engagement. This pathway advocates not merely for rightsholder inclusion in decision-making processes, but also for the removal of barriers that obstruct effective communication.
• Human Rights Due Diligence (HRDD). The HRDD pathway provides transparency regarding a business’s approach to addressing supply chain risks, it tracks progression within the framework, and fosters awareness of workers’ rights.
• Purchasing Practices. The purchasing practices pathway recognises that the decisions made in procurement are a linchpin for either advancing or impeding labour standards or worker rights, and need to be considered in contract negotiations, agreement formations and performance evaluations.

Next steps

The SEA Alliance anticipates providing support to our members in advancing this framework and facilitating collective efforts to achieve progress in specific areas. We will be working with partners on the creation and provision of supplementary guidance on actionable steps for businesses. Crucially we know that verification of progress against this framework is key to its impact. Working with industry experts, as well as organisations who work closely with workers and fishers, will be a key part of this process.

Commitment to Progress Pilot

We are currently working on developing an effective verification framework to monitor member’s progress. We want to pilot this framework, so we are asking for a number of SEA Alliance member businesses to trial this framework within their current businesses processes. We currently have three SEA Alliance retailer members, and three SEA Alliance processor/supplier members, who have indicated an interest in taking part within the Commitment to Progress pilot.

We hope to officially kick off the 6-month pilot during September 2024 following 1-1 workshops with the participating members.

There is still time to get in contact if you would like to participate within this pilot. Joining the C2P pilot lets you advise on your business’s support needs, and collaborate with the SEA Alliance to ensure realistic and effective progress and monitoring systems.