Advancing Human Rights

We believe everyone should be treated with fundamental dignity and respect, and provided an equal opportunity to thrive. We’re committed to ensuring this for all the people connected to our business—our employees, our customers, our partners, our suppliers, and our broader communities.

A smiling person uses sewing machine
A smiling person uses sewing machine
A smiling person uses sewing machine
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OUR PROGRESS
By the Numbers
$53 Million
Committed $53 million to accelerate female representation in climate tech in partnership with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)
152
Hosted the first annual Tech Against Trafficking Summit in 2022, bringing together 152 global anti-trafficking leaders
12,600
Supported 12,600 people in our supply chain with mental health screenings in 2022, through our work with the international nonprofit PATH
Our Approach

We are embedding respect for human rights throughout our business activities and relationships through our principles and standards. We conduct human rights saliency assessments to identify risks, and prevent and address impacts through audits, open communication, and stakeholder engagement, among other mechanisms.

Our human rights strategy is informed by leading international standards and frameworks developed by the United Nations (UN) and the International Labour Organization (ILO). We are committed to respecting and supporting the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Core Conventions of the ILO, and the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work.

Our strategy to deliver on these commitments is based on the UNGPs and has five pillars:

Developing and Maintaining Strong Policies and Standards

Our efforts are anchored in policies that apply across our business. We regularly review our policies to identify areas for updates and improvements. We also engage external stakeholders and conduct benchmarking against international human rights standards and evolving industry norms.

Our Global Human Rights Principles demonstrate our commitment to respecting human rights and the dignity of people connected to our business around the world.

Our Supply Chain Standards apply to all suppliers of goods and services for Amazon and Amazon’s subsidiaries, including service providers, vendors, selling partners, contractors, and subcontractors (collectively, “suppliers”). They are grounded in principles of inclusivity, continuous improvement, and supply chain accountability. We engage with suppliers that are committed to these same principles and suppliers commit to these standards as a condition of doing business with us. We update these standards at least every three years, working with external stakeholders to align requirements with current best practices and regulatory standards.

Embedding Human Rights Into Our Business Operations and Decision-Making

We’re committed to embedding human rights considerations into decision-making across our company and into our policy and governance framework. While Amazon’s Board of Directors has overall responsibility for risk oversight of the company, the Board has delegated responsibility for certain risks to its committees.

The Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee oversees the management of risks related to our environmental, sustainability, and corporate social responsibility practices, including those related to human rights. The committee regularly meets with management to review these matters. Learn more about our committees on Management and Governance.

As a global company, we recognize the responsibility and opportunity we have to raise awareness among our employees on human rights issues. We have a central team that works across the company to conduct human rights due diligence and embed human rights considerations into everyday business decisions.

We also offer trainings tailored to salient human rights risks. For example, our forced labor awareness program makes ongoing training available to employees around the world to help them recognize indicators of forced labor and report concerns to appropriate authorities in a way that puts the interests of potential victims first.

Assessing, Prioritizing, and Addressing Risk

We’re committed to assessing, prioritizing, and addressing adverse human rights impacts connected to our business, and are continually working to improve our approach. At Amazon, businesses deploy a variety of mechanisms to do this.

In our supply chain, we assess and respond to risk by leveraging internal and external data and guidance from external stakeholders, including industry experts, civil society groups, and nongovernmental organizations. We engage directly with suppliers and their workers, and conduct independent audits to verify compliance with our Supply Chain Standards. We work with suppliers on appropriate remediation measures and offer partnerships and programs to help them address risks and invest in worker well-being.

We recognize that audits alone are insufficient to drive long-term change across industries. Like many companies in similar industries, we are exploring new ways to encourage improvement in worker protections. These include supporting suppliers’ efforts to improve their grievance mechanisms, supplier capacity-building programs, worker trainings, and collaborations with other brands and civil society. We currently focus our supply chain efforts on key commitment areas: Safe Workplaces, Responsible Recruitment and Freely Chosen Employment, Gender Equity, Fair Wages, Environmental Protection, and Access to Effective Grievance Mechanisms. Learn more about our Supply Chain Commitments.

Within our own operations, we have a central team that works across the company to conduct human rights due diligence and embed human rights considerations into everyday business decisions. With support from this team, Amazon businesses work towards integrating our human rights principles into their operations and business relationships by conducting human rights risk assessments and remedying identified issues.

In line with the UNGPs, identifying and prioritizing the most salient risks connected to Amazon operations and business relationships is central to our human rights due diligence practices. As we continue to improve and expand our human rights due diligence practices, we will leverage human rights impact assessments (HRIAs) to assess and address risks connected to our operations and business relationships. HRIAs help us understand causes of systemic issues, enhance ongoing engagement with critical stakeholders, and facilitate increasingly transparent disclosures.

Engaging With Stakeholders

We’re committed to driving best practices in human rights due diligence through increased disclosures about our approach and by expanding our stakeholder engagement. Each year, we track progress on our human rights commitments and publicly share up-to-date information about our programs, including external partnerships with organizations that share our core human rights values.

Engagement with external stakeholders is key to our human rights due diligence approach. This collaboration is essential to identifying positive outcomes for people connected to our business and is part of our responsibility to respect human rights in line with the UNGPs. We rely on experts and affected rights-holders to inform our approach and validate that our efforts have the impact we intend. Through regular stakeholder engagement and strategic partnerships, we incorporate invaluable expert input into our work, helping us achieve greater impact on people connected to our business around the world.

Improving Access to Effective Grievance Mechanisms and Remediation Procedures

As part of our first enterprise-wide human rights saliency assessment, we made a foundational commitment to ensure that those in our value chain have the opportunity for concerns to be heard and issues to be resolved. Focusing on listening to the people connected to our business and understanding their experiences to address risks and remedy issues is a critical element of our human rights approach and a core obligation under the UNGPs.

Consistent, honest, and open communication with our employees allows us to continually improve our workplace experience, empowering individuals to voice concerns and have them directly addressed by leadership. Our goal is to hear from and listen to everyone. Dedicated teams across the company focus on establishing open communication with our employees, providing them with meaningful grievance mechanisms and avenues for dialogue with leadership. We have many policies, practices, and mechanisms in place to provide open lines of communication between leadership and employees, and act regularly to address employee concerns and make improvements. Aligning with the UNGP Reporting Framework, Amazon’s policies and practices are designed to promote respect for the rights of freedom of association and collective bargaining and to comply with the legal requirements of the countries where we operate.

Our aim is that every worker across our supply chain has access to an effective grievance mechanism. We work with suppliers to increase their capacity to develop these mechanisms by creating channels to hear directly from workers about their experiences and to support the resolution of issues from workers’ perspectives.

From the associates in our fulfillment centers, to the drivers delivering packages to our customers, to the factory workers making the products we sell—people are critical to our mission of being earth’s most customer-centric company. Our Human Rights Principles demonstrate our support for fundamental human rights and the dignity of workers everywhere we operate around the world.
Our Salient Human Rights Risks

Identifying and prioritizing the most salient risks connected to Amazon operations and business relationships is central to our human rights due diligence practices. We completed an enterprise-wide human rights saliency assessment in 2020. Through that process, we identified nine salient human rights risks across our operations and business relationships. Since then, we have built on this foundation, performing human rights impact assessments (HRIAs) across a number of Amazon businesses to gain deeper understanding of our salient issues. Our salient human rights risks:

  • Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
  • Safe and Healthy Working Conditions
  • Modern Slavery and Forced Labor
  • Fair Wages and Hours
  • Freedom of Association
  • Future of Work
  • Right to Privacy
  • Product Safety and Security
  • Social, Economic, and Environmental Justice
Human Rights Impact Assessments

We use HRIAs to assess and address risks connected to our operations and business relationships. HRIAs help us understand causes of systemic issues, enhance ongoing engagement with critical stakeholders, and facilitate increasingly transparent disclosures.

In 2022, Twitch conducted its first HRIA in partnership with Amazon’s central Human Rights team and consulting firm BSR. Twitch is an Amazon subsidiary that provides interactive livestreaming service for content spanning gaming, entertainment, sports, music, and more. The HRIA identified the most salient human rights risks and opportunities related to Twitch’s services, including content governance and online safety, incorporating a focus on vulnerable groups.
In 2020, we conducted Amazon’s first HRIA on the raw and recovered materials supply chain for Amazon-branded digital devices. Using the UNGPs as a framework to guide the assessment, the HRIA results indicated we are directly linked to potential risks for Tier 1–2 manufacturing and reverse logistics suppliers.
Human Rights Partnerships

We recognize that many human rights risks are complex issues with widespread social impacts. Addressing these risks requires cross-industry engagement to find effective solutions. We collaborate with credible, knowledgeable, and innovative industry partners around the world who share our vision. Learn more about our partners by exploring the logos below.

  • Amader Kotha Logo
  • Amfori logo
  • Article One
  • Better Buying Institute logo
  • Better Cotton logo
  • Business for Social Responsibility (BSR)
  • BSR HERproject logo
  • International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) Advisors logo
  • Issara Institute logo
  • Nest logo
  • Polaris
  • Public-Private Alliance for Responsible Minerals Trade (PPA) logo
  • Resilience Fund for Women in Global Value Chains logo
  • Responsible Business Alliance (RBA) logo
  • Responsible Labor Initiative (RLI) logo
  • Responsible Minerals Initiative (RMI) logo
  • Sedex member logo
  • StolenYouth logo with prevent, connect, empower tagline.
  • Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC) logo
  • Tech Against Trafficking logo
  • The Centre for Child Rights and Business logo
  • The Copper Mark
  • Thorn logo
  • Truckers Against Trafficking (TAT) logo
  • Ulula
  • USAID - Climate Gender Equity Fund
  • United States Council for International Business (USCIB) logo
Related Downloads
Human Rights and Environmental Complaints

If you have a concern about a human rights or environmental issue related to Amazon’s business or supply chains, we strongly encourage you to use this webform to report your concern directly to us. The webform can be viewed in various languages by selecting the desired language at the top of the page.

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