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Our approach to sustainability is founded on a respect for human rights. We are committed to respecting and supporting the human rights of all people, including our employees, the communities in which we operate, those within our supply chains and those who may be impacted by our activities. 

Our Human Rights Policy outlines our business conduct, which strives to be consistent with the International Bill of Human Rights, the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the International Organization’s Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work.

We support the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, are signatory to the UN Global Compact and work to align to the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights.

Our Human Rights Policy and Code of Conduct and Integrity form the foundation for respecting human rights at Fortescue and apply to our directors, employees, contractors and suppliers.

 

Our human rights approach

Fortescue’s Sustainability Team, including a human rights specialist, is responsible for the day-to-day management of our human rights approach. The Sustainability Team reports human rights matters through our executive Sustainability Committee to the Board’s Safety and Sustainability Committee responsible for overseeing human rights matters at Fortescue. 

Our Human Rights Steering Group comprising key functions from across the business helps support a collaborative and multi-functional approach in delivering our human rights approach. 

We respect human rights through a range of mechanisms and embed our approach in multiple policies, standards and procedures throughout the business.

  • Ongoing due diligence

    We undertake ongoing human rights due diligence of our operations, supply chain, partnerships and business activities (investments and acquisitions) to identify, assess, prevent and mitigate actual and potential human rights impacts. We implement social performance, labour, security and environmental systems guided by international standards, including undertaking social assessments to identify and manage risks and opportunities.

  • Meaningful engagement

    We engage meaningfully, respectfully and transparently with communities and stakeholders to understand the impacts of our activities and work with them to minimise negative impacts and optimise benefits. We respect local and Indigenous communities their values and heritage, and work to obtain and maintain the Free, Prior and Informed Consent of affected Indigenous Peoples across all phases of an activity's lifecycle.

  • Grievance and remedy

    We implement effective grievance mechanisms and provide access to remedy.

  • Continuous improvement

    We implement tracking and monitoring to help assess effectiveness and continuously improve our human rights approach.

  • Communicating our approach

    We actively communicate our approach and expectations to stakeholders including employees, suppliers and business partners. We participate in collaboration and engagement initiatives on human rights issues, policy and regulation and deliver human rights training to all employees as well as periodic awareness sessions.

Understanding our human rights risks

We identify and assess potential human rights risks through our company wide Risk Management Framework. These risks, along with prevention and mitigation actions, are captured in our corporate risk register and grouped by our identified salient human rights risks.

Grievances and remediation

We are committed to providing access to remedy through effective grievance mechanisms and will provide for, or cooperate in, remediation where we identify we have caused or contributed to an adverse human rights impact.

Our Fortescue Family are encouraged to speak up when our values, Code of Conduct or Human Rights Policy are not being followed.

Our global Speak Up platform enables our Fortescue Family and external stakeholders to safely, confidentially and anonymously (if desired) raise concerns with us. We also implement operational level grievance mechanisms where we operate for local community stakeholders to raise concerns.

Addressing Modern Slavery

Fortescue rejects all forms of slavery in our operations and supply chain and expects that same of our suppliers and business partners. We respect workers freedom of association, rights to collective bargaining, rights to a fair and living wage, and to be treated fairly and without discrimination.

We take action to identify, assess and address risks of modern slavery in our operations and supply chain and report annually in compliance with the Australian Modern Slavery Act 2018 (Cth) and other legislation in the jurisdictions we operate.

We collaborate with our suppliers, peers, civil society and other stakeholders to help address modern slavery risks and continuously improve our approach.

Read about our actions in our Fortescue Modern Slavery Statement.

Supply Chain

We procure a wide range of goods and services and are committed to ensure our procurement practices meet the highest standards. Our Procurement Policy and Sustainable Procurement Standard sets our expectations of suppliers to respect human rights and address modern slavery. Suppliers compliance with our Sustainable Procurement Standard is considered during contracts and performance assessments.

Our Standard Terms and Conditions include human rights and modern slavery obligations and an opportunity for suppliers to seek reasonable assistance from Fortescue in meeting the obligations. We also provide a Human Rights Supplier Information Pack to support our suppliers understanding of human rights and modern slavery expectations.

Security and Human Rights

Fortescue is proud to be a member of the Voluntary Principles Initiative (VPI) and is committed to continuously improving our implementation of the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights (VPSHR).

The VPI is a multi-stakeholder group comprising companies, governments and civil society committed to working together to address security-related human rights issues in the extractives, energy and related industries.

Read more about our implementation of the VPSHR in our Sustainability Report and Annual VPSHR Report.

Collaborations and Partnerships

Collaborations with peers, business partners, civil society and other stakeholders are key to helping us achieve our commitments respecting human rights and addressing modern slavery, and continuously improving our approach.

Fortescue proudly collaborates and partners with the following groups:

A GLOBAL APPROACH TO A GLOBAL imperative

Sustainability is critical to the future success of our company, and we integrate it into all aspects of our business.

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