AIM-Progress and brand members (incl. Reckitt, The Coca-Cola Company and Unilever) are partnering with Diginex to empower suppliers to undertake human rights due diligence and identify forced labour risks, through their new SaaS platform diginexLUMEN.
diginexLUMEN sets a new standard for scalable and affordable due diligence by empowering brands and their suppliers to better identify, assess and act on hidden social risks and impacts, including forced labour across the entirety of the supply chain.
Diginex, the disruptive impact technology company working to solve the world’s most pressing sustainability challenges, has partnered with AIM-Progress and its members to utilise diginexLUMEN – a proprietary SaaS platform designed to drive a new level of transparency, trust and accountability across global supply chains. The tool was based on lessons from an initial partnership with The Coca-Cola Company focused on responsible recruitment in Middle East countries. It was then developed and scaled through financial and technical support provided by The Coca-Cola Company and Reckitt, who sought to gain a greater level of transparency into the practices of recruitment agencies and labor providers in their supply chain.
While the platform is quickly expanding to offer users a suite of modules focused on salient social and environmental risks, the Group will use diginexLUMEN as a first phase of the project, to facilitate the identification of hidden recruitment and forced labor-related risks by mapping, collecting and triangulating data from key actors including workers, suppliers and labor intermediaries. Based on the findings, a capacity building training will be designed to support suppliers in their journey towards responsible recruitment.
There is a critical need to address forced labour risks in global supply chains, including those related to the hiring and employment of migrant workers. In September 2022, new gobal estimates on modern slavery were released by The International Organization for Migration, the International Labor Organization and the Walk Free Foundation. The number of people in situations of modern slavery has grown to 50 million with an estimated 28 million people in forced labour in 2021. The majority (86%) of forced labour occurs in the private sector... Migrant workers are at three times higher risk of forced labour. Further, with the adoption of new legislation on mandatory corporate due diligence, such as the proposed EU Directive on corporate sustainability due diligence and forced labour ban, requirements are being pushed down the supply chain. Yet few tools exist to support suppliers in monitoring their own business partners. The partnership between AIM-Progress and diginex seeks to address this gap by facilitating multi-party due diligence, recognizing that supply chains are complex eco-systems, and no single actor can eliminate risk without the support and accountability of its partners. The platform also features a multi-lingual worker voice tool, diginexAPPRISE, which to date has reached nearly 60,000 workers, to verify supplier data and provide a more holistic and real-time reflection of recruitment and working conditions.
AIM-Progress members are opting to work collaboratively and pre-competitively, to identify sustainability trends and challenges, in the hope that it will allow the group to more easily drive continuous improvement across the consumer goods sector. Due diligence information is displayed in an actionable format on customized dashboards that helps companies narrow down where the risk factors are in the supply chain and where to focus capacity building efforts.
diginexLUMEN is the latest addition to diginex’s product suite, which includes diginexESG and diginexCLIMATE. Find out more here.
For more information please contact:
Leanne Melnyk, Head of Global Supply Chains, diginex: leanne.melnyk@diginex.com
Yael Fattal, Project Manager, AIM-Progress: Yael.fattal@aim.be
Download press release here.
