AstraZeneca is fully supportive of the principles set out in the UN Declaration of Human Rights and we are a signatory to the United Nations Global Compact.
Human Rights is one of our top priorities reflecting our commitment to making sure that we continue to drive and share best practice across all our activity. This is particularly important as we re-shape our organisation, grow our business in new and emerging markets and increase outsourcing around the world.
Our Code of Conduct and supporting policies outline our long-standing commitment to supporting the UN principles of Human Rights and the high standards of employment we require across the company. These include respecting diversity and, as a minimum, complying with national legal requirements regarding wages and working hours. We also support the International Labour Organisation's standards regarding child labour and minimum age. All eligible employees have the right to be a member of a trade union. We have agreements with trade unions in a number of countries where collective bargaining is customary practice; is within a country’s legal framework, and is supported by employees. We are also committed to working only with suppliers who embrace standards of ethical behaviour that our consistent with our own.
Strengthening the framework
In January 2010, AstraZeneca signed up to the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), a strategic public-private initiative for organisations committed to social and environmental sustainability. This means that we have committed to uphold ten internationally recognized principles in the areas of human rights, labour standards, environmental sustainability and anti-corruption. These are not new principles for AstraZeneca (as described in our Code of Conduct and global policies) but joining the Global Compact reinforces how seriously we take our commitment to them. It also gives us the framework for further developing our commitment in the areas of human rights and labour standards.
In recent years, we have been participating in a project led by the Danish Institute for Human Rights (DIHR), working with the pharmaceutical industry to develop a human rights assessment tool for pharmaceutical companies, based on the Institute’s existing Human Rights Compliance Tool. The first pharmaceutical industry version of the tool was launched in November 2010.
Our participation in the project helped to improve our understanding of the specific human rights implications for our industry and during 2010, we focused on further understanding how the human rights and labour-related UNGC principles apply to our activities.
As part of this, we conducted a Human Rights self-assessment pilot study in our marketing company in South Africa. The study focused on employment practices, R&D, products and marketing, and the community. The outcomes were positive overall due principally, we believe, to the extensive external regulation governing these issues in South Africa. However, the assessment usefully highlighted areas of AstraZeneca’s global governance which required improvement, including increased alignment with the International Labour Organisation (ILO) core conventions, which has also been raised during our stakeholder engagement. We subsequently conducted a human rights based review of our Code of Conduct and our global policies, focusing in particular on labour standards and diversity. We will be using the outcomes and recommendations on how to further strengthen our governance in these areas to inform the further development of our Code of Conduct and global policies.
We also used the DIHR assessment tool to conduct a labour review in 11 of our marketing companies - including some countries where national labour standards are not consistent with global best practice. The review focused on ILO core areas (freedom of association and collective bargaining, forced and bonded labour, child labour, discrimination and working time and wages). The results showed that our practices are in the main consistent around the world, based on our requirement that our global standards are applied when external national standards do not meet AstraZeneca’s minimum standards. However, we identified the need for more consistency in some areas – for example, working time and some aspects of diversity.
In parallel to these activities, we consulted external expertise and reviewed the industry landscape for best practice.
We have developed a global approach and framework for progressing our human rights agenda, including defined accountabilities and responsibilities and an action plan to ensure that human rights continue to be appropriately integrated into our strategies, policies and processes. We plan to begin a phased roll-out across the company in the first half 2011.
Overall accountability for progressing the human rights agenda within AstraZeneca is shared between our Global Human Resources function and our Global Corporate Responsibility Team who work to ensure that human rights issues continue to be appropriately integrated into responsible business strategies across the organisation.
For information about our commitment in human rights-related areas, please visit:
- Our employees
- Access to healthcare
- Sales & marketing practice
- Clinical trials
- Working with suppliers
- Codes, policies & standards
Right to health
We believe that it is governments who are accountable for providing a robust healthcare infrastructure for their populations – one that supports good public health and can ensure that medicines are delivered to those who need them. However, we recognise that as a global biopharmaceutical company, we have a role to play. Alongside our dedicated TB research, we continue to partner with non-governmental organisations and other organisations to help strengthen local healthcare capabilities.
The content of this page was externally assured by Bureau Veritas, February 2011.