USA – Children’s rights

Section II. Priority Areas of the National Action Plan on Responsible Business Conduct

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2. Priority Area (2) Strengthening Respect for Human Rights in Federal Procurement Policies and Processes

“As the largest single purchaser of goods and services in the world with more than $700 billion in spending last year alone, the USG has unique leverage to protect human rights in federal supply chains. The United States has long had a policy of prohibiting government employees and contractor personnel from engaging in trafficking in persons and procuring products made with forced or indentured child labor. The efficacy of this policy was strengthened in 2015 when a Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) rule, titled “Combating Trafficking in Persons,” was updated to implement trafficking-related prohibitions for federal contractors and subcontractors.”

“Through this NAP, the USG commits to strengthen implementation of the existing regulations that prohibit human trafficking, trafficking-related activity, and forced or indentured child labor. To better identify violations of these prohibitions in the FAR, the USG will complete a review of reporting mechanisms as set forth in priority action 4.4.7 of the NAP to Combat Human Trafficking and will thereafter identify options for improving methods through which workers and civil society can inform the USG of human trafficking violations by federal contractors and subcontractors.”

(p.12)

Section III. Additional National Action Plan Commitments

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Table 2: Procurement Commitments

The Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB), within the Department of Labor, will “make it easier for contractors to identify “high-risk” sectors for federal contracts by standardizing naming conventions between their lists and those in the FAR and improving access for contractors to a designated ILAB webpage with information about USG resources, including ILAB’s child labor and forced labor reports. The technical amendment will harmonize naming conventions between the FAR and DOL to eliminate confusion. The webpage will make information more accessible to those in the contracting and procurement communities.”

ILAB will also “map the “List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor” to Product Service Codes (PSC) and country information to increase use by the acquisition workforce. DOL maintains the “List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor” to raise public awareness about forced labor and child labor around the world and to promote efforts to combat them; it is not intended to be punitive, but rather to serve as a catalyst for more strategic and focused coordination and collaboration among those working to address these problems.”

(p.19)

Table 5: Workers’ Rights Commitments

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) “[…] will conduct an interagency review across the USG through the Trade Policy Staff Committee’s Subcommittee on Trade, Forced Labor, and Child Labor to examine existing trade policies and tools used to combat forced labor, including forced child labor, in order to identify areas that may need to be strengthened and gaps that may need to be filled.” (p.30)

Table 6: Environment, Climate and Just Transitions Commitments

The International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) will “update its ESPP by clarifying its clients’ responsibilities in assessing supply chains with high risks of child labor and forced labor, […] in order to promote due diligence. Through this update, clients will better understand DFC expectations with respect to identifying and managing risks in their supply chains, and DFC will be better positioned to assess supply chain risks to mitigate harm.” (p.33)