A missed opportunity for Swiss food and beverage companies

Dorothée Baumann-Pauly wants measurable targets for companies to address human rights issues like child labour.

According to the International Labor Organization, over 100 million girls and boys work as child labourers in agriculture, including farming, fishing, aquaculture, forestry, and livestock. This represents about three quarters of all child labourers worldwide in the age group 5-11 years. Child labour is affecting children’s health and well-being and keeps millions of children out of school.

The Swiss cocoa and coffee sector is particularly exposed to operational and reputational risks related to child labour. Both supply chains have been subject to negative media exposés and NGO scrutiny for years. Swiss companies have significant sourcing volumes which could help to create leverage over working conditions at the farm-level.

Some Swiss cocoa and coffee companies are already collaborating in the Swiss Platform for Sustainable CocoaExternal link (SWISSCO) and the newly founded Swiss Sustainable Coffee Platform External link(SSCP), two initiatives that are supported by the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs. The Swiss government must make the expectation explicit that such collaborative initiatives develop clear objectives and a plan of action for eliminating child labour.

A plan that lacks ambition

At the end of 2024, the Swiss government adopted a revised National Action PlanExternal link (NAP) on the implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. The plan was prepared by an expert group of which I am part of, and which consists of representatives of business associations, unions, NGOs, and academia, led jointly by the Swiss State Secretary of Economic Affairs and the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs.

The NAP that the Swiss government approved and published in December 2024 does not reflect the work of the expert group but falls back to a list of activities that can help to raise awareness for human rights in business. This is surprising because the evaluations of the previous NAP, financed by the Swiss government, concluded that awareness-raising is no longer enough. Instead, measurable targets for substantive issues like child labour will need to be defined.

The revised NAP is lacking ambition, but not all is lost. The leadership of the expert group agreed to develop and publish a more detailed implementation plan to accompany the revised NAP. This is where the expectation should be set that Swiss collaborative initiatives such as those in cocoa and coffee take the lead in prioritising impact-focused activities with measurable steps towards eliminating child labour. The initiatives should set standards, metrics and develop means of evaluation so that progress can be measured and reported on over time. Academia can support measuring impacts by conducting baseline studies, develop key performance indicators, and assess progress.

The north star for developing such an implementation plan of the NAP should be the impacts the Swiss government hopes to see by the end of the implementation period in 2027.

‘Decent corporate citizenship’

Helene Budliger Artieda, the director of the State Secretary for Economic Affairs, said at an event for commodity traders in Zug a couple of weeks ago that she expects companies to create jobs in Switzerland, pay taxes, and be decent citizens around the world. It would be helpful if the vagueness of “decent corporate citizenship” could in 2027 be backed up with actual impact data.

This would also reflect the Zeitgeist. In January, over 180,000 Swiss citizens lent their signature to support an initiative to tighten the rules for companies’ social and environmental impacts. The overwhelming support for this second attempt at such an initiative indicates that many Swiss citizens do not see competitiveness and sustainability as irreconcilable objectives.

Swiss food and beverage companies have an opportunity to lead developing solutions that align profits and principles. The Swiss NAP should hold the collaboration platforms that the government supports accountable for delivering on this opportunity. 

Edited by Anand Chandrasekhar/vm