Complying with global standards

Fortescue complies with global standards on business and human rights and takes a leading role in the Australian business community on human rights.

Protecting human rights

Fortescue is committed to respecting and promoting 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.

We conduct business in a manner consistent with the International Bill of Human Rights, the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the principles concerning fundamental rights set out in the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work. We are also a signatory to the United Nations Global Compact.

Our Human Rights Policy and Employee Code of Conduct and Integrity Policy form the foundation documents for human rights protection across Fortescue. Specific policies and guidelines ensure the highest standards are achieved.

We ensure the protection of human rights including by:

Actively communicating our approach and expectations to all stakeholders including suppliers
Engaging with stakeholders to understand the impacts of our activities and working with them to optimise benefits and limit negative impacts
Undertaking ongoing due diligence to identify, prevent and mitigate the adverse impacts of our activities, capturing outputs in our corporate risk register
Providing access to remedy via our grievance procedure
Seeking to secure the consent of Traditional Custodians for mineral exploration and development on their traditional lands
Considering human rights in our sourcing and purchasing decision processes and promoting our expectations via contract clauses
Participating in engagement sessions related to human rights policy and regulatory development.

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Modern Slavery

Fortescue opposes all forms of slavery in its operations and the operations of our suppliers.

We are committed to identifying, assessing and mitigating human rights impacts, providing access to remedy through effective grievance mechanisms, and ensuring continuous improvement to strengthen our actions. We work in collaboration with our suppliers to eradicate modern slavery from our supply chain.

Key actions undertaken during FY21 include:

Further refinement of our modern slavery work program.
Updating our risk assessment process with additional criteria for a more targeted assessment of our suppliers.
Undertaking independent audits of one international supplier and two Australian based suppliers.
Implementing a human rights supplier site checklist which helps our employees engage with suppliers at their sites and identify areas where additional monitoring is required.
Undertaking face to face human rights and modern slavery training for relevant roles and teams.
Reviewing independent supplier risk assessment tools to identify the risk profile of our supply base.

To date, we have published three Modern Slavery Statements to detail our supply chain, risk categories, key countries and spend. These statements outline the actions we have taken to assess and address modern slavery risks in our business and supply chain. Our FY21 Modern Slavery Statement was released in December 2021.