SLCP and the UN Sustainable Development Goals
How SLCP contributes to the advancement of the UN SDGs
At the heart of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by 193 countries in 2015, are the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs call for urgent action to meet the challenges facing our world. In the wake of the recent global pandemic and the unprecedented challenges it poses, the ambition to achieve the SDGs is more urgent than ever.
The vision of the Social and Labor Convergence Program (SLCP) is to improve working conditions in global supply chains. This translates to creating impactful change in the work environment of over 450 million people. Workers from lower- and middle-income countries account for a large part of this global production workforce. By supporting industry stakeholders' efforts to reduce vulnerabilities and build socially sustainable supply chains, SLCP helps uphold the central promise of the SDGs: ’Leaving no one behind’ in the path towards sustainable development.
Below we discuss how SLCP contributes to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development by advancing the SDGs, particularly SDGs 8 and 17.
Enabling Conditions for Decent Work
SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth: Promote sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work for all.
SDG 8, which focuses on promoting decent work for all, directly speaks to the vision of SLCP. Through SLCP’s Converged Assessment Framework (CAF), users can leverage credible and comparable data to understand working conditions in their supply chains. By facilitating data sharing to a wide range of users, SLCP also replaces the need for repetitive, resource-intensive audits and saves users time and money. With a greater understanding of the conditions, stakeholders can redeploy resources saved to make targeted efforts that promote decent work for all.
As many as 152 million children are in child labor, and 25 million adults and children are in forced labor worldwide, including in global supply chains. Human rights violations like forced labor and child labor are some of the key topics covered in the CAF, which supports stakeholders to identify these risks along the supply chain. Moreover, the resources saved from adopting the CAF can be redirected by factories and their business partners to addressing the complex risks identified in their supply chain.
Compliance with fundamental labor rights that concern worker involvement, like freedom of association and collective bargaining, is also critical in tackling systemic supply chain risks. However, not much progress has been made globally in the level of national compliance to these rights. In this context and following good practice as suggested by the ILO & OECD Due Diligence Guidance, SLCP is continuously looking for ways to increase worker involvement in the collection and verification of SLCP data. The latest version of the CAF (v1.4) provides specific guidance to facilities on how to include workers in the self-assessment process. SLCP is also currently piloting worker engagement technology to give workers who may not have a voice in onsite verification methods the opportunity to speak up. The SLCP process provides deeper insight into worker experience through a range of activities that can help promote safe and secure working environments for all workers.
“With its highly focused mission, SLCP is supporting the advancement of the SDGs. By providing a scalable and collaborative solution for efficiently gathering and sharing accurate factory data, stakeholders are enabled to redirect resources where it matters most - on targeted improvement activities that promote decent work for all”.
Tamar Hoek - Senior Policy Advisor Sustainable Fashion, Solidaridad
Steering Collaborative Action
SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals: Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development.
Collaboration is central to SLCP’s vision and mission. This is why SLCP strongly resonates with SDG 17’s call for multi-stakeholder partnerships to drive sustainable development. SDG 17 binds together all the SDGs, as coordination across countries and sectors is key to realizing them. The complexity of international supply chains, coupled with a lack of alignment between industry stakeholders, has made it challenging to achieve impact in efforts to improve working conditions.
It was from the need for diverse stakeholders to come together to solve a systemic problem that SLCP was born. By providing a single comparable data set, SLCP filled the absence of a common language to understand and measure social and labor conditions.
SLCP brings together over 250 signatories with a shared vision of improving working conditions through the implementation of the CAF. SLCP also engages in strategic collaborations that can increase its impact in transparency, data comparability and better buying practices. As a result, SLCP enhance collective improvement actions.
As a multi-stakeholder initiative, SLCP enables inclusive conversations and stakeholder collaborations that prompt action to address deep-rooted problems, accelerate sustainable development, and adapt to the challenges of a post-pandemic world.
“For Trade for Sustainable Development (T4SD), avoiding the duplication and multiplication of audits methodologies is one of the objectives we consider key in supporting businesses to trade more sustainably and to align with the SDGs – specifically SDG 17 – partnerships for the goals. We see the work of SLCP as crucial in this regard: by playing a leading role in the convergence of social assessments and delivering credible social and labor data, the Program supports businesses to focus their resource and efforts on charting a path to more sustainable trade. ITC is proud to partner with SLCP to deliver the Gateway & training for users of the Converged Assessment Framework.”
Joseph Wozniak - Head, Trade for Sustainable Development (T4SD), International Trade Centre
Synergies Between SDGs
While SLCP’s areas of work directly contribute to SDGs 8 and 17, SLCP also positively influences the progress of several other SDGs in the social and economic domains. In this sense, the interconnectedness of the goals is reiterated.
By implementing the CAF, SLCP offers stakeholders the potential to reinvest resources to reduce income inequality (SDG 10). Additionally, by enabling conditions for socially sustainable supply chains, SLCP helps promote responsible production patterns (SDG 12). SLCP verified data also supports stakeholders to assess legal compliance, promoting the rule of law at the national and international levels (SDG 16).
Through audit harmonization and by providing actionable and comparable social data, SLCP reemphasizes its potential in advancing the broader SDGs. This is crucial to the world’s path to recovery and resilience. SLCP will continue to support partners in driving the industry to a more sustainable future for all.
