The human rights report of the supermarkets

All major supermarkets in Belgium can do much more for farmers and agricultural workers in their supply chains. Lidl is performing significantly better than the rest, while Colruyt (a major Belgian supermarket chain) is catching up. This is evident from Superlijst Sociaal (an annual benchmarking report scoring Dutch and Belgian supermarkets on human rights in their supply chains), the human rights report on Belgian and Dutch supermarkets by ©Questionmark Foundation (a Dutch think tank specialising in sustainability research), in collaboration with Rikolto, Oxfam Novib, and Solidaridad, and with the support of Fairtrade Belgium and Oxfam Belgium.

What do supermarkets do for...?

Agricultural workers

• Lidl, Colruyt, Aldi, and Delhaize are committed to a living wage for banana workers. In other high-risk chains, the report currently sees hardly any efforts towards a living wage.
• All supermarkets state that they help suppliers improve working conditions instead of immediately dropping them (the so-called cut-and-run approach). However, it is not yet clear how they reward progress.

Farmers

• All supermarkets have pledged to ensure a living income for cocoa farmers. For the many other types of farmers without a living income, there is no similar initiative yet.
• Lidl and Colruyt sell chocolate bars that guarantee cocoa farmers a living income, and have promising initiatives for coffee, orange, cashew, and date farmers.

Women

• There is, of course, nothing wrong with strawberries from our own Belgian horticulture, but strawberries from abroad often come from high-risk supply chains. In these and other high-risk chains, women must be given extra protection.
• Lidl has a current action plan to close the gender pay gap and an action plan against violence against women. However, progress has not yet been reported.
• At the other supermarkets, Superlijst found no structural policy for women in food supply chains yet.

Transparency and accountability

• Lidl and Colruyt map their supply chains with a high risk of human rights violations.
• Lidl has been conducting human rights investigations in high-risk chains since 2023 and reports on the progress of its measures. Lidl also discloses the names and addresses of its direct suppliers and of the entire chain for three high-risk products: bananas, strawberries, and tea.
• No supermarket has an effective complaints mechanism for all high-risk chains.