Editor’s Note
This article highlights a new Human Rights Watch report assessing major jewelry companies. While noting improvements in sourcing, the report underscores a critical gap: most major brands still cannot assure consumers their products are free from human rights abuses. This serves as a timely reminder for the holiday shopping season.
(London) – Leading jewelry manufacturers have improved their sourcing practices for gold and diamonds, but most still cannot guarantee customers that their jewelry is free from human rights abuses, according to a report released today by Human Rights Watch ahead of the upcoming holiday shopping season.
The 84-page report, “Sparkling Jewels, Opaque Supply Chains: Jewelry Companies, Changing Sourcing Practices, and Covid-19,” assesses and grades 15 major jewelry and watch brands on their efforts to prevent or address human rights abuses and environmental damage in their gold and diamond supply chains. The report examines how company practices have evolved since Human Rights Watch’s 2018 report on the topic. While most jewelry makers have taken steps to improve their practices, many still fall short of international standards.
Human Rights Watch also examined the impact of Covid-19 on the mining and jewelry sectors. Where mining was suspended due to lockdowns, miners, their families, and communities suffered income losses. Where industrial mining continued, miners worked in confined spaces with little distancing and often lived together in hotels, increasing their risk. In some mining regions dominated by unlicensed artisanal mines, there were increases in child labor, illegal mining, and trade.
Human Rights Watch conducted extensive research in numerous countries with documented human rights abuses in supply chains. In Venezuela, armed groups known as “syndicates” control illegal gold mines and are responsible for horrific abuses against residents and miners, including “punitive amputations” and torture.
In Zimbabwe, the state-owned Zimbabwe Consolidated Diamond Company uses private security personnel against residents accused of diamond digging, allegedly including setting dogs on the accused.
Hazardous child labor occurs in areas with unlicensed artisanal gold mining, including Ghana, Mali, the Philippines, and Tanzania, where children are exposed to mercury and fatal pit accidents occur.
Under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, jewelry and watch companies have a due diligence responsibility regarding human rights and environmental protection. They must ensure their supply chains do not cause or contribute to human rights abuses. This due diligence refers to the company processes to prevent, identify, address, and mitigate human rights abuses or environmental harm in their supply chains.
The 15 assessed companies have annual revenues exceeding $40 billion, representing about 15 percent of global jewelry sales. Nine companies responded in writing to Human Rights Watch inquiries about sourcing policies and practices: Boodles, Bulgari, Cartier, Chopard, Chow Tai Fook, Pandora, Signet, Tanishq, and Tiffany & Co. Six companies did not respond despite multiple requests: Christ, Harry Winston, Kalyan, Mikimoto, Rolex, and TBZ. Human Rights Watch’s assessments are based on company-provided information and publicly available data.