“To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.”
This quote from Nelson Mandela is the perfect opening to celebrate a very special day that we, at CWT, hold very dear: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which this year celebrates its 70 anniversary.
After the Second World War, a 10th of December of 1948 the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This document, drafted by representatives of diverse legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, sets out universal values and a common standard of achievement for all peoples and nations. It was the first declaration about the rights and freedoms of the individual to be adopted by the UN.
Since then, Human Rights Day is observed every year on that date to proclaim the inalienable rights which everyone is inherently entitled to as a human being – regardless of race, color, religion, sex, language, political or other opinions, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.
At CWT, we strongly believe in the role that companies play as corporate citizens, that is why human rights is one of the seven domains of our Responsible Business program. Within this area, there are two topics where we are actively taking action: diversity and inclusion, and fight against human trafficking.
Let me share with you some of our key achievements in these two fields in 2018:
- In regards to diversity and inclusion, we have created a global taskforce that has been key in advancing our strategy.
All our Talent Acquisition teams followed a non-discrimination training and we rolled out a mandatory module for top management to understand and avoid unconscious bias.
On International Women’s day, our Executive Leadership Team signed the UN’s Women’s Empowerment Principles and invited all the employees to adhere.
- When it comes to fighting against human trafficking, we published a global Statement Against Slavery and Human Trafficking and continued to support and collaborate with our partners including the World Childhood Foundation, ECPAT, Thorn and Orphaned Starfish Foundation. We also updated our Responsible Supplier Code with anti-slavery and non-discrimination language.
We continued to create awareness internally by offering training to employees and externally through public leadership in events like the International Summit on Child Protection in Travel and Tourism, the End Violence Against Children Solutions Summit or the Trust Conference.
Recently we launched digital anti-trafficking ads on our client’s platform myCWT with a call to action to report signs of human trafficking and child sexual exploitation.
You can find more information about these actions in our latest Annual Responsible Business Report.
