Ireland-based banana and tropical fruit multinational has released its Human Rights Mitigation and Management Plan, which it says provides "a framework to manage, mitigate and help resolve identified human rights risks".

The company in January completed its first-ever corporatewide Human Rights Impact Assessment aligning with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, through its partner BSR.

The development comes after Fyffes was expelled from the U.K.-based Ethical Trading Initiative in March 2019 over alleged abuses of workers' rights at its Suragroh business in Honduras.

“With migrant worker issues, Fyffes has good practices in place already. But we‘re working on measures to ensure that workers are aware of their rights and their rights are upheld, especially in relation to the risk to Haitian migrants in the Dominican Republic," said Fyffes Global Director of Sustainability, Julie Cournoyer.

“Fyffes has recently published its Global Human Rights Policy and Statement, which sets out our commitment to protecting the human rights of all our stakeholders, including our employees. This policy is brought to life through training and internal protocols.

"We would like to thank BSR for conducting the Assessment and all those employees and stakeholders who contributed to the Assessment through interviews. Fyffes has started work already on implementing our human rights mitigation plan and will provide annual updates of the Human Rights Impact Assessment.”

The full scope of Fyffes Human Rights Mitigation Plan is as follows: 

- Establish and circulate Fyffes Global Child Labour Remediation Protocol

- Continue to engage with existing trade-unions and workers committees in good faith and train all managers on freedom of association

- Implement Fyffes Gender Equality Program, targets and gender-related training

- Provide training on security and community programs to reduce security threats

- Conduct community-needs assessments to identify environment and health-related issues and solutions

- Facilitate capacity-building in smallholder and own farm climate resilience

- Continue to engage with and support the Living Wage initiative

- Increase worker training and awareness of the Fyffes Ethics Hotline and extend to suppliers and stakeholders

- Partner with NGOs to reduce Haitian migrant worker vulnerability in Dominican Republic