Our approach
We recognise that everyone is entitled to enjoy human rights without discrimination, and that our activities may affect these rights and affect the trust that people place in us. Our actions in one location may affect this trust elsewhere.
ArcelorMittal is therefore committed to respecting all internationally recognised human rights, including, but not limited to, those covered under the International Bill of Human Rights, the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Rights at Work, and implementing the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (‘UNGPs’).
In addition, we voluntarily uphold and align with other international standards including the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, the International Finance Corporation’s Environmental and Social Performance Standards, the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights, and other relevant voluntary conventions and Standards applicable to our operations.
We acknowledge and respect Indigenous Peoples’ connection to lands and waters and are committed to consulting and cooperating with them to obtain their free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) on a good faith basis for new projects and changes to existing projects where significant adverse impacts are likely to occur.
As a minimum, we are committed to complying with the laws of the countries in which we operate and apply our own standards where these exceed local laws. When local laws conflict with our standards, we will comply with national regulations while encouraging the adoption of international standards and seeking to respect human rights in accordance with our policy.
Our policy applies to all the employees of our subsidiaries and affiliates worldwide. We will continuously reinforce our human rights policy commitments into our company culture, management systems, and day-to-day activities.
We are committed to implementing an ongoing human rights due diligence process, acknowledging that effective human rights due diligence requires tailoring a process that considers our industry, business sizes, corporate structures, and operating circumstances. This will include the proactive identification of actual and potential human rights risks and impacts through completion of a saliency assessment process aligned to best practice. Risks will be assessed and prioritised based on the potential severity of the impact on people and following the UNGP’s criteria.
Management of identified human rights risks and impacts will be integrated and embedded into our core business processes (e.g., risk management, human resources, community relations, supply chain management etc.) and we will monitor and measure the effectiveness of our processes and actions to respond to identified human rights risks and impacts and ensure we continually learn and improve.
We are committed to communicating and accounting for how human rights impacts are addressed with relevant stakeholders, developing adequate mechanisms to engage and disclose information with them. We will do this by providing detailed human rights training to personnel in key functional roles who provide support to the business. In certain high-risk cases, we may also choose to engage relevant external expertise to support the assessment of risk and development of appropriate remedies. We will continually raise awareness and provide general and role-specific training on our human rights policy commitments to our workers, relevant suppliers, and affected stakeholders, including local communities, in different languages, and local languages where necessary.
We are strengthening our Responsible Sourcing Policy and Responsible Sourcing Code to clearly set out our expectations for our suppliers to adopt similar commitments to our own. We will conduct human rights due diligence on all our business relationships through tailored risk assessment tools, KYC procedures, audits, monitoring plans, third-party standards certification (e.g., ResponsibleSteel™), and contractual provisions.
Should it be found that human rights have not been upheld, we are committed to providing access to appropriate remedy. To facilitate this, each of our operations will be required to operate a local grievance mechanism in accordance with group level guidance. In addition, we will provide a global grievance mechanism system that includes email, post box, and telephone hotlines available in official languages where we have operations, to provide an avenue for any stakeholder, including local communities, business partners, suppliers, and member of the value chain to share information on possible human rights or environmental impacts and risks. No matter how information is received, it is required to be entered into the Company’s main grievance mechanism system for recording, classification, and assignment to relevant functions for investigation, and remedy as required.
We will treat all reports confidentially in accordance with data protection regulations. Reports can be made anonymously, if required, with a commitment that users of the system will not be disadvantaged or retaliated against by filing a report.
Our progress
Our objective is to deeply embed ArcelorMittal’s human rights policy commitments into our company culture, management systems, and day-to-day activities.
In 2023, along with the update of our human rights policy, we have completed a corporate-level saliency assessment aligned to best practice, developed a new set of human rights training for employees and suppliers, developed and currently piloting a new supplier due diligence tool, and updating our corporate grievance mechanism.
Further information will be provided in our annual sustainability reporting, and we will update our website as we progress.