Verité and Mars, Inc. Global Strategic Human Rights Partnership: Purpose and Scope
Verité and Mars are establishing a long-term partnership further their common goals of advancing respect forhuman rights in Mars operations and supply chains and raising levels of human rights awareness and action
among key actors across sectors. We believe that by partnering we can accomplish more than we could eachaccomplish alone. We have agreed upon a shared ‘purpose’ statement for our partnership as follows:“The purpose of our long-term partnership is to take action to advance respect for human rights in Mars
operations and extended supply chains through systematic evaluation and mitigation of human rights risk, andto generate insights and dialogue that raise human rights awareness and drive change from business,government and civil society.”
We each bring to the partnership unique resources, skills and attributes that can drive progress toward ourshared goals. These include:
Verité
 Deep subject matter expertise across a wide range of human rights issues and high risk geographies; Extensive capabilities in conducting human rights research, analysis, auditing and reporting; Proven track record engaging with the private sector to raise awareness and drive meaningful changes
in the practices of both global and local companies on complex human rights topics; Strong and widely recognized credibility as an impartial and trusted human rights non-profit
organization.
Mars, Inc.
 Strong commitment in terms of policy, practice and governance to taking action on human rights inoperations and supply chains; High business relevance of human rights issues - buyer of a number of high human rights risk raw
materials around the world and with operations and suppliers based in many high human rights risk
countries; Demonstrated willingness and ability to lead industry and sector coalitions to drive progress on
sustainability and human rights issues;
 Credibility as a privately-owned, principles-based company focused on sustainable growth andresponsible buying practices.
Our partnership will be activated through jointly-agreed work across three ‘pillars’ – Action, Insights andDialogue. We expect to work together in the following areas:
Action: Verité will advise on Mars’ global human rights strategy, policies and practices across its business.
 Verité will provide expert guidance and input as Mars safeguards human rights in its own workplaces.
 Verité will support Mars and its first-tier suppliers in high-risk countries through specialized training andmanagement consulting to increase capacity and by strengthening human rights monitoring andremediation systems.
 In high-risk extended supply chains, Verité and Mars will work jointly to identify human rights challenges
and develop and activate strategies to address them, in collaboration with other actors in business,government and civil society. Our shared priorities are actions to identify and remediate forced laborand child labor.
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Insights:
 Verité will provide thought leadership about best practice, challenges and latest approaches to humanrights in relevant supply chains, and will conduct new research as needed, sharing insights to inspire andinform action by Mars and others. Together, we will share reflections and learnings from ourcollaboration along the way. We are committed to transparency and sharing our progress.
Dialogue: Mars and Verité will convene stakeholder dialogues with practitioners across sectors to explore insights
and to foster discussion that meaningfully advances the field of business and human rights.
This work will include both global and central collaborations between the Verité and Mars teams as well as
collaborations focused specifically on key at-risk supply chains. The scope of the work will include the range ofsteps in the Mars CARE Framework, including:Commit: Mars commitments, policies, capabilities and governance.
Assess: Human rights conditions and impacts assessment, risk research and monitoring and grievancesystems.
Respond: Human rights remediation approaches, best practices and government engagement.
Engage: Human rights stakeholder engagement, coalitions and transparent reporting andcommunications.

We will hold an annual partnership meeting in person, a mid-year partnership meeting remotely, and our teams
will engage frequently in the interim as necessary to advance agreed plans.
We will communicate publicly about our partnership and its results, as doing so helps to drive progress toward
our purpose and our shared goals. As we do so, we will develop and draw from key messages including thefollowing that are jointly developed and agreed.
Verité and Mars, Inc. Global Strategic Human Rights Partnership: Approved Key Messages
Key Messages: Partnership Overview
 Verité and Mars are launching a long-term, strategic partnership to advance respect for human rights andimprove the lives of the most vulnerable workers in global supply chains relevant to Mars operations.
Together, we will take action, foster new insights and lead dialogue on critical human rights challenges.
The purpose of our long-term partnership is to take action to advance respect for human rights in Mars
operations and extended supply chains through systematic evaluation and mitigation of human rights risk,
and to generate insights and dialogue that raise human rights awareness and drive change from business,government and civil society. We expect to work together in the following areas:Action:o Verité will advise on Mars’ global human rights strategy, policies and practices across its
business.
o Verité will provide expert guidance and input as Mars safeguards human rights in its own
workplaces.
o Verité will support Mars and its first-tier suppliers in high-risk countries through specialized
training and management consulting to increase capacity and by strengthening human rights
monitoring and remediation systems.
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o

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

In high-risk extended supply chains, Verité and Mars will work jointly to identify human rights
challenges and develop and activate strategies to address them, in collaboration with otheractors in business, government and civil society. Our shared priorities are actions to identify andremediate forced labor and child labor.

Insight:o Verité will provide thought leadership about best practice, challenges and latest approaches tohuman rights in relevant supply chains, and will conduct new research as needed, sharing
insights to inspire and inform action by Mars and others. Together, we will share reflections andlearnings from our collaboration along the way. We are committed to transparency and sharing
our progress.
Dialogue:o Mars and Verité will convene stakeholder dialogues to explore insights and to foster discussionthat meaningfully advances the field of business and human rights.

Supporting Messages
 Verité and Mars share a common goal – advancing respect for human rights in Mars’ operations and supply
chains, and raising human rights awareness and action among key actors across sectors.


Our collaboration is unique, combining Verité’s expertise in identifying and addressing serious human rights
issues in global supply chains with the strong principles and policies of Mars, Incorporated – a private,family-owned business operating across 78 countries. Together, we believe we can accomplish far more to
improve lives and advance respect for rights than we could individually.


For Verité, forming a strategic partnership with a consumer goods company as large and complex as
Mars represents a remarkable opportunity to achieve impact on a truly global scale, across a range ofcritically important supply chains. As a leader in assessing, addressing and eliminating the root causes of
unsafe, unfair and unlawful labor in global supply chains, Verité will be applying more than 20 years ofexpertise in new and innovative ways with Mars.

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For Mars, this long-term, multi-faceted partnership will deepen our global human rights programs, leadchange in specific supply chains and generate new insights that fuel dialogue across sectors.

Verité and Mars, Inc. Global Strategic Human Rights Partnership: Q&A
Partnership Q&A
Why are you working together?
Verité envisions a future where everyone works under safe, fair and legal conditions, and at Mars, we believe
everyone touched by our business should be treated with fairness, dignity and respect. We share thesecommon values, bring together complimentary skills and capabilities and work across many of the same
countries, issue areas and supply chains. By partnering, we not only accelerate impact, we also deepen theexpertise and experience of both our organizations.
What do you hope to achieve?
The purpose of our partnership is to take action to advance respect for human rights in Mars operations andacross its tier-one and extended supply chains and to generate insights and dialogue that raise human rights
awareness and drive change across business, government and civil society. Together, we aim to improve lives
through this work and to inspire action among a broader range of actors.
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In which countries or supply chains will you take action?
In the coming months, we will determine the specific supply chains in which we will collaborate. These may
include work in a range of supply chains relevant to Mars such as cocoa, palm oil or fish. Our collaboration in
supply chains may include work such as identifying human rights conditions, providing customized and practicaltraining for first tier suppliers, or deploying integrated approaches to remediation or specific due diligence andremediation tools.
We will focus in particular on supply chains in which forced labor and/or child labor are potential issues, as those
are the salient human rights issues that Mars and Verité have jointly prioritized. We know that supply chainswith greater numbers of migrant workers, or geographies where passport retention is legal or culturally
acceptable, for example, are important risk factors in determining where workers may be most vulnerable.
Is this just a one-year project?
No - we’re taking a long-term approach, given the sustained action that is needed to change and impact thesecomplex issues. This allows us to take risks and try new approaches, as well as build capabilities within ourorganizations over time.
Will Verité also be influencing Mars strategy and policy on human rights?
Yes - in addition to our work in specific geographies and industries, Verité and Mars will also work together at a
global level on human rights policy, governance, strategy and practice.
Mars, Inc. Q&A
Is Mars working on human rights already?
At Mars, we’re seeking to promote and respect human rights across our entire value chain. From farms to
supplier factories to our own workplaces, we believe everyone touched by our business should be treated with
fairness, dignity and respect. For more than 100 years, we’ve sought to bring to life our Five Principles of
Quality, Responsibility, Mutuality, Efficiency and Freedom.
Our human rights work is guided by our comprehensive global Human Rights Policy, launched in 2014, whichembraces the approach to international human rights in the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business andHuman Rights. Our dedicated global human rights team works with teams across our business, respected thirdparty experts, and a Human Rights Steering Committee of our senior executives. Annually, our Board of
Directors reviews our human rights progress and challenges.
In the 78 countries where we do business, and across our value chain, we’re making progress in our efforts topromote and respect human rights, but we also face real challenges. We know that collaboration is critical tomaking progress in addressing the complex and systemic human rights issues that are present across theindustry in many of the supply chains upon which we rely. We work with governments, businesses, civil society
and impacted people and communities as we make progress on our shared goals.
What are the biggest human rights challenges facing Mars?
We believe, based on research insights and guidance from experts, that child labor and forced labor are themost serious human rights risks present in our extended agricultural supply chains. Where these issues exist,
they are often systemic and endemic across the industry for a particular material. We are focused in particularon seeking to eliminate child labor and forced labor in key supply chains, including, for example, cocoa, palm oiland fish.

For Internal Reference Only – Not for Distribution – Page 4 of 6Child Labor: Through our work with the ILO’s Child Labor Platform and other collaborations, we areworking to identify and advance best practices in eliminating child labor and to apply those models at
the community level with our suppliers and partners across our supply chains.

Forced Labor: We Co-Chair the Consumer Goods Forum’s global task force on forced labor, which is
focused on mobilizing our industry to identify and address the practices that contribute most to forcedlabor in supply chains at the factory or farm level, including recruitment fees, withholding of passports
and unfair pay practices. We played a leadership role in the development of these Priority Industry
Principles and work is underway to implement them across the consumer goods industry and beyond.
CGF members have an action plan to advance these Principles which includes a focus on forced labor in
the seafood and palm oil industries in Southeast Asia.

What kind of action on human rights is Mars already undertaking in their supply chains?
 Cocoa: In all our work on sustainable cocoa – by pursuing 100% cocoa certification, by increasing farm
productivity through our Vision for Change program, or by driving industry and government
collaborations – we are committed to making progress on the elimination of child labor. In cocoa
communities in West Africa, we are working with the International Cocoa Initiative to help implement
Child Labor Monitoring and Remediation Systems and we aim for Vision for Change communities tohave Child Protection Committees in place, in partnership with the International Labor Organization. We
are also focused on increasing farm productivity as a way to raise farm incomes, which we believe
further supports reductions in child labor. We believe progress toward reducing child labor in cocoa overthe past ten years has been far too slow – while this is a complex issue with numerous drivers, we
believe it can and must be addressed. Efforts must be redoubled and we all must re-commit to actionthat drives results.
Palm Oil: We use small amounts of palm oil in many of our confectionary products. Since 2013, we’vebeen sourcing 100% certified palm oil on a mass balance basis through the Roundtable on Sustainable
Palm Oil (RSPO), and we are now able to trace more than 90% of our palm oil to the mill level. Our Palm
Oil Policy and sourcing strategy includes a focus on going beyond certification to ensure that our palm isgrown and produced with respect for the rights of local communities and workers. Across the palm oil
industry, human rights issues such as forced labor, health and safety risks and land rights continue to bechallenges. Through our partnership with The Forest Trust and other advisors, we are securingcommitments from all of our palm suppliers to comply with our Policy requirements and requiring thatthey ask their suppliers to do the same.

Fish: Fish is an important source of protein in our food for pets. We are aware of the widely reported
human rights issues prevalent across the fishing industry in Southeast Asia and we are taking action toaddress them in our supply chain. In 2016, we launched our Thai Fish Human Rights Action Plan, which
includes key performance indicators based on the CARE Framework. As a part of our longstanding
commitment to sustainably sourced fish, we taking action on human rights which includes mapping ourfish supply chain in Southeast Asia, working with experts to identify any potential human rights issues
through to the vessel level, and working with our supply chain partners and others to address issues thatare identified. This includes a partnership with the Issara Institute, a local NGO with unique networks
among vulnerable migrant workers in the Thai fish industry, in efforts to assess and improve conditions
for workers. We are also playing a leadership role in the Seafood Task Force, a group which brings
together key groups across sectors to drive progress on human rights in this industry.

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Verité Q&A
How does Verité operate?
Verité is a global, independent, non‐profit organization which provides consulting, training, research, andassessment services with a vision to ensure that people worldwide work under safe, fair, and legal conditions.
Verité has an extensive network of regional offices and partner organizations located in China, the Philippines,
India, Bangladesh, and throughout Europe, Africa, and Latin America. As an NGO, Verité is recognized for its
independence and unique credibility, as well as the practical usefulness of its information to brands, suppliers,
governments, investors, civil society organizations and trade unions. Our work to align business and social
impact has earned us recognition in the social entrepreneurship space, including a 2007 Skoll Award for Social
Entrepreneurship and the Social Entrepreneur of the Year in the United States for 2011 by the World Economic
Forum‐affiliated Schwab Foundation.
What issues and sectors does Verité focus on?
Verité provides global companies and their supply chain partners with integrated assessment, research,
consulting, and training services to address the root causes of unsafe, unfair, or illegal labor practices in their
supply chains. For more than 20 years, we have partnered with hundreds of multinational brands, suppliers, andinternational institutions in more than 70 countries across multiple sectors to improve working conditions andsocial performance within global supply chains. We have particular expertise in the electronics, apparel,seafood, palm oil, agriculture, and construction industries, and are increasingly working in mining, forestry,
hospitality, and tourism. Verité offers an unbiased understanding of working conditions in global supply chainsthrough our network of researchers. Our analysis and recommendations provide the knowledge and tools
needed to address the worst forms of child labor, forced labor, human trafficking, and other human rights
abuses across regions and sectors.
What are some examples of Verité’s previous work?
 Labor Recruitment: Working with the U.S. Department of Labor, Verité conducted a two year study into
labor conditions in electronics manufacturing in Malaysia. Verité found that one in three foreign workers
surveyed was in a condition of forced labor. We have also worked with Apple since 2008 on the issue ofbonded labor and excessive recruitment fees in their supply chain. This has resulted in $25.6 million
repaid to workers since 2008, including $4.7 million in 2015 alone. One hundred percent of Apple’s top
200 facilities at risk for bonded labor are audited annually and, in 2015, 69 special bonded laborinvestigations were conducted.
Agriculture: Verité has worked with Philip Morris International since 2011 to develop and implement a
global Agricultural Labor Practices program aimed at eliminating forced labor and the worst forms ofchild labor in their global tobacco supply chain. This program reaches and improves working conditionsof 2.5 million people working or living on approximately 450,000 smallholder farms in nearly 30
countries.

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Seafood: In 2015, we worked with Nestlé to conduct an assessment of recruitment practices andmigrant labor conditions in their Thai Shrimp Supply Chain. Verité found indicators of forced labor,
trafficking, and child labor to be present among sea-based and land-based workers engaged in the
production sites covered by the assessment and provided recommendations on how to correct such
issues. Verité continues to work on this issue through the USAID Oceans and Fisheries Partnership andthe Seafood Task Force.
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