Taxpayer dollars should not help fund exploitation and human rights abuses.

Governments around the globe spend significant amounts of money buying the goods and services they need to function. Like other mega-consumers, governments currently purchase these goods and services via supply chains in which serious human rights abuses are widespread, and in recent years the implication of public buyers in such abuses has been frequently documented.

This represents a failure of governments to meet their duty to protect human rights and a missed opportunity to leverage government contracting to encourage the uptake of human rights related business practices in the private sector.

At ICAR, we work to ensure that governments use their purchasing power to improve human rights conditions in their supply chains.