Inside Amazon’s human rights journey

The last decade has seen a critical realization that human rights risks are systemic and deeply embedded across complex, global supply chains. Millions remain vulnerable to human rights risks, including forced labor. The United Nations  guiding principles on business and human rights emphasize the necessity for continuous due diligence, urging businesses to move beyond siloed compliance toward proactive risk management, innovative technology, and collective action across sectors.

To mark Human Rights Day, Devex heard from Leigh Anne DeWine, Amazon’s director of human rights and social impact, about Amazon’s human rights work, the challenges facing global supply chains, and the role of responsible innovation in addressing them.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Walk us through the evolution of Amazon’s human rights journey — when did this work formally begin, and how has its strategic importance within the company progressed over time?

Amazon is a company like no other. We operate an e-commerce business, a global logistics network, cloud services, movie studios, grocery stores — even satellite and robotics programs. That breadth means human rights due diligence can’t be ‘one-size-fits-all,’ and that has been both a challenge and an opportunity. For us, human rights aren’t a checklist but a lens for how we decide, invest, and innovate — keeping people at the center. 

We published our first supplier code of conduct in 2014 and formalized our enterprise-wide commitment on human rights in 2019 with our global human rights principles, aligned with the U.N. guiding principles on business and human rights. Since then, real progress has come from operationalizing those principles. We moved from enterprise-wide human rights saliency assessments to collaboration with individual business units, working to understand their unique risk profiles and building tailored due diligence processes.

We’ve also strengthened the infrastructure supporting this work — from conducting human rights impact assessments to expanding supplier transparency, such as publicly mapping suppliers on Open Supply Hub.

What are some of Amazon's human rights priorities for the coming year?

Our work is anchored in several strategic pillars: strengthening our policy foundation; deepening business integration to expand to new sectors like logistics, warehousing, and construction; advancing predictive, AI-powered risk insights and other tech solutions; expanding stakeholder engagement across civil society, workers, and the communities where we operate; and strengthening access to trusted grievance mechanisms. Workers’ voices sit at the core of this. Last year, we addressed 100% of the 826 complaints received through our human rights and environmental complaints form. Finally, as we decarbonize our operations, we’re focused on the transition being just — striving to integrate social considerations into environmental strategies so the shift to cleaner systems can also deliver meaningful benefits for vulnerable workers and communities.

How are you using artificial intelligence to strengthen risk prediction, and why is collaboration essential to scaling these tools responsibly?

At Amazon, we’re experimenting with how AI can complement — not replace — human judgment and expertise. Over the past year, we’ve developed machine learning models that analyze millions of data points from historical audits, government reports, and global news signals to identify early signs of forced labor risk. Pilot results show the model correctly flags roughly nine out of 10 high-risk supplier sites while keeping false positives low. This helps us prioritize due diligence resources more effectively.

But even the most advanced models are only as strong as the data behind them. Two challenges stand out: expanding the breadth and quality of the data on which we can train models, and ensuring the broader industry adopts AI responsibly. That’s why we collaborate with NGOs, research organizations, and audit firms to improve data coverage and rigorously test our models.

What is the most persistent and intractable systemic obstacle currently facing the global business community in advancing human rights?

Data fragmentation remains one of the most persistent challenges today. Human rights issues often remain hidden because information is incomplete, inconsistent, or siloed across owners, countries, and systems. It’s collected through incompatible formats and constrained by varying privacy laws. 

Without shared data standards, trusted mechanisms for collaboration, and strong privacy safeguards, efforts to address risk remain siloed and reactive. Companies may identify issues in one facility or region, but lack the interoperability and insight to act collectively or upstream, where many risks begin. This is why focused, cross-sector collaboration is urgently needed to unlock the value of data while protecting rights holders. Amazon recently joined the World Economic Forum’s Global Data Partnership Against Forced Labour, which brings together committed leaders across sectors to accelerate responsible data sharing, bridge data gaps, and drive collective action against forced labor.

You mentioned Amazon’s engagement with the World Economic Forum’s Global Data Partnership Against Forced Labour. What other multilateral initiatives is Amazon involved in, and how is the company using its technology and expertise to advance collective action against human rights abuses?

Amazon co-founded Tech Against Trafficking, or TAT, a coalition that includes Google, Microsoft, Meta, TikTok, and others. TAT unites industry, civil society, technologists, and survivors to scale effective technology solutions that combat human trafficking. We have contributed technical expertise and Amazon Web Services cloud solutions to support anti-trafficking NGOs and helped shape the coalition’s long-term vision — including hosting the 2022 and 2024 TAT summits and helping advance a first-of-its-kind benchmark on how companies collect forced labor indicators, highlighting where data standardization and interoperability can drive real-world impact. 

Another example is our partnership with the International Organization for Migration to strengthen ethical recruitment practices in both countries of origin and destination to prevent practices — such as worker-paid recruitment fees, deception, and wage theft — that can be indicators of forced labor and often begin during the recruitment and migration process, particularly along migration corridors. That’s why we work with IOM; addressing problems at this early stage is one of the most effective ways to tackle issues at the root.

What are other concrete ways you believe the industry as a whole should collaborate to advance human rights globally?

We face very real challenges — from achieving visibility beyond tier 1 suppliers, to managing seasonal and dynamic workforces, to navigating diverse regulatory environments. These are not issues that can be solved overnight or in isolation. We’re expanding digital tools to improve traceability, partnering with NGOs and peer companies to strengthen ethical recruitment, and engaging workers directly to elevate their voices and lived experience.

We see such challenges not as barriers, but as opportunities. Technology, transparency, and collaboration are key to moving forward. Multistakeholder collaboration — between business, civil society, workers, and government — is essential to drive systemic change and positive outcomes for people. That's why we're collaborating with audit firms, NGOs, and research institutions to improve our AI modeling and performance. Together, we can better understand conditions across our global supplier networks and share what we learn to scale responsible practices industry-wide.

What does success look like for Amazon’s human rights efforts in the long term?

For us, long-term success means human rights are embedded in every decision, risks are prevented before they arise, and workers can speak up and be heard. It also means helping create the broader conditions that enable safe and healthy workplaces, ethical recruitment, and a future where issues like forced labor become increasingly rare. But this work is never done.

That’s why we work to continuously improve our approach. Ultimately, we’ll know we are making progress when the most vulnerable workers in global supply chains experience greater agency, safety, and remedy. That’s the horizon we’re working toward — one defined by dignity, responsibility, and the conviction that lasting change for people is only possible when we act together.

Explore Amazon’s human rights work at https://sustainability.aboutamazon.com/human-rights.