Transparent dialogue and collaboration: Insights from roundtables on hand-picked fruit in Morocco

Hand-picked fruit from Morocco, such as lemons and berries, can be found in many Swedish supermarkets. However, agricultural workers face poor conditions, including forced labour and sexual harassment. To tackle these issues, ETI Sweden and Oxfam have hosted a series of roundtables with supermarkets, suppliers, and relevant stakeholders. This article highlights the key results and some learnings from the discussions.

About the project

Several of ETI Sweden’s members buy hand-picked fruit from Morocco. While the sector creates jobs in Morocco it is also linked to severe human rights issues. In a recent Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA) by Oxfam of Coop’s Moroccan citrus supply chain, abuses such as forced labour, sexual harassment and discrimination where revealed.

Many of the issues are wide-spread and systemic, at the same time as there is a lack of collaboration and trust between actors in the sector. This is why ETI Sweden teamed up with its member Oxfam to start a new project gathering Swedish and Moroccan actors to jointly explore challenges and solutions through dialogue and collaboration.

Oxfam was a natural partner having conducted the HRIA and also having connection with relevant local stakeholders and knowledge about the issues through Oxfam’s local branch in Morocco. Subsequently, ICA, Coop, Axfood and Greenfood joined the project which kicked off in April 2023.

Consultative roundtable discussions

In 2023 and 2024, ETI Sweden and Oxfam have organised five roundtable discussions involving Swedish supermarkets, their suppliers, Moroccan producers, civil society, trade unions, and authorities. The purpose of the meetings was to create a mutual understanding of supply chain challenges, developing solutions, and fostering long-term cooperation to inspire positive change across the entire sector.

The first roundtable was held in Agadir, Morocco, which was crucial to build the foundation of the project and trust between different actors. Three prioritised challenges were identified:

• Safe transportation of workers
• Sustainability standards
• Responsible purchasing practices

Each challenge was subsequently discussed in virtual roundtable discussions. The approach used was co-creative and the participants were expected to collaborate to find solutions, and also to identify what their role in the change should be.

Results

The project has managed to bring together a range of actors to have joint discussions about challenges and solutions. This in itself has been an important result in a sector where there has been a lack of trust between actors. Through the dialogue trust has been strengthened and conditions are better set for further collaboration.

More concretely, participants have been able to find consensus around the main challenges in the sector, namely safe transportation, standards and purchasing practices. In addition, solutions to the challenges have been identified with key recommendations for further action.

Overall results from the project:

• A dialogue between Swedish supermarkets and their suppliers, Moroccan producers, civil society, trade unions, governmental officials and standard owners has been achieved.
• Producers are displaying increased openness towards initiatives that promote awareness of labour rights and are actively engaging in collaboration with civil society actors.
• A majority of the stakeholders in the project have expressed an interest in continuing the collaboration.

Learnings

The project highlighted the importance of constructive and collaborative dialogue among various actors in the supply chain. It is essential that all parties, particularly those impacted by violations, are heard and that obstacles to engagement are removed. Building trust is crucial to enabling everyone to participate in an open dialogue about challenges and solutions.

Key learnings:

• The open dialogues enabled all stakeholders to better understand the challenges faced by each stakeholder in the supply chain and created a mutual understanding of human rights challenges. Stakeholders agreed that this fosters collaborative problem-solving to prevent human rights violations.
• Stakeholders appreciated the constructive approach of the roundtable discussions. It was mentioned that this creates more trust and enables dialogue.
• Separate discussions, with the different stakeholder groups, before the roundtable discussions clearly enabled trust building which was necessary to continue the project.
• A general reflection from all the stakeholders is to narrow the scope in a next step and form working groups with concrete outputs.

A potential next phase

Actors will now explore the possibility to establish working groups to work on specific issues. Some of the potential themes for the working groups are to implement pilot projects to improve standards regarding transport and gender equality and continued capacity building for the stakeholders.

Contact

For questions about the project, please contact Christopher Atapattu Riddselius on christopher.atapattu.riddselius@etisverige.se.

Photo: Hands Picking Citrus Unshiu (Tangerine). Credit: Canva