The Workers Behind Sweden’s Italian Wine: An illustrative Human Rights Impact Assessment of Systembolaget’s Italian wine supply chains

Overview

This paper reports on an illustrative human rights impact assessment (HRIA) of the Italian wine supply chains of Systembolaget, the Swedish monopoly alcohol retailer. The HRIA aimed to evaluate the actual and potential human rights impacts at the production stage of the value chain in Italy, to identify their root causes, and to provide recommendations to relevant stakeholders concerning their prevention, mitigation and/or remediation. 

The assessment took just over a year and consisted of five phases of analysis using a methodology aligned with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). However, the onset of Italy’s severe first wave of coronavirus in 2020 meant that the assessment team was unable to conduct the field study phase with the full rigour required of an HRIA. 

The field phase started in September 2019, with an initial assessment phase based on a literature review and a round of stakeholder interviews from September 2019 to March 2020. Further, limited, worker interviews were conducted from October 2020 to January 2021. The result is an illustration of the human rights risks that are present in the areas of Italy from which Systembolaget sources its wine.