Human Rights Policy

On 16 June 2011, the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted the “Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights”, which emphasise that the rights granted by the International Charter of Human Rights are very important for companies – no discrimination, the rights of indigenous peoples, the abolition of child labour, etc. Respect for these rights should be a primary responsibility for companies.

In particular, the interpretation of the responsibility expressed in the Guiding Principles takes an approach that goes beyond the “legal” limits of a company and includes the entire sector: a company may be involved in human rights abuse cases not only because of their direct activity but also for indirectly not respecting them.

On 5 February 2013, Enel adopted the approach established by the United Nations of “protect, respect and remedy” with the approval by the Board of Directors of a policy dedicated to the respect of Human Rights, which strengthens and extends the commitment already established in the Code of Ethics, the Zero Tolerance of Corruption Plan and the Compliance 231 Programme.

At Endesa we support the main principles and commitments contained in the Enel Group Human Rights Policy: our policy was approved by the Endesa S.A. Board of Directors on 24 June 2013 and updated in May 2020.

The contents of this policy were marked by a six-month multi-stakeholder consultation process in which different areas of the company (CSR, Human Resources, Legal, Procurement, Auditing, Risk Management, etc.) and important international experts participated.

The policy identifies eight principles that employees and subsidiaries must adhere to within two broad areas: work practices and communities and societies.

Furthermore, within this formal commitment, we promote respect for these rights among our contractors, suppliers and business partners.

As required by the Guiding Principles, due diligence processes will be developed, such as, for example, Human Rights Compliance Assessment (HRCA) in all the countries in which we operate, the integration of social, environmental and good governance metrics in risk management procedures and the definition of a method to assess the social impact of industrial projects.

At Endesa, we have a specific channel over which stakeholders - internal and external - can report when this policy has been breached. We also have a process for managing claims, in line with the Code of Ethics.

To ensure the implementation and monitoring of Endesa’s Human Rights Policy and its commitments and as is recommended by the Guiding Principles, we developed a Due Diligence process in 2017. The implementation of the actions included in the action plan resulting from this analysis was successfully completed in subsequent years until reaching 100% compliance in 2019. This plan is supervised annually by our Board of Directors.

In 2020, we have repeated the Human Rights Due Diligence process, resulting in a new action plan with six actions to accomplish in the three successive years. Our Due Diligence methodology exhaustively reviews the adjustment of Endesa’s company activities both to the Guiding Principles that affect us as a business and the eight principles that make our Human Rights Policy. It covers all the company activities and all its stakeholders, including, our employees with a focus on trade union associations, women, migrant workers, minors and people with disabilities and we extend it to our value chain, also analyzing our suppliers and contractors and the local communities in our areas of operation. Due to the generic relevance of this stakeholder, in the starting point of the due diligence analysis we included also indigenous people, but given the company's scope of operation, this initial analysis qualified with a low materiality, therefore it doesn’t have an specific individualization in the due diligence.