With the advent of COVID-19, the last two years have seen human rights coming under increasing pressure around the world. As early as April 2020, just a few months into the pandemic, António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, declared that the COVID-19 pandemic was not only an economic and social crisis but also “a human crisis that is fast becoming a human rights crisis”. One and a half years on, the current inequity in access to COVID-19 vaccines between the developing and the developed world has proved that to be true. Yet it remains a fact that even before the pandemic, half the world’s population still lacked access to essential health services.
Unless positive action is taken now by governments, business, and society at large, global inequity could get worse. Geo-political tensions, political polarization, and climate change all have the potential to disrupt healthcare systems and displace communities, depriving more people of the right to good health and many other fundamental human rights - economic, social, and cultural - that underpin civilized society. Philips is determined to help prevent that from happening.
“Our purpose is to improve people’s health and well-being through meaningful innovation with the aim of improving 2.5 billion lives per year by 2030,” said Frans van Houten, CEO of Royal Philips. “As such, addressing human rights is a key element of our ESG strategy – not just in terms of our aims, but also in terms of transparency and accountability in our ESG action plans and reporting. Our Human Rights Report provides an overview of our initiatives aiming to respect every individual’s human rights, not only within Philips, but also across our value chain and the wider societies we serve.”
