Catalyzing Corporate Change 2025

RESOLVED, that shareholders of Eli Lilly and Company (“Lilly”) urge the board of directors to oversee conduct of human rights due diligence (“HRDD”) to produce a human rights impact assessment (“HRIA”) covering Lilly’s operations, activities, business relationships, and products, including access to medicines. The HRIA should be prepared at reasonable cost and omitting confidential and proprietary information and made available on Lilly’s web site. The HRIA should describe actual and potential adverse human rights impacts identified; identify rightsholders that were consulted; and discuss whether and how the results of the HRDD will be integrated into Lilly’s operations and decision making. 

SUPPORTING STATEMENT

Lilly currently has a Code of Business Conduct (the “Code”), applicable to its suppliers, which contains provisions addressing various issues including protecting worker rights.¹ The Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Initiative (“PSCI”) Principles,² a link to which appears on Lilly’s web site, includes an expectation that suppliers respect workplace human rights. 

Article 12.1 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights “recognize[s] the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.”³ Target 3.8 of Sustainable Development Goal 3 assesses progress toward “access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all.”⁴ The section of Lilly’s Sustainability Report on human rights states that Lilly is “deeply committed to equitable and affordable access to our medicines” and to monitoring the “safety and well-being” of clinical trial participants.⁵

Insulin has been on the World Health Organization’s essential medicines list since 1977.⁶  Recently, an “increasing lack of supply of critical insulin products [has] severely affect[ed] diabetes patients and healthcare providers.”⁷ There is concern that insulin makers like Lilly are “turning their focus and resources away from insulin and toward the GLP-1s,” like Ozempic, that are more profitable but cannot substitute for the insulin required by some diabetics.⁸

Lilly appears not to have adopted an HRDD process. According to Deloitte, it is not possible for a company to “really commit to respecting and promoting human rights without having full transparency of its human rights impacts.”⁹ The Code makes no mention of how Lilly evaluates and enforces suppliers’ compliance, aside from a reporting hotline. That is worrisome given a recent letter from members of Congress indicating that U.S. pharmaceutical companies have conducted clinical trials in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where forced labor is common.¹⁰  The PSCI Principles contemplate supplier audits,¹¹ which are not HRDD.  

As well, Lilly does not indicate whether and how it identifies actual and potential adverse human rights impacts resulting from its own operations. The Sustainability Report section on human rights in health is silent on HRDD. Conducting comprehensive HRDD across Lilly’s operations and value chain would enable Lilly to identify actual and potential impacts, including those related to the human right to health, and publicly releasing the resulting HRIA would allow shareholders to assess Lilly’s human rights performance.

[1]  https://assets.ctfassets.net/srys4ukjcerm/gVAGEcUTLBkaVdSHHyrd6/b4fb276dc3b73984e6b4af96f58545f2/Lilly_SCoBC_2024_EN.pdf

[2]  https://pscinitiative.org/principles

[3]  www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/international-covenant-economic-social-and-cultural-rights; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7605313/

[4]  www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/generalassembly/docs/globalcompact/A_RES_70_1_E.pdf

[5]  https://sustainability.lilly.com/social/human-rights#human-rights-health

[6]  https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587(21)00322-3/fulltext

[7]  https://medpak.com/insulin-shortage/

[8]  https://www.statnews.com/2024/07/17/insuln-novo-nordisk-eli-lilly-weight-loss-drugs/

[9]  https://www.deloitte.com/global/en/services/risk-advisory/blogs/human-rights-due-diligence-in-the-modern-era.html

[10]  https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/against-their-will-the-situation-in-xinjiang

[11]  https://pscinitiative.org/sharedAudits

RESOLVED, that shareholders of Gilead Sciences Inc. (“Gilead” or the “Company”) urge the board of directors to adopt a comprehensive human rights policy covering Gilead’s operations, activities, business relationships, and products, that commits Gilead to respecting internationally recognized human rights, including the right to health, and to conducting human rights due diligence (“HRDD”) to identify, prevent, mitigate, and remedy the most salient adverse human rights impacts caused by Gilead’s or a supplier’s activities.

SUPPORTING STATEMENT

The United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (the “UNGPs”) state that businesses should adopt a human rights policy committing them to respecting internationally recognized human rights.[1] Although Gilead has a supplier code of conduct, it does not have a comprehensive human rights policy that applies to its own operations and commits Gilead to respecting the human right to health.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including . . . medical care.”[2]Article 12.1 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights “recognize[s] the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.”[3] Access to medicines is a key element of the right to health. Target 3.8 of Sustainable Development Goal 3 assesses progress toward “access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all.”[4] As a global pharmaceutical company, we believe Gilead should commit to respecting this right.

Gilead has been criticized for limiting access to its lifesaving HIV medications. Its recent deal licensing to six generics manufacturers the right to sell the “game-changing”[5] long-acting lenacapavir has been faulted for sidestepping the Medicines Patent Pool and for its inadequate geographic reach.[6] Lenacapavit’s annual U.S. price of over $40,000 also inhibits access.[7] Gilead recently settled one case and faces a much larger one claiming that its delay in seeking approval for a safer form of tenofovir out of a desire to fully exploit its exclusivity period for its already FDA-approved but much more toxic form of the drug caused kidney and bone damage that killed patients.[8]

The UNGPs also state that respecting human rights requires companies to establish an HRDD process to identify, prevent, mitigate and remedy human rights impacts.[9] Gilead does not appear to have established such a process, nor has it disclosed any human rights impact assessments resulting from HRDD it has conducted. The supplier code’s requirement that suppliers conduct HRDD to identify and address human rights risks[10] would not identify adverse impacts of Gilead’s own operations; also, suppliers’ incentives, including those created by purchasing practices, may discourage them from undertaking robust HRDD.[11] Conducting HRDD covering its own operations and those of its suppliers would give Gilead a full picture of its human rights risks and impacts.

[1]  https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/publications/guidingprinciplesbusinesshr_en.pdf, at 15-16

[2]   https://www.ohchr.org/en/human-rights/universal-declaration/translations/english

[3] www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/international-covenant-economic-social-and-cultural-rights; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7605313/

[4] www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/generalassembly/docs/globalcompact/A_RES_70_1_E.pdf

[5]  https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/presscentre/pressreleaseandstatementarchive/2024/july/20240710_lenacapavir

[6]  https://www.citizen.org/news/hiv-breakthrough-drug-licensing-deal-marks-significant-but-flawed-step-for-access/

[7]  https://msfaccess.org/activists-aids2024-demand-break-gileads-lenacapavir-monopoly-gileads-price-100000-higher-target

[8]  https://www.statnews.com/2024/08/16/gilead-suit-patent-hopping-hiv-treatment/

[9]  www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/publications/guidingprinciplesbusinesshr_en.pdf, at 16

[10]  https://www.gilead.com/-/media/files/pdfs/gilead-supplier-code.pdf, at 6

[11]  https://betterbuying.org/the-impact-of-purchasing-practices-on-workers-human-rights/

RESOLVED, that shareholders of AbbVie Inc.(“AbbVie”) urge the board of directors to oversee conduct of human rights due diligence (“HRDD”) to produce a human rights impact assessment (“HRIA”) covering AbbVie’s operations, activities, business relationships, and products, including access to medicines. The HRIA should be prepared at reasonable cost and omitting confidential and proprietary information and made available on AbbVie’s web site. The HRIA should describe actual and potential adverse human rights impacts identified; identify rightsholders that were consulted; and discuss whether and how the results of the HRIA will be integrated into AbbVie’s operations and decision making.

Supporting Statement

The right to health is a fundamental human right. Article 12.1 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights “recognize[s] the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.”[1]Access to medicines is a key element of the right to health. Target 3.8 of United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 3 assesses progress toward “access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all.”[2]

AbbVie has adopted “Our Commitment to Human Rights” (the “Commitment”), which includes respecting the human rights of clinical trials participants and supporting “access to quality and affordable medicines.”[3] The Commitment also says that AbbVie supports “key tenets of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights” (the “UNGPs”).

The UNGPs state that to satisfy their obligation to respect human rights, companies should establish an HRDD process to identify, prevent, mitigate and remedy human rights impacts. AbbVie does not appear to have established such a process. The Commitment states that AbbVie “surveys and measures our most critical suppliers on their environmental and social practices, including criteria related to human rights and safety,”[4] which suggests that it is relying at least in part on self-reported data. As for its own operations, under which the right to health would fall, the Commitment mentions no process used by AbbVie to identify human rights impacts, beyond an ethics and compliance hotline. 

Some of AbbVie’s actions appear to undermine its commitment to promoting access to medicines. A case brought by a Dutch organization claiming that AbbVie’s overcharging the Dutch healthcare system for Humira violated the human right to health was recently permitted to proceed by a Dutch court.[5] In the U.S., AbbVie has been accused of using a variety of anticompetitive practices to raise prices for two lucrative drugs.[6]

Comprehensive HRDD that includes access to medicines would enable AbbVie to identify human rights impacts of its own operations, such as harmful pricing practices and shortcomings in access programs. According to Deloitte, it is not possible for a company to “really commit to respecting and promoting human rights without having full transparency of its human rights impacts.”[7] Publicly releasing the resulting HRIA would allow shareholders to assess AbbVie’s human rights performance.
 

[1]   www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/international-covenant-economic-social-and-cultural-rights; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7605313/

[2]  www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/generalassembly/docs/globalcompact/A_RES_70_1_E.pdf

[3]  https://www.abbvie.com/content/dam/abbvie-com2/pdfs/about/our-commitment-to-human-rights.pdf, at 2

[4] https://www.abbvie.com/content/dam/abbvie-com2/pdfs/about/our-commitment-to-human-rights.pdf, at 3

[5] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01545-9/fulltext

[6]  https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/pharmaceutical-company-abbvie-inflated-prices-two-major-drugs-house-oversight-n1267591; https://www.i-mak.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/i-mak.humira.report.3.final-REVISED-2020-10-06.pdf

[7] https://www.deloitte.com/global/en/services/risk-advisory/blogs/human-rights-due-diligence-in-the-modern-era.html