Why we joined the UN Global Compact
For a company sourcing gloves from Asia and supplying public healthcare, this was less about signalling values than accepting a documented obligation where it is hardest to meet.
Originally published December 2022, rewritten July 2026.
In December 2022 Eastwest Medico joined the United Nations Global Compact. For a company sourcing medical gloves from Asian manufacturers and supplying public healthcare systems, the decision was less about signalling values than about accepting a documented obligation in the part of the business where it is hardest to meet.
What the Global Compact is
The UN Global Compact is a voluntary initiative under which companies commit to aligning operations with ten principles covering human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption, and to reporting publicly on progress. At the time we joined it described participation of more than 14,000 organisations across over 160 countries; participation has grown since, and current figures are published by the UN Global Compact.
Two features make it more than a badge. Participation requires an annual Communication on Progress, which is published. And a participant that fails to report is delisted, publicly.
The ten principles
Human rights – support and respect internationally proclaimed human rights, and ensure the business is not complicit in abuses.
Labour – uphold freedom of association and collective bargaining; eliminate forced and compulsory labour; abolish child labour; eliminate discrimination in employment.
Environment – take a precautionary approach to environmental challenges; promote greater environmental responsibility; encourage development and diffusion of environmentally friendly technologies.
Anti-corruption – work against corruption in all its forms, including extortion and bribery.
The principles are set out in full on the UN Global Compact site.
Where this bites for a glove supplier
For our business the labour principles are the demanding ones, and they are demanding because of where gloves are made.
The Malaysian glove industry has a documented history of forced labour findings, including US import bans on major manufacturers over recruitment fee practices, passport retention and debt bondage among migrant workers. Any European company sourcing gloves from the region is exposed to that history, and a supplier who says otherwise has not looked.
Signing up to the labour principles therefore means treating employee-rights compliance as a supplier qualification criterion of the same standing as quality, not as a separate corporate-responsibility exercise. In practice:
We are not claiming this eliminates risk in a complex supply chain. It establishes a documented basis for assessing it, and a duty to act on what the assessment finds.
Why it matters commercially
Three reasons, stated plainly rather than as values language:
Public buyers increasingly require it. Social and ethical criteria appear in EU public tenders as award criteria and, increasingly, as exclusion grounds. A supplier without a documented framework cannot answer those questions credibly.
Institutional and UN-linked procurement requires it as a baseline. Frameworks serving public health programmes assess supplier conduct as a condition of participation, not as a bonus. Our appointment to the Stop TB Partnership Global Drug Facility framework was made against that kind of assessment.
It is a constraint on our own decisions. The value of a public commitment is that it removes the option of quietly relaxing it when a cheaper supplier appears. That is the point of documenting it publicly rather than holding it internally.
The environmental side
The environment principles connect directly to work we were already doing: ISO 14001:2015 environmental management certification, a nine-step carbon reduction plan across operations and value chain, and the development of the first biodegradable nitrile examination glove in Scandinavia to hold full medical certification.
Our position on environmental claims has hardened since 2022 in one respect: we now treat a claim without a test method and duration as incomplete. See how to verify a biodegradability claim.
Key takeaways
Seventeen years sourcing and supplying medical gloves and PPE to governments, UN agencies, NGOs and healthcare systems. Writes on glove standards, quality management and responsible sourcing for institutional buyers, working from the source standards rather than secondary summaries.
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