Human rights

Operational grievance mechanisms

These mechanisms strengthen our relationship with our stakeholders

Effective reporting channels following the UN model

We set up operational-level grievance mechanisms to attend to information requests claims, concerns, and complaints from communities in the areas where we operate, adapted to and accessible in the appropriate languages for every context. This is our approach to how we anticipate and respond to possible consequences that may arise due to company activities. These operational-level grievance mechanisms are a contribution to fulfilling the responsiblity to respect human rights that all companies have and provide feedback on the effectiveness of the human rights due diligence process. Additionally, these mechanisms allow us to anticipate and respond to relatively minor incidents to be remediated early and directly, thereby preventing harms from compounding and grievances from escalating.

Tres empleados trabajan sobre una mesa en campus Repsol.

These operational-level grievance mechanisms have two main purposes:

To contribute to identifying any adverse human rights impacts and provide a means for people who are directly affected to raise a concern.
To enable the company to address any adverse impacts and to make any necessary reparations early and directly.

The United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights lay out operational-level grievance mechanisms must be:

Legitimate: enabling trust from the stakeholder groups for whose use they are intended and being accountable for the fair conduct of grievance processes.
Accesible: being known to all stakeholder groups for whose use they are intended, and providing adequate assistance for those who may face particular barriers to access.
Predictable: providing a clear and known procedure with an indicative time frame for each stage, and clarity on the types of process and outcome available and means of monitoring implementation.
Equitable: seeking to ensure that aggrieved parties have reasonable access to sources of information, advice and expertise necessary to engage in a grievance process on fair, informed and respectful terms.
Transparent: keeping parties to a grievance informed about the progress and providing sufficient information about the mechanism’s performance to build confidence in its effectiveness and meet any public interest at stake.
Rights-compatible: ensuring the outcomes and remedies accord with internationally recognized human rights.
A source of continuous learning: drawing on relevant measures to identify lessons for improving the mechanism and preventing future grievances and harms.
Based on engagement and dialogue: consulting the stakeholder groups for whose use they are intended on their design and performance, and focusing on dialogue as the means to address and resolve grievances.

Our ambition lies in enabling these mechanisms to significantly contribute to the sustainability of our operations.

Promoting dialogue and communication

We undertook our commitment to human rights and laid it out in our codes of conduct, policies, rules of procedure, and framework agreements that govern all our actions.

Our Human Rights and Community Relations Policy (pdf l 53 KB) specifically outlines a commitment to establish operational-level grievance mechanisms that adapt to each particular activity from the moment it begins and as early on as possible in the planning of the project. Ultimately, the aim is for people directly affected by company operations to be able to raise any potential human rights impacts.

As of today, there is an operational-level grievance mechanism in our operations to handle claims mainly from local communities but also from suppliers, contractors, and other organizations. Such mechanisms are adapted to every context. The implementation of our incident grievance mechanisms follow an extensive process based on the following system:

How the reporting system works

From the moment reports and claims are received to when they are closed, the entire process can last at least a month, perhaps a little more or a little less depending on the complexity of the issue. This is how the process works:

1. Identification of claims and complaints.

2. Registration, analysis, and classification.

3. Altering concerned parties.

4. Investigation of causes.

5. Dialogue with the parties placing the claim or complaint.

6. Analysis of all parties involved.

7. Generation of options for solving the matter and steps for improvement.

8. Creation of solutions for the party placing the claim or complaint.

9. Solution agreement to reach a compromise.

10. Drafting of report and providing feedback.

How to send us reports, claims, or information requests

All communications will be treated as confidential and anonymous.

In person
Through our community liaison officers (CLO)
Using intermediary channels
E-mail
Telephone