Under the regime of private company or multi-stakeholder voluntary codes of conduct and industry social auditing, workers have absorbed low wages and unsafe and abusive conditions; labour leaders and union members have become the targets of both government and factory harassment and violence; and trade union power has waned. Nowhere have these private systems of codes and audits so clearly failed to protect workers as in Bangladesh’s apparel industry. However, international labour groups and Bangladeshi unions have succeeded in mounting a challenge to voluntarism in the global economy, persuading more than 180 companies to make a binding and enforceable commitment to workers’ safety in an agreement with 12 unions.
The extent to which this Bangladesh Accord will be able to influence the entrenched global regime of voluntary codes and weak trade unions remains an open question. But if the Accord can make progress in Bangladesh, it can help to inspire similar efforts in other countries and in other industries.
Venture capitalists shape the future of technology, and with it the future of our economies, politics, societies and fundamentally, our human rights. They decide which new technologies and technology companies will receive early-stage funding. This,...Read More
The data in this report represents signals and cases from January 1, 2018 through December 31, 2018 and is accurate as of July 25, 2019. Cases of trafficking may be ongoing or new information may revealed to the National Hotline over time. Consequen...Read More
Domestic workers are one of the communities least protected by existing laws and one of the most vulnerable to exploitation in the world. We have documented an array of systemic and widespread abusive practices against Sierra Leonean women domestic ...Read More
The Addendum complements the OSCE Action Plan to Combat Trafficking in Human Beings adopted in 2003 and supplemented in 2005, and provides the OSCE participating States with an updated toolkit to combat all forms of trafficking in human beings (THB)....Read More
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