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.
This report presents the findings of research conducted by Focus on Labour Exploitation (FLEX) and Fife Migrants Forum (FMF) between March 2020 and February 2021. This research was initiated in order to seek to understand the risk of human trafficki...Read More
This research study addresses legal issues around child online protection and the herewith related risk of becoming a victim of online sexual exploitation, in particular child pornography or online grooming. It serves as a supplementary gui...Read More
Edited by Joel Quirk and Julia O’Connell Davidson. This is the first volume of the series Beyond Trafficking and Slavery Short Course. Much of what people think they know about human trafficking and ‘modern-day slavery’ is inaccurate, ...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
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