This brief is part of a series highlighting how we can leverage the commitments governments have made to guarantee human rights to steer us towards a just recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The pandemic response has demanded a greater role for the state in many countries. In the recovery, governments will set the broad regulatory framework that will define what business can and can’t do in terms of workers’ and community rights. Crucially, they will also devise business bailouts, forgivable loans, and other publicly funded incentives. These should be designed to reward responsible business conduct and prevent abuse.
This brief focuses on the protection and strengthening of international standards for human rights in businesses in the process of recovery of those businesses seriously affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. The brief suggests a series of conditions companies should meet in order to receive public funds, as well as a range of accompanying measures that can enhance the transformative potential of bailout conditions.
Forced Labor — and human trafficking for forced labor — have been documented as recently as 2018 in the cocoa sector in Côte d’Ivoire, with one recent study by the Walk Free Foundation and Tulane University estimating the number of victims at...Read More
Workers in apparel supply chains are among the hardest hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. Even before the pandemic, workers had to survive on poverty wages; in the first three months of the pandemic alone, workers lost at least US$3 billion in income. Po...Read More
In responding to COVID-19 many have adopted the rallying cry of "we are all in this together." But the stark reality is that we are not. Millions of vulnerable workers do not have access to COVID-19 testing, health care, sick leave or the physical o...Read More
Edited by Anniina Jokinen and Natalia Ollus. Labour exploitation and trafficking can be seen as direct consequences of global inequality. Poverty, a lack of social or economic opportunities, disparities in income and the standard of living, oppr...Read More
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