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 training manual – developed by ILO and UNICEF under the UN Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking – seeks to aid governments, workers, employers, international, and non-governmental organizations that combat trafficking in children f...Read More
Many valuable, but often fragmented models are currently used in the fight against human trafficking. Building from the themes raised in a five-part webinar series hosted by Freedom Collaborative last fall, this paper argues that data should be used...Read More
The exercise was done with some social workers from the field to understand their thoughts, feelings and unexpressed emotions using visual imagery. Sometimes verbalizing the internal emotional experience during a stressful period becomes difficult. ...Read More
Many key questions and serious concerns hang over the ethical audit regime. These include: are audits effective in identifying non-compliance and driving up standards, what does the audit regime mean for governments and NGOs, where does power lie wi...Read More
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