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.
The risks to migrant workers using informal and unregulated labour migration channels are well documented: forced labour, including labour trafficking; debt bondage primarily due to high recruitment fees; child labour; excessive work hours; underpay...Read More
The NetClean Report 2016 provides an overview of global trends in child sexual abuse crime, especially on the channels that are used for the distribution of child sexual abuse material. The report is a unique insight into the experiences and accumula...Read More
A LOT CAN CHANGE IN A DECADE. FOR BETTER, AND FOR WORSE. Ten years ago, in the early hours of April 24, 2013, a garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, crumbled. Within its walls were thousands of workers, many of whom never returned home to their ...Read More
This Advocacy Brief aims to support civil society organizations to improve legal, policy and other responses to child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA) in Kenya. It is an output of the Enhancing Policy Responses to Addressing Child Sexual...Read More
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