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 commentary explains how and why the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights should apply throughout the maritime environment to all business enterprises and in all business operations throughout the maritime supply chain, both on land ...Read More
This briefing paper by Liberty Shared sets out recent improvements to the transparency of supply chains and analysis techniques and resources being increasingly applied by civil society to identify where exploitative activities exist in a supply chai...Read More
The IGWG’s fifth session, which took place from 14 to 18 October 2019, opened with a statement from the United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights. She congratulated the Chair-Rapporteur on the release of the revised draft legally bi...Read More
The vast majority of deforestation and illegal logging takes place in the tropical forests of the Amazon basin, Central Africa and Southeast Asia. Recent studies into the extent of illegal log- ging estimate that illegal logging accounts for 50–90...Read More
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