Women's Views on News |
| Transparency to help garment workers Posted: 18 Mar 2016 06:19 AM PDT
Information is power, but brands have it all and workers on the ground have very little – and the lack of information about where our clothes and shoes are made and who made them is a huge barrier to change. We must make the workplaces and people in global supply chains more visible, so we can hold companies to account for their actions if need be. The garment industry turns over almost USD3 trillion a year. Yet garment workers, 80 per cent of whom are women, work for poverty pay, earning as little as USD21 a month. And human rights abuses are systemic throughout the industry. Poverty wages, long hours, forced overtime, unsafe working conditions, sexual, physical and verbal abuse, repression of trade union rights and short term contracts are all commonplace in the clothing industry. It is an industry built on exploitation and growing under a lack of transparency that makes holding brands accountable difficult. Campaigners at Labour Behind the Label are dedicated to changing this. Labour Behind the Label wants to improve conditions for and empower workers in the global garment industry. And you can help. You could send the following message, asking four question, to: Clarks, Base London, Asos, Boden, H&M, Inditex (Zara), Marks & Spencer, Monsoon, New Look, Next, Pentland, Primark, Tesco, Sainsburys, and William Lamb. Dear Brand, I want to know who made my clothes and shoes, and to have access to data about the conditions where she works, whether she is safe, if she can afford to look after her kids, and lots more besides. If companies were more transparent with this data this would also allow change makers at all levels of supply chains to work together to solve the problems the industry faces in upholding human rights. Are you willing to help this process by committing to be transparent? Specifically: Will you commit to annually disclose a spreadsheet with the names, addresses and contact details of supplier facilities, subcontracted suppliers and labour agents managing home-working facilities? Will you publish your social audit reports? Will you report on an annual basis on the impact of your activities on human rights throughout your production network, including explicit reporting on due diligence processes, and on the effectiveness of responses to address adverse impacts on human rights, using measurable indicators? Would you support calls for legislation to create a level playing field for all brands and retailers with garment supply chains to be more transparent? Thank you for your response. Sincerely, And add your name. For in the end, if companies are doing the right thing, what have they got to hide? As you might like to point out to them too, really. Thanks.  |
| Posted: 18 Mar 2016 03:03 AM PDT
A report published recently documents the findings from a series of events held in Cardiff, London, Manchester and Sheffield by Imkaan and Rights of Women to reflect on local and regional responses to forced marriage in 2015. This project follows an earlier analysis of legal and support responses to forced marriage reported in "This is not my destiny." Reflecting on responses to forced marriage in England and Wales, published by Imkaan and Rights of Women in 2014. Called 'Creating A Clear Pathway For Practice: Working Towards More Effective Responses To Survivors of Forced Marriage' the new report had several suggestions for improving current practice: Professionals with a responsibility for addressing violence against women and girls within a policy or frontline role should have access to opportunities for training and development as part of their on-going professional development. Agencies should at a minimum be using the FMU guidance as a basic foundation for developing more holistic local, integrated cross-sector responses both at a policy and practice levels to guide policy from commissioning to service delivery as well as monitoring and evaluation within a wider VAWG framework. It is essential that professionals (health and social care, education, CJS, mainstream voluntary sector) have a clear understanding of what constitutes consent in cases of forced marriage and where victim/survivors experience multiple forms of violence. Agencies should develop stronger partnerships with specialist BME women's organisations, where these partnerships do not exist to commission appropriate accredited training and development services. BME women's and girls' experiences of forced marriage should be located within the broader range of different forms of violence they are likely to be experiencing in order for organisations to develop fully integrated responses. This would also support organisations to move away from siloed single-issue responses, which create a hierarchy of need and response. There is a need to consider whether existing pathways of accessing support are adequate and resourced. It is essential that training and development programmes for staff are both prioritised but also developed by specialists who have competence and experience of developing accredited programmes or tools that are framed in the context of gender, gender inequality and violence. Organisations should carry out more effective monitoring and on a routine basis the impact of local interventions and approaches to assess the impact on women and girls and find ways of promoting examples of 'promising practice' to other professionals in the sector as an opportunity for enhanced learning. Professional development, both in terms of the law and of the issue of forced marriage, amongst both solicitors and barristers and the judiciary is necessary to improve the practice of legal professionals and ensure that survivors receive an appropriate response to their legal and other needs. The Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) should host a specific meeting with the Education Minister, OFSTED and education providers (independent, statutory, academies and further education colleges) who currently do offer specialist support/education to consider strategies for improvement. For example, school responses to forced marriage should be built into inspection processes. To read the full report, click here. Britain’s Forced Marriage Unit said earlier this month that it had dealt with 1,220 suspected forced marriage cases last year – a slight fall on 2014. But Shaheen Hashmat, who campaigns against forced marriage and “honour based” violence told the Thomson Reuters Foundation the figures don’t convey the real extent of the problem and that police need better training. “If you can’t absolutely rely on the authorities to help you when you may have just one chance to get out, that may well be the difference between life and death,” she pointed out.  |
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