Amnesty International calls on textile giants to protect workers' rights

On Thursday, the NGO Amnesty International called on global textile companies and the governments of four Asian countries to take action to protect workers' rights and ensure decent wages.

In two reports published on Thursday, the NGO states that fashion brands manufacturing in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka must urgently take measures to protect workers' rights in their supply chains.

To produce the reports, Amnesty conducted nearly 90 interviews covering 20 factories in these four countries. The reports detail “widespread violations affecting freedom of association in the garment industry.” It argues these violations include infringements on workers' rights, harassment, and violence from employers.

“In many respects, the fashion industry’s model is based on the exploitation of low-cost labour,” Dominique Muller, a textile industry researcher at Amnesty, told AFP. “We see manufacturing countries like India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka being forced to maintain low wages and suppress trade unions because they want brands to place orders with them.”

The textile sector accounts for up to 40 percent of manufacturing jobs in these countries. However, Amnesty states that workers are “underpaid and overworked, lack access to fundamental rights, and are systematically deprived of their rights through informal and precarious contracts.”

However, it laments that “the garment industry has not adequately addressed the denial of these essential rights.”

Amnesty sent a questionnaire to 21 companies requesting information on their human rights policies, monitoring, and specific actions related to freedom of association. However, “there is little evidence to determine whether human rights policies are being implemented at the factory level.”

“Companies must stop merely repeating their commitment to freedom of association and instead adopt an active sourcing strategy that rewards suppliers and countries respecting this freedom,” urged Dominique Muller.

These reports are published as the European Union is weakening a directive on corporate social and environmental due diligence. In mid-November, MEPs approved the scaling back of the text's main ambitions by reducing the scope of companies covered and removing some of their social and environmental obligations.

This article was translated to English using an AI tool.

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