View previous stories
	Rana Plaza: three years on, garment workers still exploited by Thulsi Narayanasamy War on Want, Human Rights Watch, agencies Bangladesh   21 April 2016   Global fashion brands dictate the precise designs of clothes down to the last stitch, yet claim to have little power to ensure the basic rights of workers in factories. On the third anniversary of the Rana Plaza factory collapse, the voices of garment workers continue to be ignored.   The mass of rubble and clothes. Stunned workers emerging on makeshift stretchers. Then the news: it wasn’t an accident. Factory workers had seen the cracks. Rana Plaza had been evacuated, but garment workers were forced to return, for fear of losing their jobs.   Three years after the devastating collapse of Rana Plaza in Bangladesh, the factory owner is in prison, compensation to victims and families has been paid and global garment brands continue to profit from exploitation of workers in Bangladesh.   Over 1100 workers were killed and thousands more seriously injured on 24 April 2013, yet it took years for brands to pay compensation to victims.   Three years on, workers are still forced to work 14-16 hours a day, six days a week, face routine abuse in the workplace, and all for poverty wages that aren’t enough to pay rent in a slum or provide three meals a day.   All over the world, fashion brands are driven by the search for lowest production prices and the highest profit.   The race to the bottom on wages and competition across garment producing countries has left local factories scrambling to offer the cheapest production prices at the expense of the rights of workers. Exploitation of workers is the norm, and relied upon to rake in profits for the brands.   But we cannot say that nothing has changed. The Bangladesh Safety Accord marked the first step towards holding garment companies to account for the working conditions in their supply chains, and now it is no longer contested that the brands are responsible for the human rights abuses that workers face.   It is finally accepted that the issues driving the exploitation of workers and their unsafe working conditions cannot be tackled on a case-by-case basis. The system is at fault and stacked in favour of the brands: profits come before people.   This February, another fire broke out in a garment factory in Bangladesh. Had the fire broken out an hour later, 6000 workers would have been crammed into the building making clothes for the UK high street.   The factory had been inspected by the Bangladesh Accord years earlier, but changes had not been made. Whether the thousands of factory inspections will lead to safer workplaces remains to be seen.   Perhaps the biggest change since the factory collapse, has been in the awareness of garment workers themselves.   The unprecedented international attention on working conditions brought about by the Rana Plaza collapse flicked a switched in the minds of many workers, previously resigned to the grim reality of life working in a sweatshop.   The shift among workers was such that many workers now refer to working life as ‘before Rana Plaza, and after Rana Plaza.’   Workers and unions recognise that the best tool to create decent working conditions is their right to organise and collectively bargain in factories. While this is a basic human right, workers who form unions and attempt to negotiate together still face severe intimidation and violence, alongside the ever-present risk of losing their job. Their voices are all too often marginalised or dismissed.   Yet despite this, garment workers, mostly women, are far from hapless victims; they continue to fight every day to improve working conditions for themselves and each other. They also have a clear analysis of the problem: international brands are responsible for their exploitation, it is they who benefit from it.   The success of workers’ initiatives in improving their wages, hours and factory conditions has been mirrored by a corresponding failure of the international community to implement binding, enforceable legislation to ensure that a living wage and safe working conditions are mandatory in garment factories, everywhere.   Voluntary regulation has failed; voluntary standards have enabled brands to present themselves as ethical without having to change a thing about how they operate. National regulation, alongside legally binding international mechanisms is long overdue.   The opportunity exists in the form of a UN treaty that is currently being negotiated, to form a set of laws to hold corporations to account at an international level for their impact on human rights. This could also provide a well-resourced tool to monitor and enforce these standards and provide an instrument to penalize the failure of corporations to ensure these basic rights.   This could mean that no matter where the clothes are being made, workers will be guaranteed a living wage, safe working conditions, regular working hours and the right to join a union.   We know corporations will do all they can to avoid this and protect their profits, so the voice of garment workers must be even louder if we are to pressure our government to support this process.   Brands dictate the precise designs of clothes down to the last stitch, yet claim to have little power to ensure the basic rights of workers in factories. The reality is, that if the rights of workers were put first, they could ensure human rights across their supply chain. A garment industry that provides justice and dignity for garment workers is possible. Governments now must support the international process to hold corporations to account for human rights abuses. If they don’t, we will have once again failed the people who make our clothes.   * Thulsi Narayanasamy, is Senior International Programmes Officer (Sweatshops and Plantations) at War on Want.   http://www.hrw.org/news/2016/04/21/bangladesh-garment-workers-union-rights-bleak http://bangladeshaccord.org/ http://business-humanrights.org/en/binding-treaty Visit the related web page
	2016 World Press Freedom Index by Reporters without Borders (RSF)   The 2016 edition of the World Press Freedom Index, from Reporters Without Borders (RSF), shows that there has been a deep and disturbing decline in respect for media freedom at both the global and regional levels.   Ever since the 2013 index, Reporters Without Borders has been calculating indicators of the overall level of media freedom violations in each of the world’s regions and worldwide. The higher the figure, the worse the situation. The global indicator has gone from 3719 points last year to 3857 points this year, a 3.71% deterioration. The decline since 2013 is 13.6%.   The many reasons for this decline in freedom of information include the increasingly authoritarian tendencies of governments in countries such as Turkey and Egypt, tighter government control of state-owned media, even in some European countries such as Poland, and security situations that have become more and more fraught, in Libya and Burundi, for example, or that are completely disastrous, as in Yemen.   The survival of independent news coverage is becoming increasingly precarious in both the state and privately-owned media because of the threat from ideologies, especially religious ideologies, that are hostile to media freedom, and from large-scale propaganda machines. Throughout the world, “oligarchs” are buying up media outlets and are exercising pressure that compounds the pressure already coming from governments.   All of the Index’s indicators show a decline from 2013 to 2016. This is especially the case for infrastructure. Some governments do not hesitate to suspend access to the Internet or even to destroy the premises, broadcast equipment or printing presses of media outlets they dislike. The infrastructure indicator fell 16% from 2013 to 2016.   The legislative framework has registered an equally marked decline. Many laws have been adopted penalizing journalists on such spurious charges as “insulting the president,” “blasphemy” or “supporting terrorism.” Growing self-censorship is the knock-on effect of this alarming situation. The “media environment and self-censorship” indicator has fallen by more than 10% from 2013 to 2016.   Every continent has seen its score decline. The Americas have plunged 20.5%, above all as a result of the impact of physical attacks and murders targeting journalists in Mexico and Central America. Europe and the Balkans declined 6.5%, above all because of the growing influence of extremist movements and ultraconservative governments.   The Central Asia/Eastern Europe region’s already bad score deteriorated by 5% as a result of the increasingly glacial environment for media freedom and free speech in countries with authoritarian regimes.   The 2016 World Press Freedom Index is seen as a benchmark throughout the world, the Index ranks 180 countries according to the freedom allowed journalists. It also includes indicators of the level of media freedom violations in each region. These show that Europe (with 19.8 points) still has the freest media, followed distantly by Africa (36.9), which for the first time overtook the Americas (37.1), a region where violence against journalists is on the rise. Asia (43.8) and Eastern Europe/Central Asia (48.4) follow, while North Africa/Middle East (50.8) is still the region where journalists are most subjected to constraints of every kind.   Three north European countries head the rankings. They are Finland (ranked 1st, the position it has held since 2010), Netherlands (2nd, up 2 places) and Norway (3rd, down 1). The countries that rose most in the Index include Tunisia (96th, up 30), thanks to a decline in violence and legal proceedings, and Ukraine (107th, up 22), where the conflict in the east of the country abated.   The countries that fell farthest include Poland (47th, down 29), where the ultra-conservative government seized control of the public media, and (much farther down) Tajikistan, which plunged 34 places to 150th as a result of the regime’s growing authoritarianism. The Sultanate of Brunei (155th, down 34) suffered a similar fall because gradual introduction of the Sharia and threats of blasphemy charges have fuelled self-censorship. Burundi (156th, down 11) fell because of the violence against journalists resulting from President Pierre Nkurunziza’s contested reelection for a third term. The same “infernal trio” are in the last three positions: Turkmenistan (178th), North Korea (179th) and Eritrea (180th).   “It is unfortunately clear that many of the world’s leaders are developing a form of paranoia about legitimate journalism,” said RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire.   “The climate of fear results in a growing aversion to debate and pluralism, a clampdown on the media by ever more authoritarian and oppressive governments, and reporting in the privately-owned media that is increasingly shaped by personal interests. Journalism worthy of the name must be defended against the increase in propaganda and media content that is made to order or sponsored by vested interests. Guaranteeing the public’s right to independent and reliable news and information is essential if humankind’s problems, both local and global, are to be solved.”   Published annually by RSF since 2002, the World Press Freedom Index is an important advocacy tool based on the principle of emulation between states. Because it is now so well known, its influence over the media, governments and international organizations is growing.   The Index is based on an evaluation of media freedom that measures pluralism, media independence, the quality of the legal framework and the safety of journalists in 180 countries. It is compiled by means of a questionnaire in 20 languages that is completed by experts all over the world. This qualitative analysis is combined with quantitative data on abuses and acts of violence against journalists during the period evaluated.   The Index is not an indicator of the quality of the journalism in each country, nor does it rank public policies even if governments obviously have a major impact on their country’s ranking.   * Access the report via the link below. RSF has published a 60 page report on the growing concentration of a few businessmen on media outlets all over the world. RSF uses the word "oligarchs" to describe those who purchase newspapers, magazines and TV channels on a global scale. China, France, Russia, even the US - no country, no continent can escape the insatiable appetite of these media moguls, many of whom regularly use their media purchases to serve their economic and political interests: http://bit.ly/2adV0Fb Visit the related web page
	View more stories