Human rights news and archive

Salvadoran President accuses Paris Fashion Week of ‘glorifying criminals’

San Salvador – Salvadoran president, Nayib Bukele, criticised Paris Fashion Week on Sunday for "glorifying criminals", following a show which depicted, as a protest, prisoners held in El Salvador’s maximum-security mega-prison. Mexican-born, US designer Willy Chavarria presented a show in Paris on Friday in which several tattooed men knelt,...

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Business

EU member states aim to significantly dilute supply chain act

EU member states sought to significantly dilute the European Supply Chain Act. A majority of countries voted to apply the human rights protection law only to companies with more than 5,000 employees, instead of the previous threshold of 1,000, the member states announced. In addition, the turnover threshold was to be raised from 450 million...

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Retail

Inditex accused of turning a blind eye amid rising tensions in China boycott crisis

On Thursday, China, backed by the Chinese government itself, started retaliating against the Western boycott of cotton produced in the ‘Uyghur labor camps’ of Xinjiang, calling for its own boycott against international fashion companies. The boycott primarily affected Swedish retail giant H&M on Thursday, but is now also being launched against...

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Culture

Western brands face China backlash over political statements

Nike was the recipient of Chinese backlash after the sporting goods giant stated it does not use cotton from China’s Xinjiang region, where currently an international human rights crisis is ensuing with the alleged forced labour camps of the Uyghur people. On Weibo, China’s most popular social media channel, a retaliation against Nike began when...

Business

H&M ban of Xinjiang cotton under criticism in China

Swedish clothing giant H&M's decision to no longer source cotton from China's Xinjiang region is drawing a backlash as the Asian country adopts an increasingly assertive stance against accusations of human rights violations. The fashion retailer's products had vanished from Chinese tech titan Alibaba's e-commerce platform Taobao on Wednesday,...

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Fashion

The world's biggest fashion brands are complicit in forced labour, say human rights groups

Supply chains are complex entities, with far-reaching tentacles that often have little or no contact with the main body or businesses. If a fashion behemoth outsources production to a third party, and subsequently this party also outsources its production to another vendor/factory/partner, it become a murky chain where it is difficult to...

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Business

Study: "Exploitation Made in Europe": human rights violations plague apparel production

Five days ago was the seventh anniversary of the collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh. More than 1,100 garment workers lost their lives and thousands were injured. The event highlighted the inhuman working conditions: locked in, intimidated and grossly underpaid. Tragic, we think, but far away. New research by the Clean Clothes...

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Business

Levi's and Kontoor Brands react to reports of sexual abuse in garment factories

Levi Strauss & Co., Kontoor Brands - which owns Wrangler and Lee jeans - and The Children’s Place have all pledged to crack down on gender-based abuse in Lesotho garment factories after an investigation found women were being coerced into having sex in order to keep their jobs. The major fashion brands will be taking part in a pilot programme...

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Business

Ethiopian garment workers paid the lowest wages in the apparel industry

With newly built industrial parks and a range of financial incentives, Ethiopia is working hard to become the world’s next garment exporter. “We will make Ethiopia the leading manufacturing hub in Africa”, Dr. Arkebe Oqubay, Special Economic Adviser to the country’s Prime Minister, recently said. The efforts seem to be bearing fruit, as...

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Business

Factory abuse starts with brands’ purchasing behavior, says Human Rights Watch

A new report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) confirms once more that global fashion brands are contributing to unsafe and unfair working conditions at garment factories in countries like Cambodia, Myanmar, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh by pressuring suppliers to drive down prices and produce faster. The study was based on hundreds of interviews...

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Fashion

Leading fashion firms call on Cambodian government to improve labour standards

Leading fashion companies including Nike, PVH, Levi Strauss, Esprit, Adidas and Under Armour have signed an open letter to the Cambodian government urging it to improve its labour standards. The companies, who claim to contribute 9.5 billion US dollars (7.26 billion pounds) to Cambodia’s exports through their work with the country’s suppliers,...

Video

Video: Kate Gilmore | The Universal Declaration of Human Rights at 70

The deputy high commissioner for human rights at the UN Human Rights Office reflects on the nature of human dignity at the Business of Fashion Voices conference. Source: Youtube, UN