This briefing highlights the responsibilities of fashion companies in relation to the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Implementing the United Nations “Protect, Respect and Remedy” Framework (UN Guiding Principles), and assesses the key ways in which fashion companies compound the failure of states and factory employers to protect workers and respect freedom of association. In this briefing, Amnesty International analyses the areas where fashion companies can work harder to promote freedom of association and decent working conditions across their supply chain in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. We identify how the current model of complex supply chains and privatized auditing in the industry diffuses responsibility and places a low value on the labour of the predominantly female garment workers, solidifying an exploitative business model which fashion companies need to address at its core. We make recommendations for how these companies can play a much larger role in promoting freedom of association for workers in their supply chain.
This briefing is designed to be read alongside Amnesty International’s Stitched Up: Denial of Freedom of Association for Garment Workers in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka which looks in more detail at the human rights violations in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and the role of states and employers (supplier factories).
