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Bonn/Berlin. The fashion industry celebrates Berlin Fashion Week – but questions about social and environmental consequences are, as every year, neglected. The Alliance for Sustainable Textiles, founded in 2014, has begun to gradually eliminate the grievances in global textile supply chains. So far, the balance sheet has been meager. A study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) recommends adapting the review process. The civil society in the Textile Alliance sees the reform now planned as an opportunity to make the alliance more effective.

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© Textile alliance

On 6 March 2019, the first major conference of the multistakeholder initiative - Tamil Nadu (MSI-TN), which is supported from Germany by some members of the Textile Alliance as part of an alliance initiative, took place in Coimbature. Around 130 representatives from the government of Tamil Nadu, business associations, trade unions and NGOs took part. They came from Germany: Representatives of BMZ, Hugo Boss, Brands Fashion, FEMNET and the Alliance Secretariat of the Textile Alliance. The theme of the conference was: Better Compliance – Better Competitiveness. The question was whether compliance with social and environmental standards would lead to a higher competitiveness of spinning mills, as the German representatives argued, both on the economic side and on the part of FEMNET. A paper on the topic was also prepared by the MSI-TN. The participants discussed the topic vividly in mixed groups and each group developed recommendations.

Further information on the website of the Textile Alliance

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© charles deluvio - unsplash.com

Civil society has long called for more sustainability and the Council and the administration are also clearly positioning themselves: Stuttgart wants to play a special pioneering role in improving global living and working conditions through public procurement. The city no longer wanted to remain ‘at the groin’ and consciously use the considerable purchasing power of municipalities to strengthen fair production conditions and the supply of fair products. FEMNET accompanied the municipality in the successful pilot project for the procurement of sustainable work and safety shoes.

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© charles deluvio - unsplash.com

Civil society has long called for more sustainability and the Council and the administration are also clearly positioning themselves: Stuttgart wants to play a special pioneering role in improving global living and working conditions through public procurement. The city no longer wanted to remain ‘at the groin’ and consciously use the considerable purchasing power of municipalities to strengthen fair production conditions and the supply of fair products. FEMNET accompanied the municipality in the successful pilot project for the procurement of sustainable work and safety shoes.

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In 2019, the International Labour Organization (ILO) celebrates its centenary. With its highest body, the International Labour Conference, the member states of the United Nations meet every year in Geneva to decide on international labour law. This year, the conference will be held from 10 to 21 June and will address the issue of violence and harassment in the workplace. So far, there are no effective regulations at the international level.

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Photo: © Saskia Wulfinghoff

Since 7 March 2019, thousands of textile workers have been on strike in Ethiopia's largest textile park, Hawassa. The unorganized workers (trade unions are banned in Hawassa Park) demand higher wages, safe working conditions and a stop to sexual violence in the workplace.

The textile park with 52 factory halls has been made available by the Ethiopian government to foreign inverters since June 2017. Companies such as H&M and PVH (Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger), but also producers from India, China, Sri Lanka and other countries have low wages produced there. The park is one of five parks, with a total of 30 industrial parks planned by the government by 2015. Currently, export revenue from clothing production from all industrial parks in Ethiopia is $145 million.

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The future multipliers for fair public procurement. © FEMNET

The important market power of the public sector is increasingly becoming the focus of public attention: In NRW alone, public authorities and municipalities consume for around €50 billion per year. Other municipalities want to make sure that the products they buy are not produced under inhumane conditions. In order to accompany them in the individual steps, FEMNET has Education and training of multipliers Continued this year as well.

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The FEMNET project consultants Marijke Mulder and Anni Korts-Laur at the fair stand at Fair Handel Stuttgart. Photo: © FEMNETThe FEMNET project consultants Marijke Mulder and Anni Korts-Laur at the fair stand at Fair Handel Stuttgart. Photo: © FEMNETThe Fair Handel trade fair took place in Stuttgart from 25 to 28 April 2019. FEMNET was present on site to present the first results of the current studies on working conditions in the workwear industry in Tunisia and India.

Marijke Mulder, FEMNET Project Officer, presented the results during the panel discussion ’The fashion revolution. Opportunities and challenges in textile production”, including SethuLakshmy Chakkenchath, a member of the Fairtrade Producers Network NAPP (the Network of Asia and Pacific Producers), Rapha Breyer from TransFair e.V. and Deniz Köksal from Reutlingen University, who presented his research results from Vietnam and Indonesia.

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A violent scene in the middle of Bonn's city centre: Again and again the overseer raises his hand against the seamstress and leaves a blue handprint on her white clothes with every symbolic hitting, pinching, holding. Exhausted, her head sinks to the table. “Faster! There is no pause now! Back to work!" On the occasion of the Rana Plaza Memorial Day, Bonn activists drew attention to the problematic working conditions in the fashion industry with an action theatre on 24 April 2019.

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On the occasion of the World Economic Forum in Davos, more than 150 European non-governmental organisations, including the CorA network, are launching a petition against Investor State Dispute Settlements (ISDS) and for a binding UN agreement on business and human rights (UN-Treaty).

In doing so, they call on the EU and its Member States to withdraw from trade and investment agreements containing special rights of action and to refrain from concluding such agreements with special rights of action in the future. They also call for legal possibilities to hold corporations accountable for human rights violations.

The petition seeks to build pressure on the EU and its Member States to push for a binding UN agreement on business and human rights (Binding Treaty).

Europe-wide petition ‘Protecting human rights – stopping corporate lawsuits’: www.stopisds.org/de

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