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Deutschland ist einer der wichtigsten Textilmärkte weltweit und importiert 9% der globalen Bekleidungsimporte. 90% der Textilien in unseren Kleiderschränken werden dabei in Entwicklungsländern hergestellt, wo schlechte Arbeitsbedingungen und der Einsatz zahlreicher giftiger Chemikalien leider zu oft noch gängige Praxis sind. Deutschland trägt eine besonders große Verantwortung, die Einhaltung von Sozial- und Umweltstandards in Textil-Lieferketten zu fördern. Die Bundesregierung setzt sich deshalb weltweit für menschenwürdige Arbeitsbedingungen, existenzsichernde Löhne, die Vermeidung giftiger Chemikalien und umweltfreundliche Produktionsprozesse ein.

Im Bericht legt die Bundesregierung dar, welche Maßnahmen 2018 umgesetzt wurden und präsentiert neue Ziele für 2019.

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Weltweit arbeiten mehr als 75 Millionen Menschen in der Bekleidungsindustrie – vor allem Frauen in Entwicklungsländern. In den Textilfabriken erhalten insbesondere Frauen ohne Ausbildung erstmals ein eigenes Einkommen. Die Textilindustrie kann so ein Motor für die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung sein. Gleichzeitig gibt es weiterhin einen enormen Handlungsbedarf zum Schutz der Menschenrechte und der Einhaltung grundlegendster Sozial- und Umweltstandards. Deutschland ist zweitgrößter Importeur von Bekleidung weltweit. Wenn immer mehr Kundinnen und Kunden Wert auf nachhaltig hergestellte Kleidung legen, können sie so einen wichtigen Beitrag zur Verbesserung der Sozial- und Umweltbedingungen in den Produktionsländern leisten.

Die Broschüre informiert über Herausforderungen der globalisierte Textilwirtschaft und stellt verschiedene Maßnahmen des BMZ vor, u.a. das Bündnis für nachhaltige Textilien, den ‘Grünen Knopf, die Zusammenarbeit mit den BMZ-Partnerländern, die Stärkung von Unternehmensverantwortung sowie öffentliche Beschaffung.

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The global garment and footwear industry relies heavily on the work of women, who represent up to 80% of its global workforce. The current living wage debate presents both opportunities and risks for the millions of women workers in this industry. A living wage is a central enabling human right: as such, it is a powerful tool not only to improve the working situation of women workers but also to create an environment in which they can realize their full capabilities. However, if the benchmark for a living wage is set too low, it risks cementing their current situation, in which they face poverty related gender-specific consequences and multiple burdens of work, including care work, and the challenges arising from income poverty, such as the need to work overtime, engage in multiple jobs, or search for the cheapest food, all of which result in absolute time poverty. This paper therefore argues that it is imperative to adopt a gender-sensitive approach in the living wage discourse, and to look at the implications that such an approach has on the methodology of calculating a living wage and on the measures to implement it.

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The economic repercussions of the coronavirus pandemic are colossal in scale and global in scope. The world’s wealthy countries are poised to spend trillions of dollars to shore up the income of their workers and to rescue their corporations. A vital question remains unanswered: who is going to rescue the workers who toil in the global supply chains of many of those corporations? These workers, like ones who make the clothes and shoes we wear, are among the hardest hit by the economic catastrophe of Covid-19.

The number of people who will be affected — as supply chain workers are terminated, en masse, with little or no compensation — is enormous. There are more than 150 million workers in lower-income countries producing goods for export to North America, Europe, and Japan and tens of millions more in service jobs linked to global corporations in wealthier countries.

In apparel, textile, and footwear — a sector where workers will fare especially poorly — there are 50 million workers, many of them women who are their families’ primary wage earner. Very few of these workers have ever been paid enough to accumulate any savings. In fact, chronically low wages have left many in debt. This paper focuses on the apparel sector, as it will be among the most severely affected by the Covid-19 crisis; however, to a substantial extent, the points made herein apply across sectors.

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This report aims to contribute to a better understanding of the corporate-controlled social auditing and compliance industry. It takes stock of evidence on the effectiveness of the dominant auditing regimes and the auditing firms that are currently active in the apparel industry. The case studies presented in detail in this report illustrate how – far from being an effective tool to detect, report, and remediate violations – corporate-controlled audits often actively aggravate risks for workers by providing misleading assurances of workers’ safety and undermine efforts to truly improve labour conditions. By doing so, this report builds upon previous analytical work done by academics, journalists, and labour advocates, as well as on the Clean Clothes Campaigns’ (CCC) substantial experience working on remedy in specific instances of human rights violations in factories over the past thirty years. This history provides a rich case base of more than 200 documented instances of auditing failures which serve as the basis for the primary analysis. Evidence clearly shows that the industry has failed spectacularly in its proffered mission of protecting workers’ safety and improving working conditions. Instead, it has protected the image and reputation of brands and their business models, while standing in the way of more effective models that include mandatory transparency and binding commitments to remediation. In order to shift this balance, auditors and monitoring initiatives need to involve workers in a meaningful way. They must be transparent and accountable by adhering to enforceable regulations that provide legal and commercial consequences for auditors and auditing firms that fail to identify essential and foreseeable, and thus avoidable, human rights risks. There must be legal and commercial consequences for the sourcing companies who fail to stop, prevent, or mitigate identified human rights risks and remedy actual human rights violations. Without an enforceable human rights due diligence framework in place, ineffective social audits will continue to be relatively meaningless in terms of ensuring worker safety and promoting humane working conditions. At worst, they could risk further entrenching inhumane working conditions. Addressing the gaps in the identification of human rights risks and violations is vital in order to ensure the industry starts to focus on actual prevention and remediation.

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