Are European cotton dealers responsible for child labour? ECCHR complains at OECD
Posted: October 25, 2010 Filed under: Government, Soft law | Tags: Cotton, ECCHR, OECD complaint, Reinhart, Uesbekistan 3 Comments »
The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) and some partners filed an OECD complaint against seven European cotton dealers (Paul Reinhart AG, ECOM Agroindustrial Corp Ltd., Devot S.A., Otto Stadtlander GmbH and three UK-based companies) for breaching the OECD rules for MNCs by (indirectly) supporting the maintainance of a state-driven system of child labour in Uzbekistan.
Photo: Hans Peter Jost
In the background paper the organizations criticize that the (authoritarian) state of Uzbekistan systematically and comprehensively uses child labour in the cotton fields: “Children aged 10 or more are regularly sent out to work in the harvest. … It is estimated that around 57% of the entire Uzbek harvest during the 2006/2007 season was gathered by children aged between 5 and 11″. These problems in the Uzbek cotton field are not new, and there have already been some attempts at mediation at EU, UN and other levels.
The OECD complaint against the relatively unknown cotton traders was filed also to highlight the role of the cotton traders in the maintainance of the state-driven child labour system in Uzbekistan. The traders, who “have close long-standing trading relationship with Uzbek state owned cotton companies, play an important part in the maintenance of the system of forced child labour in Uzbekistan.” By purchasing the cotton, they “ensure that such trade remains lucrative for the Uzbek Government, which is able to skim off almost all of the profit.”
Who should the traders react? This is what ECCHR demands from the cotton traders (sorry I am lazy translating):
1. Boykott cotton from child labour: Die Unternehmen sollten sich darauf festlegen, keine usbekische Baumwolle in ihrer Lieferkette zuzulassen, solange der Einsatz von Kinderarbeit im usbekischen Baumwollsektor andauert.
2. Support that Uesbekistan allows ILO delegation: Die Unternehmen sollten sich dafür einsetzen, dass Usbekistan den Einsatz einer Kommission der Internationalen Arbeitsorganisation während der Ernte 2011 akzeptiert.
3. Pressurize Uesbek Government: Die Unternehmen sollten mit allen erdenklichen Mitteln auf die usbekische Regierung einwirken, keine Kinderarbeit einzusetzen: Unternehmen können Druck auf die usbekische Regierung ausüben, indem sie sich mit anderen Unternehmen in diesem Sektor zusammentun. Darüber hinaus können sie Druck auf ihre Heimatstaaten ausüben, Usbekistan entsprechend zu beeinflussen.
4. Make cotton purchases from Uesbekistan transparent: Die Unternehmen sollten offenlegen, wie viel Baumwolle sie jährlich aus Usbekistan beziehen. Auch sollten sie ihre Abnehmer öffentlich bekanntmachen.
“Do you work for Oxfam or will you be objective?”
Posted: October 15, 2010 Filed under: Book, Exhibition | Tags: Cotton, Photography Leave a comment »In the US, the photographer Hans Peter Jost and the journalist Christina Kleineidam were confronted with this question before cotton farmers opened their doors for them. The two went on a trip to seven cotton producing countries (India, Uzbekistan, China, the USA, Brazil, Mail and Tanzania) in order to portray the people working in the cotton industry and their living and working conditions (see picture by Jost).
One result of their world trip is a wonderful book “Cotton worldwide”, which was published 2009 by Lars Müller Publishers (also in English). This book tells stories about people working in the cotton industry in text and great black&white pictures (2009 the Beobachter printed a story). I really enjoyed the book! The second result is the exhibition “Cotton worldwide”.
The pictures come to Zurich: On October, 28th, the Paulus Akademie in Zurich will open this photography exhibition: Here is the programm of the vernissage.
Greenwashing, Bono & Louis Vuitton
Posted: September 12, 2010 Filed under: News | Tags: Africa, Cotton, Greenwashing Leave a comment »
Here is some stream of consciounsness on a lazy Sunday. I just read an interesting article “Mehr Schein als Sein” in the print issues of the Manager Magazine 9/2010 about Greenwashing and how measurements like the Dow Jones Sustainability Index can easily present a false image of a company – as in the case of BP. Christian Rickens presents two methods of greenwashing: (a) Exaggerate small environmental successes in public and thus divert from the fact that your core business is not ecological. (b) Clandestinely work against strict mandatory norms and publicly presents its (minor) endeavours in the area of sustainability.
Through my open window I hear Bono and his band singing in the Zurich Letzigrund stadium, which is only 600m from my flat. This makes me think of Bono’s T-Shirt brand, EDUN, which focused its marketing on developing Africa by sourcing some processes from Africa (e.g. organic cotton). Some clicks on the quite confusing website tell me that not all of Edun’s products are made of organic cotton in Africa – some say „cotton“ and „China“. Edun’s “mission” presents us a movie about “Bidii School” that is promoted by Edun and we can see some slides from cotton fields in Africa. But there is no information about a Code of Conduct, no transparency of the supply chain, no talk about living wages, fair trade cotton or GOTS.
I then learn that Bono and his wife are supporting the marketing of Louis Vuttion by posing for Anne Leibovitz in Africa – to promote „core values“… Tomorrow some German newspapers will present the new „campaign“. How does Bono benefit? Money from the sales goes into his „Conservation Cotton Initiative“ in Uganda. Where is the connection to LV’s core business?! Maybe to deduct attention from the core business? The website of the lvmh group – to which LV belongs – does not talk about corporate responsibility or accountability, but only about solidarity – and here we return back to what Slavoj Zizek talks about in his lecture about Solidarity that I posted some days ago.
