Side event externally organized by Traidcraft India
Brief description of the session:
The proposed session is convened by the
Hidden Homeworkers project - an initiative of Traidcraft Exchange, Homenet South Asia, and Homeworkers Worldwide, co-funded by the European Union. It will draw on rich learning from this programme and beyond that can applied to facilitate due diligence in supply chains.
The session will include insights from a 1000+ homeworker survey conducted amongst communities in India, Pakistan and Nepal; supplier experiences of working with homeworkers in textile value chains in northern India; and
learning based on an ongoing initiative with homeworkers and transparency practitioners. Through these reflections on best practice, the session will shed light on some key enablers of business due diligence and support for rights, representation and recognition for homeworkers in South Asia.
Key objectives of the session:- Illuminate working conditions for homeworkers in supply chains in India, Nepal and Pakistan, with attention to the pre and post covid-19 situation.
- Share best practices that brands, suppliers, CSOs, trade unions and other stakeholders can learn from in order to advance transparency and improve working conditions for homeworkers in textile, leather and comparable supply chains in South Asia
Background to the discussion:
Homeworking is recognised within the ILO Home Work Convention 1996, and standards such as the OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Supply Chains in the Garment and Footwear Sector. However, many businesses do not, in practice, extend their supply chain due diligence much beyond the factory walls. As a consequence, homeworkers and many other informal workers are often unrecognised by the businesses that profit from their work. This lack of recognition is generally compounded in South Asia by exclusion from social security and other entitlements. This is a serious human rights issue for the estimated 50 million homebased workers in South Asia who provide an essential function in a huge range of supply chains that serve both domestic and international markets. Mainly women, these workers often struggle with precarity, very low pay and invisibility within supply chains. However, there are well-tested approaches and tools available that governments, businesses, trade unions and civil society organisations wishing to improve conditions for these workers can learn from and practically apply.