Turkey has won praise for its “open door” policy towards 2.5
million Syrian refugees within its borders and this month it was announced that
they would be given the right to work. Hundreds of thousands of Syrian adults
in Turkey already work for low pay far below the minimum wage of 1,300 Turkish
lira (£309) per month. Many children are employed as cheap labour on farms and
factories in breach of Turkish and international laws that forbid those under
12 from working. Children aged 13-14 are banned from all but light work.
The Business and Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC), a
non-profit organisation that monitors company ethics, warns that few brands are
taking adequate steps to ensure that vulnerable refugees are not “fleeing from
conflict into exploitative working conditions”.
The BHRRC asked 28 major brands last month about their
Turkish suppliers and their strategies for combating the exploitation of Syrian
children and adults. H&M and Next were the only ones which revealed that
they had identified child labour over the course of 2015. Both companies said
that they had taken action to return the children to education.
The BHRRC said that it was alarmed by the responses,
warning: “Only a few brands appear to have engaged with the extent and the
complexity of these issues in their Turkish supply base; even fewer report
taking action to protect these vulnerable workers.” It said that many companies
appeared to have an “out of sight, out of mind” approach to auditing their
factories, conducting preannounced visits that could allow factory managers to
cover up abuses.
Phil Bloomer, executive director of the BHRRC, said: “No
brands want child labour in their supply chain, but what matters is how
vigorous they are in looking for it and what they do when they find it. Given
reports from the ground indicate refugee child labour is common in Turkey, it
is positive that two brands in our report identified this problem and took
action to protect the children. We need all brands to show equal vigour in
eliminating this curse.”
0 comments:
Post a Comment