Is tuna ecolabeling causing fishers more harm than good?

20 | International Union Rights | 24/1 FOCUS | WORLD BANK AND IMF The World Bank in Uzbekistan: Labour Standards Take a Back Seat After two decades of financing Uzbekistan’s agriculture sector, the World Bank received a complaint to its independent accountability mechanism in September 2013 filed by victims of forced and child labour in Uzbekistan’s cotton industry. The complaint filed to the Bank’s Inspection Panel alleged that one of its agriculture investments was contributing to forced and child labour1. The complainants argued that the Bank had failed to put in place adequate measures to prevent Bank funding from being used on agricultural lands on which forced and child labour is practiced. The Panel noted that ‘a plausible link does exist between the project and the alleged harms’ and identified significant issues of policy compliance2. In response, World Bank management promised to implement measures to mitigate risks of perpetuating child and forced labour in its projects. Viewing the proposed mitigation measures as adequate, the Panel did not undertake a full investigation3. The complainants strongly disagreed4. Since then, the Bank has drastically increased its funding to the Uzbek agriculture industry, claiming that it has mitigated the risks linked to its projects. But a forthcoming report from Human Rights Watch and Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights (UGF), Forced and Child Labor Linked to the World Bank Group Investments in Uzbekistan in 2015 and 2016, reveals that these measures are insufficient. The ILO recently determined from unpublished survey data that approximately two thirds of the 2.8 million people who participated in the 2015 harvest were recruited voluntarily, a ‘minority recruited involuntarily’, and the remaining were ‘to some degree reluctant’, due to poor working conditions and wages5. If many of those classed by the ILO as ‘reluctant’ workers were in fact coerced into working, up to one-third of workers (924,000 people) could be considered victims of forced labour in 2015. Human Rights Watch believes that the proportion of involuntary labour is much greater. The ILO has conceded that ‘many interviewees appeared to have been briefed in advance’.6 This corroborates our research: numerous people told Human Rights Watch and UGF that government officials or their supervisors told people to say they were picking cotton voluntarily. With few exceptions, when interviewed in a confidential setting, people told researchers that they undertook cotton work, not voluntarily, but because the government required them to, and they had been explicitly told or reasonably believed they would be punished if they refused.7 This combination of involuntariness and the menace of penalty is the very definition of forced labour under international law8. Forced, Child Labour in the 2016 Harvest Research and evidence compiled by Human Rights Watch and UGF for our forthcoming report – due to be published in May 2017 – illustrates that in 2016 (as in previous years), senior government officials ordered officials ‘to involve all employees in the cotton harvest’9. Regional and district officials implemented the central government’s orders by imposing labour mobilisation quotas on public institutions for cotton picking during the harvest, as well as planting and weeding in the spring. Officials imposed harvest quotas on institutions, which lead to financial and other penalties if not met. District and law enforcement officials monitored how many workers each institution contributed and how much cotton each institution delivered at daily cotton meetings. Officials threatened and punished heads of institutions that did not meet their quota with public humiliation, beating, disciplinary action, and dismissal. Heads of institutions, in turn, threatened employees and students with dismissal, expulsion, or disciplinary consequences to induce them to work. Heads of neighbourhood committees (mahallas) threatened residents with loss of welfare payments. Despite a significant reduction in child labour over the last five years, officials continue to force schools to send children as young as 10-11 years old to work in the cotton fields in some rural areas. In 2016, UGF and Human Rights Watch documented government-organised child labour in three regions of the country. Education workers emphasised that they were under pressure from ‘higher authorities’ to mobilise students. One education worker said that he and his colleagues had to ‘run after’ most of students. Some teachers...

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to highlight that child labour is complementary to adult labour in the brick kiln industry.Design/methodology/approachThe paper presents a case study of bonded labourers in the brick kiln industry of Southeast India.FindingsThe paper finds that child labour is used by parents in the moulding process in order to avoid falling into debt bondage. In this industry, brick making is organized as a home‐based enterprise. Thus, child labour increases the family productivity and consequently its income. In case of a ban on child labour bonded parents will be worse‐off. NGOs can play an essential role by preventing families from falling into bondage and by improving their living standards.Originality/valueThe results may help the NGOs address child labour issues in the developing world.

Effects of sea surface temperature on tuna catch: Evidence from countries in the Eastern Pacific Ocean

Child Labor

INTERNATIONAL union rights Page 22 Volume 21 Issue 3 2014 FOCUS ❐ TRADE AGREEMENTS AND THE LABOUR MOVEMENT A labour rights scandal followed Uzbekistan’s demechanisation of cotton picking Since preferential trade terms were threatened a new factory has opened and an ILO mission has been accepted cessful in both the EU and the US. But a decisive recent vote in the European Parliament has sent a clear message. In December 2011 Members of the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly (by 603 votes to eight) to reject an extension of the EU-Uzbekistan bi-lateral trade agreement, which would have brought textiles within its ambit. Although this does not change Uzbekistan’s GSP status, it was a symbolic step forward. It is difficult to identify exact triggers for policy changes it seems significant that just over a year after the European parliament vote two dramatic new promises were unveiled: i) ILO observers would be allowed to monitor the harvest ii) A new cotton harvesting machine factory would open in Uzbekistan But does this amount to real progress? The promised joint ILO-Uzbek monitoring took place from 11 September to 31 October 2013 and carried out 806 documented unannounced visits to sites across more than 400 farms, together with homes and workplaces. The ILO mission reached striking conclusions: ‘it would appear that forced child labour was not used on a systematic basis in Uzbekistan to harvest cotton in 2013’. But NGOs remain sceptical. The Cotton Campaign, it Review of the 2013 Cotton Harvest in Uzbekistan reached very different conclusions: ‘in 2013 the government systematically forced children, primarily students from colleges and lyceums (aged 15-18) to pick cotton’. In a submission to the Human Rights Council PreSessional Review of Uzbekistan Human Rights Watch noted that the ILO mission’s terms of reference covered only child labour not adult forced labour and expressed concerns that ‘the ILO’s mission was … weakened by efforts of the Uzbek government ’. Disagreement persists on the extent to which the grant of access to ILO observers represents a commitment to change or whether it represents merely a change in tactic in evading proper scrutiny. Whether or not re-industrialisation is really the best approach to solving the country’s forced labour problem is equally open to conflicting interpretations . It does seem significant that factory opening is reversing nearly 25 years of de-mechanisation . But the authorities’ claim that the new factory will permit the mechanisation of 80 – 90 percent of the total harvest by 2016. Few commentators seem as yet convinced by the official line on remechanisation . But if the Cotton Campaign’s analysis of the correlation of de-mechanisation and the growth of forced labour is correct, then it seems reasonable to acknowledge that machines will likely play an important role in tackling this scandal. 1. Historical data from Richard Pomfret, State-Directed Diffusion of Technology: The Mechanisation of Cotton Harvesting in Soviet Central Asia. U zbekistan’s problem with child and forced labour during the cotton harvest has roots in the Soviet-era harvest. Although rapidly mechanised between the 1950s and 1980s, the harvest has always relied heavily on hand picking and the mobilisation of workers, college students and even school children by the State. In the post-Soviet period, as mechanisation halted and declined, the scale and degree of the problem were exacerbated. Mechanisation of the Uzbek cotton harvest Soviet production of cotton pickers began in 19491 . By 1986 the Uzbek Republic was manufacturing up to 1000 machines per year, and was reported to have amassed just under 38,000 harvesting machines. Although the mechanisation process has been criticised as having been poorly handled, and some circumspection ought to be reserved for official figures of the period, the indications are that by 1988 47 percent of Uzbek cotton was being harvested by machine. Yet even in this period, at the height of mechanisation, school children are reported to have been involved in the harvest. In the post-Soviet period production of new machines fell. Just 278 machines were produced in 1999, and by 2008 Uzbekistan’s last cotton harvesting machine factory had closed. The blunt calculation seems to have been that hand picking could yield a...

Longtail tuna (Thunnus tonggol) is a neritic species that supports commercial, artisanal and recreational fisheries throughout the Indo-Pacific region. Historically receiving little attention by commercial fisheries, the global annual catch of longtail tuna has steadily risen from around 30,000 t in the early 1980s to exceeding 200,000 t since 2004, reaching a peak of 291,264 t in 2007, and was 281,613 t in 2017. Catches of longtail tuna in the Indian Ocean now exceed catches of principal commercial target species, such as albacore and bigeye tunas. A sequence of stock assessments undertaken throughout the species’ range since the late 1980s persistently indicated that at least three of the four stocks defined in this paper are likely to have been, and most likely are currently, subject to overfishing and overfished as a result of excess fishing effort on this relatively slow-growing and long-lived tuna species. As the spawning biomass of principal tuna target species continue to decline in both the Indian and western and central Pacific Oceans, the increasing catches of longtail tuna, other neritic tunas, and seerfishes is worrisome. Few conservation and management measures (CMMs) are currently in place specifically for longtail tuna, although in recent years some coastal States, Regional Fishery Bodies, and tuna Regional Fisheries Management Organisations have begun to develop initiatives to improve the catch and biological data quality for longtail tuna and sympatric species of neritic tunas and tuna-like species. This paper provides a global review of biological, ecological and fishery information to provide researchers, fishery managers and policy makers with the most current information from which to begin to guide future stock assessment and the development of CMMs for longtail tuna.

Human trafficking is not the recent issue. Since the early history of the world the trafficking was there. The South Asia is most vulnerable in position in the world to human trafficking. In South Asia, Bangladesh, India and Nepal are most vulnerable in relation to human trafficking. The international community considered that the human trafficking is a grave violation of human rights. There are many reason for the trafficking including poverty, illiteracy, globalization etc. The main purpose of the human trafficking is the forced labour, debt bondage, child labour and sexual exploitations. There are some international laws which directly prohibits the human trafficking. Some regional instrument including the SAARC Convention On Prevention And Combating Trafficking in Women and Children for Prostitution, also there which directly prohibits the human trafficking. The states should prohibits the human trafficking by incorporating the national legislation. The States can not deny it's international obligation also. States should ensure the safe return of the trafficked persons in the home country.

Creating a safe and healthy world for our children is as a important task as any that exists. Yet millions of children around the world remain victims of poverty, illness, armed conflict, exploitive and forced labor. Child labor is a very complicated development issue, effecting human society all over the world. Child labour is any work that is likely to interfere with the child's education or harmful to his/her health, physical, mental or social development.

Цель: раскрытие информации о подкатегории «Права человека» в отчетности в области устойчивого развития, сформированной на основе международного стандарта GRI G4 [1]. Обсуждение: одной из категорий отчетности в области устойчивого развития является социальная, содержащая ряд подкатегорий, включающих аспекты. Информация подкатегории «Права человека» характеризует уровень соблюдения необходимых требований, случаи нарушения прав человека, а также возможности заинтересованных сторон соблюдать свои права и пользоваться ими. В отчете раскрываются недопущение дискриминации, гендерное равенство, свобода ассоциаций, право на заключение коллективных договоров, детский труд, принудительный или обязательный труд, права коренных или малочисленных народов. Международная законодательная база по правам человека включает Международный билль о правах человека, содержащий Всеобщую декларацию о правах человека 1948 г.; Международную конвенцию о гражданских и политических правах 1962г.; и Международную конвенцию об экономических, социальных и культурных правах 1966 г., а также еще более 80 документов (рекомендательных деклараций и руководящих принципов, договоров и конвенций). Результаты: информация нефинансовой отчетности, раскрывающая соблюдение прав человека в части обеспечения свободы союзов, ведения коллективных переговоров, использования принудительного и детского труда, обеспечения прав коренных и малочисленных народов позволяет заинтересованным сторонам оценить деятельность корпорации и принимать обоснованные экономические решения.

Slavery and the slave trade are among the oldest socio-economic relationships in history, dating back to the dawn of civilization and evolving in many forms. In the 21st century, slavery continues to exist in new forms, despite its official prohibition in almost all countries of the world. Modern slavery includes forced labor, human trafficking, sexual exploitation, child labor, forced marriage, and debt bondage. This phenomenon affects millions of people around the world, especially in poor communities, those affected by war, or climate change. Despite international conventions and laws, these crimes continue to go unpunished in many countries due to weak legal systems, corruption, and public apathy.

This manuscript aims to analyse the inclusion of human rights in the context of decent work. To this end, the current challenges to achieving the end of all forms of forced or compulsory labour were analysed. The Federal Constitution has human dignity as one of its pillars, considering work to be a social and fundamental right of all. The research was developed using qualitative methods, based on theoretical and methodological approaches of an exploratory, bibliographic and documentary nature. However, data analysis was carried out using the socio-legal method, as it sought to analyse international human rights treaties at work, in view of the current challenges to their implementation in the Brazilian socio-economic context. The results show that Brazil has recently implemented public policies to eradicate all forms of contemporary forced or compulsory labour. In this sense, the approval of Decree No. 12,857/2026, which internalised Protocol 2014 relating to ILO Convention No. 29, demonstrates the Brazilian government's commitment to the eradication and prevention of all forms of forced or compulsory labour, in particular slave and child labour, providing for the reparation of damages suffered by victims and the conviction of those responsible. It can be concluded that, although international instruments have been internalised, the United Nations still faces complex challenges in eradicating all forms of forced or compulsory labour, and it is incumbent upon the public authorities and society in general to ensure the effectiveness of humane and dignified work and, in accordance with SDG 8, to promote full and decent employment and sustained and sustainable economic growth for all.

Purse-seine tropical tuna fishing in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean (EPO) results in the bycatch of several sensitive species groups, including elasmobranchs. Effective ecosystem management balances conservation and resource use and requires considering trade-offs and synergies. Seasonal and adaptive spatial measures can reduce fisheries impacts on nontarget species while maintaining or increasing target catches. Identifying persistently high-risk areas in the open ocean, where dynamic environmental conditions drive changes in species' distributions, is essential for exploring the impact of fisheries closures. We used fisheries observer data collected from 1995 to 2021 to explore the spatiotemporal persistence of areas of high bycatch risk for 2 species of oceanic sharks, silky shark (Carcharhinus falciformis) and oceanic whitetip shark (Carcharhinus longimanus), and of low tuna catch rates. We analyzed data collected by fisheries scientific observers onboard approximately 200 large purse-seine vessels operating in the EPO under 10 different flags. Fishing effort, catch, and bycatch data were aggregated spatially and temporally at 1°×1° cells and monthly, respectively. When areas of high fishing inefficiency were closed the entire study period and effort was reallocated proportionally to reflect historical effort patterns, yearly tuna catch appeared to increase by 1-11%, whereas bycatch of silky and oceanic whitetip sharks decreased by 10-19% and 9%, respectively. Prior to fishing effort redistribution, bycatch reductions accrued to 21-41% and 14% for silky and oceanic whitetip sharks, respectively. Our results are consistent with previous findings and demonstrate the high potential for reducing elasmobranch bycatch in the EPO without compromising catch rates of target tuna species. They also highlight the need to consider new dynamic and adaptive management measures to more efficiently fulfill conservation and sustainability objectives for exploited resources in the EPO.

FOCUS | INDUSTRY 4.0 13 25/3 | International Union Rights | Mobile devices, sensors, screens, chips, and robots… do not fall out of the sky. Much of the debate on labour and Industry 4.0 has centred on the application of new technologies across the labour market. Somewhat less attention is paid to the production of these technologies – and still less their dependence on the extraction of certain raw materials. The electronics sector is increasingly linked to highly exploitative working conditions and practices, and significant risks of modern slavery in its supply chains. One recent report describes forced labour as the ‘backbone’ of global electronics manufacturing1. In respect of its raw material inputs, companies appear more or less indifferent to where and how these are sourced. In 2016, the Australian Behind the Barcode project ranked fifty-six electronics companies ‘on the strength of their labour rights management systems to mitigate the risk of forced labour, child labour and exploitation in the supply chain’2. One table in the report illustrates these companies’ scores at the point of raw material extraction: it is block red. Universally, the companies failed on questions of traceability, monitoring and labour standards. Not one company could guarantee a living wage, not one had a child labour policy, no collective bargaining agreement was recorded, and none reported that they based sourcing decisions on supplier labour conditions. Of the fifty-six, only one company achieves a ‘partial’ tick, for having at least a pilot labour grievance mechanism in operation in the extraction part of its supply line. The Raw Materials of a Revolution The mass expansion of technologies heralded under the title ‘Industry 4.0’ will clearly require a massive growth in mineral extraction. It is little surprise that the extraction needed for these technologies will take place in the Global South. According to some estimates, by 2035 demand for rare earths will increase three-fold, for lithium fourfold3. Cobalt demand will rise to more than twenty times its current rate, and copper more than forty-times. Others predict that global copper demand may grow by over 300% until 2050. The massive growth in industrial demand for the raw materials that new technologies will require is bound to have social and environmental costs. Does Industry 4.0 simply spell a new ‘resource curse’ for countries rich in these raw materials? What impact will the growth in demand have on labour conditions already prevailing in the supply chains of these goods? Discussions about ‘Industry 4.0’ could do well to heed the examples of the first industrial revolution. Industry 4.0 is deeply rooted in that revolution: the digital genealogy of machine code can be traced back to the Jacquard loom. Technology was central to Britain’s rapid industrialisation, and to the rise of cotton in textile production, replacing wool due to the advantages of newly mechanised cotton processing. By the middle of the 19th Century, cotton represented one tenth of all British capital investment and accounted for almost one half of British exports. A quarter of the British population was dependent on the cotton trade for their livelihoods4. This relatively arbitrary technological advance also contributed significantly to the economic ascendency of the United States. The ‘prototype machine industry’ massively increased the demand for raw cotton from planters in the Caribbean and the Americas. Imports to Britain grew eightfold between 1780 and 1800. Mechanised spinning therefore created ‘rising demand for raw cotton resulting in the extension of the slave plantation system’5. Questions about labour rights and Industry 4.0 should require us to think about how different workers’ rights are differently impacted, including in the electronics supply chain. In the first industrial revolution, technology had variable impacts on existing labour practices. The introduction of weaving machines into British textile factories dealt a deathblow to the guild system of skilled craft workers and the economic relations that went with it. On the cotton plantations however, the late eighteenth century invention of the cotton gin reduced the labour required to remove seeds, but this efficiency gain only provoked a massive expansion of US cotton planting and with it the intensification – rather than any reduction – of slave labour. And for its importers...

From the time Intel became aware of the potential for conflict minerals to enter our supply chain, we have responded to this issue with a sense of urgency and resolve. In July 2010, the US Government enacted legislation that requires all US publicly traded companies to file disclosures and reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) related to the use of Conflict Minerals (tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold) in their products. The legislation came about due to serious concerns related to illegal mining contributing to human rights abuses including forced and child labor, theft, extortion, and violence within the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) At its core, the legislation requires companies to identify their materials sources of origin for the four legislated metals. As shown in (Table 1) the uses of the four metals are wide ranging within the electronics industry.

Market‐based instruments of fishery governance have been promoted in the past two decades on the basis of two widespread expectations: that complying with sustainability standards will lead to environmental benefits; and that certifications will not discriminate against specific social groups, countries or regions. This paper assesses whether these assumptions hold through the analysis of how the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) label for capture fisheries has managed ‘supply’, ‘demand’ and ‘civic’ concerns in the market for sustainability certifications. The MSC has created and now dominates the market for ‘sustainable fish’, but success has been accompanied by serious challenges. The MSC has so far failed to convincingly show that its certification system has positive environmental impacts, and it has marginalized Southern fisheries, especially in low‐income countries. As an institutional solution to the global fishery crisis, the MSC seems to be better tuned to the creation of a market for ‘sustainable fish’ rather than ‘sustainable fisheries’.