‘Effectively and Systematically Gamed’: Why Audits Need an Overhaul
As an inferno ravaged a five-story footwear factory in southern Thailand last week, leaving massive cracks in the blackened walls that had firefighters fearing the building’s collapse, human-rights experts are debating the limits of social audits, particularly in the context of voluntary due diligence in global supply chains.
Human Rights Watch Report on the Shortcomings of Social Audits
Human Rights Watch’s new report on the shortfalls of social audits was released this week: ‘Obsessed with Audit Tools, Missing the Goal’: Why Social Audits Can’t Fix Labor Rights Abuses in Global Supply Chains. It provides recommendations for policymakers and regulators to better hold companies, as well as auditors and certifiers, accountable for human rights […]
Uncovering Audit Deception: Countering Hidden Social Compliance Violations
“Sophie Broach, an investigations analyst at the global workers’ rights advocate Transparentem, writes about the nonprofit organization’s investigations into forced labor, child labor and other human rights abuses in economies in Asia, including India, Malaysia and Myanmar, which revealed the seriousness and prevalence of audit deception.”
Tech-Driven Tools To Uncover Labor Exploitation
“The report Hidden Harm: Audit Deception in Apparel Supply Chains and the Urgent Case for Reform, by the nonprofit organization Transparentem, documents many cases of deception during social audits in India, Malaysia, and Myanmar.”
Sweatshop Conditions Hide Behind Low-Quality Monitoring, Report Says
“In interviews at almost 20 factories and spinning mills in India, Malaysia and Myanmar, Transparentem investigators learned that employers routinely hid underage workers during audits, coached them to lie about their ages, or gave them modified identity documents to make them look older.”
Supply chain audit deception ‘common’ – report
Audit deception is common in global apparel supply chains according to a new report from the Transparentem nonprofit which calls for urgent reform. The report, entitled Hidden Harm, revisits previous investigations by the organisation which seeks to uncover and eradicate labour and environmental abuses in supply chains.
