Fair Wear in India in the week of 26th February!

Fair Wear knows that industry-wide change requires the active participation of all involved in the supply chain – including suppliers.

Join us as we recap a week in India with Fair Wear’s Annabel Meurs, Mousumi Sarangi and Hans Docter, working together to highlight the need to focus on human rights due diligence (HRDD) by the garment industry.

Starting off the week, Fair Wear’s Associate Director Annabel Meurs participated in the knowledge session on ‘Skilling and Entrepreneurship Development in Textile & Apparel’ at #BharatTex2024, organised by the Ministry Of Textiles and CITI. In her talk, Meurs focussed on the need to include an understanding of HRDD principles in skill-building schemes. “These legislations will require buying companies to change their practices when doing business with Indian textile suppliers. If the textile industry in India prepares well for this and puts itself as a frontrunner in facilitating progress on labour rights, it can become an even more reliable partner of the EU,” said Meurs.

Emphasising this need for on associations and suppliers’ need to prepare for the HRDD approach, the Netherlands Embassy in India hosted key business associations and suppliers from the textile and garment industry on March 1st. A supplier dialogue on “Making Human Rights Due Diligence Work” was facilitated by Fair Wear. H.E. Marisa Gerards opened the session, highlighting the need to facilitate an environment that enables suppliers to become critical players in shaping the transformation of the industry. The dialogue session was a crucial step towards preparing the Indian textile industry to benefit from HRDD approach opportunities.

Fair Wear’s focus while facilitating the session was on how suppliers can leverage the HRDD approach to strengthen their negotiation position and present themselves as frontrunners through a collective supplier voice. The importance of shared responsibility, stakeholder engagement and power imbalances were especially highlighted when discussing the European legislative framework. During the session, we delved into the intricate challenges within the textile industry while anticipating the upcoming policy opportunities and exploring the practical dimensions of policy implementation with suppliers.

To close an exciting week, Fair Wear and Confederation of Indian Textile Industry (CITI) signed an MoU, considering recent developments on CSDDD legislation and the existing EU legislative framework. The focus of the MoU will be on strengthening stakeholders in production countries. It is a first step in skill building on human rights developments and a commitment to cooperate sharing a common purpose for a system-wide change in relation to purchasing practices in the textile industry. Suppliers and business associations sit at the nodal point between brands and workers. It is crucial we get the due diligence framework right. The focus of the MoU will be on strengthening stakeholders in production countries by:

• Raising HRDD awareness and engagement,
• Collect at scale stakeholder information relevant to HRDD and
• Improved industry action: providing access to stakeholder information and a validation feedback loop to enable (more) impactful Human Rights Due Diligence.

We concluded this insightful and inspiring week by continuing the dialogue and supporting the suppliers and business associations in India with concrete tools, knowledge and connections to other industry actors.