StemCell Therapy

Better Cotton uptake accounts for 6% of global cotton production

The findings are set out in the'BCI Task Force on Forced Labour and Decent Work: Final report and recommendations,' which notes:"While BCI explicitly cites the promotion of decent work as one of its core objectives, the level of attention and investment thus far has been insufficient.

"This is clear across many areas of BCI, including new country start-up evaluations, implementing partner selection, onboarding and project development, and findings from second and third-party assessments. The Task Force believes that this has resulted in organisational blindness to forced labour and likely other key decent work issues."

BCI trains farmers on more sustainable cotton production, with the BCSS covering all three pillars of sustainability social, environmental and economic and addressing the many challenges of cotton production. According to its last annual report, Better Cotton uptake accounts for 6% of global cotton production, and retailers and brands sourced more than1.5m metric tonnes of Better Cotton by the end of 2019 a 40% jump on the previous year.

The group appointed theindependent task forcein Aprilto review the current BCI systemand make suggestions to improve its effectivenessin identifying, preventing, mitigating and remediating forced labour risks.

Report authors say the initiative"now has an opportunity with the right level of commitment and resourcing to renew its focus on the more than 1.5 million workersat the foundation of the Better Cotton system, to give these workers a stronger voice, and to pioneer innovative, worker-focused approaches to promote decent work in cotton fields.

"Strengthening decent work capabilities and systems will also provide greater assurance to brands, retailers, and other stakeholders that farmers growing Better Cotton are following BCI's stated principles on forced labour and decent work."

The findings come a week afterBCI calledan immediate halt toall field-level activities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) of China, where ongoing allegations of forced labour and other human rights abuses "have contributed to an increasingly untenable operating environment." Earlier in the yearit suspended itslicensing and assurance activities in the XUAR, meaning there is now no new licensed Better Cotton coming from the region.

The task force also says BCI must acknowledge it cannot operate in regions where there is credible evidence of state-imposed forced labour.

The nine-point roadmap set out to help address the gaps and shortfalls in its decent work capability is grounded in international human rights standards, understanding inequalities, and addressing discriminatory practices.

In a statement following publication of the report, BCI says it recognises that strengthening its decent work programme will be a multi-year process and will require additional resources and funding.

"In the short-term, we will focus on strengthening our forced labour capabilities through capacity building for staff, implementing partners and third-party verifiers, enhancing our due diligence for selecting and retaining implementing partners, and revising our assurance processes to better identify and mitigate forced labour risks.

"In 2021, BCI is also exploring opportunities to pilot a more comprehensive set of decent work activities, including a detailed forced labour risk assessment and civil society engagement tactics, in one or two high priority regions."

Click here to read the Task Force's report in full.

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Better Cotton accused of "blindness" to forced labour - just-style.com

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