Not Made By Children – an initiative to end child labour in the garment-manufacturing supply chain in India

Global March’s intervention and campaign to eliminate child labour in the garment manufacturing supply chain was boosted through a grant by UKAid from the Department for International Decelopment’s (DFiD) Responsible and Accountable Garment Sector (RAGS) Challenge Fund.

‘Not Made by Children’ programme is aimed towards strengthening the efforts against child labour and trafficking for forced labour through improvement of inspection and monitoring processes in garment supply chains, providing comprehensive remediation of victims and promoting decent work for adults, through the five key objectives:

a.  Strengthening the “Multi-stakeholder Garment Steer Group on Child Labour”.
b. Sensitisation and capacity enhancement of the Labour Inspectorate’s to inspect and monitor violations of child labour in the garment supply chains.
c.  Generate awareness of core labour standards across supply chains through outreach initiatives and dialogue with workers and sub-contractors.
d. Remediation/withdrawal of child labourers from supply chains.
e. Development of a comprehensive toolkit based on the learnings for approaches for sustainable solutions to eliminate child labour, forced labour and promoting decent work.

Global March Against Child Labour has partnered with Developmental Initiatives for Social Causes (DISC) and Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA).

Developmental Initiatives for Social Causes (DISC) is a non-governmental organization that established the Garments Workers’ Union (GWU), which has 14,000 members (workers from the garment manufacturing sector in the formal as well as informal segment) working at about 300 factories/ subcontracting units. In India, GWU is affiliated to Indian National Trade Union Congress. On a global platform, GWU has executed various projects under the aegis of Ambekar Institute of Labour Studies (an Indian institute affiliated to International Textile, Garment, and Leather Workers Federation (ITGLWF)). The GWU was the first trade union among the garment workers and has been successful in generating awareness of labour rights and responsibilities.

For more information about Indian National Trade Union Congress, please log on to: www.intuc.net

Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA) is a grassroots movement against child labour, child trafficking and child servitude. Founded in 1980, BBA has been actively rescuing and rehabilitating bonded child labourers in active collaboration with the law enforcement agencies and other institutions christened to promote and protect the rights of the child. Other interventions of Bachpan Bachao Andolan include organizing awareness-raising campaigns among the communities in the source areas of trafficking for forced labour. Since the early 1990s, BBA has been campaigning and advocating for ethical trading especially no-child labour in various sectors including apparel and garments. Beginning with the child labour free carpet campaign and first social labelling mechanism, the ‘Rugmark’ a visual label certifying a carpet as child labour free, BBA has come a long way in spearheading the movement to promote child labour free goods in the world, working among the carpet manufacturers, sporting goods industry, firecracker factories, mica mining, among others. BBA has ventured into garments sector with massive raids in the last five years rescuing and rehabilitating over 4,000 child labourers from garment sweatshops in India.’

For more information about Bachpan Bachao Andolan please log on to: www.bba.org.in