Bangladesh factory owners threaten inspection agencies with legal action

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Hundreds of clothing factories are being inspected for fire-safety and structural problems under the Accord on Fire & Building Safety. Photograph: Rana Plaza
An international agreement to improve safety in Bangladesh's clothing factories is facing the threat of legal action as factory owners demand compensation for the cost of closures and repair work.
With some repair programmes expected to take months, factory owners say they cannot shoulder the costs of paying staff while factories are closed, alongside the expense of some major works needed to ensure buildings are safe. The building overhauls are being carried out in the wake of the collapse of the Rana Plaza complex in Dhaka last year, in which 1,138 people were killed.
The problems come as hundreds of Bangladeshi clothing factories per month are inspected for fire-safety and structural problems under the Accord on Fire & Building Safety in Bangladesh, which is backed by over 170 international brands including Primark and Marks & Spencer and international trade unions including IndustriALL.
The owner of one Dhaka-based factory, Softex Cotton, has threatened legal action against the Accord after his factory was closed down due to structural problems, prompting a demand for a reported $100m (£59.4m) in compensation.
Another factory owner who declined to be named said that once a factory closed its doors, even for a few months, it would lose orders and close permanently: "There is no such thing as temporary closure," he said. The factory owner said that the Accord agreement had "pussy footed" around the issue of who paid for factory closures amid efforts to get as many brands as possible to sign up to a deal in the wake of the Rana Plaza disaster. He said there was no clear process in place to handle the costs involved.
Jenny Holdcroft, policy director for international union IndustriALL, which has been closely involved in the Accord, said that the agreement ensured that factories would not lose orders during closure because brands had committed to maintain orders with suppliers for two years.
While 12 factories have been identified by the Accord as needing significant work so far, Holdcroft said many of those only needed partial closure in order to reduce stress on the building so production could continue on other floors. The Accord also legally binds brands to ensure that workers are paid during factory closures. She said the detail on who would make payments had been left open in order to ensure that all those factory owners who could afford to pay for repairs and compensation for workers made the necessary contribution.
"This was always going to be a topic of negotation. Brands don't want to commit to paying so that rich factory owners who have just pocketed the profits and not been spending on their factories for years continue to do so. There was obviously going to be disruption, if there was no disruption there would be not change," she said.
A spokesman for the Accord said negotiations over payments and even legal action would not hold up its work to improve safety in factories.
However, pressure on the Accord to contribute to the payment of displaced workers has ratcheted up after a rival factory safety group backed by US retailers including Walmart and Gap, the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, set aside $5m (£3m) to help pay factory workers for up to two months while work is carried out on the buildings it has identified as needing improvement. It has so far identified five factories in four buildings where production needed to be suspended.
"The Alliance is sharing the workers salary along with entrepreneurs so now there is a big confusion. We had a big meeting with the Accord to make them understand they have to come forward or how will we help our workers?" said Shaidullah Azim, a director of the Bangladeshi garment manufacturers association the BGMEA.

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As Bangladesh female health workers strengthened family planning | Kenneth R White

Community health workers, Salma one-acter, interviewed mothers in MATLAB data input at the research centre health to be compiled. Photo: Kenneth R. Weiss
§ Wearing sandals and draped in dark blue Sari, Aparajita Chakraborty slides into the Hill houses cluster with the confidence of someone who has long made home visits.
She has. For more than 30 years, Chakraborty was advice visit this family, to do checkups and dispensing equipment. But she is not a doctor, community health of workers has been sent by the local hospital. Still, she has won the trust and gratitude of the surrounding villages to save lives - especially from cholera and other deadly diarrhoeal diseases.
With all the men removed either in the rice paddies or emigrated to the city work Chakraborty, down connection half a dozen houses to the business in the family fast. She and a colleague guide a group interview asked four women personal questions like: when you menstruate last? They are taking the pill, or through any other method of family planning?
A woman explains that they the pill to take ceased when her husband worked in Chittagong, a day's journey away. She took their use of contraception immediately after his surprise visit. Until then, it was too late, and she is now expecting her third child.
Another woman says that she used any form of contraception. Her husband turns out, had a vasectomy after her fourth child. But he wants to know his brothers, not out of fear, they think him impotent. It is a secret, if documented the hospital staff, along with every birth, death, marriage, divorce and other vital statistics of 225,000 people in the region has.
Chakraborty know more intimate details about the community than they know about each other. But discretion is of the utmost importance, she says: "I'm, what I hear. "I feel like I'm part of the family."
It is part of an all-female team of health care workers, this portion of Bangladesh low-lying delta, span carefully one maintain the longest and most detailed health and population records in the developing countries.
The MATLAB hospital, the Chakraborty shipped has grown extensively since 1963, when it was started as a cholera research station on a barge close to Dhaka. The institution was from the International Centre for diarrhoeal disease research, Bangladesh set up.
Half a century later, this hub for child and maternal health is widely credit attributed to demonstrate how poor Muslim women with little or no formal education can plan their families. The approach has settled this tight, impoverished themselves country spread out on its rapid population growth.
In the year 2000 which was UN saying that Bangladesh is 160 million strong population would rise to 265 million by the year 2050. Recent forecasts show that the numbers on something likely to rise more than 200 million by mid-century before soon after stabilization.
"Matlab the way shown us", says Ubaidur Rob, non-profit population of Council of Bangladesh Director. "Women were in the 1970s, as fertility was very high and employment of women was almost zero as a sales representative. This is where change began."
Good chronological achievements MATLAB something of a Mecca for public health have made researchers. First, many of the rural outposts were attracted because regularly it suffered cholera epidemics. Now is the lure of the detailed population and health data bank which health can reproduce the success or failure of a drug study or intervention.
Decided in the mid-1970s the family planning advocates was this an ideal place to test, whether poor, poorly educated accept women in a religiously conservative area, the use of contraceptives. To set up the experiment, researchers have divided into two groups 149 villages. Half took maternal and child health initiatives, including home delivery of modern contraceptives, in the MATLAB Observatory while the other had only access to government services.
The municipalities were identical: poor fishing and farming families live in bamboo houses in the villages with little or even no electricity, running water or sewage. Most had dirt floors and cooked on fire wood, cow dung and rice chaff.
The area was 88% Muslims and Islamic clerics denounced contraception. Purdah - the women out of the House, practiced most households only if they covered "correctly" and accompanied by a male relative.
Researchers quickly learned, it was not enough just to contraceptive methods available, says Dr. Mohammad Yunus, the MATLAB Central ran for nearly 40 years. What works, he says, was a comprehensive door service with trained female health workers, regular follow up visits to help mothers, choose a method of contraception that it was best to handle side effects and offer basic maternal and child healthcare.
Differences emerged immediately. Married women were more likely to use contraceptives, and in the course of time were on average 1.5 of fewer children than their counterparts in the comparison area. Their children were healthier, fewer women died from pregnancy-related causes and toppled.
These families grew even more prosperous. With fewer children, support parents accumulated built more arable land, valuable houses and were given access to running water. Their children stayed in school longer, and women enjoyed higher incomes.
The results of the proposed family planning was a cost-effective way to improve public health and to help people out of poverty free, said health experts. And it showed that municipalities not to wealthier or better educated before the birth rate can - fall if contraception in a suitable manner will be made available.
Work programme of the MATLAB Observatory attracted the attention of government officials, who decided it roll-out in two areas. MATLAB Government employees trained in the door-to-door approach. In the early 1980s the areas a similar increase had experienced the contraceptive use, and set the Government on the training of tens of thousands of female workers with the MATLAB model.
"In the next five years it was introduced throughout the country", says Yunus. "Bangladesh has been a success story for family planning and reducing infant mortality."
Since average birth rate have to slightly more than two fell from six children of a woman, and Bangladesh has become one of the first impoverished countries to meet two-thirds of the UN Millennium development goal of reducing child mortality.
• Ken Weiss writes about science, environment and health for the LA Times, and elsewhere. A grant from the Pulitzer Center crisis reporting supports research for this article

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Responding to Rana Plaza: a made-in-Bangladesh boycott won't help girls

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Arbeiten in Bekleidungsfabriken hat Mädchen und junge Frauen können steuern, wie sie ihre Einkünfte verbringen, sagt Sajeda Amin. Foto: David Levene
Letzte Woche war der erste Jahrestag des Zusammenbruchs der Rana-Plaza in Dhaka, Bangladesch, die mehr als tausend Menschen getötet und verletzt mehr als 2.500. Viele von denen, die getötet und verletzt wurden Migranten Heranwachsende Mädchen, die in ein Kleidungsstück-Fabrik in dem Gebäude beschäftigt waren. Viele der Überlebenden sind schlecht verletzt oder verstümmelt und nicht in der Lage, wieder um zu arbeiten. Dieses schreckliche Ereignis mit den Bedingungen von Kleidungsstück Fabrikarbeiter in Bangladesch erlebt in den Blickpunkt gerückt und Aufrufe zur Verbesserung der Sicherheit in Bangladesch Bekleidungsfabriken zog. Die Tragödie führte auch einige fordern Kleidung in Bangladesch zu boykottieren.
Ich glaube nicht, dass ein Boykott den gewünschten Effekt haben würde. Obwohl ich glaube, dass die Forderung nach einer wohlmeinenden, in Wirklichkeit sind, wäre es einen wichtiger Schritt zurück für die Rechte und Lebensbedingungen von Frauen und Mädchen darstellen. Unvollkommen, wie es ist, der Bekleidungsindustrie in Bangladesch, das jetzt fast 4 Millionen Menschen beschäftigt, bleibt die einzig gangbare Arbeit-Option für viele junge Frauen. Bangladesh ist an zweiter Stelle nur nach China in Bezug auf das Volumen der Kleidungsstücke hergestellt. Einer Schätzung zufolge beschäftigt 12 % der Frauen im Alter von 15 bis 30 im Land. Bis vor kurzem waren Löhne noch weniger als ein Viertel derjenigen, die in China bezahlt. Mit neuen Mindestlohn-Gesetzgebung im Dezember 2013 in Kraft gesetzt sie haben fast verdoppelt auf £40 pro Monat von £23 – aber weiterhin die Hälfte Chinas. Diese Lohnsteigerungen und neue Sicherheitsbestimmungen übersetzt in eine Steigerung von 17P pro Kleidungsstück auf die Produktionskosten, laut Wall Street Journal.
Der Grund, warum die Löhne niedrig für Garment Workers in Bangladesch geblieben ist, dass Frauen, die in diesem Sektor arbeiten nur wenige Optionen. In einer Umfrage haben, die wir festgestellt, dass ländliche Mädchen selten Vollzeitbeschäftigung zu finden und deutlich verdienen, weniger als die Einsteiger Löhne in der Bekleidungsbranche.
Arbeitsmöglichkeiten für Frauen in der Bekleidungsindustrie sind aus mehreren Gründen wichtig. Vor dem Beginn der Bekleidungsbranche Einstellung von Frauen in den 1970er Jahren war es ungewöhnlich, dass Frauen ihre eigenen im öffentlichen Raum in Bangladesch gehen auf. Aber in den 90er Jahren mehr als 1 Million Frauen Arbeitsplätze in der Bekleidungsindustrie gefunden hatte. Nicht nur waren sie sichtbar in der Belegschaft, sie waren im öffentlichen Raum sichtbar, während sie zum und vom Arbeitsplatz gingen. Die sichtbare Präsenz der so viele Frauen war transformative. Heute gibt es weit weniger Stigma für junge Frauen auf den Straßen von Dhaka zu sehen.
Meine Forschung auf der Bekleidungsindustrie in Bangladesch verweist auf eine andere Art von Transformation: Arbeiten schafft eine andere Art der Adoleszenz. In Bangladesch heiraten Frauen in ländlichen Regionen, die nicht arbeiten bald nach der Pubertät. Arbeitende Frauen neigen dazu, später zu heiraten. Beschäftigung erstellt eine Phase des Übergangs für diese Mädchen und ermöglicht es ihnen nach Verzögerung Heirat und Kinderwunsch.
Darüber hinaus hat der Bekleidungsindustrie wie junge Frauen in Bangladesch denken über ihre Möglichkeiten, Leben verwandelt. Im großen und ganzen kommen Mädchen und jungen Frauen, die in der Bekleidungsindustrie arbeiten aus extrem benachteiligten Familien. Sie kommen aus den ärmsten Haushalten in den ärmsten Gemeinden in Bangladesch, diejenigen, die besonders anfällig für Umweltkatastrophen sind. Sie kommen aus großen Familien und oft aus Familien, deren Väter nicht arbeitsfähig sind. Einen Lohn verdienen hilft junge Frauen, die für eine Vielzahl von Szenarien Leben, Ausgleich von lang- und kurzfristigen Ziele vorbereiten.
Frauen, die in Bangladesh Bekleidungs-Industrie Bericht zu arbeiten, haben ein hohes Maß an Kontrolle über die Verwendung ihrer Erträge. Sie Berichten eine immense Gefühl von stolz über die Beiträge, die sie zu ihren Familien machen können. Sie haben eine starke Neigung, ihr Geld für die zukünftigen Bedürfnisse zu speichern und in der Ausbildung ihrer Geschwister und Kinder zu investieren.
In einer jüngsten Podiumsdiskussion habe ich für eine alternative Antwort auf die Tragödie von Rana Plaza plädiert. Statt Risiko Ich empfehle die Errungenschaften von jungen Frauen in Bangladesch, die größtenteils von der Bekleidungsindustrie erleichtert wurden, Unterstützung von Initiativen, die auf diese Gewinne aufbauen und erweitern die Möglichkeiten für Mädchen und junge Frauen.
Sajeda Amin ist senior Associate bei der Bevölkerung Rat. Folgen Sie @Pop_Council auf Twitter.
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How to engage boys and men in the fight for gender equality

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AppId is over the quota

Fatherhood is key for challenging gender discrimination in South Africa, says the director of Africa Father Initiative. Photograph: Alamy
Challenge misogyny in public: Some of our most powerful work has been when we've held senior male politicians and public figures accountable for misogynistic statements or abusive behaviour. The documentary film Can't Just Fold Your Arms shows our case against Julius Malema, then the most prominent political figure besides the president. Our case against him in the Equality Court generated a much-needed national conversation about the roles and responsibilities of male politicians.
Recognise we are all responsible for raising men: We need to see how are we 'raising' men around us. It could be as a parent, as sibling, as a friend, as a boyfriend, as a husband… what expectations are we putting on them? We must recognise our role in raising men.
Get power behind the movement: The key for us in Zimbabwe has been to use the current power dynamics. We have worked with traditional leaders and used their power to influence change for women and girls. The truth is, men have the power in the current set up; they have resources and sit in most decision-making positions. We will make little progress now if we're excessively confrontational.
Don't lose focus on girls: Very clearly men and boys have got to be a central component of the solution, but we need to tread carefully here not to lose the focus on equality and empowerment for girls and women.
Scarce funding is being diverted away from girls to programmes that leave them out and directly benefit boys and men (all under the name of gender equality). We must be very intentional in the design of gender-equality programmes to not lose sight of the primary goal: levelling the playing field.
Make gender equality cool: Within the Nigerian context, men are rewarded for upholding patriarchy and adhering to the expected codes. Any man who deviates from that is sanctioned by his male constituency. So in this context, a man will not likely get recognition for supporting gender equality. This is why Voices 4 Change has adopted a social-norms-marketing approach where we market the 'coolness' of supporting women's empowerment.
Reach boys through their hobbies: Methodologies on engaging boys must reach their interests. In Central America we are engaging boys and men through music, arts and sports.
Give boys positive role models: Currently what boys see is violence and discrimination against women committed by men. So, they grow into the same type of men. This paradigm needs to change.
Significant change is possible when the men take collective responsibility for shifting the violent norms that exist. In Narok, Kenya, young men took a collective decision to protect their sisters in the community from undergoing female genital mutilation (FGM) by taking a stand against and warning their fathers not to subject their sisters to the cut. This happened after the young men were sensitised and shown the dangers of FGM.
Laws and government are key to changing beliefs: Behaviour and norm change at scale is an expensive and hugely challenging proposition. From anti-smoking to safe-driving the evidence is stunning. It takes long time to change. That's why laws and good governance are critical.
Focusing just on girls suggests they are the problem: Over emphasis on girls implies that they are the only problem. Both girls and boys need to bring their own perspectives and solutions to the table.
Start with the dads: Fatherhood is an important area of work as it is intergenerational. It speaks to a key area of masculinity for men. It is a life milestone when many men can look inward and want to change or do better.
Interest in fatherhood is increasing dramatically because of the rates of fatherlessness in countries such as South Africa and the startling range of social issues that accompany such rates including gender-based violence, academic achievement of boys and girls, HIV transmission to infants and maternal and newborn mortality in general.
Look at the bigger picture: Poverty, ignorance and lack of options remain the greatest barriers – at least in Uganda – to ending harmful practices such as FGM and child marriage. Education must be accessible in terms of cost and distance to all children as an alternative to child marriage.
Boys are vulnerable too: One in seven boys in Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Haiti experience sexual violence prior to the age of 18 and they are much less likely than girls to tell someone about the abuse. So, involving men in the fight to end gender inequality should include this nuance: the recognition of how gender norms affect masculine experiences of violence, especially sexual violence.
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Search ferry sunken Bangladesh canceled after only 40 bodies found

The search from the rescuers called for the missing passengers of a sunken ferry in Central Bangladesh on Saturday after getting 40 points cause trouble between the relatives of those unaccounted for.
Bangladesh water transportation Chief, Shamsuddoha Kalu Dacian, said that divers would leave the premises of the Meghna river where the ferry Miraz-4 on Thursday in a storm sank.
About how many passengers on board were there was confusion and authorities was not an exhaustive list of the available place.
"The search request off we got the ferry for the Bank was drawn and we found no more bodies," he said. "Our Savior found overall represent 40."
Ferries in Bangladesh generally does not maintain lists of passengers, and no one was in the recent disaster, said local administrator Saiful Hasan.
"I'm not my brother, where is he?" asked Mohammad Moniruzzaman. "Why keep authorities looking for?"
Before Saturday, 11 bodies were recovered, police had estimated that at least 100 were still missing.
Rescue Diver Masudul Haque, said on Friday night he had recovered nine of the body, but many were caught in cabin room.
"We have recovered the body, especially from the lower deck and other open spaces, but could not open the doors of the cabin room where many passengers, took refuge after the storm have made," said Haque.
"I tried these doors open but could not, as many of the doors buried large amounts of sand," he said.
Relatives of the missing and dead close to the banks of the river Meghna, assembled, where the boat capsized. Several bodies with cloth covered were laid on the ground.
"I'm here yesterday for my brother but I have still no traces," said Lokman Hossain, a sobbing relatives. "No one can assure me about anything."
Sabuj, a passenger who jumped overboard when the ship began to sink, said he was swimming about 25 survivors ashore.
He said the captain of the ferry passengers ignored biplane claims to stay near the coast, as the storm began brewing.
"But he continued to steer the ship" out there in the water, said Sabuj, who uses a name.
The ferry was apparently overcrowded and loaded its deck were, said Mohammad Ali, Director of the Bangladesh inland water transport authority. Officials investigated whether the ship was overcrowded or had design flaws.
Ferries are a common means of transport in the Delta's most populous country, and the Meghna river has been the scene of recent accidents.
A ferry died at least 150 people in 2012 with about 200 people at night in the river capsized.
In 2003, a crowded ferry in waters capsized swollen flood at the confluence of the Padma-Meghna and Dakatia rivers near the capital Dhaka. Up to 400 people died.

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Rana Plaza disaster: call for UK retailers about compensation fund press

Aerial view of the construction site of Rana Plaza, after it in April 2013, crashed in the deaths of more than 1.100. Photo: Munir Uz Zaman/AFP/Getty Images

The TUC calls for the British Government ramp pressure on dealers who produce clothes in Bangladesh to help reduce a relief fund for the victims of the Rana Plaza, the factory.
Next week a high-level international meeting of the Organization for economic cooperation and development (OECD) in Paris, will discuss Rana Plaza after the disaster in which more than 1,100 people died and many others were injured.
More than a year after the factory building reduced, nearly 17 million $ (£10 m), been killed paid into a compensation fund supported by the International Labour Organisation well behind the $40 m, that which it is aimed, increase to support injured and the families of those.
Primark donated by far the largest share of these resources while other companies have a presence in Rana Plaza, including Chilean Britain and Italy Benetton admitted, managed to make every contribution.
Frances O'Grady, General Secretary of the TUC is the International Development Secretary, Justine greening, calls use the meeting to pressure written on British companies sourcing from Bangladesh, the funds to pay.
"Families that strongly, be affected by this disaster without the income or medical payments, which they deserve and need, for their lives to rebuild," she wrote.
The majority of the victims claims should be processed in the next few weeks. O'Grady, said it would be impossible to cover their payments over the first installment, if not more money.
The Government could not confirm whether greening or Alan Duncan, the Minister of State for the Department for international development (DfiD), which would attend OECD Paris.
However a spokesman for DfiD, the Summit to the underline the need for companies to use a "serious contribution" to the compensation fund.
"British companies have to stop and wonder if they do everything they can." They have the power to bring about profound and positive change, and we will continue every opportunity to encourage them, to this Act", he said.

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Copenhagen fashion summit: for an event based on solutions were there any?

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Copenhagen was the setting for the world's largest gathering on sustainable finance. Photograph: Alamy
More than 1,000 designers, producers, manufacturers, auditors, academics and NGOs involved in the fashion world gathered at Copenhagen Opera House yesterday to discuss sustainable fashion.
With the anniversary of Rana Plaza and Fashion Revolution Day as a hook for the event, the attendees certainly talked the good talk on sustainability but for a summit based on solutions, were there any? A summary of some of the days key sustainability lessons.
Vanessa Friedman, fashion editor of the Financial Times and soon to be fashion director of the New York Times spoke to Guardian Sustainable Business about the fast fashion versus luxury fashion. Of the latter she said:

Their production chain has always been more controlled and one of the premises of the modern luxury industry is based on vertical integration which really starts with the factory. So they have always had a much higher ability to trace their supply chain from the beginning and now increasingly they're buying the actual suppliers of the fabrics and the materials that go to the factories, so they're almost there from the ground up.
So in way you see that with Kering, the information they have about the goods they produce is probably significantly higher than the information that one of the mass suppliers has because they know every single link in the chain.

At least it is according to Alan Roberts, CEO of the Accord. "I would really like to say to you that don't believe what you read in the media about the antagonism if you like between the two organisations", Alan Roberts told me.
However, he did go on to make clear two major differences between the two initiatives. Firstly the Accord is legally binding, where the Alliance is not. Secondly the Accord is publishing its inspections in the name of transparency. "The alliance isn't", said Roberts, " but that's for them to decide that's not for me to criticise that's just their judgment call."

Photograph: Thierry Tronne/Corbis
Denmark's deputy prime minister Margrethe Vestager spoke of a proposal to include a standard sustainability mark next to the price on an item of clothing. This, she said, would give customers the chance to care about how, where and by whom their clothes were made and allow them to factor sustainability into purchasing decisions.

Photograph: Livia Firth
During her talk, Green Carpet Challenge founder Livia Firth removed her blazer and turned it inside out to mark Fashion Revolution Day, which called on people to wear their clothes inside out. Despite the loud applause she received, her plea to the audience to do the same wasn't met with any action. No labels seemed to be on show among any of the Copenhagen attendees.
The role of millennials came up at the conference, with the FT's Friedman seeing hope in the number of young people shopping online. Sites such as Pinterest and Instagram were offered as examples of media platforms which could encourage people to spend more time thinking browsing, comparing and thinking about the clothes they buy.
President and CEO of luxury fashion brand Bottega Veneta, Marco Bizzarri, called on government to create stricter rules for leather in the same way regulation is now in place for food. And Livia Firth talked about her collaboration with Gucci to create the first line of zero deforestation leather handbags. Incidentally, Ikea's head of sustainability Greg Priest recently told Guardian Sustainable Business that leather was next on the agenda for the company. Perhaps 2014 will be the year for sustainable leather.
Despite the emphasis on solutions at the summit, few concrete ideas shone through among the rousing speeches which pulled on familiar themes of making the world a better place and fashion as a great place to start. The sense was of a crowd of industry figures genuinely committed to and invested in sustainability, gathering together to reassure themselves of the good work going on but leaving with few new ideas. Unless, of course, all the work was going on behind the scenes at the Opera House.
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Qatar Government spends nearly 1,000 deaths among migrants

Of foreign workers in Qatar have strengthened construction before the football World Cup, 2022., photo: str/EPA
The major report commissioned by Qatar in the treatment of migrant workers produced more than 60 proposed reforms - and a revealing confirmation:, hundreds of migrants have died, many from unexplained sudden illness in the last two years, at a rate of more than one day.
The report of the international law firm DLA Piper demands changes the much criticized Kafala system that links workers to their employers. In addition, the Qatari government figure on the number of migrants who have died on its soil contains: 964 from Nepal, India and Bangladesh in 2012 and 2013. Total killed 246 of "sudden death" in the year 2012, according to the report by 35 died in falls and 28 suicide committed. The number of deaths as a result of work-related injuries was low.
But the real purpose of the 135-page report, in the course of the guardian revelations about appalling working conditions in Qatar, in order was given, recommendations for reform. The document was by human rights activists as a major step forward, welcomes in particular given the initial fears that through their work for Qatar-owned news network al-Jazeera DLA Piper independence be at risk can.
But also warned, that its recommendations must be followed through action, a clear timetable and were discouraged, that little on the report in the Wednesday announcement was referenced.
"The judgment of DLA Piper is clear. "The sponsorship system not for purpose is appropriate and the exit permit is not justified", said James Lynch of Amnesty International. "Instead of rejigging and renaming of the system, the Government should now real profound reform and a wider programme of measures combating commit access to the justice, health and private sector accountability for human rights violations against migrant workers."
The report, 62 recommendations on nine key areas:
The report recommends Qatar strengthens and enforces laws to prevent agencies from fees. It called the authorities still go further and ban employers with any foreign agencies in countries of origin, the fees. This would try to deal the big fees and overpromise impoverished workers, the middleman, so that they are in debt out of the way.
Also is required, an optimized system, abuse, improved perception of the methods of reporting an overview of licensing used remedies for abused workers by agencies and for unethical agencies on the black list.
Shortly before the discussion such as Qatar and its neighbors handle Golf migrant workers human rights groups have called for long the Kafala system, which eliminates employees in their employer links. Resistance of which met these calls, claiming that it is culturally embedded.
The DLA Piper report calls a "far-reaching and comprehensive review" of the kafala in regard to the elimination or phasing-out "certain aspects" of the system and prioritization of freedom of movement and the rights of workers.
It is recommended that controversial exit visa system be fundamentally reformed to allow migrant workers leave the country right unless "compelling evidence" to the contrary. In the course of time it should be abolished completely.
Existing laws prohibit employers from seizing passports, currently largely ignored, enforced much better with generating companies that are on the black list.
Workers welfare standards, for example in February by the Qatar 2022 World Cup Organizer, should be mandatory in all contracts, would be issued by authorities, a move that immediately raised the threshold on many major infrastructure projects.
Crucially, recommends the report that lead responsible, that all their Web of subcontractors, where abuse is far spread contractor for this. It calls for better monitoring of employee contracts and these contracts translation in their mother tongue. Like many of the recommendations by DLA Piper falls the enforcement will and resource.
The report calls for assessing, on the introduction of a minimum wage and for employers, the wages are disqualified just in time to, of which a sponsor not pay. Qatar recently a new system for the automatic payment of wages announced, electronically, another recommendation in the report.
DLA Piper strongly recommends the importance for health and safety of the Qatari authorities in the midst of his dash builds to show a new nation.
It calls for contractor injury standards used on the black list and the introduction of stronger criminal penalties, as well as joint and several liability for contractors (often large Western companies) and their subcontractors.
In addition to practical measures such as the introduction of electronic ID cards and health and safety education she recommends a series of measures to set to die as many workers on construction sites.
DLA Piper "recommends" the regular collection and release of statistics on work related injuries and deaths, every six months will be published anonymously.
Given the seemingly abnormal heart attacks it calls an independent study in sudden cardiac arrest in the next three years and a proper investigation for unexpected or sudden deaths.
Recommendations include a compulsory induction for new employees, a worker welfare officer on each side, better monitoring and inspection, and better appeal.
Qatar has claimed, that is the number and frequency of checks has increased, but DLA Piper says more needs to done to so that the Labour Inspectorate Department with "Sufficient coverage and strict" can perform their task. It wants better training for inspectors, more competence, more interpreters for employee interviews and more transparency.
As an "interim injunction", the law firm says recently announced standards on worker welfare for the Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee should apply to all public contracts. It calls for more transparency and says the Dole proposals, so that the right to freedom of Association and representation "should publish foreign workers". Where Qatar sees reasons for restricting these rights, he should say why.
DLA Piper recommends the abolition of fees for complainants, better access to the online and physical resources from the Labour Ministry, interim payments and an accelerated procedure for certain categories of complaint.
•, Has been changed in this article on 28 may 2014, the subheading to correct, which gave an incorrect total for the number of migrants, who died of cardiac arrest, waterfalls and suicides. A line has been added to the article to say that the report found that the number of deaths in connection with work-related injuries was low.

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Bangladesh garment workers still vulnerable a year after Rana Plaza

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AppId is over the quota

Bangladeshi activists and relatives of Rana Plaza victims mark first anniversary of disaster. Photograph: Munir Uz Zaman/AFP/Getty Images
Fewer than 300 of Bangladesh's 5,000 clothing factories have allowed in trade unions, as workers' rights remain under pressure a year on from the Rana Plaza building collapse in which more than 1,100 people were killed.
Amirul Haque Amin, president of the country's National Garment Workers' Federation, said his union had doubled the number of factories where it operated during the past 12 months to 42, while the total number of factories with any union representation had more than doubled to about 237. However, many workers were still vulnerable to exploitation despite unprecedented international efforts in the wake of one of the world's biggest industrial disasters.
"I think it is really hard to say that an ethical factory exists in Bangladesh at present. As a trade union we cannot say that. We can simply say that factories are moving towards better conditions," said Amin, who took part in protests on Oxford Street in London on Thursday to mark the anniversary of the Rana Plaza disaster and put pressure on companies that have yet to pay into a compensation fund for victims.
His comments tally with a report by New York University's Centre for Business and Human Rights which says: "The government of Bangladesh lacks the resources, administrative capacity, and often the will to protect workers in garment factories. The labour law remains weak and enforcement weaker still. Local industry enjoys outsized influence in the country's politics, which impedes the establishment and enforcement of rigorous regulation." Authors Sarah Labowitz and Dorothée Baumann-Pauly say "major corruption challenges" mean that foreign governments are shying away from providing the finance needed to improve Bangladesh's infrastructure, such as a weak power network which exacerbates the risk of factory fires.
Amin said that even with a 77% increase in Bangladesh's minimum wage last year, workers were struggling to survive on 5,300 taka (£41) a month, while many factories still required improvements to bring them up to basic safety standards.
"If multinational brands really want to improve the life of the workers then they can take the initiative. If representatives of the buyers, the factories and the workers sit down together they can work out a better price and some kind of mechanism so workers can get the benefit," Amin said.
Further evidence has emerged in an Italian documentary of poor working conditions in Bangladeshi factories. The Presa Diretta programme filmed factories working for Benetton's Olimpias sourcing division using young workers and continuing unsafe working practices months after more than 1,100 workers were killed and 2,000 injured at Rana Plaza. Benetton is one of a number of retailers linked to Rana Plaza that have yet to pay into an international compensation fund backed by the UN's International Labour Organisation.
The documentary makers filmed locked factory gates at two facilities where they saw Olimpias branded clothing being made. One factory owner admitted that employees could start work as young as 13 and the other said he used workers aged 15 or 16. A production manager for Olimpias was secretly filmed defending the employment of children in its factories, saying: "At least they are not on the streets."
The Olimpias representatives admitted that they continued to make orders despite knowing that few factories in the country had external fire escapes, seen as a basic safety requirement by most experts. One said: "None of the buildings here have outside fire exits. It's not my fault."
Benetton said that comments by its employees and factory owners were "taken completely out of context and with the objective of constructing a specifically negative message about us".
Both factories filmed by Presa Diretta were on the list of facilities supplying retailers that have signed up to a legally-binding factory safety deal, which included inspections. Benetton had signed up to the deal and admitted it had added the factories to the list, as it was legally obliged to do. It also said it had commissioned independent audits of them.
"We will move to immediately stop working with them if we find that they are not in compliance with our code of conduct," a spokesman for the company said.
However, he added that Benetton did not recognise the facilities filmed in the documentary.

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Ziauddin Mahmood obituary

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AppId is over the quota
My father, Ziauddin Mahmood, who has died of motor neurone disease aged 73, was a political activist, journalist, teacher and barrister who challenged social injustice.
He was born in Barisal, in the Bay of Bengal, then under British rule, to ABM Mazharul Huq, who became a judge in the East Pakistan high court, and his wife, Meherunessa Khatun. Growing up in Dhaka, Zia witnessed the turbulent political and social changes that beset the new state of Pakistan. In East Pakistan demands for the Bengali language to have equal status with Urdu grew into a widespread protest movement. Zia became fiercely political at a young age after demonstrating students were killed by Pakistani police in 1952.
As a student, Zia rallied his peers against West Pakistan's suppression of East Pakistan and led the Dhaka University Students' Union in 1961, at a time when Pakistan's president, General Ayub Khan, ruled the country by martial law. The same year, Zia drew national attention when he challenged the foreign minister, Manzur Qadir, following a speech at the university.
Zia's activism and Marxist beliefs led the Pakistani authorities to issue a warrant for his arrest. He went underground, but was discovered and imprisoned in Dhaka central jail, where a fellow prisoner was Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the future prime minister of independent Bangladesh. On his eventual release, Zia qualified as a lawyer, worked as a journalist and taught at Notre Dame College in Dhaka.
In 1964, under threat of further imprisonment, Zia left Dhaka for London. He enrolled at Middle Temple and qualified as a barrister. He later gained a master of laws from King's College London. He fought for the cause of the Bengali people of East Pakistan and wrote for the London-based publication Ganojudda (People's War) during the liberation war of Bangladesh. During this time Zia met his wife, Maya Alva, an Indian student of history at Soas, who shared his political views.
Zia was active in the anti-Vietnam war movement and was a founder member of the original Palestine Solidarity Campaign. He lectured in law and economics in various London schools, and volunteered as a community law centre adviser.
In later years, contemporaries asked Zia to join mainstream Bangladeshi politics but he declined, wanting only stability for his family. He continued to teach and practise law, taking up pro bono legal cases, including one involving whistleblowers and missing European Union funds at a London local authority.
Zia is survived by Maya, and by his son, Firdaus, and me.

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Bangladeshi Bauern fing in Zeile über $600.000 GM Aubergine Testversion

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Grocers in Jamalpur, Bangladesh, have been selling Bt brinjals in the market without the GM label. Photograph: Saad Hammadi
Farmers growing a landmark genetically modified food crop in Bangladesh – Bt brinjal, or aubergine – have found themselves at the centre of a power struggle between the government and activists trying to prevent the technology getting a hold in the region.
The growers say they have been subjected to intimidation and misinformation about the safety of their produce by anti-GM campaigners. But in an effort to get the crop out to farmers quickly, the Bangladeshi government agency behind the project appears not to have followed some stipulations of its license to release the crops.
The $600,000 (£357,920) pilot scheme – which is owned and run by a Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (Bari) with support from USAid and Cornell University – is a pivotal moment for GM technology in south Asia.
Bt brinjal is southeast Asia's first GM food crop and has been brought to market after India's environment ministry imposed a moratorium on the release of a similar crop in 2010 pending further scientific scrutiny. Last May, a court in the Philippines also restricted the release of the crop citing lack of 'scientific certainty' on health and ecological safety.
"Activists and many others are fighting over these farmers to try to get them to say what is most convenient to their viewpoint," said Mark Lynas, communications adviser to the Bt brinjal project.
"The powerful anti-GMO lobby knows that if Bangladeshi farmers successfully adopt this new crop, other GMO crops in the pipeline such as golden rice (also being developed in Bangladesh) will be advantaged and their cause of banning the technology permanently will be harmed," he wrote in a blog about the project.
The country's agriculture minister Matia Chowdhury has even suggested that anti-GM activists have received kick-backs from pesticide companies that stand to lose out if the crop is adopted more widely – although she provided no evidence for the claim.
The new crop – which so far has had mixed cultivation success in the pilot farms – is a domestic variety of aubergine or egg-plant (locally called brinjal) which has been genetically modified with a gene from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis

– hence Bt brinjal. Mansur Sarker is the only Bt brinjal grower in Gazipur who has had a high yield. But he has to face the ire of people who are against the GM crop. Photograph: Saad Hammadi
The gene makes a protein that is deadly to a voracious and highly costly pest, a fruit and shoot boring caterpillar, but is harmless to humans and other animals. One big advantage, say its backers, is that farmers will not have to spray their fields with pesticide every two to three days – at a cost of between £76 and £380 per year depending on the extent of infestation. Less spraying also means environmental and health benefits with less collateral damage to wild insects and less pesticide residue on the fruit sold at market.
In granting license for the crop to farmers, the Bangladesh ministry of environment stipulated that Bari must satisfy technical demands to ensure that test fields were suitable and to protect local varieties and wild plants from receiving pollen from the GM plants.
One stipulation was that prior to release of the crops, the institute must, "formulate field production planning, field biosafety management planning ... safety measures such as isolation distance management planning, border row management planning, techniques for protection of local and indigenous variety and wild plants." But Bari's director Rafiqul Islam Mondal said that the institute did not check the fields before planting the crops. "We did not visit the fields ourselves," he said.
Another stipulation from the ministry was that Bt brinjal sold in market should be labelled as GM. However, in Jamalpur region the produce was sold without such labelling.
Mondal said grocers do not label any of the vegetables. "We expressed our reservation to the ministry when this [gazette] was issued," he said.
The backlash against the crop from anti-GM activists has been vehement with unsubstantiated claims that it may itself be harmful to human health and could lead to cancellation of exports of conventional brinjal crops to the EU.
Of the seven farmers the Guardian visited, four had received visits at their farms from people who claimed what they were growing was dangerous to people's health and trying convince them to cease their involvement. One of those recounted a similar experience at a market where his produce was denounced as unsafe by people opposed to GM technology.

"It will pose a great danger to the farmers and consumers who will not know what they are producing and what they are eating," wrote Farida Akhter, a green activist and founder of Naya Krishi Andolan (New Agricultural Movement) in an op-ed in Dhaka Tribune shortly after the crop was approved for small-scale growing by the government. "Brinjal is a very common vegetable consumed by majority of the population. So the risks are very high for the people in Bangladesh and even to the consumers in neighbouring India and those in Europe and Middle East."

In Gazipur, farmer Abul Baten's Bt brinjal crop died prematurely, incurring him a huge loss. His farms grow vegetables that are exported abroad. Photograph: Saad Hammadi
There is no evidence that the crop causes any health problems in people, but Akhter says longer-term problems can't be ruled out. She accuses the government of exploiting the farmers' lack of understanding about the technology and said the farmers have only grown the crops because the government gave them free saplings. "Farmers are not even aware of the concerns related to the GM crop," she said.
The 20 farms in four regions of the country have become the focus of intense interest. Farmers have received frequent visits and inquiries from green activists, researchers and journalists. "They come, take photographs of the field and leave but we don't know what they are doing with it," said Babul Khan, a Bt brinjal farmer in Jamalpur.
Bari has tried to prevent farmers from speaking about their crops. "I am scared to even talk to anyone about my field. I don't know what would put me into trouble," said Haidul Islam, 44, in Gazipur. Some of the farmers have found it difficult to sell their produce at market because of rumours that the fruit are dangerous to eat.
Controversy about the project reached a new peak last month when two local newspaper articles – in the New Age and Financial Express – claimed that the crops had been a failure.
A third article, in the Dhaka Tribune, claimed that Helena Paul – which it described as a "London-based importer of vegetables" – had written to the government in December to "warn that the European Union would stop vegetable imports if any such genetically-modified eggplant is detected in a consignment." Paul is in fact an anti-GM activist who had written to the government in her capacity as director of the campaign group GM freeze.
The Bt brinjal project team reacted angrily to the suggestion that the technology was not working. They visited one of the farmers quoted in the Financial Express article and claim that he said two men had tried to coerce him into saying his crop had failed.

Farmer Mojibur Rahmanm, in Gazipur, shows a Bt Brinjal plants which are giving yield but are starting to die out. Photograph: Saad Hammadi
The Guardian has visited or spoken to all but one of the 20 farmers growing the Bt brinjal crop and established that it has so far had mixed results. While it appears to have successfully repelled the fruit and shoot borer pest as expected, some of the fields have succumbed to other ailments including bacterial wilt and drought. Of the 19 farmers, nine said they had had problems with the crop, with a failure rate of four out of five farms in Gazipur, the region closest to Dhaka.
Visits to the two farms in Jamalpur, over 124 miles north of the Bangladeshi capital, show the contrast in results. The region is a patchwork of meadows and green fields where the locals are largely farmers growing a variety of crops that are mostly trucked to the capital for sale.
Ratan Miah's farm has yielded 17 maunds (traditional baskets) of the vegetable since the beginning of May – and he says the crops sold well at market. The other farm in the region, owned by Babul Khan, has yielded only three maunds and more than half of his crops have died.
Akhter says that Bari should have had closer oversight over which farms were selected to grow the crops, how they were doing it and whether they were suitable.
Mondal said the "selection of the fields were wrong." Most of the test fields had cultivated conventional brinjals previously and so they contained pathogens of bacterial wilt and fungus left over from those conventional crops, he said.
But Frank Shotkoski, manager of the Agricultural Biotechnology Support Project II programme at Cornell, said that the problems with bacterial wilt was largely unavoidable. "We and the farmers were well aware of the fact that the fields were being planted during the wet season when bacterial wilt is more prevalent … There is little that can be done to prevent or control the pathogen when conditions are conducive for infection."
What is the crop?
The crop is a local variety of brinjal (aubergine or eggplant) that has been genetically modified to include a gene from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis
. This gene produces the toxin cry1Ac that kills fruit and shoot boring pest when it ingests the plant. Because the plant carries it own 'pesticide' the caterpillar does not need to be controlled by repeated rounds of pesticide spraying. The toxin is harmless to humans and other animals.
Who owns the crops?
The Bt gene was developed by the Maharashtra Hybrid Seed Company, the Indian partner of the US seed giant Monsanto and later donated to the public sector partners in India, Bangladesh and Philippines. Bt brinjal was developed by the government-operated Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute with technical assistance from Cornell University in the US and funding from USAid. Monsanto still owns the technology but has granted a royalty-free, not-for-profit license to BARI to test, produce and distribute the plants other than by sale. Farmers will be encouraged to save seeds and use them in future.
• This article was corrected on 9th June 2014. It originally stated that Monsanto had no ownership rights over the technology. That has now been corrected.

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Five memorable sets healthcare

Health campaigns to be effective not high-tech. Photo: Graeme Robertson
It is easy to successful public health campaigns take for granted. Once behavior has become a habit, or a vaccination programme is manufactured, it is present difficult to live without them. But the defeat of disease and the end of the harmful conduct coordinated team work and ideas that work.
Here, some of the best public-health campaigns in the global South are recommended by our community for the impact had to stop preventable diseases.
A poster with a HIV-awareness message for young people in Zambia. Source: Uttara Sumesh Kumar
Each other act responsibly together was a campaign to raise awareness (heart) and reduces the spread of human immunodeficiency virus in Zambia. It focuses on young people, news "abstain or a condom use, everytime you have sex" TV and radio were with their input and disseminated through posters, print,.
In 2009 of a follow-up campaign, One Love, Kwasila!, used multimedia to disseminate messages about how the virus can spread it through multiple and concurrent sex partners. A TV series called Club risky business featured three men, exchanging stories about their relationships in a bar. A question was asked at the end of each episode for the audience to answer via SMS. More than 17,000 texts went and the campaign sent messages, targeted HIV awareness these numbers.
Recommended by Uttara Sumesh Kumar, program senior officer, John Hopkins University Center for communication programs.
In the 1980s, a community health staff teaches village women about drinking solution. Source: Brac
In the 1980s, specially trained female health workers visited 13 million households in the country and drinking solution (local) taught women personally at home with salt and sugar to make. Due to this campaign, Bangladesh is now the highest use of place in the world (over 80%).
Recommended by Ahmed Mushtaque Raza Chowdhury, Deputy Chairman and interim executive Director, Brac.
Poster for a HIV awareness campaign for people with disabilities. Source: World Vision India
Not directly in the sights take all too often disabled people on the benefits of public health campaigns such as they. In the case of HIV / AIDS it is often assumed that it does not apply to people with disabilities. In 2009, World Vision India ran a campaign to raise awareness of HIV and AIDS for people with disabilities. They developed customized programs and awareness for the disease in persons with disabilities increased significantly. An important part of her campaign wanted to work with physicians and caregivers, to change settings, and highlight the prevalence of the disease.
Stevie Kent, senior program manager, sense international.
A poster advertising of a maternal health-text-message campaign in Tanzania. Source: mHealth Tanzania public private partnership
Wazazi Nipendeni is one of the largest mobile health projects in Africa until today. Pregnant women log on to free SMS messages with health advice at the same time their stage of pregnancy, such as when on prenatal care and malaria medications take to get. A mobile phone has households even in the poorest part of society a third Tanzanian, a targeted communication channel to offer pregnant women in rural areas with little access to conventional media. The campaign has reached more than 300,000 women.
Recommended by Dr. Sion Williams, doctor on the Beregi mission hospital, Morogoro, Tanzania.
Poster for the first vaccination week in America in June 2003. source: who
After an outbreak of measles in Venezeula and Colombia 2002 health ministers in the Andean countries (Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezeula and Colombia) coordinates planned to prevent future outbreaks. The first vaccination week in the Americas was in 2003 and since then more than 465 million people of all ages have vaccinated against diseases such as measles, rubella, yellow fever, diphtheria, tetanus, polio, and influenza. The media campaigns for the week include endorsements from popular Latin American celebrities.
Recommended by Leticia Linn, WHO Regional Office for America.
Read more stories like this:
• Seven ways to stop preventable children
• India is polio-free: best Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria to learn?
• Innovations for disease control
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Establishment of trade unions in Bangladesh will prevent that a further Rana Plaza

A Bangladeshi of mourner and relatives of the victims of the Rana Plaza building collapse. Photo: Munir uz Zaman/AFP/Getty Images
It is now just over a year since the collapse of the Rana Plaza-factory complex in Dhaka, Bangladesh, 1,138 people killed and around 2,500 others injured. Led uni work global international trade unions and IndustriALL with trade unions such as the national garment workers Federation (NGWF) of the agreement on fire and building safety in Bangladesh to develop.
Multinational companies such as Inditex (owns the Zara) were put under enormous pressure to sign the agreement. Some 160 companies registered and the agreement now includes 1,500 factories and has completed its first round of tests. This is a serious piece of legislation, which has never before been in the fashion industry. It is a legally binding five-year plan, obliged to announce what factories, companies they use.
Also in the implementation of the agreement, there is still a long way to go before Bangladesh garment industry are fully protected in accordance with international standards and to workers.
Activists agree that the key to the progress of freedom of Association and organising the dress workers. President of the NGWF Amirul Haque Amin is insistent that "without organising will not be changed in terms of ready made garment (RMG)". Christy Hoffman, Deputy Secretary General of which global Union UNI agrees: "there is no such thing as a truly safe factory without informed and committed workers in the factory with an independent voice to force problems and solutions."
The population of Bangladesh is about 164 million, to work, 4 million in the clothing industry. A new report (PDF) of the International Labour Office says: "96 new unions in the RMG sector in the year 2013, 222, with 34 federations that bring the total number of trade unions in the sector have been registered".
This increase of registrations occurred, because an easing in restrictions and shows continue to organize mood among the workers. However, despite a large number of trade unions in the area, too few workers are members, so that they are vulnerable to abuse in the workplace and unsafe conditions. Even a larger Union as the NGWF is large obstacles faced: "to a Union with the labour Department, you need to register one-third of the workforce, register" said Amirul Haque. "It is very difficult because first of all in a workplace of 10,000 people organize 3,000 workers must log on." Setting of workers must be a largely secret process as trade unionists face harassment and violence is raised also remain.
Amirul Haque says that international unions a role in two long-term capacity building and expanding into new regions can play. Hoffman says this as one of the main objectives of the Convention: "the agreement foresees inspections recorded and educated are, both in the security practices and the recovery process of the workers." Health and safety committees will be working factories in accord. Workers hung on the right to refuse unsafe activities, and this right to a robust appeal mechanism."
Hoffman identified one crucial difference between the accord and the rival deal, the Alliance for Bangladesh worker safety, which is led by Walmart and gap: "employees are the heart of every element of a chord - its negotiation, governance, implementation and enforcement. In a departure from the past, and in contrast to the Alliance, the accord is not a "brand only" or also "multi stakeholder"-initiative. The agreement reflects (globally and locally). a binding agreement between trademark and trade unions"
Ian Spaulding, senior advisor of the Alliance explained by e-Mail which will work with local trade unions in Bangladesh and the trade union representatives on the alliances Board of advisors and subcommittees are. Yet the NATO leadership is dominated by earnings from companies such as Wal-Mart and it can not be argued that it made workers.
John Hilary is the Managing Director of want, which supports the agreement was on. Hilary is clear that ensuring the trade unions in the global South to continue, their work is vital and indicates that this is 'Solidarity in action' not charity. "Together with campaigns to challenge, the brands and retailers, that is to control the global supply chains, strength the best hope save local Union long-term improvements for garment workers in Bangladesh."
Worked on want recycling for aid and international development have in addition to textile (morning) capacity building in Bangladesh in the last decade. You have a deal function only for the UIA Charitable Foundation (the nonprofit wing of the Union insurance company UIA insurance) gave to three years funding for leadership training specifically for female garment workers in Bangladesh.
Amazingly had Rana Plaza has been tested twice (by Primark) and both times sure declared. Only unionized garment supports employees themselves through global unions and backed up by legislation, to ensure correct, that Rana Plaza must never happen again.
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9 reasons why gender matters when improving global nutrition

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AppId is over the quota
Studies have shown that more empowered women have better nourished children. Photograph: Martin Godwin
Women are crucial: We simply cannot end malnutrition if we don't invest in women, and not just because of their hugely important role as mothers. Women are critical to food and nutrition security due to the enormously important and myriad roles they play in agriculture, in their communities as workers and as producers.
Recognise inequality: Of course we have to recognise that there are multiple competing demands on women, especially the poorest. What's needed is a supportive system to allow women to make the choices that work best for them and their families. Sometimes this goes to the heart of complex and unequal power relationships in the family and the social and economic status of women in the poorest communities.
Breastfeeding powers the next generation: As the mother goes, so goes the child. Improving rates of exclusive breastfeeding is one of the best, most cost-effective solutions to ensure child survival and set the foundation for lifelong health. Successful breastfeeding promotion relies on tapping into 'influencers' in a woman's life: doctors, mothers-in-law, celebrities or media. It is important for breastfeeding to be promoted as the norm.
Covert breastmilk substitute promotion happens everywhere: An egregious tactic used to market infant formula is using medical professionals, especially pediatricians and nurses, to 'prescribe' or push formula onto mothers. I had it just happen to me when I gave birth to my second child here in the US a month ago. I was encouraged by doctors and nurses to 'supplement' my breastfeeding with formula on my baby's second day of life. Medical professionals often don't realise that their well-meaning advice can undermine a woman's confidence to breastfeed and serve as a tacit endorsement of infant formula.
Focusing exclusively on mothers is unfair, but gender roles have significance: Women are, more often than not, the primary caregiver in homes, and have a great deal of responsibility in defining their children's eating patterns. But it would be unfair to stop there and to ignore the broader power and decision-making dynamics that govern and influence food security and livelihoods of families and communities.
Empowered women leads to less hunger: The International Food Policy Research Institute published a study that found that as much as half of the reduction in hunger between 1970 and 1995 could be attributed to improvements in women's societal status. Progress in women's education access (which explained 45% of gains in food security) was nearly as significant as increased food availability (26%) and health advances (19%) put together.
Men have a part to play in improving nutrition: Educating men to buy the right kind of food, doing home gardening, rearing cows, poultry farming, using safe water, building sanitary latrines and hygiene is as important as educating women.
Child marriage affects nutrition: Despite huge progress in Bangladesh, more than half of the girls are getting married before 18. When mothers are babies, how do we expect babies to care for their own babies? To stop child marriage, we need to create safer environment and provide social and economic security to young girls in this society. Political commitment is critical.
Don't just focus on women and girls: Men and boys have a huge role to play and I'm afraid that many organisations ignore them in discussions. One very innovative strategy I've seen is the use of community theatre in Zambia and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa. The Food and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network has used their research to develop a script used by a travelling theatre company to emphasise the importance of valuing women and girls in agriculture, and in communities overall. It's a fun way for elders and men to realise all of the important roles that women play.
Read the rest of the advice shared on the Q&A
here.
Read more stories like this:
• Is $17.5bn incentive enough for more mothers to breastfeed?
• 2014: the year we defeat child hunger?
• The economic rationale for investing in undernutrition
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Bangladesh ferry capsizes with 200 passengers on board

File photo of the crowded passenger boats in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in the run-up to the Eid al-Adha. The ferry MV Miraj-4 lifted on the way from Dhaka to Shariatpur. Photo: Andrew Biraj/Reuters
A Bangladeshi ferry with some 200 passengers has capsized in a river near Dhaka, police reported that at least six bodies had made well again, and a rescue ship on the way to the site.
Lifted the MV-Miraj-4 ferries in the stormy weather in the Meghna river near Rasulpur in the Munsiganj district, 27km (16 miles) from the capital on Thursday. The accident occurred at around 3:30 local time. The ferry had direction Shariatpur from Dhaka.
"We are at the point with rescue team, heading," said Saiful Hassan Badal, Deputy Commissioner Munsiganj District said. He said the Navy and Coast Guard sent rescue teams and had a ship sent from Dhaka.
Six bodies have so far recovered have been including a child after Oliur Rahman, a police officer at the scene.

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