Accountability for child Labour: Navigating obstacles for a Fair Trade producer organisation’s journey to Fair Trade certification
研究孟加拉国一家生产世界遗产产品的公平贸易组织因童工问题十余年未获认证，揭示现有社会审计机制忽视边缘群体社会经济文化差异，无法有效问责。
This study investigates accountability for child labour, navigating obstacles in a Fair Trade producer organisation’s journey to Fair Trade certification and audits. The power asymmetries between the Global North and South, and the consequent limits on existing accountability mechanisms in global supply chains, have attracted broader research attention. Less is known about how marginalised groups’ specificities and socio-cultural diversities can be recognised in an accountability mechanism for sensitive human rights issues like child labour. Our study highlights such phenomena, focusing on a Fair Trade producer organisation in Bangladesh that produces a world heritage product – Muslin Jamdani. This organisation has been struggling to secure full certification from a Global North Fair Trade body for more than a decade due to the presence of child labour. Drawing on Young’s (2011) lens of recognising differences, we conducted this single embedded case study to reveal the limits of a Fair Trade certification and related social audit mechanisms that frame children’s rights in an assimilationist manner. Our findings highlight how social auditing fails to address the diverse economic, social, and cultural challenges faced by marginalised communities. In doing so, our findings shed light on the problematic aspects of applying the assimilationist no child labour policy pursued by a Global North based transnational Fair Trade governing body. Such findings also offer key insights into challenges of recognising group differences in creating transparency and accountability on the ground in the context of a Global South country.