International Justice Mission Deutschland e.V.

The membership of IJM Germany in the Textile Partnership started in January 2021. Since then we have had various internal and external discussions on how we can increase the focus of our work in the textile sector. To date, some efforts of IJM’s dialogue with textile sector players is in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, and there we focus on creating or leveraging forums for dialogue with individual global brands around recruitment concerns bordering on bonded labour and labour trafficking in subsectors like spinning mills and others. We hope that the theme of responsible recruitment can bring attention on an ecosystem-based solution that goes beyond the regular and local worksite concerns to address sourcing of marginalised and weaker sections and their vulnerabilities to deception and fraud. During to the Covid-19, the pandemic saw reported cases of labor exploitation, trafficking and forced labor emerging in Tamil Nadu’s spinning mills and subsectors. However, strict prohibition of travels and lockdown requirements by offices and government have halted efforts of further dialogue efforts.

In Germany our advocacy work largely focused on raising awareness on the need for a supply chain law In Germany. Here we used i.a. IJMs work as in the textile sector in Tamil Nadu as a reference to raise awareness on how textile companies from Germany profit from the exploitation of workers in the Global South. Our focus here was on lobbying for more responsibility for the working and safety conditions in e.g. spinning mills in Tamil Nadu, but also the importance to prevent child and forced labor.

In India our efforts for collaborative engagment and dialogue allowed our partners and collaborators to participate in speaker and moderator roles (from Business, Law enforcement and CSO domains) in the  DELTA8.7 Country Policy Workshop India – Textile Sector – to arrive at recommendations for the sector in Tamil nadu, organised by the UN University.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic and large scale loss of lives in India,  our efforts has been extremely curtailed – especially in the recent months. With the current anticipation of a 3rd wave  and aggressive vaccination drive, efforts in this area for the next three months will still remain uncertain. However for the future we do wish to continue our focus on raising awareness on

• Recruitment concerns in textile subsectors as well as measures of responsible recruitment;
• Explore other aveneus that address protection of the vulnerable and migrant workers
• Legal framework on Bonded labour and Human Trafficking.

In Germany we wish to continue raising awareness on the need for a supply chain law on the EU level and monitor the implementation of the German supply chain law, which includes further discussions with politicians on e.g. how textile companies from Germany can – despite the German supply law – still profit from the exploitation of workers in Tamil Nadu.