Labour standards

NGOs have played a key role in development since the end of World War II, and more so since the 1970s. Like elsewhere in the world, the state and the market catered to the different needs of people in Pakistan. With the arrival of foreign funding, NGOs emerged as a channel for dispersing resources to […]

Women workers across Asia and throughout the world continue to face long hours, low wages and discrimination when they try to organise into unions within garment and footwear factories. Millions of young women are making products for companies Nike and Adidas. Over the past decade, under considerable public pressure, these companies have developed standards on […]

Fair Trade and organic certification production of coffee and other commodities is popularly seen as beneficial to producers in many ways. However, gender analysis of Fair Trade is important for assessing the gains and losses for women and men specifically, which result from compliance with globally set codes of conduct. This article presents a case […]

Global Value Chains (GVCs) serve as significant sources of employment for developing countries, with various impacts upon their labour markets and workers. While participation in GVCs is important for economic upgrading, there is concern about a ‘race to the bottom’ happening in global competition. This paper attempts to understand how economic upgrading and decent working […]

In addition to raising the living standards of loved ones back home, remittances sent by men and women migrants can transform the way spouses, children, and communities left behind interact within the household, including changing culturally accepted roles and opportunities for men, women, boys, and girls. For women senders of remittances, ‘rising’ to become a […]

This article reports on an ex-ante impact study in the Indo-Gangetic Plains of South Asia. The study, guided by a livelihoods approach, developed a spatial-mapping methodology based on secondary data for 18 variables which served as indicators of the five livelihood classes of assets (natural, physical, financial, social, and human). The overall livelihood-asset index showed […]

Since 1996, CTA-ZM, a local Brazilian NGO, has been developing better ways to understand its work on pro-poor institutional transformation in Minas Gerais. It operates within a ‘messy partnership’ which includes farmer trade unions, associations, social movements, and academic institutions. The combined challenge of institutional transformation and messy partnerships has made it clear that mainstream […]