As of today, the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 has started. An event that has brought strong criticism, firstly because of allegations of bribery and corruption in the selection process, additionally because of the treatment of foreign workers involved in preparation for the World Cup. In the series “Qatar: beyond the football” of The Guardian, you can dig into twelve years of reporting on the issues around the Qatar World Cup. According to Amnesty International, on sites both connected and unconnected to the World Cup, migrant workers (which make up more than 90% of Qatar’s population) have encountered, among other things, “unbearable and dangerous working and living conditions, with thousands of workers’ deaths remaining unexplained”. So, didn’t anyone try to stop this?

As a Global Law Professor at KU Leuven Yvonne Erkens has taught the class Business and human rights from a labour law perspective. As part of their final assignment, the students participating in that course have written a blog about how companies in the Database of Business Ethics - chosen randomly - aim to comply with fundamental labour rights according to their (supplier) codes of conduct. The three best blogs are now published on our site. The third blog can be found below.

In a worrying trend, the Global Rights Index of the International Trade Union Center (ITUC) shows that the percentage of countries in violation of the right to collective bargaining has increased from 63% in 2014 to 79% in 2022. Serious restrictions regarding collective bargaining were recorded in 117 countries. The ITUC analysed nine-year data trends to report on the status regarding workers’ rights and found restrictions in all regions of the world, in both public and private sectors. 

What does the right to collective bargaining entail? 

As a Global Law Professor at KU Leuven Yvonne Erkens has taught the class Business and human rights from a labour law perspective. As part of their final assignment, the students participating in that course have written a blog about how companies in the Database of Business Ethics - chosen randomly - aim to comply with fundamental labour rights according to their (supplier) codes of conduct. In the upcoming weeks, the three best blogs will be published on our site. The second blog can be found below.

“One out of five clothes made out of cotton is tainted by forced labour from the Uyghur Region,” states End Uyghur Forced Labour. Thousands of people are corralled into forced labour, causing outrage and calls for international support against this. Beijing continues to deny the occurrence of forced labour. Chinese sources point out “the willingness to work and the abilities of the poor are ‘insufficient’, and together with their inner motivation must be ‘stimulated’.” This emphasises the probability of forced labour in this region. As this shows the urgency of reducing forced labour among these people, it also becomes important to know how forced labour is defined. Let’s have a closer look at forced labour as an International Labour Standard.

As a Global Law Professor at KU Leuven Yvonne Erkens has taught the class Business and human rights from a labour law perspective. As part of their final assignment, the students participating in that course have written a blog about how companies in the Database of Business Ethics - chosen randomly - aim to comply with fundamental labour rights according to their (supplier) codes of conduct. In the upcoming weeks, the three best blogs will be published on our site. The first blog can be found below. 

For the first time in twenty years, the number of children as victims of child labour raises. The ILO estimates that 160 million children are working in unethical conditions, and many more are at risk, especially due to the impact of COVID-19.

What is considered child labour? Let’s have a closer look at the definition.

The Database of Business Ethics consists of hundreds of codes, in which companies state how they want to enforce rules to which labour practices at work can be evaluated. Each code is different, for each company has a different work environment. However, they more or less live up to the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, consisting of eight ILO-conventions on the core labour standards. In this blog post, a brief overview of the origin of these core labour standards is presented.

Now that autumn is there, a new sweater seems to be needed in every wardrobe. A simple Google search will lead you to thousands of websites, but Shein seems to be popping up very often. Shein is an online fashion company founded in 2012 and according to Euromonitor, one of the internet's largest fashion stores. In competing with other companies, it is well known for its social media strategies and cheap prices. But how fair are these cheap prices?

It has taken several years to build the database you can now find on the website of The Database of Business Ethics. And still, this database is an ongoing project: we continue to work on collecting codes from all over the world and from all kinds of enterprises. Currently, Dr. Erkens, Kate Verhoeff and Emma Snel are in charge of managing, updating and expanding this database. Thanks to a grant from the KNAW, blog posts about the database will be written every week. In these posts, aspects of the research and the data collection will be explained. 

Curious about Dr. Erkens, Kate Verhoeff and Emma Snel? Let’s introduce them!

Have you ever bought shoes from Adidas? If so, have you ever wondered where these shoes came from and who made them?

Products made by a company like Adidas have traveled a long way. People and companies  all around the world have put in effort gathering materials, putting them all together, controlling logistics and so on in order to accomplish the final product. Over the past 30 years, companies  started to account for the human rights of the workers in their global supply chains. Stockholders and societal debates have put moral pressure on companies to document their ethical values and principles. This has led to the introduction of so-called ‘codes of conduct’ for employees and ‘supplier codes’ for suppliers. Sometimes  companies add other ‘ethical documents’ like due diligence reports.

To clarify, here’s a concise definition of each of the documents to be found on the websites of companies.