Irrawaddy/Reuters-Aug 19
Workers in the Myanmar factories that supply global brand H&M—most of whom are women—are worried about how they will feed themselves and their families after the fast-fashion Swedish titan announced on Thursday that it would phase out the country. The world’s second-largest fashion retailer sources directly from 41 factories in Myanmar and as of March 2023 it employed almost 42,000 workers at these factories, according to its website. The factories that it directly sources from also outsource some of their work to other factories, H&M says on its website, but it does not disclose their names, number, or the number of workers these factories employ. Vicky Bowman, the director of the Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business and a former British ambassador to Myanmar, told Reuters: “I regret H&M’s announcement, as it will have a negative impact on thousands of women workers in Myanmar.” H&M’s announcement followed by one day the release of the report “Falling out of fashion: Garment worker abuse under military rule in Myanmar” by the UK-based Business and Human Rights Resource Centre. The rights group had earlier launched its “Myanmar garment worker allegations tracker” after receiving an increase of reports of abuses at factories in Myanmar after the February 2021 coup. Subsequent research found severe violations of human rights in the supply chains of global brands sourcing from Myanmar. The rights group tracked 156 cases of alleged abuse in Myanmar garment factories from February 2022 to February 2023, and linked them to global brands including Inditex-owned Zara, Primark, Bestseller, C&A and Mango. Twenty of the cases were linked to H&M and another 20 were linked to Spain-based Inditex, whose main brand is Zara. Inditex announced in late July that it was exiting Myanmar. Read more at: https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/burma/hms-forced-exit-leaves-42000-myanmar-workers-asking-how-they-will-eat.html
