Dear Reader,

Thank you so much for your support of ILRF’s work to advance dignity and justice for workers worldwide! Our 2015 Annual Report catalogues some of the highlights from our work last year, which you helped make possible.

Perhaps the most poignant success of 2015 was securing full financing for the victims’ fund for the families of the 1,134 workers who died and the hundreds injured during the tragic collapse of Rana Plaza. During the 2nd anniversary, I led a delegation to Bangladesh, where we spoke with victims about their physical and economic struggles and met brave union organizers who are resolved to make the garment industry safer.
Our campaigning also helped stop the Thai government’s proposal to replace migrant labor with prison labor on fishing vessels at sea, where horrific abuses have been documented. The global Cotton Campaign, housed at ILRF, successfully pressured the International Labour Organization (ILO) to monitor forced labor in Uzbekistan’s annual cotton harvest for the first time. Despite such progress, these frontline activists in both countries are facing greater duress and threats for their work.
We now see similar threats and the closing of civil society space in Latin America, which is the most dangerous region in the world for trade unionists, and in China, where two labor organizers have been detained since last December. Meanwhile child labor and human trafficking remain unabated in Africa’s cocoa and tobacco sectors, where ILRF partners struggle to secure a voice in government reforms to end these practices.
Looking ahead, ILRF will continue pushing global corporations to take action down their entire supply chains and advocating for more effective and humane policies that secure workers’ access to legal remedy and the ability to speak out without fear.
In Solidarity,
Judy Gearhart
Executive Director