Barbie has more rights than the 16-year old girl who makes her

John Ruggie, UN expert on human rights, on supply chain monitoring:

Just about everybody, at least off the record, will tell you that monitoring doesn’t work and auditing of supplier factories doesn’t work because people cheat.

Ruggie is quoted in Women’s Wear Daily.  The piece goes on to mention that 70% of the factory audits are flawed and that the most viable option of monitoring and training lies with the Fair Labor Association.

The National Labor Committee was all over this report and makes a strong argument why labor laws must be upheld:

If Barbie Doll can be legally protected, by intellectual property and copyright laws, we sure as heck ought to be able to provide similar legal protection to the 16-year-old girl in Indonesia who made Barbie.  As things stand now, corporate products-Barbie, Nike’s Swoosh, Mickey Mouse-are all protected by enforceable laws backed up by sanctions.  But the corporations say that providing similar legal protections to the human beings who make the products would be an “impediment to free trade.”