Social Certification in the Textile Industry. Consumer Deception or a Powerful Tool for the Future?

Essay from the year 2022 in the subject Politics - Topic: Public International Law and Human Rights, grade: A, École des hautes études commerciales de Paris, course: Business and Human Rights, language: English, abstract: The textile industry is particularly prone to human rights abuses. Even though several catastrophic events have made news headlines, the exact impact of one's apparel purchasing is unknown to most consumers. Effective certification aimed at informing consumers could increase consumers' awareness and influence their purchasing behavior, which in the end could alter company behavior and improve the human rights conditions for hundreds of thousands of workers. However, introducing effective and practical certification is complicated, mostly because the numerous stakeholders have different interests that slow down progress. Thus, this essay develops the '4I-Framework for Promotive Certification', aimed at overcoming the problems and challenges of certification. This holistic framework, consisting of the pillars Independence, Intelligibility, Inferability, and Integration, provides a theoretical blueprint for social certification in the garment industry.