Regional Tripartite Sectoral Meeting Towards a more resilient, inclusive and sustainable garment and textiles sector in Asia and the Pacific

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Friends and Colleagues

It’s my pleasure to provide closing remarks at what has been an important and timely ILO event looking at the current and future of the garment industry in Asia and the Pacific. 

As Resident Coordinator for the UN system in Cambodia, a key garment exporter in the region, the topics discussed are very close to my heart. They are especially relevant in the context of the country’s pandemic recovery and UN’s support to build back better with human rights at its core.

As we have heard, millions of people are employed across the fashion value chain globally, 80% of them women.

Home to 70% of global garment production, the apparel sector has tremendous impact on Asia’s socio-economic development. Employing 65 million workers across the region, it has brought new opportunities for low-skilled workers to enter formal employment – spurring major advancements in women’s economic empowerment along the way.

In the globalized era, the industry has also become a gateway to export led growth – connecting local producers to the international market, enabling knowledge and skill transfer together with rising investment and economic growth.

But as we have heard, there is also another side of the story.

With ‘fast-fashion’ as the dominant model, the apparel industry heightens more adverse risks on people and the environment along with its growth. The pressure to reduce lead-time and cost for production makes low wage and poor working conditions rife for people along the lengthy fashion supply chain.

In Cambodia, for example, half of garment workers work more hours than permitted. The industry’s bulk production also contributes largely to the ongoing environmental crisis. It is responsible for more carbon emission than all international flights and maritime shipping combined and produces one in five of global wastewater.

The garment industry has been on an increasingly unsustainable path for decades now, with only modest progress to redress its many social, environmental and human rights challenges. This needs to change.

The pandemic stopped the industry in its tracks. But now, as it reboots, it has a choice to make. Revert to its increasingly destructive and unsustainable road, or recast itself as a more responsible steward for both people and planet.

The UN’s position is clear. We put human rights up front. The right to decent work, including just and favourable conditions of work, protection against unemployment, equal pay, social protection. Women’s rights. The right to a clean environment. The only viable choice to assure the industry’s future is to build back better –both to recover from the pandemic and to set it on a new pathway towards a fairer, more inclusive and environmentally sustainable future.

The Sustainable Development Goals provides a collective vision for future. It calls for action from everyone, producers and consumers alike. To achieve them, we need to seriously think about how to refashion the way we produce clothes.

For UN organisations working at the country level, the SDGs are a compass that guides us toward the same direction, no matter which aspect of development we are working on. 

The United Nations Alliance for Sustainable Fashion works to foster coordination between UN bodies working in fashion and promoting projects and policies that ensure that the fashion value chain contributes to the achievement of the SDG’s targets. It does so by promoting active collaboration, knowledge sharing, strengthening synergies between initiatives, and outreach and advocacy.

The pandemic hit Asia’s garment production centres hard. The United Nations System is working together with national authorities and stakeholders to mitigate the immediate negative impacts of the pandemic and to build a more sustainable and resilient garment industry for the long term.

In Cambodia, this disruption has affected the livelihood of nearly one million garment workers. The UN conducted interviews to understand their concerns. The result revealed that personal finance and immediate safety and health of families are workers’ top priorities. With this better understanding, the UN organisations come together to formulate a coherent response. The Resident Coordinator works closely with the ILO’s Better Factories Cambodia programme and the WHO to protect workers and safeguard public health. We assist not only the government but also factories and key industry players to ensure that workers return to safer and fairer workplace and that businesses are prepared to operate under a new normal.

This meeting has provided a unique opportunity for industry leaders to come together to collectively examine the drivers of change facing the industry, both today and in the coming years.  I hope that the discussions have informed and inspired you about how to harness the potentials and mitigate the risks stemming from these changes.

But as much as we are here to share insights, we are also here because we share the same hopeful vision. If there is one thing this meeting hopes to achieve the most, it is not about presenting any existing initiatives or setting any new standards, but to make us all realise that today is the critical juncture to change the course of the garment and textile sector.

We usually design clothes for people who wear them. As we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s time to also put people who made them at the centre of our approach. The UN remains committed to working with the Government, employers and workers to ensure that the garment industry can become increasingly sustainable and resilient in the post-pandemic future.

We believe the apparel industry can be a leading driver for sustainable development. We count on all of you here to help us realise it.

Thank you.