WASHINGTON (CNS): As a consequence of the Covid-19 coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic, “particularly vulnerable to the worst impacts of the crisis are the millions of workers lower down the supply chain—many of whom are women,” said more than a hundred bishops from around the world in a statement in early July seeking mandatory due diligence laws and regulations in the international supply chain.
“For instance, some big fashion brands and retailers have cancelled orders and refused to pay for textiles already produced, resulting in millions of workers being sent home without pay, social security or compensation,” the bishops noted.
“Through their operations, irresponsible companies are complicit in acts of violence and suffering. We, Catholic leaders throughout the world, call on states to put an end to this,” the bishops said in the statement.
“Now more than ever, we need mandatory supply chain due diligence to stop corporate abuse and guarantee global solidarity,” they said.
They added, “Irresponsible companies have long been involved in various abuses, by evading taxes that could serve to build and maintain public services such as hospitals or schools, by polluting our soils, water and air, or by being complicit in gross human rights violations around the world, like forced and child labour.”
The statement said, “As bishops, we feel we have a moral and spiritual obligation to speak about the urgency of reordering the priorities.”
The bishops who signed the statement hail from North and South America, Europe, Africa and Asia.
The quoted from Pope Francis’ encyclical, Evangelii Gaudium (Joy of the Gospel): “Each meaningful economic decision made in one part of the world has repercussions everywhere else; consequently, no government can act without regard for shared responsibility.”
They also cited his message to the executive chairperson of the World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland, last January: “The overriding consideration, never to be forgotten, is that we are all members of the one human family. The moral obligation to care for one another flows from this fact, as does the correlative principle of placing the human person, rather than the mere pursuit of power or profit, at the very center of public policy.”
The bishops noted a February report by the European Commission that “voluntary measures are failing,” and a 2019 German government study that found “less than 20 per cent of German companies conduct human rights due diligence, despite (it) being a requirement in international frameworks for almost a decade.”
The statement said, “We call on all governments to uphold their obligations under international law to protect human rights and prevent corporate abuses.”
Laws, the bishops said, “should introduce mandatory environmental and human rights due diligence, that is, to identify, assess, stop, prevent and mitigate the risks and violations to the environment and all human rights throughout the supply chains of businesses, and to substantially improve the possibilities of affected people to claim for compensation in national civil courts.”
They said the Covid-19 crisis “should be taken as an opportunity to start a just transition and to put in place a new economic system that serves people and the planet first.”
The statement was developed by Coopération Internationale pour le Développement et la Solidarité, a network of Catholic social justice organisations.
