"Fair Food Program to consult in adaptation of FFP’s proven protections to prevent brutal labor abuses exposed in Mumbai High Court, Indian press, and hard-hitting New York Times series,"

A coalition of labor and human rights groups – coming together under the banner of the newly-formed India Sugar Industry Workers Association (ISWA) – is launching an ambitious collaboration to end longstanding human rights abuses in India’s multi-billion-dollar sugar industry.

The emerging initiative includes several leading grassroots labor organizations representing sugarcane cutters in the key sugar-producing states of Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Uttar Pradesh, which collectively account for approximately 85% of India’s sugar production. The abuses that gave rise to the collaboration – including tens of thousands of women farmworkers subjected to forced hysterectomies and debt bondage arrangements that in some cases stretch across generations – came to light through several recent, high profile legal actions and investigative articles by Indian and international media outlets, including The Hindu and the New York Times.

The labor and human rights groups associated with ISWA– are looking to the US-based Fair Food Program (FFP) for inspiration as they begin the slow and careful process of designing and building their own initiative to enforce farmworkers’ fundamental human rights in India’s sugarcane fields. The FFP has successfully addressed similar issues in the US agriculture industry and has received widespread recognition for its groundbreaking Worker-driven Social Responsibility (WSR) model, a new paradigm for enforcing human rights in global supply chains based on binding legal agreements between worker organizations and the corporate brands at the top of global markets that set humane standards for workers in their suppliers’ operations...

ISWA intends to build a robust WSR program within the Indian sugar industry, empowering sugarcane cutters to serve as frontline monitors of their own rights and, in the process, providing a proven system of human rights due diligence for global brands sourcing from India. ISWA is committed to partnering with international brands to ensure that India’s labor laws –particularly those barring forced labor and sexual violence – are implemented in the sugar industry supply chain...