Page 302 - วารสารกฎหมาย ศาลอุทธรณ์คดีชํานัญพิเศษ

วารสารกฎหมาย ศาลอุทธรณ์คดีชำานัญพิเศษ

participating institutions without making any reference whether they have lived up to
their own pledges. Some enterprises hire accounting firms to provide their views on the

achievement of the enterprises’ performance with respect to social goals they had initially
proclaimed. However, this kind of check is short on supervision, with the nature of an

internal audit. It is obviously better than not having any monitoring at all, but the scene
changes when the reviewing institution is an independent third party not hired by the
enterprises themselves. An excellent example of this type of third-party assessment is

provided by the Better Work Programs of the ILO.

The program, which is now run in Jordan, Lesotho and Vietnam, started earlier
in 2001 in Cambodia with a Better Factories Project. Originally, the project was linked
to a trade agreement with the United States that provided market access in return for

improving working conditions in the garment sector in Cambodia. After the expiration
21
of the trade agreement in 2004, the Cambodian government, together with unions and
employers, requested that the ILO set up a sustainability strategy to turn Better Factories

Cambodia (BFC) into a self-financing local institution, financially supported by the
International Finance Corporation in designing and implementing this strategy. Factories
connected with BFC consistently increased compliance with ILO core labour standards

and national labour laws in the Cambodian apparel sector. The main function of the
22
ILO project was to provide training and monitoring the compliance with ILS and national

laws.
Similar programs are run by private NGOs. Institutions, such as Social

Accountability International (SAI with its SA8000) and the Fair Labor Association
(FLA, with its Workplace Code of Conduct), provide certifying services and exercise

a third-party assessment of the standards they propose. While this type of certification
service may contribute to the betterment of working conditions to some extent, there
is no assurance that they are pronouncing the correct interpretation of national as well

21 This project was particularly effective, because the main buyer of the Cambodian garment products
were American companies and the certification by the Better Factories Program was a condition for exporting to
the USA. In a way, it was a sort of social clause in the trade agreement.
22 https://betterwork.org/where-we-work/cambodia/bfc-programme/ (visited 22 July 2019).

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