Human rights around the world.
A new report on human rights from the risk consulting firm Maplecroft finds backsliding in China:
Most significantly for business, given it plays a major role in supply chains, China has fallen two places in the ranking from last year to 10th. China joins DR Congo (1), Somalia (2), Pakistan (3), Sudan (4), Myanmar (5), Chad (6), Afghanistan (7), Zimbabwe (8), and North Korea (9) as the countries with the worst human rights records.Russia (14), Colombia (15), Bangladesh (16), Nigeria (17) India (21), Philippines (25) and Mexico (26) have also seen their scores worsen and are featured in the â??extreme riskâ?? category.
Interestingly, the report also singles out India for criticism:
India, which is important to the ICT, manufacturing and agriculture sectors, performs particularly badly in the area of labour rights protections. It is ranked joint first for child labour, forced labour and discrimination and 7th for trafficking, which includes the use of girls in bonded labour and sexual exploitation. Estimates of the number of child labourers varied widely. The government's 2004 national survey estimated the number of working children from aged 5-14 at 16.4 million. NGOs, however, claimed the number of child labourers was closer to 55 million.
