News

6. Jul 2017

Danwatch and IMS to develop new digital “clearing-house” platform with Google Digital News Initiative Innovation Fund

IMS and Danwatch, a Danish independent investigative media and research centre, have received a grant from Google to develop a new digital platform that links up local journalists in conflict zones with international media outlets, paving the way for their stories to reach a global audience

26. Jun 2017

Mass faintings afflict the women who sew our clothes

Clothing and shoes from brands like Bestseller, Nike, Puma, Asics, Vans and North Face are manufactured at textile factories in Cambodia, where garment workers faint by the hundreds every year. Doctors, experts and the women themselves blame exhaustion, malnutrition, overheating and panic.

30. Mar 2017

Activist receives death threats following Danwatch avocado investigation

The life of a Chilean activist was threatened last week as a result of his involvement in a Danwatch investigation into avocado production and water theft in Chile. “Absolutely reprehensible,” say supermarkets that have been buying avocados from Chile.

19. Mar 2017

Supermarket avocados take water from local communities

Avocado production in Chile is draining water resources to such a degree that local residents now lack water. In the area where most of Chile’s avocados are grown, a battle is being waged over water rights. At least one supermarket chain has indicated it will change its purchasing policy for avocados from this area.

15. Feb 2017

Rohingya testimony

Mass gang-rape, brutal beatings and killings – including of babies and young children. A new UN report documents horrifying assaults by Myanmar's security forces on the Muslim minority Rohingya in a sealed-off area in the northern Rakhine State. Danwatch photographer Shafiur Rahman has met some of the assaulted women who fled to Bangladesh.

31. Jan 2017

Europe’s Largest Pension Funds Heavily Invested in Illegal Israeli Settlements

Europe’s five largest pension funds have €7.5 billion invested in companies with business activities in and around illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. This is at odds with United Nations guidelines, clear warnings from 18 European countries, and undermines the two-state solution, experts warn.

31. Jan 2017

Companies with activities in or around illegal Israeli settlements

36 publicly traded companies with economic activities in or around settlements, checkpoints, the separation wall or involved in extraction of natural resources in the occupied Palestinian territories - with investments from the five largest European pension funds.

27. Oct 2016

Hydro boom sparks violent conflicts in Nepal

A state of emergency in Nepal has paved the way for green energy projects intended to relieve the country’s energy crisis. But following the approval of new hydroelectric power plants, conflicts have arisen between the government and local communities who feel their voices were not heard in the process, leading to several violent clashes between police and locals in 2016 alone.

13. Oct 2016

Maersk scraps ships at dangerous shipyards in India

Maersk has sent two ships to be recycled at a shipyard in India considered by experts to be dangerous. Cancer, mutilation and death caused by a lack of protective equipment threaten employees, according to occupational safety experts that have reviewed Danwatch’s documentation. Maersk concedes that there are problems.

3. Oct 2016

Google investors “deeply concerned” over human rights violations in Kenyan wind project

Google is preparing to acquire a large share in Kenya’s prestigious green-energy Lake Turkana Wind Power project, but the deal is mired in accusations of violations of indigenous peoples’ rights and a court case over illegal land acquisition. In a leaked letter obtained by Danwatch, Google investors say they are “deeply concerned”.

14. Sep 2016

“No woman has known grief like me”

Shafiur Rahman is a Documentary Film maker. He has worked together with Danwatch on numerous stories.

10. Mar 2016

Brazilian coffee is sprayed with deadly pesticides

In Brazil, coffee may be sprayed with pesticides that are illegal in the EU because they are acutely toxic and cause disease. Many workers apply pesticides without sufficient protective equipment, and pesticide poisoning is widespread. Even the drinking water contains traces of these dangerous pesticides.

10. Mar 2016

You may be drinking coffee grown under slavery-like, life-threatening conditions

Brazil’s coffee industry has serious problems with working conditions that are analogous to slavery, life- threatening pesticides and scarce protective equipment. Danwatch has confronted the world’s largest coffee companies with the facts of these violations. Jacobs Douwe Egberts admits that it is possible that coffee from plantations with poor labour conditions ended up in their products, and coffee giant Nestlé acknowledges having purchased coffee from two plantations where authorities freed workers from conditions analogous to slavery in 2015.

2. Mar 2016

Coffee workers apply pesticides without protection

Francisco Paulo Pereira used to apply pesticides on a coffee plantation in Minas Gerais in Brazil without protective equipment. Today he is very ill and cannot feel the ground when he walks. Hear him explain how he learned to use pesticide by reading the label on the bottle.

2. Mar 2016

Coffe workers must sign blank documents

40-50 percent of coffee workers in Brazil are working without a formal contract giving them the right to pension and sick leave. Hear coffee worker Elisabete Vitor da Costa explain how she was forced to sign blank documents instead of an official contract during the coffee harvest in 2014.

24. Feb 2016

Google grants Danwatch 50.000 euro for ‘Open Supply Chain project’

Google Digital News Initiative has granted Danwatch 50.000 euro for the development of a mapping tool, Open Supply Chain, which will map the supply chain for products and make data transparent to consumers.

12. Feb 2016

Danske Bank removes Bank Hapoalim from exclusion list

It made headlines around the world when Danske Bank in early 2014 excluded Israeli Bank Hapoalim from its investment portfolio over Hapoalim’s ties to Israeli settlements. Now, two years later, Danske Bank is ready to invest in Bank Hapoalim again. Danwatch has tried to find out why.

22. Jan 2016

Watch the film Promised Land

Meet the people who have been resettled to Mualadzi in the Tete province in Mozambique. They struggle with shortage of food, water, jobs and lack of adequate compensation after the government and mining companies removed them from their homes to use their land for coal mining. Watch the film 'Promised Land'.

22. Jan 2016

The Resettled

At least three of Europe's biggest steel companies are buying coking coal from mining companies in the Tete province in Mozambique where the government and mining companies in 2010 resettled 736 families to the areas Cateme and Mualadzi. Browse the photos and read the stories about the people that now live without adequate access to food, water and jobs.

23. Nov 2015

Danwatch has moved

Danwatch is growing and we have moved to larger facilities. We can now be found at Gammeltorv 8 in the heart of Copenhagen.

20. Nov 2015

37 clothing factories closed after inspections in Bangladesh

After the collapse of Rana Plaza in 2013 where at least 1134 people were killed, the Government of Bangladesh initiated an extensive inspection of the country's clothing factories. The inspections are now finished and focus has switched to remediation.

25. Aug 2015

Guide: 7 Enlightening TED Talks

TED.com is an endless and free source of useful and peculiar knowledge. You can find short lectures about global development and human rights - or lack thereof. Danwatch has picked seven surprising and entertaining TED Talks that makes you a little bit wiser about the state of the world.

16. Jul 2015

New film: Dignified documentary on the battle of the textile workers

Documentary depicts five turbulent years in Bangladesh’s textile industry seen from the workers’ perspective. A proud and self-aware documentary that portrays the workers as human beings instead of victims.

17. May 2015

Fashion clothes for deplorable wages

Textile workers in Bangladesh work around the clock to produce Western fashion clothes for a pay below the living wage level.

6. Feb 2015

Power relations in the value chain of fashion

The fashion industry is linked to a range of problems concerning child labor, environmental damage and hazardous working conditions. So who holds the power to improve sustainability in the industry?

29. Jan 2015

Tourism on stolen land

Danish travel agencies advertise trips to occupied territories as “to Israel”. This is against the Danish Marketing Act, says expert.

29. Dec 2014

Few Rights for Workers in the IT industry

As the global market for tablets is booming the labour rights for the people who make them is not keeping the same pace. In South Korea, where microchips for tablets are made, laborers are willing to die in their fight for labour rights.

29. Dec 2014

The Human Cost of Tablets

As the price of a tablet is falling, the human costs of producing them seems increasing. In South Korea, hundreds of workers demand compensation from Samsung Electronics for a job, they say, caused them cancer. The company apologizes, but takes no blame

19. Dec 2014

Investment funds invest half a billion in Israeli settlements

Danish investment funds invest 689 million dkk. in companies with activities in the Israeli settlements on the West Bank, a new report from Danwatch shows.

18. Dec 2014

The Municipality of Copenhagen continues investments in Israeli settlements

Despite critique, the Municipality of Copenhagen continues its investments in companies that contribute to the maintenance of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank, a new report from Danwatch shows.

26. Sep 2014

Danish stores halts sales of cosmetics from illegal settlements

Danish stores take lotions from Israeli settlements off the shelves and retract orders. Minister advises against trade with settlements.

8. Sep 2014

The Price of Rice

For two Euros any European supermarket can sell you a bag of Basmati rice, but the Indian migrant workers, who carry the heaviest burden, see the smallest profit and remain in poverty.

8. Sep 2014

Drowning the Grain

Loans with usurious interest rates and aggressive marketing of fertilizer and pesticides imprisons Indians rice farmers in a debt spiral. Those who embarked upon organic rice farming say that the yields are not lower.

6. Aug 2014

Race to the bottom of the coffee mug

Slavery and degrading working conditions have been prevalent in Brazilian coffee production for centuries. And because violations of working conditions have been severe even in the past decade, we set out to uncover how Brazilian coffee is produced and under what conditions.

5. Aug 2014

Precious Beans as Bargain Buy

Ethiopian specialty coffee is big business, just not for the farmers who grow it. With scarce information and low cash-reserves they are easy prey for middlemen and see little of the profits made with the organically grown Arabica bean.

31. Jul 2014

ISS sells security company in Israeli settlements

The cleaning company ISS has sold its security company that until recently delivered security services to illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.

17. Jun 2014

Suicide and Class Struggle in South Korea

On 11 June, 2014, Jyllands-­Posten published an analysis from DanWatch of the national pride of South Korea, Samsung. Samsung is the second largest producer of tablets and cell phones in the world, but yet another suicide among the employees reminds us that the price of success can be high. Read the analysis.

16. Jun 2014

G4S pulls out of Israeli Prisons

The security company G4S terminates its contracts with the Israeli prison services over a 3­ year period. This decision is made in the wake of a DanWatch report from 2010 which discloses the company's contracts with Israeli prisons.

12. May 2014

Overview: Who Works for Better Conditions in the Textile Industry?

Danwatch documents and discloses the failure of companies to meet their ethical responsibility, but we do not provide solutions for the problems. There are many others, however, who do just that. Get an overview of the Danish actors who work to improve the conditions for textile workers in Bangladesh.

8. May 2014

A Poisonous Blend

The Brazilian coffee market is a wild west of toxic pesticides, possibly leading to depressions, suicides and cancer.

24. Apr 2014

Victims of Factory Collapse Have Waited a Year for Compensation

One year after the Rana Plaza collapse, the victims now receive the first portion of the long-­awaited compensation. Several millions, however, are still needed to cover the total expenses.

4. Apr 2014

Cruel conditions at H&M garments factory

The workers behind the world's two biggest brands, H&M and Zara face severe physical punishment, threats on their life and serious harassment every day.

4. Apr 2014

Forced into Death Trap

The workers were led into the textile factory Rana Plaza, which collapsed, claiming the lives of at least 1,134 people. Rozina had to saw off her own arm to escape from the ruins.

5. Nov 2013

Millions in Danish tax money can end up supporting harsh exploitation of Chinese workers

Conditions at DELL, a major supplier to National Procurement Ltd. Denmark, are highly questionable.

5. Nov 2013

Case story: exploitation and miserable conditions are routine for Dell’s suppliers

Workers flee from Dell’s suppliers.

13. Jun 2013

G4S: We’ll stay in prisons and settlements

In the controversial issue of their engagement on the occupied West Bank, G4S now reveals which contracts they plan to pull out of and which they plan to continue.

15. Jan 2013

Overtime turned into flextime at Hungary’s electronics factories

Nokia, Samsung and other well-known brands manufacture their mobile phones in Hungary. Although the production takes place in Europe, this is no guarantee for decent working conditions.

20. Nov 2012

Are your savings invested in illegal settlements?

Danish pension funds and investment funds are using their customers' savings to invest heavily in illegal Israeli settlements. The UN special rapporteur recommends the selling of shares, but this is not the way to go, investors say.

19. Nov 2012

When words are not enough

In a business founded upon different sets of values, words are not always enough. Rambøll has several times tried to notify two contractors that their employees worked under slave-like conditions. But they were met with silence.

11. Nov 2012

Danish universities work with illegal settlements

The Technical University of Denmark and Roskilde University participates in scientific collaborations involving Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. DTU now drop their project with a settlement. The Danish Foreign Minister welcomes the decision.

10. Jun 2012

ISS provides security services in illegal settlements

The cleaning service giant ISS provides cleaning services, catering and – like the security firm G4S – security services for illegal settlements in Palestine