Country Initiatives
About GoodWeave
GoodWeave International (GWI) is a non-governmental organization working to end child labor in the handmade rug industry and offer educational opportunities to children in South Asia. The GoodWeave certification program (formerly known as RugMark) provides an assurance that rug manufacturers that voluntarily join as licensees and agree to its independent verification adhere to the GoodWeave standard.News
Standard Consultation Recent Comments
- GoodWeave: Quality, Ethical Rugs on GoodWeave New Standard
- Jane Peranteau on GWI Standards Committee Terms of Reference v.5.3
- Carmen Iezzi on section_3_excerpt
- Carmen Iezzi on Principle-7
- Carmen Iezzi on Principle-5-a
- Carmen Iezzi on Principle-5-b
- scott welker on GoodWeave Generic Standard draft v 2.4.2
- Matt Fischer-Daly (Social Accountability International) on GoodWeave Generic Standard draft v 2.4.2
This is the most problematic section. I have extensive comments, however, the most important one is this:
it is not clear when certification inspections are finalized, how they are finalized and when the licensees are told.
2 – the words “inspection” and “audit” are used, but it is not clear when one occurs over the other and what the outcome is for each.
3 – Compliance Criteria: to be clear, the same names should be used in the text
such as: Core and Progressive, not changed to “major and regular”. These were confusing and the use of “regular” for progressive was very confusing.
4 – The use of “may” lead to suspension” is confusing. (see bottom of pg 28). This is done several times in the document when I believe it should be clarified if it truly is “may” or changed to “will”.(see pg 29, (2).
5 – Id of non-conformities: (1) and (2) should be reversed on the page simply because that is how they are presented in the rest of the text.
6 – Response to the Discovery of Child Labour: see “Random Inspections” there seems to be some differences. One says “local guidelines/legislation”, this section says “GoodWeave has processes in place…”
Certification Committee comments, pg. 31:
the last paragraph of that section reads as though there are two certification bodies, i.e., “The Certification committee should meet…….and advise the GoodWeave certification body.” I don’t think this is what was intended.
More than anything, I have more questions than comments.
For example, why may local offices “implement their own license application procedures… monitoring, inspections, labelling and support programmes?” If it is expected to be a region-wide standard, would this approach leave certification open to the individual offices and create variance from one location to the next?
The text indicates that the criteria “imply compliance” with key principles and are “mainly” linked to the core requirements. To what else is compliance linked? How else would compliance be demonstrated?
What the penalties for non-compliance with core requirements (3)? The text indicates that non-compliance “may lead to a suspension,” but does not indicate what would be expected regarding certified product from that facility already in circulation?
I would also encourage you to consider making more of the criteria core criteria than currently listed under each of the principles.