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URBAN INFORMAL SECTOR LABOR RIGHTS
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The ‘informal sector’ in Bangladesh represents economic activity taking place outside the realm of state sanctioning and state regulatory practices. Its main distinction from the ‘formal sector’ is thus the absence of rights and social protection of the workers involved in it. NU works to help cultivate the organizations that exist to promote the rights of informal sector laborers, especially laborers from the Dalit community (the most marginalized in Bangladeshi society), to help form alliances between these organizations and to push for policy reform.
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Provisions and Strategies
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• Mobilization of urban poor groups to make effective demands on public agencies for (a) improved access to appropriate basic services and (b) their participation in urban development planning and policy
• To build a coalition of women-headed organizations working with informal sector women laborers
• To develop the capabilities, knowledge and confidence of these organizations to take collective action to increase their voice and visibility, and recognition of their rights
• To raise the level of women workers’ income in the informal sector
• Rehabilitation of slum dwellers and promotion of their housing rights.
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Impacts and Achievements
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• Assistance of women and Dalits worker groups in their participation in Asian Social Forum and World Social Forum conferences
• Building of coalition of informal sector worker groups (i.e., Partnership of Women in Action), and facilitation of strategic meetings to formulate common agenda
• Networking of coalition with broader national and international human rights organizations
• Institutional planning of existing urban poor organizations
• Facilitation of skills-training courses
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