Guilty until proven innocent: Pakistan's textile trade on trial

When European lawmakers talk about labour abuse in the garment trade, Pakistan is too often cast as the defendant before any evidence is heard. A serious child-labour problem in one corner of the economy becomes, in the retelling, a verdict on an entire export industry. That is not regulation. It is collective punishment by reputation. Europe is right to insist that the clothes, towels and bed linen entering its market are not produced through child labour, forced labour, unsafe workplaces or environmental abuse. Pakistan should not seek exemption from those standards. It should, however, challenge the habit of turning legitimate concerns into sweeping judgments about an entire industry.…