Film Screening

Global Electronics Supply Chains and Women Workers’ Voices: Special screening of “Women Workers from Vietnam”

ORGANIZED BY

Supporters for Health and Rights of People in Semiconductor Industry, Korean Transnational Corporations Watch, Asia Monitor Resource Centre, Asian Network for the Rights Of Occupational and Environmental Victims

15-Sep

14:15-15:15

Theater

This special screening of 'Women Workers from Vietnam' depicts 80,000 workers – 80% women – at a major electronics factory in Vietnam. A live Q&A follows with panelists, connecting these stories to occupational health risks and supply chain accountability through international worker solidarity and cross-border corporate responsibility.

Overview

This special screening presents "Women Workers from Vietnam," directed by Parsifal Reparato. The film depicts the lives of women working at one of the world's largest electronics component factories, located in Bắc Ninh province, Vietnam. The factory employs 80,000 workers, around 80 percent of whom are women working 12-hour shifts around the clock.

Following the screening, a panel discussion will connect these workers' experiences to the broader landscape of occupational health, women's labour rights, and corporate accountability across the electronics industry. Panelists will share the development of i-SHARPS, a transnational network of labour safety activists, researchers, archivists, and experts spanning the semiconductor and electronics sector, alongside a chemical exposure data-sharing platform designed to document and compare health risks across production sites. The session will also introduce a documentary project linking workers' experiences across multiple regions, and ongoing advocacy for supply chain due diligence legislation.

The session argues that genuine resilience cannot be built by shifting risk onto workers in regions with weaker regulation and limited voice—it requires transparency, worker participation, and enforceable corporate accountability that reaches across borders. Participants will leave with a clearer understanding of how occupational disease and labour risk function as structural, transnational issues, and why the inclusion of workers, women, and migrants as rights holders is essential to shaping effective business and human rights policy.

The post-screening discussion will be interactive: audience members can submit questions and comments in real time through an online platform, and the session will close with an open Q&A between panelists and participants.

Key questions

What problems do workers—particularly women workers—face in the region's electronics supply chains, and how are these connected to the absence or inadequacy of corporate accountability and related policies in the region?
How is regional solidarity possible to address labour issues in the region's electronics supply chains, and in what ways should it be pursued?

Who should attend?

Every stakeholder who is interested in labour issues in electronics supply chains.

What participants will gain

Recognition of the Importance of Inclusion and Participation of Rights Holders: This session aims to help the audience recognize the issues faced by rights holders—such as workers, women, and migrants—in electronics supply chains, and the need to ensure their inclusion, active participation, and central role in shaping the BHR agenda.
Recognition of the Need for Regional Solidarity and Its Strengthening: This session seeks to raise awareness among the audience that labour issues, such as occupational diseases, are structural problems occurring across borders throughout the region, and to strengthen regional solidarity in addressing these issues.

Hyunjun Yang

Coordinator, KTNC Watch (Korean Transnational Corporations Watch)

Hyunjun Yang is a Coordinator at KTNC Watch. As a full-time public interest lawyer, his work focuses on business and human rights and labour rights. He serves as the Head of the Legal Team for the Joint Action for the Right to Rest When Sick, a coalition campaigning for the institutionalisation of paid sick leave and sickness benefits in South Korea, and provides free labour law counselling to workers through Gapjil119. He has litigated cases concerning the impacts of the renewable energy transition on local farmers and the employment status of platform delivery riders. At KTNC Watch, he has monitored and addressed human rights abuses committed by Korean corporations operating overseas and by companies within their global supply chains. He is currently leading advocacy efforts for the enactment of a mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence (mHREDD) law in South Korea.

Kwon Young Eun

Representative, SHARPS (Supporters for the Health and Rights of People in the Semiconductor industry)

Kwon Young Eun has been an activist of SHARPS (Supporters for the Health and Rights of People in the Semiconductor Industry) since 2014, focusing on international solidarity, gender-related issues, and campaign planning. She served as a negotiator in the SHARPS-Samsung dialogue from 2015 until the conclusion of the mediation agreement in 2018. Following this, she organized the publication of 'People Who Make Problems into Issues', a book addressing reproductive toxicity and occupational disease affecting workers’ children. Kwon is also active in campaigns for corporate accountability and climate justice. She works with the KTNC Watch (Korean Transnational Corporations Watch) to advocate for the passage of the Mandatory Human Rights and Environmental Due Diligence Act in South Korea and is a member of the Climate Justice March (in Seoul) organizing committee, emphasizing the intersection of labor rights and environmental justice in the semiconductor industry.

Punyathorn Jeungsmarn

Plastics Campaigner and Researcher, Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF)

Plastics campaigner and researcher at the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF).