Sanchita B. Saxena, PhD

Areas of expertise: Business and human rights, the garment industry in Asia, labor conditions in global supply chains, stakeholder engagement, shared responsibility business models and partnerships, effective grievance mechanisms, restructuring social audits, and economic and political development in South Asia.

IN THE NEWS: September 2026

I will be moderating two important sessions at the United Nations Responsible Business and Human Rights Forum, Asia-Pacific in Bangkok this September. 

1. Meaningful Worker Engagement: From Participatory Research to Action on September 15th, 9-9:45 AM. 

Grounded in a case study from Viet Nam’s electronics sector, the session will explore how participatory research with internal migrant and ethnic minority workers surfaced onboarding and workplace challenges that traditional audits had missed. Presenters will share a practical set of worker-centric tools developed from these insights, including proactive interventions during the vulnerable “first 30 days” of employment and approaches for embedding worker voice more effectively into formal audit and remediation processes. Through discussion and interactive exercises, participants will have the opportunity to consider how these approaches can be adapted across global supply chains to strengthen worker participation and build more resilient systems.

Panelists include:

  • Faris Natour (Article One)

  • Ngoc Nguyen, (Institute of Society, Economy and Environment, iSEE)

  • Elodie Jacoby, (International Organization for Migration, IOM)

  • Natalie Giggy, (Google)

2. Heat Mitigation as a Human Right: Effective interventions centering the lived experience of garment workers on September 16th, 9-9:45 AM. 

This session focused on heat stress is very timely and urgent because temperatures across the globe are rising sharply, transforming heat from a silent disaster into a central climate and public health crisis. Heat is not just a workplace safety hazard; it is a systems-level pressure on labor. Garment workers and others  in vulnerable sectors in developing countries are on the frontlines of this crisis. This session will bring the perspective of those who are primarily affected by heat stress in their daily lives and help us understand, from their point of view, which interventions can be the most effective in addressing this.


Panelists include: 

  • Thivya Rakini (Independent Consultant to the garment sector, Tamil Nadu, India),

  • Apekshita Varshney (HeatWatch, Bangalore, India), 

  • Sultana Begum and Amrin Hossain (Green Bangla Garment Workers Union, Bangladesh) 

I will also be a panelist at the session: Adverse Climate Events and Human Rights Impact: Rethinking Resilient Supply Chains (14 September, 2:45 PM). Co-organised with the World Benchmarking Alliance and Amfori, this session will explore how extreme heat and other adverse climate events are affecting workers and communities, and what companies need to do differently to build supply chains that are resilient not only for business, but also for people.