by DEVNET JAPAN
Devnet International is collaborating with private sector, other non-governmental organizations, and the Japanese Government in ensuring that the implementation of Japan’s Technical Intern Training Programme (TITP) fully incorporates the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and Goal 8.7 of the UN’s Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development.
Since 2016, Devnet has been working closely with the Organization for Technical Intern Training Program (OTIT), responsible for the implementation of the programme and with the sending organizations in Vietnam and Thailand, responsible for the selection and initial training of interns and with the implementing business in Japan. Devnet provides with orientation, oversight, and consultation to ensure that the UNGPBHR and SDG ?s are being complied by the businesses implementing the training of interns.
The principal aspect of Devnet involvement is to develop and review procedures for implementing organizations (private sector); to receive the trainees according to these principles; to provide the initial educational language and culture introductory training for the interns arriving in Japan; to help them develop their internship plans and provide a recourse to assist trainees, in case there non-compliance situations emerge vis a vis the principles. Devnet, in collaboration with the supervising organization, plays a significant role to protect the rights of the trainees and in this context makes periodic monitoring visits to training sites.
Devnet collaborates with the Japanese embassy in Vietnam, and Vietnamese organizations with information that is critical to exclude from the programme businesses that are not willing or able abide by the UN Human Rights and SDG principles. The model for this collaboration of Devnet with the TITP was expanded in 2018 to include Thailand. Some of the members of the Japanese business sector, and the areas of training involved in the program that Devnet has been coordinating and consulting to include the following:
Aishin / (Casting, Machine inspection), Harada/ (Bread Baking) Japan outsourcing/ (Plastic melding) Godai automotive factory/ (automobile repair and maintenance), Sanko food factory/ (Ready-made meal manufacturing work), Konoike Transport Co., Ltd /(Ham, sausage and bacon making and industrial packaging).
There are different project stages in the development of the TITP as listed below. The areas where Devnet’s coordination and participation take place are identified within brackets.
1. Recruitment (participation in consultations with government institutions of country of origin in selection criteria for trainees, specific areas and vouchsafing for private sector implementing organizations in Japan);
2. Language/culture introduction (Devnet coordinates the training of interns upon their arrival in Japan);
3. Visa permits;
4. Continuation of language training;
5. Initiation of training internships (Devnet in collaboration with other NGO’s monitors that implementing organizations of the private sector are undertaking the training of interns in accordance with UN principles);
6. Return to country of origin;
7. Development of entrepreneurial plans for business in the original country. (Devnet is currently initiating negotiations with JICA and organizations in the country of origin to support start-up entrepreneurial initiatives of trainees returning to home country).
Since Devnet started its participation on this project in 2016, to oversee, in collaboration with governmental and civil society partners, the project abidance with the UN principles and the stated capacity building goals of the TITP, close to 100 people from Vietnam are or have been trained (46 of them already completing the programme) in various areas: casting, bread baking, plastic moulding, automobile repair and maintenance, ready-made meal manufacturing, Ham, sausage and bacon making and industrial packaging.
For the future Devnet contemplates to expand the number of countries participating in the vocational training entrepreneurship capacity building program to include the following number of trainees during the next 5 years: 1000 from Vietnam, 500 from Thailand, 1000 from Myanmar, 1500 from Cambodia and 500 from Laos.