Oscar-nominated American actress Minnie Driver teamed up with British charity Oxfam on Sunday to launch a campaign, designed to pressure clothing companies to pay more to workers in the developing world.
Part of a long-running "Make Trade Fair" drive, Oxfam hopes the campaign will eventually change the way people shop - choosing clothes from countries or companies which are known to give garment workers a better deal.
It is the clothing equivalent of the "Fair Trade Coffee" initiatives in the United States and Europe.
"It is time to ask the buyers to have a share, and help the workers in developing countries earn a better living," said Heather Grady, Oxfam's south-east Asian director, at the campaign's launch in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh.
Cambodia, which is still recovering from the genocide of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, has a booming garment industry, nurtured mainly by a unique US quota deal, which has enshrined independent monitoring of labour conditions in garment factories.
Besides giving a huge boost to the sector - which now employs 230,000 people and accounts for over 80 percent of exports - it has also led to the eradication of so-called sweatshops and an overall improvement in working conditions, according to International Labour Organisation (ILO) monitors.
However, under constant price pressure from the likes of big brands such as Nike, Adidas and Gap, workers are still paid little more than $50 per month to make shirts and trousers which sell on US and Europe high-streets for the same amount.
With the US quota deal expiring at the end of this year, Cambodia is desperately trying to brand itself as a "clean clothes" country, from where big high-street brands can source their goods without fear of being labelled sweatshop overlords.
Driver, who spent the last week in Cambodia visiting garment factory workers, said that despite ILO monitoring, their lives were incredibly tough, and she begged clothing companies to have more of a heart and not squeeze the last drop of profit out of people who already have so little.
"It's not that hard if you know the hardship of the people involved," said Driver, wearing a dark-red Cambodian silk skirt and with a purple orchid in her hair.
"The poorest people who have the least are making sacrifices for those of us who have the most," she said.
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