The Mobile World Congress, the world's greatest mobile event, has recently been celebrated in Barcelona (Spain) and it has focused on showing innovations in the electronics industry. Given the clear interest and motivation of the Government of Catalonia and Barcelona City Council - co-hosts of the congress - in the area of socially responsible procurement, Electronics Watch would be delighted to see, in future editions, spaces for discussion around the huge impact of the electronics industry on people and the environment.

The revision procedure initiated three years ago has finally come to a conclusion. The new public procurement Directives approved recently by the European Parliament should allow public authorities across Europe to spend taxpayer's money more responsibly.

On Thursday 14 November, the Hortus Botanicus in Amsterdam was the setting for the first international Electronics Watch conference, hosted by the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO). It brought together nearly thirty participants from over ten different countries to discuss socially responsible public procurement of ICT hardware.

We are happy to announce that the Electronics Watch Advisory Group is now officially in existence! This international group is going to advise on the creation of the world's first independent labour rights monitoring organisation in the global electronics industry.

Electronics Watch is excited to be holding its first work conference: "Socially responsible public procurement of ICT hardware through independent factory monitoring", organised by SOMO on the 14th November in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Forced overtime, strenuous, long shifts during peak periods with few days off per month, wages lower than a living wage and militant management are persisting grievances in the Chinese IT manufacturing sector.

Today, the Electronics Watch initiative goes live with its international website! This will be the central hub of all online activity to do with the initiative, and provide a useful tool towards improving conditions for electronics workers across the globe.

An investigation has been opened in Paris on an official complaint against Samsung France presented in February by three organizations: Peuples Solidaires, Sherpa, and Indecosa-CGT, based in part on China Labor Watch's report of eight factories producing for Samsung in China, published last September.

The Taiwanese company Pegatron Corp., currently producing one-third of the world's iPhones and iPads, appears to be no better in terms of respect for the human rights of its workers, than Foxconn, the Apple supplier who have made a global name for themselves due to the high number of suicides that have taken place in their factories.