infringement Festival
Ethical Sponsorship Criteria
The Infringement Festival is founded on principles of
respect for freedom of artistic expression, the nurturing of non-commodified community culture, and also on a wider
commitment to basic principles of social and environmental justice. Within our own organization, we insist on
non-discrimination, participatory governance, transparency, and a responsible
approach with respect to the way we connect with our community, society, and
the environment. We seek sponsors who
are similarly committed to basic ethical standards.
The following guidelines are the ethical criteria we
use to judge whether an organization can be accepted as a sponsor of the inFringement festival.
An 'ethical organization' must:
- uphold basic human rights (i.e. as stipulated in
basic UN documents including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights)
- avoid links with other organizations which do not
uphold basic human rights
- respect diversity of gender, ethnicity, culture,
sexual orientation, and belief with regard to both internal policies and
external (especially promotional) policies
An 'ethical organization' must:
- not be involved in the
manufacture or transfer of armaments
- not be involved in the
manufacture or transfer of equipment designed for the repression of citizens
- not be involved in war
profiteering
An 'ethical business' must:
- uphold basic labour rights (i.e. as stipulated in
core International Labor Organization documents; i.e. the Fundamental ILO
Conventions and the Priority International Labour Standards)
- not market the goods or
services of other organizations which are complicit in undermining basic labour
rights (e.g. goods produced in sweatshop conditions by a third party)
- not undermine labour
solidarity through the use of outsourcing
An 'ethical organization' must:
- not engage in (or
subcontract) activities which involve cruel treatment of animals
An 'ethical organization' must:
- be committed to environmental protection and therefore
not profit from practices which cause significant environmental damage (e.g.
old growth logging, clear-cutting, manufacture of toxic substances, etc.)
An 'ethical organization' must:
- conform to established standards for transparency
and integrity in accounting practices
- meet reasonable expectations for transparency and
integrity of governance (e.g. published record of principal shareholders and
administrators, free from corruption and serious conflict of interest)
A thorough and ongoing ethical audit takes time and
resources. Therefore, in addition to our
own information gathering, we rely on the results of other ethical oversight
initiatives undertaken by well-recognized human rights, labour, environmental,
and other social justice advocacy groups.
We accept the judgement of well-recognized
advocacy groups which base ethical evaluations on principles similar to those
as described above.
We give priority to sponsors which
are locally based, and particularly to those which make an active effort to
enrich and to participate in local culture.