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Fashion has a major child labour problem and is failing to address it, according to new research from the US government.
The US Department of Labor has named major fashion-sourcing regions — India, China, Turkey, Vietnam, Azerbaijan, Benin, Brazil and Egypt, among others — as hotspots for child labour, with cotton, gold, rubber and leather among the highest-risk materials. With child labour figures expected to increase and forced labour regulations on the horizon, experts are urging the fashion industry to clean up its murky supply chains and eradicate the pervasive issue once and for all.
Part of the problem is a misconception about where child labour is being used, which in some ways traces back to 1996, when Life magazine published the story of a 12-year-old Pakistani boy found working in a factory sewing footballs for Nike (in response to the public outcry at the time, Nike co-founder Phil Knight committed to raising the minimum age for employment in its factories and allowing human rights groups to attend third-party audits on suppliers). However child labour can occur elsewhere too, and it tends to crop up deep in raw materials supply chains. As a result, it can often be missed by the audit systems that brands rely on to identify or address labour abuses, which usually focus on the higher tiers of production that brands have closer contact with (for example, factories).
“There’s a massive misconception that child labour happens [only] in a fast fashion Tier 1 supplier in South Asia and it’s a 15-year-old that maybe shouldn’t be working,” says Eleanor Harry, founder and chief executive of Hace, a company that monitors child labour risks in supply chains. She cites International Labor Organisation (ILO) research that estimates that almost 90 million children working are under the age of 12, which is illegal in every single jurisdiction and international law, and that 79 million children are working in hazardous conditions. “It’s such a widespread issue in all tiers, but most heavily in deeper tiers of the supply chain, which is why it gets ignored.”
An estimated 160 million children aged five to 17 are in child labour, according to the ILO, of which around 3.3 million are deemed to be in forced labour. Most existing forced labour governance covers Tiers 1 to 3 of the supply chain, but child labour often hides in subcontracted and home working segments of Tier 4. The majority of affected children are working at home — on farms where they live, or doing intricate work like embellishment, sewing buttonholes and trimming loose threads on garments. This work is subcontracted from larger facilities, making it essentially impossible for brands to monitor with audits.
“It’s not happening out in the open, but just scratch the surface, and you will find child labour in the garment industry,” says Suhasini Singh, head of supply chain engagement at Fair Wear Foundation, a non-profit that works to improve conditions for workers in garment factories.
The problem is only growing worse. The ILO reported an increase of eight million children in labour between 2016 and 2020, and while the next ILO report isn’t due until next year, it isn’t expected to show any improvement. “When you see macroeconomic factors like a global recession, the pandemic or civil wars, you do see an uptick in child labour,” says Thea Lee, deputy undersecretary for international labour affairs at the US Department of Labor, whose office released the ‘2024 List of Goods Produced by Child Labor and Forced Labor’ (known as the TVPRA list) in September. Indigenous peoples, ethnic minorities, migrants and refugees who may be isolated or unable to access education and social protection are particularly vulnerable.
The role of industry
Brands have limited visibility over this part of the supply chain, and are slow to implement the complex task of tracking their vast networks of suppliers. Fashion is fond of forming multi-stakeholder initiatives to tackle industry-specific issues, but the commodities sourced with child labour intersect different industries — gold is used in jewellery, fashion and technology, while cotton is used in homeware, furniture, fishnets, tents and more. This suggests the need for a sector-agnostic approach to solving the problem.
Lee from the US Department of Labor believes brands across all of these industries have an outsized duty of care. “If you’re at the top of the supply chain with wealthy consumers in wealthy countries, that is where the capacity to address these problems starts,” she says. “None of us want to be wearing clothes made by children… So we need to tell the companies that we’re buying clothing from that they have to take responsibility.” The ILO’s integrated area-based approach to creating child labour-free zones recommends collaboration between local governments, NGOs, farms, communities and international brands to create tailored strategies for specific regions.
There are also some common sense approaches for brands to address the problem that involve improving labour practices overall. Ensuring fair working conditions for adult workers will have a knock-on effect for children, says Lee. “You can’t look at child labour in isolation from freedom of association, collective bargaining and safe workplaces free from discrimination, because they’re all intertwined,” she says. This means that brands need to address their purchasing practices to ensure they are treating facilities fairly and not creating conditions that force suppliers to cut corners or resort to outsourcing. “What are your sourcing policies? How do you place an order? What are your lead times? Do you negotiate when you fix a price?” asks Singh from Fair Wear Foundation.
Governance documentation like grievance and whistleblowing mechanisms should be updated to cover children. “A huge problem is the lack of acknowledgement and therefore invisibility of children within solutions. If we don’t admit that they’re there, the problem is not going to go away,” says Hace’s Harry. “The first step is taking a risk-based approach, based on proven child labour in specific goods and jurisdictions.”
Brands are advised not to cut and run from offending facilities, because it doesn’t solve the problem. In August, ultra-fast fashion retailer Shein became the latest brand to discover child labour in two of its supply chain partners, as detailed in its 2023 sustainability report. Prior to October 2023, Shein suspended suppliers that violated its codes of conduct, giving them 30 days for remediation; it has since cracked down and now says it will immediately terminate contracts with non-compliant partners. Some believe this hardline stance isn’t going to solve child labour issues, and potentially risks burying it deeper underground. “It’s a detrimental practice. Cutting ties with suppliers does not work and it’s not good governance,” says Harry.
The stakes are enormous. Child labour has long-term repercussions, says Margaret Jungk, deputy director of the office of child labour, forced Labour and human trafficking at the US Bureau of International Labor Affairs. “You have damage at many different layers inflicted on the individual, the society and the country level when you engage in child labour. You’re curbing their intellectual development because you’re denying them access to school. You’re curbing their physical development, sometimes stunting their growth when you expose them to the chemicals, pesticides and the dyes used in clothing,” says Jungk. “These issues ripple to the country’s economic development, too. If you have a lot of children in a country engaged in child labour, your future workforce has been stunted in their intellectual and physical development.”
Understanding the root causes of child labour is key to eliminating it, says Harry, but there’s no singular root cause for all 160 million children. “It seems like poverty equals child labour, but poverty isn’t just financial,” she says. Typical root causes of child labour can include lack of access to basic needs like clean water, food, education and social safety nets or family illness that puts a dent in a household’s income. “If you look at a specific geographical jurisdiction, you’ll see that the root causes are not commodity based — it’s not like there is one way to tackle the issue of children working in gold. What’s driving the child labour in Vietnam may not be what’s driving the child labour in Thailand.”
The need for well-drafted laws
Incoming laws like the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) will force brands operating in the region to track, identify and remedy instances of human rights abuses in their entire value chains (in turn forcing upstream suppliers to stop using use child labour, or that is the hope).
The inclusion of child labour in the CSDDD is a positive step to recognise its presence in supply chains. When implementation begins in 2026, the law will demand that brands identify, prevent and mitigate human rights violations. “Well-drafted laws that require companies to look for human rights abuses in their supply chains and provide remedy when they are found, could have a profound effect on ending the exploitation of children,” says Serena Grant, director of business and human rights at Walk Free, an organisation working to end modern slavery. “But laws are only as strong as their enforcement. Without effective enforcement mechanisms like financial penalties or liability for companies and their directors, these laws are simply a toothless tiger and will not be taken seriously.”
Government intervention driven by international pressure has proven to move the needle on child labour. Uzbekistan eradicated state-imposed child labour in cotton harvesting because of the Cotton Campaign’s Uzbek Cotton Pledge, in which hundreds of global brands and retailers committed to not using Uzbek cotton. Evidence has shown that bans and legislation around the import of goods made with forced labour, like the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, can be effective if accompanied by financial incentives or penalties, says Harry.
Taking on a complex, hidden and pervasive issue like child labour will take concerted effort, but “supply chains are a human construct, and we can rebuild them”, says Grant. “I don’t believe that anyone wants to wear clothes that take away a child’s innocence or future, and I don’t think any brand wants to be associated with that.”
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