INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS PAGES
Uncovering Hidden Supply Chains: Strategies to Close the Gap
Between Child Labour and Forced Labour Legislation and Implementation
The International Labor Organization
(ILO) estimates there are 152 million
child labourers (ages 5-17) toiling in the
global economy and 25 million children
and adults in forced labour1. Many of
them are hidden in remote, undocu-
mented, or otherwise informal loca-
tions. Over 73 million children are en-
gaged in hazardous work, and 5.5 mil-
lion are trapped in forced labour. The
US Department of Labor’s 2019 List of
Goods Produced by Child Labor or
Forced Labor cites 136 products (in-
cluding garments, textiles, and foot-
wear) in 76 countries identified as hav-
ing been made with child labour.
While child labour is entrenched in
many supply chains, the phenomenon
remains largely invisible to brands and
consumers. Despite its global scale,
the causes of child, forced, and bond-
ed labour are strikingly similar, embed-
ded in inter-generational poverty, so-
cial norms that undervalue education
for girls, social bias against minority
ethnic communities, and institutional-
ized exploitation. In light of the preva-
lence of child labour globally, it can be
expected that the vast majority of
brands have child labour somewhere
in their supply chains.
In his 2019 study of India’s home-
based garment workers, Tainted Gar-
ments, Siddharth Kara documented
the conditions of work for women and
girls in India’s home-based garment
sector who constitute a majority of
home-based workers across numerous
informal sectors. Kara found that due
to the lack of transparency and the in-
formal nature of home-based work,
wages are almost always suppressed,
conditions can be harsh and hazard-
ous, and the worker has virtually no
avenue to seek redress for abusive or
unfair conditions. Power imbalances
relating to gender further perpetuate the
exploitation of female home-based
workers, as their liaisons (i.e., labour
subcontractors) are typically male and
can often be verbally abusive or intim-idating in order to secure compliance.
The situation of the home-based work-
ers is worsened by the fact that there
is little to no regulation or enforcement
from the state regarding their conditions
of work. The researchers found that
home-based garment workers in India
consist almost entirely of women and
girls from historically oppressed eth-
nic communities who scarcely manage
to earn $0.15 per hour. Lack of access
to schooling for children in families of
home-based workers further increas-
es children’s vulnerability. Among doc-
umented workers, the child labour rate
in the home-based portion of India’s
apparel industry is 17.3 percent.
What progress has been made?
Progress has been made in efforts to
diminish child labour. In 2000 the In-
ternational Labour Organization (ILO)
confirmed global child labour preva-
lence of 246 million. Today that num-
ber is down by nearly 60 percent.
Progress reflects a global movement
of government, civil society, worker,
and corporate actors working together.
Modern slavery and child labour laws
globally have been enacted and/or
strengthened, as evidenced by the
Child Labour (Prohibition and Regula-
tion) Amendment Act, 2016 of India,
the UK Modern Slavery Act, and the
Dutch Child Labour Due Diligence law
that passed last year.
Most major brands have adopted
Codes of Conduct that prohibit the use
of child labour and forced labour, and
a significant number of these use their
own and/or or third-party audit programs
to confirm their implementation at pri-
mary factory locations. Some of these
regimes are stronger than others, but
few systematically go beyond the Tier
One production sites/factories, there-
by missing the opportunity to reach the
more prevalent and exploitative issues
deeper in the supply chain. Multi-stake-
holder platforms including the German
Partnership on Sustainable Textiles and
NCM-MARCH 2020
55the Dutch Agreement on Sustainable
Garments and Textile have also called
out child labour as a focus issue for
member brands’ ongoing due diligence
reporting.
Finally, several civil society and work-
er organisations have sought collec-
tivization within specific worker regions;
however, these efforts rarely link to the
supply chains of major industry brands
in any sustained way.
What are remaining challenges/
gaps?
Child and forced labour in supply chains
are entrenched and complex problems
that cannot be eradicated without long-
term, committed involvement of all
stakeholders—companies, govern-
ment and civil society. Efforts against
these abuses will be inadequate if they
do not extend beyond to downstream
suppliers closer to final production, and
also cover actors in preceding tiers of
supply chains, including those involved
in upstream or outsourced production.
Suppliers continue to use outsourced
labourers to lower costs and also dur-
ing times of peak seasonal demand.
Additionally, suppliers may consistent-
ly outsource specific production pro-
cesses to home based workers. Such
activities in the apparel sector typical-
ly include embellishment, embroidery
and finishing. Home-based, informal
workers are especially vulnerable, be-
cause of their unregulated status and
female gender. The often-complex
webs of production activities leading
to exports, and the risk of child labour
across these webs, clearly pose a chal-
lenge for traceability and auditing. The
challenge is further increased by the
fact that exports are often intermedi-
ate goods and services that will be fur-
ther transformed in the destination re-
gion.
Some corporate policies ban the use
of outsourced and home-based produc-
tion; however, these policies can drive