In many countries, forced labour remains to a problem with textiles and garments industry. Despite progress in the last few years due to rising awareness, forced labour still occurs in cotton fields and factories across the world. Forced labour is the use of coercion to force people to work for little or no pay. Mostly, it takes the form of modern day slavery but also perpetuates itself through less overt practices such as debt bondage where workers are forced to work to pay off high-interest loans with no other means to pay off their debt.

In the garment industry, forced labour can be seen in two areas. One is the beginning of the supply chain, labour-intensive crops such as cotton often require abundant work for cultivation and harvest. And forced labour is not uncommon in the fields. Forced labour happens in fields around the world, but one of the worst scenarios unfolds in Uzbekistan, a dictatorial country in Central Asia. The cotton harvesting season turns huge parts of the nation into vast forced-labour plantations with Uzbek cotton being exported to East Asia from where it is sent around the world.

Forced labour is also pervasive in garment factories, where fabrics are transformed into the countless pieces of apparel we wear every day. Few factories remain in developed, Global North countries these days, with cheap labour costs resulting in the mass migration of garment labour to Asia and Africa. It is generally easier to understand forced labour at this level.

In fact, advocacy groups have found countless instances of forced labor in factories, but the sheer complexity of the industry makes it hard to paint broad pictures. Factories that treat workers well can be found in the same regions as those using forced labour. And from the outside, it can be nearly impossible tell the difference. The problem is that, too often, products created from both good and bad factories end up in the same supply chain.