"Tailoring Responsibility: Tracing Apparel Supply Chains from the Uyghur Region to Europe"

This report provides critical insight into how forced labor in the Uyghur Region is affecting European Union apparel supply chains. The apparel industry’s connections to the Uyghur Region are now well-established. The Region produces approximately 23% of the world’s cotton and 10% of the world’s PVC, a key material in the production of protective clothing and accessories. As a result, a huge quantity of the world’s clothes and footwear risk being implicated in the forced labor of the Uyghur people...

This report maps various apparel supply chains potentially from the Uyghur Region to the EU marketplace. To conduct this research, the team identified four major China-headquartered fabric and apparel manufacturers that have significant ties to the Uyghur Region, through sourcing, subsidiaries, and/or manufacturing. Using publicly available sources, including shipping data, corporate financial and media reporting, journalism, state propaganda, remote sensing data, and maps, they then traced the supply chains of these companies to brands and retailers in the EU.

The companies named in this report were provided the opportunity to respond to these issues. All responses are available in Annex A – Corporate Responses on the website for this report.

The report’s key finding is that a substantial volume of apparel tainted by Uyghur forced labor is moving into the EU without restriction. Throughout the report, 39 well-known brands are identified to be at high risk of sourcing apparel made by Uyghurs compelled to participate in state-imposed labor transfers.

The number of companies identified in this scaled-down mapping exercise indicates that EU policy is not protecting its consumers from buying products made with Uyghur forced labor. With the EU poised to decide on forced labor regulation and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, this report addresses how legislation such as the US’ landmark Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act can shield companies and consumers from complicity in human rights violations against the Uyghur people.

KEY RECOMMENDATIONS:

To EU companies/ investors/ procurers:

• Conduct forensic due diligence on any products made of cotton rayon/viscose, or PVC, including synthetic leather, to identify exposure to companies operating in the Uyghur Region, including those identified in this report. As supply chains become increasingly opaque, it is essential that due diligence procedures strengthen and evolve

To all EU stakeholders:

• Support the regulation to ban the import of products made with forced labor...
• Support the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CS3D)...
• Support manifest transparency legislation that makes all ground, air, rail, and sea shipments publicly available ...
• Support multi-lateral information sharing of data regarding cargo that has been identified as having been made with forced labor