Tailoring Responsibility: Tracing Apparel Supply Chains from the Uyghur Region to Europe
This report provides critical insight into how forced labour-made apparel is moving from the Uyghur Region into high-street and high-end brands operating and selling within the EU.
Laundering Cotton: How Xinjiang Cotton is Obscured in International Supply Chains
An investigation into how forced-labor-produced cotton and cotton-based goods from the Uyghur Region wend their way into international supply chains. Based on international trade and customs data, the report concludes that at the same time as Xinjiang cotton has come to be associated with human rights abuses and to be considered high risk for international brands, China's cotton industry has benefited from an export strategy that obscures cotton's origin in the Uyghur Region.
Uyghurs for Sale: ‘Re-education’, forced labour and surveillance beyond Xinjiang
(First published 1 March 2020) The Chinese government has facilitated the mass transfer of Uyghur and other ethnic minority citizens from the far west region of Xinjiang to factories across the country. Under conditions that strongly suggest forced labour, Uyghurs are working in factories that are in the supply chains of at least 82 well-known global brands in the technology, clothing and automotive sectors, including Apple, BMW, Gap, Huawei, Nike, Samsung, Sony and Volkswagen.
Levi's Vacates Better Cotton Initiative Board Seat. Is Xinjiang to blame?
Levi Strauss’s sustainability czar has exited the board of the Better Cotton Initiative, cutting short a four-year term that was scheduled to end next year, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday, citing people close to the matter. BCI, which declined to “provide input on this topic,” updated its website early Friday to strike Levi’s from its so-called BCI Council. BCI’s leadership, members of the Geneva-based not-for-profit told the Wall Street Journal, remains deeply divided over its response to suspected human-rights abuses, including forced labor, in China’s northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.