The first piece of our series introduced a harsh reality: the clothes we wear every day are often produced within a global system where human rights are regularly violated and workers have limited ability to refuse or exit abusive conditions. Around 60% of the world’s top clothing production countries are ruled by authoritarian regimes. That statistic is not incidental. It’s structural. But there is more to uncover as to why forced labor is more prominent in authoritarian regimes.
The Political Conditions That Make Exploitation Possible
Today, roughly 76% of the global population lives under an authoritarian regime. HRF’s Tyranny Tracker outlines the methodology behind these designations across 106 countries and territories, including many of the countries where garments are produced. “Authoritarian” is not just a political label. The category describes environments where workers cannot organize, speak freely, or seek meaningful institutional recourse when their rights are violated.
Under these conditions, forced labor does not require shadowy criminal networks to thrive. It is often enabled by the absence of the legal and political systems that would otherwise prevent it. When a government restricts independent unions, controls the press, and lacks an independent judiciary, the basic checks that protect workers in democratic societies simply do not exist. Employers and suppliers operate with near-total impunity, and workers have nowhere to turn.
In functioning markets, workers can leave abusive conditions, negotiate higher wages, and seek better opportunities. In authoritarian systems, those choices are often restricted or eliminated, making it far easier for coercion to persist.
What Forced Labor Actually Looks Like
Forced labor in the fashion industry is not always a locked door or a visible chain. It takes many forms, and understanding them matters.
Wage theft and financial manipulation are pervasive. Workers cannot negotiate fair wages, have wages withheld entirely without justification, or face deductions framed as fines for minor rule violations. Compulsory overtime, with no ability to refuse, stretches workdays far beyond legal limits. In factories and farms where labor law compliance is weak or unenforced, these practices become normalized.
Migrant workers are among the most vulnerable. People who travel across borders for manufacturing work often arrive in debt, having paid significant recruitment fees before they ever set foot in a factory. Once there, they may find that their legal status is precarious, their passports are held by employers, and the cost of leaving is greater than what they can afford. The threat of deportation becomes a tool of control. Workers who might otherwise report abuse or walk off the job are held in place not by physical force but by economic and legal vulnerability.
Toxic working environments are another dimension of forced labor that is easy to overlook. Tannery workers and garment factory employees are frequently exposed to hazardous dyes and chemicals without proper protective equipment. In authoritarian regimes where occupational safety regulations may exist on paper but are rarely enforced, the gap between what is legal and what actually happens on the factory floor can be wide and dangerous.
Child labor also remains a serious problem in agricultural and garment supply chains, particularly on cotton and other raw material farms. In some contexts, children enter factory work to escape other forms of coercion, including forced early marriage, only to face different forms of exploitation inside the supply chain. Children often work alongside adults in fields where they are exposed to pesticides and other toxic chemicals with little to no protection.
On the Ground: What Investigators Have Found
Transparentem, a nonprofit organization that conducts deep investigations into labor supply chains through direct interviews with workers, site visits, and extensive research, has documented some of the starkest examples of these dynamics.
- In Malaysia, Transparentem found that all interviewed workers at three garment manufacturers had paid excessive recruitment fees before arriving for work. Some had paid the equivalent of up to 20 months of minimum wage. Workers described feeling trapped, unable to leave until they paid off debts that had accumulated before their first paycheck. One worker described the situation plainly: they had to accept the hardship and stay until the loans were paid off. Beyond debt bondage, investigators documented passport retention, compulsory overtime, financial penalties for resigning, and restrictions on freedom of association, all at one or more of the three factories. Workers at two sites said they had no viable anonymous channels to report complaints.
- In India, between June 2022 and March 2023, Transparentem investigated 90 cotton farms in Madhya Pradesh and found child labor, forced labor, and unsafe working conditions in at least 40 of them. Children were working among pesticides without adequate protection, facing serious health risks in fields. The investigation also revealed risks to the integrity of cotton certified as organic, raising questions about what supply chain certification can and cannot guarantee when oversight is weak.
- In Bangladesh, Transparentem’s findings highlighted how the absence of basic employment documentation leaves workers without any paper record of their terms of employment. Without written contracts, workers have no formal basis to dispute unfair treatment, illegal dismissal, or wage violations. For tannery workers in particular, this precarity is compounded by below-minimum-wage pay and is made worse during economic disruptions, when job insecurity intensifies and formal protections matter most.
Why Do Authoritarian Regimes Keep Getting Away With This?
The persistence of forced labor in fashion supply chains is not a mystery. It is the predictable result of economic incentives intersecting with political environments designed to suppress accountability. Brands seeking lower production costs often operate in countries where labor is kept inexpensive, in part because workers are denied the freedom to organize, negotiate, or leave abusive conditions. Authoritarian regimes, in turn, often welcome or protect industries that generate export revenue, regardless of the human cost borne by workers. This is not a failure of markets, but a reflection of environments where workers’ freedoms are suppressed.
Third-party audits are frequently cited as a safeguard against abuses, but their limitations are significant. In many authoritarian environments, auditors may access only pre-approved facilities on scheduled visits. Workers are coached in advance on what to say. Records are managed to appear compliant. When the political environment restricts independent journalism and civil society watchdogs, there is no outside pressure to make those audits more rigorous. The result is a system that looks clean on paper but is damaging to the people involved.
The Stakes & Action
Freedom from forced labor is a fundamental human right. So are the freedoms to organize, to speak freely, and to seek legal recourse when harmed. In authoritarian regimes, these rights are often the first to be curtailed. Fashion supply chains that run through these political systems are not neutral commercial arrangements. They are embedded in environments where the suppression of those rights removes the basic conditions that allow a free market to function.
Understanding this problem is the first step. HRF’s Wear Your Values initiative exists to keep pulling on this thread, connecting the clothing people wear to the political realities that shape its production.
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