Transparentem Annual Report 2025
Forced Labor Takes Center Stage in Trade Policy
This piece was originally published in Sourcing Journal on 3-24-26. By Tara Winter Recent headlines have made one thing clear: forced labor has officially entered the trade war. The Trump administration’s move to investigate 60 trading partners for forced labor under Section 301 of the Trade Act—with the potential to impose tariffs—marks a turning point. What […]
Human Rights Watch Report on the Shortcomings of Social Audits
Human Rights Watch’s new report on the shortfalls of social audits was released this week: ‘Obsessed with Audit Tools, Missing the Goal’: Why Social Audits Can’t Fix Labor Rights Abuses in Global Supply Chains. It provides recommendations for policymakers and regulators to better hold companies, as well as auditors and certifiers, accountable for human rights […]
Open Letter to CBP on Trade Data Transparency
Transparentem joined a group of 38 civil society organizations and advocates in calling for Commissioner of US Customs and Border Protection Chris Magnus and the US Government to reject a proposal to hide import data from the public. We strongly oppose corporate efforts to eviscerate supply chain transparency. The trajectory should be for more transparency, […]
2021 Apparel and Footwear Benchmark Report
Where labor rights abuses are identified at a subcontractor, it is important that remedy is provided to impacted workers, as ensuring the subcontractor is authorized is not the responsibility of workers. What should be the norm is only practiced sporadically: for example, the US sportswear company Brooks was highlighted by the investigative organization Transparentem for […]
A global call for full supply chain transparency in the clothing sector
This week, the world remembers the Rana Plaza tragedy. On 24 April 2013 more than a thousand workers lost their… life in what was, in essence, a preventable accident. The accident shook the world and put a spotlight on the unsafe conditions faced by workers in global garment supply chains. The fashion industry responded by […]
Mind the Gap: Migrant Workers Need Respect for Rights, Not Commitments on Paper
In spring 2018, Transparentem, an NGO focused on investigating labor rights abuses, approached apparel companies with forced labor findings at… Malaysian factories. Such findings are not new; the organization also noted that similar findings and mistreatment of migrant workers had already been identified in the Malaysian apparel and footwear sector ten years earlier. In October […]
Civil society organisations call on policymakers to define meaningful supply chain reporting requirements
Corporate sustainability transparency is a complex issue, which requires a careful selection of meaningful reporting requirements. Due to the climate… emergency and the advances in science and political agreements, there is greater clarity on which climate metrics and targets, as well as risk management-related information should be disclosed. However, there is less agreement on how […]
Out of Sight: A Call for Transparency from Field to Fabric
Supply chains in the global garment and textiles industry are long, complex, fragmented, continuously evolving and notoriously opaque. In support… of the Tamil Nadu Declaration and Framework of Action, Fashion Revolution has conducted new research into the supply chain transparency efforts of 62 major fashion brands and retailers. The following report explores why greater transparency […]
Fashion Transparency Index 2020 Edition
In Malaysia, Transparentem’s multi-year investigation identified endemic labour rights abuses of migrant workers in five factories…