Modern cotton slaves in 18 countries work for large textile companies and many are children

“Ravi (a pseudonym) has worked since he was 10 years old. At the time of his interview, at age 45, poverty and illness had forced him to borrow money from his employer and work off his debt on a nine-acre cotton farm connected to the supply chain of Pratibha Syntex [one of the world’s largest textile manufacturers].” This is how an extensive report published in January by the NGO Transparentem opens, which was reported by the specialized media Business of Fashion. Between June 2022 and March 2023, several members of the organization investigated a total of 90 cotton farms in Madhya Pradesh, India, the second-largest producer of this raw material in the world. They then conducted up to 200 interviews with workers and farm owners. The results go beyond the horrific: almost half of the farms are exploited with forced labor (i.e. slaves), and many of them are children.

The entire infrastructure of the workforce is based on a perverse system: they are paid 200 rupees a day (about $2.30), so to ensure their basic needs many enter into debt with their boss, who offers them a loan that decreases daily from those 200 rupees. They end up employing their entire family, including children, to meet the loan. They cannot even work on another farm and are at the mercy of their owner.

The Transparentem report found strong relationships between these farms and several major cotton factories. Most of them also pride themselves on being sustainable cotton suppliers: Pratibha Syntex (the largest supplier of organic cotton in India), Remei Group, and Maral Overseas, among others. The NGO has alerted the dozens of brands that work with them in order to address the situation. Some, such as Inditex or H&M, have already stopped working with them and have joined the Fair Labor Association (FLA), which has begun monitoring practices on farms in the Madhya Pradesh region.

EL PAÍS contacted Inditex to shed light on the situation: “We have been collaborating for years with various key organizations to improve working conditions on cotton farms in India, regardless of whether they are part of our supply chain. A notable example is our public-private alliance with the International Labour Organization (ILO), signed in 2017, to promote the Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work in cotton agriculture in countries such as India or Pakistan,” the Spanish company explains. “In line with these efforts, we are working with more than 20 brands, social organizations, and local suppliers to launch a joint remediation plan in cotton fields in 32 villages in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh with the aim of promoting protection measures for workers and their families.”

Various organizations have been warning about forced labor in India for a long time. As Business of Fashion reports, the U.S. State Department has had its sights set on this local industry for years, but also warns that when it comes to modern slavery, cotton remains one of the first markets to promote it. The cotton slaves are still there, only their geographical location has been changed so that their owners can hide from the public. A review of these reports concludes that in terms of child exploitation, coffee and construction are the main sectors involved; in terms of forced labor, the primary industry is textile manufacturing, the second is construction, and third is cotton picking.

Racism and slavery in ‘made in China’

India is the second-largest market for cotton production, behind China. It is estimated that 84% of Chinese cotton (which accounts for 20% of all cotton in the world) is produced in the Xinjiang region in the northwest of the country. Two years ago, the United States passed a law banning the import of certain products created in the region. The reason is that there was evidence that minority communities, such as the Uyghurs or the Kazakhs, are forced to work in cotton fields as part of “training” programs after being victims of reprisals by the Chinese government, which denies the accusations. In the last year alone, U.S. customs seized more than 30,000 products from the area, but several associations consider that this law is not sufficient, partly because it has not yet been implemented in other countries (which continue to study it) but, above all, because today it is very difficult to trace what the industry calls Tier 1, that is, the collection of raw materials prior to spinning the fabric. In brands that handle medium and large volumes, finished fabric is usually purchased, so the system involves hundreds of intermediaries who falsify a reality that is also obscured by questionable audits.

Difficult, but not impossible: experts agree that the solution is for those involved to allocate part of their funds to technological tools that can effectively trace the entire supply chain. There are companies capable, for example, of detecting where the fibers of each garment come from, or whether toxic materials have been used in its growth. “Think about the clothes in your wardrobe, or your kitchen utensils. One in five of these products may be made with cotton from Xinjiang harvested by slaves. It is the elephant in the room, because there is too much cotton in the supply chain that comes from there,” the spokesman of one of these technology companies, Applied DNA Sciences, told Reuters. In January, Shein’s efforts to list on the London Stock Exchange were paralyzed because its spokespeople were unable to clearly respond to the question of whether a good part of its cotton suppliers are based in Xinjiang and if they use child and slave labor.

It is estimated that 71% of child exploitation comes from agriculture, especially cotton, the harvesting of which involves children and forced labor in over 18 countries. These data from the International Labour Organization led the European Union to begin working with the UN agency in 2019 on the Clear Cotton initiative, aimed at combating child labor and forced labor in the textile supply chain: they travel the world identifying areas where slavery is used and providing solutions so that the communities involved have access to decent opportunities. For now, they operate in areas where cotton cultivation is key to development (Mali, Peru, Turkmenistan...) and, over the last three years, they have managed for example to prevent two million minors from being exploited in cotton harvesting in Uzbekistan, an area that has been in the sights of international organizations for over a decade.

Neither human nor organic

However, none of this is enough in an industry like textiles, where opacity remains an integral part of the system. The supply chain is buried by endless intermediaries who distort reality, a reality that is sometimes ignored in order to keep production costs low. Added to this is greenwashing, which is not only focused on talking about sustainability to hide much less flattering data; it also serves to prioritize the environmental aspect and thus ignores the human issue. It is not enough for cotton to be organic if it is picked by children, that is clear, but in too many cases even organic cotton is not really organic and, if it is, it hides certain facts that companies do not want to be revealed.

The Transparentem report details how many of these large suppliers in India boast that their cotton is “clean,” when in fact the NGO presents evidence not only of the use of pesticides and other toxic products, but also of the damage to the health of the forced laborers who pick it, many of whom are children.

Perhaps the most egregious recent case in this regard is that of the Swiss company Better Cotton, the world’s leading provider of ethical cotton certification, which was called into question last summer following an investigation by the British NGO Earthsight that linked it to “deforestation, land grabbing, and violence against communities” in the Cerrado region of Brazil: 816,000 tons of cotton were identified that did not meet the accreditation requirements and that ended up being transformed into almost 250 million finished garments by eight Asian companies that make clothes for major global chains. “Inditex garments only use cotton validated by external certifiers and we have committed to using only cotton with a lower impact by 2030, whether organic, regeneratively grown, recycled, or new generation,” explains the company, which last year disassociated itself from Better Cotton and issued a letter to the company demanding explanations. “We encourage our suppliers to prioritize the use of cotton from producers that Inditex has selected based on their social and environmental compliance, certified by independent third parties and with full traceability,” it added.

“It has become abundantly clear that crime related to the products we consume must be tackled through regulation, not through consumer choices. This means that legislators in consumer countries should implement strict laws,” explained Sam Lawson, director of Earthsight, in the report. In the absence of legislation, it is still very difficult to know how and under what conditions a garment is made, or if it is organic, even, as in the case of Better Cotton, even if its label certifies it. In this context, the only criterion for detecting shady and illegal activities in the supply chain is, for the consumer, to use logic. That is, to look at the price tag; no very cheap garment is a fairly produced garment.

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