By
AFP
Published
November 27, 2025
On Thursday, Amnesty International issued a clarion call to global textile companies and governments in four Asian countries, urging them to take meaningful actions to uphold workers’ rights and provide decent wages in the garment industry.
The NGO unveiled two comprehensive reports detailing the urgent need for fashion brands operating in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka to take significant steps towards protecting workers’ rights throughout their supply chains.
Drawing from nearly 90 interviews conducted across 20 factories, these reports spotlight “widespread violations of freedom of association within the garment industry.” They highlight numerous instances of worker rights infringements, accompanied by acts of harassment and violence from employers.
“In many respects, the fashion industry is built on the exploitation of low-cost labor, with producing nations like India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka subjected to pressures to maintain low wages and stifle unionization efforts,” stated Dominique Muller, a researcher for Amnesty focusing on the textile sector, in comments to AFP.
The textile sector plays a crucial role, accounting for up to 40% of manufacturing jobs in these countries. However, workers in the industry are often “underpaid and overworked, facing limited access to fundamental rights and systematically deprived of their entitlements through informal and precarious contracts,” Amnesty emphasized in their findings.
Despite the significance of the industry, Amnesty laments the failure of garment companies to adequately address the denial of essential workers’ rights.
Seeking to shed light on this pressing issue, Amnesty reached out to 21 companies with a questionnaire aimed at gathering information about their human rights policies, along with details on monitoring and specific actions related to freedom of association. However, the reports noted a worrying lack of evidence indicating whether these human rights policies are being effectively implemented within factories.
“Companies must stop merely reiterating their commitment to freedom of association. They need to adopt active sourcing strategies that… reward suppliers and countries that respect these fundamental freedoms,” urged Dominique Muller of Amnesty International.
The urgency of these reports comes against the backdrop of the European Union’s attempts to roll back a directive aimed at imposing social and environmental due diligence requirements on large companies. Recent votes by MEPs saw the core ambitions of this pivotal legislation undermined, with the scope of companies affected being narrowed and several social and environmental obligations being removed.
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