For decades, multinational fashion brands have faced scrutiny over the human rights abuses embedded within global textile supply chains. Yet despite growing public awareness and voluntary corporate commitments, many of the underlying accountability gaps remain unresolved. The global fashion industry is valued at USD1.3 trillion and relies on the labour of over 300 million workers. The greatest concerns within the industry stem from labour practices aligned with the insatiable human dependency on “fast fashion”. Such demand has resulted in opaque traceability and transparency regulatory standards across multiple jurisdictions.

The ecological toll is equally devastating. After agriculture, the fashion industry serves as the second-largest consumer of water globally and is responsible for 2% - 8% of global carbon emissions. Ironically, 85% of all textiles end up in landfills or dumps each year, whilst the routine washing of synthetic garments sends waves of harmful microplastics into our oceans. Ultimately, both the environmental footprint and the human cost of the industry remain inadequately regulated. The accountability gap is sustained through systemic discrimination, limited supply-chain transparency, and weak enforcement of both national and international standards.

Systemic discrimination

The garment sector is primarily dominated by South-East Asian women largely comprising rural migrants and marginalised castes. Systemic barriers confine them to entry-level positions, and they remain severely underrepresented in factory management. This reflects the broader active disenfranchisement of women in the textile sector where South Asian women are routinely exploited through arbitrary work practices, discriminatory wages and insecure labour contracts.

Even though the financial profits of the industry remain staggering, global brands continue to profit from the active denial of the right to unionise in countries such as Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri-Lanka.

The persistence of these practices raises broader questions about corporate responsibility. Whilst brands frequently adopt human rights policies and codes of conduct, workers often face significant barriers when seeking remedy for labour rights violations. This highlights the limitations of voluntary commitments when they are not supported by effective monitoring, enforcement and access to justice.

Lack of supply-chain transparency

Human rights abuses often remain hidden within highly fragmented supply chains that stretch across multiple countries and regulatory systems. Currently, one of the most “progressive” measure undertaken by multinational fashion brands is a commitment to textile supply-chain transparency, which relies on data recording as proof of accountability. However, true transparency ought not to be conflated with traceability. Traceability merely refers to the technical logistical assembly of a production line, from raw material to retail distribution. Transparency, on the other hand, demands open accountability regarding the actual conditions of such production and distribution. Corporations consistently fall short of adequate reporting standards because they retain full discretion over the information they choose to disclose.

To understand this opacity, one must focus on how global textile supply chain is structured across four distinct tiers:

• Tier 1: Garment manufacturing, final assembly and packaging.
• Tier 2: Fabric production, including spinning, knitting, weaving, dyeing, and finishing.
• Tier 3: Processing of raw materials into intermediate components i.e., yarn.
• Tier 4: The agricultural raw material origins, such as cotton cultivation or livestock farming. 

Although the data records published by multinational corporations often satisfy basic global reporting benchmarks, their transparency is generally limited to Tiers 1 and 2. This creates a state of fragmented opacity. Brands will readily list the factories used for final garment stitching whilst failing to report the human reality behind the factory walls. This creates a severe regulatory gap that could lead to further discovery of human rights violations such as systemic exploitation of child labour within Tier 3 spinning mills. To date, these violations remain heavily unaddressed by corporations. For example, by the time monitoring reaches “Tier 4” agricultural arms like cotton farms, tracking is rarely, if ever, recorded. Corporations effectively use the data of direct suppliers to obscure the potential exploitation at the foundational roots of their products. Even so, the recent and innovative advent of traceability and compliance platforms such as TrusTrace is designed to close this accountability gap.

There is also increasing scrutiny of misleading sustainability and transparency claims. Lawsuits and regulatory complaints in multiple jurisdictions have challenged corporate claims regarding ethical sourcing, environmental performance and supply-chain oversight, demonstrating that transparency is becoming not only a reputational issue but also a legal one.

National Garment Workers Federation (NGWF) criticised global factories supplying international corporations such as AMAZON, IKEA and Tom Tailor while continuing to operate outside the Bangladesh Accord. NGWF filed the first complaint under Germany’s strict “Supply Due Diligence Act” over inadequate monitoring standards and safety deficiencies. The complaint further characterises the failure by corporations to sign the Accord as a deliberate evasion of human rights risks and material breach of their due diligence duties. By bypassing this binding framework, these companies not only ignore their legal obligations but also perpetuate broader institutional failures to enforce global standards of practice.

Failure to enforce global standards of practice

Institutions such as the Global Standards Organisation operate under a vision and mission to ensure the highest level of social and environmental impact in textile value chains through the established requirements for environmental criteria, human rights and responsible business conduct. Due to the scarcity of legally binding cross-border enforcement mechanisms, corporations treat global standard metrics as guidelines for business accountability. Projections from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation warn that if the fashion industry continues its current trajectory, by 2050, it could consume more than 26% of the carbon budget associated with the projected global warming limit. By leaving environmental and labour compliance to corporate discretion, global brands are empowered to shift production governance jurisdictions which opens potential to avoid real accountability.

Recent legislative developments suggest a shift away from purely voluntary approaches. Human rights and environmental due diligence laws, import restrictions linked to forced labour, and climate-related disclosure requirements increasingly signal an expectation that corporations must demonstrate meaningful oversight of their supply chains. While implementation remains uneven, these measures reflect growing recognition that voluntary standards alone are insufficient. Until meaningful accountability mechanisms are consistently enforced across supply chains, workers and communities will continue to bear the human and environmental costs of the industry's growth.

Ipeleng Motuba is an international legal consultant specialising in human rights, entertainment law, and cross-border commercial strategy.