A global coalition of human rights organizations and labor groups has issued a letter to US Secretary of State John Kerry calling on the US Department of State to downgrade Thailand to Tier 3 in the 2014 Global Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report because it is not meeting minimum standards to combat human trafficking, particularly among migrant workers and Rohingya Muslim refugees. Tier 3 in the TIP Report indicates that a government is not making significant efforts to combat human trafficking and opens up the possibi
Brian Campbell, ILRF's director of policy and legal programs, testified before the US House of Representative's Foreign Affairs Committee on April 29, 2014, about the continued and systematic forced labor of farmers to cultivate cotton and adults and children to pick cotton by the government of Uzbekistan.
In a year when the tragedies at Rana Plaza and Tazreen Fashions have spurred both governments and private retailers and apparel brands to take action for a safer Bangladeshi garment industry, retail operations run by the U.S. government have been conspicuously quiet. The U.S. military exchanges use some of the same factories as private retailers and brands to make their own private-label apparel in Bangladesh and operate more than 1,100 retail stores on military installations in all 50 states and more than 30 countries around the world. As large buyers of apparel and as agents of the U.S.