About our Coalition

The Coalition to End Forced Labour in the Uyghur Region is a coalition of civil society organisations and trade unions united to end state-sponsored forced labour and other egregious human rights abuses against people from the Uyghur Region in China, known to local people as East Turkistan.

The coalition is calling on leading companies to ensure that they are not supporting or benefiting from the pervasive and extensive forced labour of the Uyghur population and other Turkic and Muslim-majority peoples, perpetrated by the Chinese government.

With over 20% of the world’s cotton output being sourced from the Uyghur Region, the apparel and textiles industries are at significant risk of being implicated in Uyghur forced labour. However, given the widespread and systemic use of Uyghur forced labor in the Uyghur region and other regions in China, there are significant risks of Uyghur forced in numerous sectors beyond apparel and textiles. Other sectors at high risk include, but are not limited to: polysilicon (used to produce solar panels), tomatoes, electronics, hair products and paper pulp.

We are asking companies to exit the Uyghur Region at every level of their supply chain, from raw materials to finished products, to prevent the use of forced labour of Uyghurs and other groups in other facilities, and to end relationships with suppliers supporting the forced labour system. Companies must take each of these steps in order to fulfil their corporate responsibility obligations to respect human rights as defined in international principles such as the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

The coalition urges national governments to strengthen and enforce existing laws prohibiting trade in goods produced using forced labour, and to adopt and implement binding laws requiring human rights due diligence in supply chains. The coalition is further committed to working with multilateral organisations like the ILO and OECD to use their mechanisms to end forced labour in the Uyghur Region as well as forced labour and human trafficking of people from these communities.

We call on governments, multi-stakeholder initiatives, companies, and other stakeholders to join us in challenging this abusive system and together build the economic and political pressure on the Chinese government to end forced labour in the Uyghur Region.