Topic in Focus

How can human rights due diligence systems be adapted to better recognise, protect, and ensure access to remedy for homeworkers and other informally subcontracted workers beyond Tier One suppliers across garment and footwear supply chains?

Overview

Homeworkers remain largely invisible within global garment and footwear supply chains, leaving them excluded from labour rights protections, human rights due diligence (HRDD), and accountability mechanisms. Using a systems change lens, this session will examine how commercial purchasing practices, weak regulatory oversight, and HRDD approaches that largely stop at Tier One suppliers interact to sustain informal subcontracting to homeworkers. Bringing together diverse stakeholders, the discussion will explore practical approaches for extending due diligence throughout supply chains. Drawing on lessons from existing homeworker protection initiatives, the session will consider how emerging approaches— including local level collective cluster-based models, strengthening worker voice— can create more inclusive and equitable supply chain governance.

Why it matters

Homeworkers occupy some of the most vulnerable positions within global garment and footwear supply chains. Their work is mediated through multiple layers of suppliers, contractors, and intermediaries, fragmenting responsibility for their working conditions. As a result, they often face low wages, insecure work, exclusion from labour and social protections, limited transparency about the brands they produce for, and ineffective access to grievance and accountability mechanisms.

Who should attend?

This session is intended for all stakeholders committed to extending human rights due diligence beyond Tier One suppliers and strengthening worker voice, representation, and accountability in global supply chains. We aim to bring together a balanced mix of stakeholders involved in policymaking, implementation, and lived experience, including worker organisations, trade unions, civil society organisations, policymakers shaping or implementing emerging HRDD frameworks, particularly in Asia, brands engaged in HRDD implementation, and suppliers and manufacturers involved in subcontracted production systems.

What participants will gain

• A clearer understanding of how the exclusion of homeworkers is produced and sustained within global garment supply chains, the supply chain risks this presents, and the systems-level changes needed to build more inclusive, accountable, and rights-based supply chain governance.

• An understanding of homeworkers in global garment supply chains at different scales and the interconnected dynamics that reinforce their exclusion.

• Lessons from worker-led initiatives in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Thailand, highlighting what has worked in strengthening legal protections, where gaps remain, and how these experiences can inform evolving HRDD frameworks across Asia.

• Practical insights into how HRDD can be extended beyond Tier One suppliers through cluster-based, locally grounded, and worker-informed approaches.