Power, Politics, & Pressure in Lesotho Garment Factories Lessons from the Bottom of the Supply Chain

The garment supply chain is highly unregulated. Multinational fashion brands source most of their products from countries with cheap labor and relaxed labor laws. In Lesotho, a small, mountainous country landlocked inside South Africa, the effects of the global garment industry play out at a local scale. Garment factory workers, the majority of whom are women, experience poor working conditions, especially sexual violence and harassment. Several investigations have probed into the environment of abuse in factories, including one by Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) from 2017-2019. In light of their findings, WRC established the Lesotho Anti-Gender Based Violence and Harassment (GBVH) Program. This program is the latest in a series of initiatives to address labor rights in Lesotho, including the Better Work Program. With Lesotho’s garment industry as a case study, this thesis attempts to identify the most pressing challenges that garment workers face in Lesotho and how past and present labor regulation efforts address those challenges. The primary research question is: How does the impact of the Lesotho Anti-GBVH Program compare to the impact of other labor regulation initiatives in Lesotho? Based on eighteen interviews conducted in Maseru in January 2024, findings show that the Anti-GBVH Program is more successful than past initiatives at impacting workers’ rights awareness and access to remedy for GBVH-related issues. However, questions remain about the program’s sustainability, as it continues to require funding and administrative support from U.S.-based nonprofit organizations and government agencies.