For several decades, the United States has strengthened its efforts to stringently enforce anti-trafficking statutes at home with practical partnerships to prevent forced labor abroad. The United States’ commitments to international initiatives draw largely from a lesser known but indispensable office within the U.S. Department of Labor: the Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB). Earlier this year, the unofficial Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) terminated or suspended ILAB’s contracts with partner entities across the world. This comes even as the office continues to conduct extensive research and publish annual reports on child and forced labor risks in global supply chains, consistent with congressional mandates that established the agency in the first place. 

This development could lead to significant divergences in U.S. forced labor policy; border and trade enforcement are intensifying while the tools that enable U.S. participation in international anti-forced labor efforts are being weakened. The cuts at ILAB further undermine highly bipartisan laws to eradicate forced labor in U.S. supply chains – namely through the landmark Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) – and undercut the U.S. role in enforcing internationally-recognized standards established by the Conventions of the International Labor Organization (ILO).

ILAB’s Disappearing Role in the Global Fight Against Forced Labor

ILAB’s partnership contracts were terminated in their entirety in March and April 2025.   The discontinued projects spanned continents and a wide range of commercial sectors; ILAB‑backed efforts helped Uzbekistan bring an end to exploitative cotton‑picking practices by farmers and children, trained agricultural workers in Mexico to combat child labor in the tobacco industry, and supported programs in West Africa to keep young children out of hazardous cocoa harvesting. 

A number of companies and trade associations, however, were quick to reject the move.  In particular, the American Apparel & Footwear Association and their constituent member companies opposed the cancellations. Additionally, labor groups condemned the decision, cautioning that it would countervail anti trafficking efforts and trade enforcement. In the months since, ILAB has also been subject to significant staff reductions, further constraining the agency’s capacity to sustain its focus on forced labor as global supply chains become more integrated and complex. 

Through international grants and cooperative agreements, ILAB has historically funded and coordinated with global and local civil society organizations, trade unions, and multilateral bodies to prevent forced labor and the worst forms of child labor in supply chains. To corporate compliance teams, these functions are vital to supply chain due diligence and remediation strategies, and help bolster their credibility. They strengthen labor inspections, expand on fair‑recruitment practices, formalize worker grievance mechanisms, and support remediation for adversely impacted workers—practical steps that help ensure U.S. commitments to ILO’s Conventions and Forced Labor Protocols are actually implemented. 

ILAB is also a critical resource for sound analysis and research that helps map forced labor risks across the globe, analysis that in turn underpins U.S. policymaking and enforcement. The agency’s annual Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor and the List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor are widely used by government agencies, Congress, and companies operating in high-risk sectors to identify forced labor hotspots and help preemptively address key challenges in supply chains. The agency’s latest child labor report confirms that the agency remains active in research and policy development intended to prevent the most pernicious practices. This work, however, does not substitute for the loss of field level capacity that partnerships provided.

Prevention and Remedy: What International Law Requires

Cuts to ILAB’s grants have arrived alongside broader retrenchment to human rights in U.S. foreign policy. The State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor has also seen reductions to its workforce and in its resource capacity. These changes have at times been presented as part of DOGE and the Administration’s wider push against the DEI movement.  

Although aspects of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives may overlap with internationally-recognized obligations to worker and other human rights, the latter is rooted in longstanding international instruments as well as bipartisan U.S. policy crafted across many Congresses and administrations.  In a similar vein, both Democrats and Republicans lawmakers serving Native tribal communities have urged the Administration not to employ anti-DEI efforts in a way that infringe on the unique rights of Tribal Nations – which are a distinct and protected political class under the U.S. Constitution.    

As Convention 29 of the ILO Forced Labor Convention makes clear, ratifying countries – which include the United States – are obligated to “undertake to suppress the use of forced or compulsory labor in all its forms within the shortest possible period.” Additionally, the ILO’s 2014 Protocol requires countries that have ratified the ILO’s Conventions to “take effective measures to prevent and eliminate its use, to provide to victims protection and access to appropriate and effective remedies, such as compensation, and to sanction the perpetrators of forced or compulsory labor.” This entails taking measures to “protect persons, particularly migrant workers, from possible abusive and fraudulent practices during the recruitment and placement process,” to “strengthen labor inspection services,” and to “support due diligence by both the public and private sectors to prevent and respond to risks of forced or compulsory labor.” 

ILAB’s partnership model has served as a practical bridge that turns those standards and benchmarks into action in sectors at high risk for forced labor. Without ILAB’s partnerships, companies also lose an important resource in operational settings facing some of the most serious human rights challenges.

The Practical Benefits of ILAB Partnerships: Examples in Retrospect

The agency is withdrawing from a world in critical need of government leadership against modern slavery, a fact made clear by other federal agencies. Notably, the U.S. State Department’s 2025 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report emphasizes the centrality of partnerships among governments, civil society, the private sector, and survivors to achieve sustainable, locally tailored anti‑trafficking outcomes across an increasingly integrated global supply chain system. The latest TIP Country Reports, which document in detail forced labor and trafficking prosecution, protection and prevention efforts per country, make clear the significant need in terms of resources and government leadership. In short, the DOGE cuts are at odds with the current administration’s own appraisals. Moreover, the Trump White House’s new trade deals with high-risk countries like Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam contain clauses that prohibit forced labor in imports and also tie enforceable mechanisms to tariff exemptions for the vast majority of U.S. exports.

But partnerships were not spared in Southeast Asia, where forced labor in the natural resources and manufacturing sectors has been an endemic problem. In Malaysia and Indonesia, DOGE cut a number of projects aimed at addressing what has been documented in numerous TIP Reports: high forced and child labor rates in palm oil production and electronics manufacturing.  This includes My Voice and an ILAB-ILO program for “Strengthening social compliance in Indonesia's palm oil sector.” 

A cross section of ILAB partnerships, particularly in high-risk pockets of the Global South, bear this out. In Ecuador, termination of AgroJusto – which focuses on improving compliance with international labor standards in the country’s agricultural sector – ends vital support for fair recruitment practices and remediation. This comes despite reports that preventive initiatives in Ecuador have already been in decline, and risks to the most vulnerable workers in the country’s agricultural sector remain high. 

In Costa Rica, at-risk seasonal workers make up a sizeable share of the agricultural labor force and regulatory oversight of subcontractors can be poorly enforced. Cuts under DOGE, nonetheless, included a Costa Rican project focused on “improving enforcement of labor laws in the agricultural export sector.” 

In Colombia, projects like Proyecto Pilares and Vamos Tejiendo – aimed at amplifying worker voice and strengthening gender responsive compliance in high risk sectors, including agriculture – were impacted. The loss of ILAB partnerships in Mexico points to similar problems: the U.S. Government pulled out of important labor initiatives despite significant shortcomings in Mexican authorities’ ability to identify trafficking victims during routine labor inspections. This comes despite the U.S.-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement that was negotiated under the first Trump Administration and that included a rapid response mechanism to oversee labor enforcement at the facility level in Mexico. The agreement also contained ILO–aligned bans on forced labor and freedom of association protections. 

There were similar cuts in Sub-Saharan Africa. ILAB programs have been ended in Ethiopia and Tanzania, where program resources focused on combatting child labor in agriculture and gold mining. Reporting by civil society and the State Department itself indicate persistent risks to women and other vulnerable groups in these countries, but projects like She Thrives and Watoto ni Hazina were ended. 

Implications for Companies and Supply Chain Partners 

As discussed, DOGE’s cuts did not end ILAB’s other work, which remains focused on research, mapping of forced labor risks globally, providing business tools for labor compliance, and critical contributions to U.S. policy on modern slavery. This is complemented by action in other agencies: the State Department’s global reporting on trafficking, commitments by Customs and Border Patrol to stop any imports from entering the United States that are made with forced labor, the Commerce Department’s use of Entities Lists to restrict business with forced labor abusers, and Treasury’s ability to pull from a panoply of statutory authorities to sanction traffickers.  ILAB’s policy work is important in its own right, but it also serves as connective tissue between other agencies and provides companies with authoritative references that help them manage supply chain risks more effectively.  

DOGE’s decision to rescind ILAB’s international partnerships effectively removed one of the federal government’s most scalable tools for addressing forced labor at its upstream source points. Ending these collaborations will also deprive compliance officers and local authorities of technical assistance, training, and remediation capacity. In practice, that means fewer resources for trained inspectors in high risk regions, trusted civil society partners that surface worker grievances, and programs aimed at addressing other contributors to forced labor – such as exploitative migrant worker recruitment firms. 

The Administration notwithstanding, lawmakers in Congress will also need to consider the long-term consequences of these losses. In January – when Congress launches back into federal spending negotiations – lawmakers will face pressure from civil society and business associations alike to reinstate cost-effective international programs such as the ones spearheaded by ILAB. 

DOGE’s cuts to the agency were penny wise pound foolish, and whatever savings they generated were negligible in the grand scheme of federal spending. While some rights-related issues remain mired in partisanship, Democrats and Republicans are in broad consensus that modern slavery must be stamped out wherever it occurs. Hampering ILAB’s work here will only infuse greater risk into supply chains and complicate corporate efforts to improve labor standards in parts of the world that need these tools the most.  

Former associate Usra Qureshi contributed to this blog post.