Lesotho’s garment-sector reforms emerged through a fragile interaction between international private regulation and public law. In this blog, Pauline Jerrentrup explains how foreign economic dependence enabled reform while also creating internal tensions over authority and ownership, and how Lesotho’s unique circumstances offer lessons for scholars and policymakers.
In 2019, reports of widespread sexual harassment in Lesotho’s garment factories triggered an unprecedented response. Major clothing brands including Levi Strauss, Wrangler and The Children’s Place joined forces with trade unions, women’s organisations and labour rights groups to establish a legally-binding “landmark agreement” aimed at tackling gender-based violence and harassment in the country’s textile industry.
Public law also changed. In 2023, Lesotho became the seventh African country to ratify ILO Convention 190, the first international treaty on violence and harassment at work. A year later, it rewrote its labour law for the first time since 1992 and named gender-based violence an unfair labour practice.
My new research, co-authored with Jade Kosché, and published in Regulation & Governance, asks how the coalition behind the Lesotho Agreement shaped both private rules and public law in a country that depends heavily on one foreign partner. It also asks how the government responded once both were in place.
Drawing on 15 months of fieldwork, 25 interviews with officials and organisations involved in the Agreement, 90 interviews with workers, and analysis of grievance records from the factories, police, courts and the labour dispute body, we examined how the Lesotho Agreement emerged and how it interacted with wider legal reforms in the country.
Why pressure worked in Lesotho
The coalition could not have secured the agreement on its own, or in just any country. Its leverage was influenced by Lesotho’s relationship with the United States.
The garment sector is Lesotho’s largest private employer, providing the overwhelming majority—nearly 90 per cent—of formal jobs, most of them held by women. The industry is heavily reliant on exports to the US market through the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which grants qualifying African countries preferential access to US markets. Lesotho also receives substantial US development assistance, including roughly $270 million in aid in 2024.
This dependence created a unique environment in which these international actors could exert influence. The coalition behind the agreement, consisting of labour rights organisations, unions and civil society groups, was able to leverage both reputational and diplomatic pressure in ways that would have been far less effective in a country without such dependencies.
Turning abuse into a reputational risk
The first source of leverage came through public reputation.
Investigations into conditions at factories owned by the supplier Nien Hsing had documented sexual harassment and labour rights violations for several years. However, these findings alone had not prompted significant change.
What changed in 2019 was the strategic mobilisation of those findings. The Worker Rights Consortium, working alongside the Solidarity Center, local unions and women’s rights organisations, used the evidence to pressure international brands into action. Rather than immediately publicising the allegations, coalition members first negotiated with brands behind closed doors.
Only after the agreement had been signed were the findings released publicly, accompanied by media coverage that highlighted both the abuses and the companies’ commitment to addressing them. In effect, the coalition transformed an ongoing labour issue into a reputational challenge that brands could not afford to ignore.
The role of trade and aid
A second channel of influence operated through diplomacy and economic relationships.
Interviewees consistently pointed to the role of US institutions, including the US Embassy, the US Department of Labor, AGOA and the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), in encouraging labour reforms.
AGOA links preferential market access to compliance with labour standards. Several interviewees described workplace harassment as an issue that had become increasingly relevant to assessments of Lesotho’s eligibility. At the same time, labour law reform became one of the conditions attached to a major MCC aid compact.
For many observers, these developments helped accelerate reforms that had long been discussed but never implemented. One government official described amendments to the Labour Act as having been delayed for more than 16 years before external incentives finally pushed them forward.
Neither acceptance nor resistance
Conventional theories often suggest that public and private forms of regulation either reinforce each other, compete for authority or coexist with little interaction. However, Lesotho did not fit neatly into any of these categories. The government never fully embraced the agreement, but neither did it attempt to dismantle it. Instead, officials adopted very different positions in public and private settings.
Internationally, government representatives frequently highlighted both the agreement and labour law reforms as evidence of Lesotho’s commitment to ethical sourcing and workers’ rights. The agreement became part of a broader narrative about progress and responsible governance.
Privately, however, many officials expressed frustration with the initiative. Some questioned its legitimacy, criticised its governance arrangements and argued that it operated alongside, rather than through, existing state institutions. Others felt the agreement had been imposed externally and gave insufficient recognition to government efforts.
Several interviewees described tensions over authority, funding and ownership. Some officials believed the agreement duplicated state functions, while others viewed it as competing with government programmes for international support. Yet despite these disagreements, the government never moved to abolish the agreement.
Understanding ‘contested coexistence’
We describe this situation as contested coexistence. The concept captures a form of relationship in which public and private governance mechanisms operate simultaneously but remain in tension. Neither side fully accepts the other, yet neither can easily remove the other.
In Lesotho’s case, economic dependence helps explain why this arrangement emerged. Rejecting the agreement outright could have jeopardised relationships with international buyers, donors and policymakers. Fully embracing it, however, would have meant acknowledging the role of external actors in driving reforms that the government also wished to claim as its own achievement.
As a result, both systems continue to exist side by side, producing recurring disputes over legitimacy, authority and ownership while nonetheless contributing to improved protections for workers.
An uncertain future
However, the conditions that enabled these reforms are now changing.
In March 2025, Donald Trump listed for Congress the aid he called “waste”, including eight million dollars “to promote LGBTQI+ in the African nation of Lesotho, which nobody has ever heard of.” Congress laughed. Within months, most USAID funding to Lesotho was gone. In August 2025, MCC’s board voted to end its $300 million compact with Lesotho.
At the same time, pressures on Lesotho’s garment sector have intensified. Factory closures, reduced orders and employment losses have raised new concerns about the industry’s future and the sustainability of labour rights initiatives that depend, at least in part, on international support.
Informal conversations suggest that the agreement continues to function, although with reduced resources and greater uncertainty. Whether the protections established over the past decade will endure remain an open question.
Lesotho does, however, offer an important lesson for scholars and policymakers alike. Labour reforms do not emerge solely from domestic politics or international pressure. Instead, they are often shaped by complex interactions between governments, businesses, civil society organisations and foreign partners. Understanding those interactions is essential if we are to explain not only how reforms happen, but also whether they last.
- The post represents the views of its author(s), not the position of LSE Business Review or the London School of Economics and Political Science.
- Image credit: Pauline Jerrentrup
The post Contested coexistence: How global pressure reshaped labour rights in Lesotho first appeared on LSE Management.