All the latest news, press releases, advocacy and blogs from Anti-Slavery International.
23 December 2009 Anti-Slavery International and the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) are demanding that high-street giants H&M and Zara stop selling clothes made with cotton from Uzbekistan, a country where around half of all cotton is picked by forced child labour, following an investigation that links Uzbek cotton to products… Keep reading »
4 December 2009 Mexican police have rescued 107 indigenous people held in forced labour at a factory in Mexico City disguised as a drugs rehabilitation centre. Twenty three suspects were arrested following a raid by police on Thursday 3 December. A further two more were arrested the following morning. The… Keep reading »
3 November 2009 Slavery persists in Mauritania despite the criminalisation of the practice in 2007, according to a UN independent expert. Speaking at the end of her fact-finding mission to the North African country, Gulnara Shahinian, the UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery, said: “There are all forms… Keep reading »
2 November 2009 An ABC News investigation has discovered children as young as five years old working on blueberry farms in Michigan, USA. The farms were supplying blueberries to Wal-Mart, the biggest US retailer, as well as top grocery chains Kroger and Meijer. All three retailers have suspended buying produce… Keep reading »
23 October 2009 The Oscar winning actress Emma Thompson described plans to close the UK’s only dedicated human trafficking team as ‘madness’. Speaking in London at the Metropolitan Police’s Trafficking Conference, she said: “The decision to dismantle the only team who possess the expertise to deal with trafficking is madness. Keep reading »
23 October 2009 The House of Lords has the historic opportunity to protect more than a thousand people estimated to be in slavery in the UK when they vote to make forced labour a crime. The adoption of the new law, expected to be voted on Monday 26 October, would… Keep reading »
22 October 2009 Response to the article ‘Prostitution and Trafficking – The Anatomy of a Moral Panic’, by Nick Davies, published in The Guardian on 20 October 2009. The article suggests that the country’s low conviction rate for trafficking offences is clear evidence that the number of victims affected by… Keep reading »
17 September 2009 The former Hindu kingdom of Nepal has backed a draft UN guideline to recognise caste discrimination as a human rights violation. The guideline also received backing from the EU presidency and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. State Minister for General Administration, Jeet Bahadur Gautam Darjee,… Keep reading »
People are being forced against their will to produce everything from Christmas decorations in China to pornography in Russia and shrimp in Thailand, according to a major new report by the US Department of Labor. The report, The Department of Labor’s List of Goods produced by Child Labor or… Keep reading »
3 September 2009 Romanian Roma children are being trafficked across Europe to become beggars and thieves, according to the BBC’s One World (shown 2 September 2009). The programme revealed Children as young as 10 years old forced by their parents and other members of their community to pick pockets, steal… Keep reading »