Slavery resources

As part of its sustained efforts to advocate for an EU legislation on mandatory Human Rights Due Diligence and as the legislative debate opens among EU institutions, Anti-Slavery International along with Action Aid, Amnesty International, CIDSE, Clean Clothes Campaign, ECCHR, ECCJ, FIDH, Friends of the Earth Europe, Global Witness and Oxfam have laid out a vision for the principal elements of such an EU legislation.

Due diligence has emerged as one of the primary tools for business enterprises, including financial institutions, to live up to their responsibilities towards people and planet.

It is understood as the process of identifying and assessing; ceasing, mitigating and preventing; tracking and monitoring; communicating and accounting for environmental and human rights risks and impacts. It is based on international standards that have been developed in collaboration with business enterprises, governments and civil society and across multiple sectors, and endorsed by the EU.

As the negotiations open, Anti-Slavery International stands open to dialogue with all stakeholders and will in particular invite its partners based in the Global South to provide their vision of what is needed to make change happen on the ground. The voices of people affected by forced and child labour and people vulnerable to labour exploitation must be central to the design and implementation of the legislation.

Anti-Slavery International and ECCJ

ECCJ’s and Anti-Slavery International’s report details a number of case studies where EU-based companies have failed to address corporate abuse and environmental harm in their global value chains, profited from it, and so far managed to avoid liability before the courts.

The case studies clearly demonstrate how EU wide mandatory cross-sectoral human rights and environmental due diligence legislation, with improved access to remedy rules, would make a difference in these cases. Only by introducing binding legislation can we truly protect people and the planet, tackle human rights and environmental abuses linked to European operations, products and services, and finally hold out-of-control EU-based companies to account.

Now is the time to make it happen.

Anti-Slavery International.

Anti-Slavery International, along with a large coalition of NGOs and trade unions, is calling on the European Commission to introduce EU-wide human rights and environmental due diligence legislation. This law would require companies and financial institutions to identify, prevent, mitigate and account for human rights abuses and environmental damage caused by their operations, subsidiaries and value chains. This policy paper outlines why the legislation is important to prevent forced and child labour in global supply chains and Anti-Slavery International’s recommendations to the European Union and its member states on the legislation.

Over 100 civil society organisations and trade unions have called on the European Union to bring forth this term new corporate accountability legislation requiring companies to respect human rights and the environment in their global value chains and operations. Such legislation should establish a corporate duty to respect human rights and the environment and require companies and financial institutions to identify, prevent, mitigate and account for abuses and harm in their domestic and global operations, activities, products, services, supply chains and exports. The legislation should hold such companies legally accountable and provide access to justice for victims.

Anti-Slavery ha​s been leading this action, together with ​NGO partners including Clean Clothes Campaign and the European Coalition for Corporate Justice.

A call for EU human rights and environmental due diligence legislation:

Submission by CORE Coalition, Anti-Slavery International, Amnesty International, Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, Christian Aid, Environmental Justice Foundation, Fairtrade Foundation, FLEX, Freedom Fund, Freedom United, Traidcraft Exchange, TUC, UNICEF and UNISON.

We’re calling on the UK government to:

• Introduce mandatory criteria for reporting
• Introduce an effective Government-run registry
• Introduce meaningful sanctions for failures to comply with the TISC provision
• Extend the reporting requirement to the public sector
• For the UK government to go beyond reporting and introduce mandatory human rights due diligence.

Improving the effectiveness of the supply chain reporting requirement in UK Modern Slavery Act 2015 and moving towards mandatory human rights due diligence. This review considers the successes and limitations of the implementation of the reporting requirements set out in the UK Modern Slavery Act to reducing modern slavery in supply chains. The review identifies that research by civil society and reports by Parliamentary committees have exposed flaws in the legislation and its implementation.

This report brings the strong links between Turkey and Turkmenistan to light. Being the 11th largest cotton producer in the world, Turkmenistan’s apparel and textile exports pose a significant risk of forced labour tainting global supply chains and present a challenge to brands’ due diligence. Anti-Slavery International has documented cases of Turkish enterprises that operate in Turkmenistan and claim to sell their products to well-known international brands. These links show that Turkey is acting as the main gateway for its cotton products to global supply chains, and brands should be aware of it.

This report is a rapid assessment of labour conditions in Vietnam’s export-oriented textile and garment sector. The findings of the report, that highlight the risk of forced labour, child labour and child slavery, showcase the need for pan-European legislation that includes mandatory human rights due diligence at the EU level. As the second largest garment producer in Asia, and key trading partner of the EU, the Vietnam case was worth looking at. With Vietnam and the EU in the middle of negotiations on a future trade agreement, this study proves the EU should set higher standards for those it chooses to trade with.

This briefing for European policy makers outlines the increased risk of forced and child labour, in global supply chains of goods and services. It argues that extant national and EU law and policies are insufficient to eradicate slavery in supply chains, since they cover only specific sectors (such as conflict minerals or timber) or generic transparency requirements. Anti-Slavery International calls for a systematic, pan-European approach to tackling forced and child labour in global supply chains that includes binding due diligence, requiring businesses to proactively tackle human rights abuses throughout their supply chains.