Slavery resources

• Read our blog about the report here

Agents for Change is a briefing that shares reflections on the lessons and challenges of a small research team originally formed to conduct research on long-term outcomes for survivors of slavery in the UK in 2020. The team consisted of three women with lived experience of modern slavery and the Anti-Trafficking Monitoring Group (ATMG). Co-written by survivors and non-survivors of slavery or exploitation, this briefing shares collective and individual reflections on the process of working and learning together to date.

Climate change is a global crisis with serious implications for all of humanity. For people who are vulnerable to exploitation, it can be especially serious: climate change can drive a vicious circle that traps people into working in industries that contribute to environmental harms, which can in turn intensify the conditions that leave people vulnerable. In our research report, author Dr Chris O’Connell, CAROLINE Fellow at Dublin City University, examines the causes and effects of climate-linked modern slavery, and identifies practical recommendations for policy makers to tackle the problem.

In order for survivors of modern slavery to recover from their exploitation, it’s essential the UK provides meaningful options to help them. This includes providing options to build independence and sustainable freedom through work, as well as through education, counselling and access to legal justice. This is a simple, achievable ask, which would do much to help survivors to move on from exploitation and to rebuild their lives. This report, produced by a coalition of organisations including Anti-Slavery International, examines the harm caused by denying survivors the right to work, as well as offering recommendations to make sure the National Referral Mechanism is reformed to allow people within the system to access work.

People who are in the National Referral Mechanism for identifying victims of trafficking (NRM) are ‘entitled’ to legal aid. However legal aid is also means tested. This means not everyone in the NRM is able to access legal aid in practice. This poses a significant barrier to justice for people who are not eligible and denies them a key entitlement. We recommend that being in the NRM should also passport you through the legal aid income and capital tests. This would mean that everyone in the NRM would be able to access legal aid.

Anti-Slavery International response to the public consultation on the need and objectives for EU intervention on sustainable corporate governance. We took part in this consultation, together with partner organisations in more than 20 countries, including Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Nepal, South Africa and Turkmenistan. We also actively encouraged our supporters and allies to do the same, and we want to thank everyone who took part: this consultation proved to the European Commission that people all over the world look to the EU to show leadership, courage and compassion for oppressed people everywhere.

This briefing reviews the provisions of the recently established Multi-Agency Assurance Panels (MAAPs) to date, assessing the extent to which they contribute to robust and transparent decision-making in the NRM. It focuses on the practical function of the MAAPs based on a survey conducted by ATMG in 2019, and feedback from 8 panellists. It goes on to highlight how this new approach to decision-making has revealed poor information sharing practices between relevant bodies, therefore undermining panel members’ ability to quality assure second stage negative decisions. In addition, it asks questions about victim support provisions more widely, especially for those engaging with the criminal justice system.

This submission has been submitted on behalf of the 31 members and endorsers of the Coalition to End Forced Labour in the Uyghur Region, a coalition of over 280 Uyghur representative groups, civil society organisations, trade unions, faith-based groups and investors united to end state-sponsored forced labour and other egregious human rights abuses against people from the Uyghur Region in China, known to local people as East Turkistan.

Submission to BEIS Committee consultation on Forced labour in UK value chains:

Anti-Slavery International, Research Centre for Human Rights and Civic Education (CHRICED)

Nigeria has more children growing up without a formal education than any other country. Largely unregulated and poorly positioned to serve as a safety net for underfunded and overstretched public education services, the Almajiri system has, since the 1980s, moved away from its roots as a traditional form of structured religious guidance to one based on exploitation, in which students are expected to sustain the schools and their own subsistence through begging and child labour. Limited effort made to improve the conditions at Qur’anic schools  and this report outlines why previous interventions have failed, and what must happen to achieve progress in the future.

Our statement with 9 partner organisations responds to the Government’s response to the Transparency in Supply Chains consultation, published in September 2020. We  argue that a lack of commitment to meaningful sanctions and enforcement measures is a major concern – and that much tougher government action is needed to tackle modern slavery and other human rights abuses in corporate supply chains.