The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (the Resource Centre) invited 19 hotel companies, representing more than 100 global brands with over 80 properties across Qatar, to participate in a second survey on their approach to safeguarding migrant workers’ rights in the country.
The coronavirus is not only claiming hundreds of thousands of lives, but is also causing a global economic crisis that is expected to rival or exceed that of any recession in the past 150 years. Poverty, lack of social or economic opportunity and limited labour protections are the main root causes and drivers that render people vulnerable or cause them to fall victim to human trafficking.
Crisis doesn’t make an appointment. The crisis of a global pandemic was no exception to the rule. Anti-trafficking organizations across the world have been forced to innovate and adapt both during COVID-19 and in post-crisis. Now is the time, more than ever, to share the field’s inventive and iterative approach to recovery.
Crisis doesn’t make an appointment. The crisis of a global pandemic was no exception to the rule. Anti-trafficking organizations across the world have been forced to innovate and adapt both during COVID-19 and in post-crisis. Now is the time, more than ever, to share the field’s inventive and iterative approach to recovery.
The case studies in this report document the experiences of anti-trafficking organizations that work on the frontlines in Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, and Vietnam and illustrate Freedom Collaborative’s impact on their activities. The four partners featured were chosen as inspiring examples of organizations that provide critical services directly to vulnerable communities, and also for their efforts in promoting the case for collaborating with other groups.
Global laws forbid the use of slave labor in the built environment, yet our buildings, and the materials that go into our buildings, are heavily reliant on slave labor. Most industry professionals are familiar with the once legal transatlantic slave trade of the previous centuries. Though slavery is now illegal in every country, it persists in various forms, from human trafficking to forced labor. This report defines aspects of modern slavery and the scope of the problem, and presents compelling reasons why we should care about the systemic use of forced labor in the building materials supply chain, including growing legal and reputational risks.
Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) to inject “new potency in the Thirteenth Amendment’s guarantee of freedom: whether on farms or sweatshops, in domestic service or forced prostitution.” Federal criminal law has long recognized forced labor under threat of criminal sanction as a form of involuntary servitude. In 2003 Congress added a powerful enforcement mechanism: a private right of action permitting victims to hold their traffickers accountable.
In 2018-2019, the International Secretariat of the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW- IS), in collaboration with eleven organisations across nine countries in Asia carried out a Feminist Participatory Action Research (FPAR) focusing on ‘Safe and Fair Migration: A feminist perspective on women’s rights to mobility and work’. In our study, FPAR is used as a framework and approach to capturing women migrants’ complex realities and perspectives on labor and migration. What distinguishes FPAR from conventional research is that it is deliberately women-centered and participant driven, the knowledge comes from the women (community) and owned by them, and based on their lived experiences, the research participants propose solutions so the research results become a tool to collectively organize advocacy actions.
Workers at a potato processing plant in Texas face abuse by their employers but choose to stay silent out of fear of losing their H-2A visas. Most are unaware they’re even victims of forced labor, or that the fees they’re required to pay to their supervisors for a visa are illegal. They don’t trust the authorities either, and fear retaliation for speaking out. It’s a reality faced by some 36,000 people a year in this border state.
Interest is growing in the responsibility of private companies to respect human rights. What was once a marginal issue is now a major concern of companies, as well as governments, intergovernmental and non- governmental organisations, investors and consumers. In July 2000 the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, launched the Global Compact, a UN- sponsored appeal which called on companies to commit themselves to respect nine core principles in relation to human rights, labour and the environment. Hundreds of companies, including many of the world’s largest, have joined this initiative.
The research examines the practices and policies of labour inspectorates and the Metropolitan Police and their relationship with the Home Office’s Immigration Enforcement team. Findings are based on these agencies engagement with immigration enforcement action; frontline organisations’ experience supporting migrant workers; and cases of people who have insecure immigration status and have chosen not to report to statutory agencies as a result.
The depth and breadth of this three-year, multi-country initiative offers a unique opportunity for reflection on approaches to researching forced and exploitative labor among hidden and highly vulnerable populations.