TDi Sustainability explored the complex issues of forced labour, a widespread problem that remains difficult to detect with current approaches. TDi experts delved into what constitutes forced labour and examined the risk areas where it most commonly occurs, shedding light on the underlying causes. The webinar featured compelling case studies focusing on high-risk areas, providing real-world insights into the challenges faced by businesses and regulators alike. James Hollins, Head of Data and Due Diligence at TDi, and Sunil Abeyasekera, ESG Consultant at TDi, discussed the latest regulations designed to combat forced labour, including who these regulations apply to and how they overlap with similar frameworks like the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) and the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA). Watch the webinar to learn how to effectively monitor for signs of forced labour and discover how tools can help identify hotspots and ensure compliance.

Presented by TDi experts:

– James Hollins | Head of Data and Due Diligence

– Sunil Abeyasekera | ESG Consultant

Download TDi’s Forced Labour Regulations Guidebooks here.

James Hollins 

Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to TDI. Sustainability is masterclass on forced labour, the risks and the regulations. My name is James Hollins. I’ll be your host today, and I’ll be talking throughout the webinar as well. I’m head of data and due diligence here at TDI sustainability, we’re a global sustainability consulting firm specializing in human rights and environmental risks through our value chains. Myself, I’ve spent the last 12/13, years specializing in human rights, focusing on human rights assessments, impact assessments, assessing agricultural supply chains, fashion supply chains. And now in the mining mineral sector, I specialize in responsible recruitment and understanding the risks of forced labour. And today we’re also joined by my colleague Sunil, who is one of our ESG consultants with an extensive background in responsible sourcing, traceability, standard setting and certifications. He’s done significant work in the benchmarking space and due diligence space, and he has spent much of his career looking at deforestation and human rights rights risks and the overlap there, particularly within tropical commodities. Throughout this session, myself and Sunil will be sharing our insights, some direct from our experience working within the human rights space on forced labour, and we’ll be talking about the regulations, the risks and how you can respond as a business to mitigate those risks. As you can see on screen, is today’s agenda. I’ll be giving an overview and the current approaches to what companies are doing with forced labour. Are we raising awareness about forced labour? What how prevalent it is throughout the world? This might be a new topic for some of you. So it might be some of these facts might be quite hard hitting, but it is a significant risk throughout value chains. Are we talking about requirements and indicators and then talking about case studies as well, why it’s occurring, where it’s occurring, and looking at hotspots as well. And then finally, I’ll be finishing on due diligence and tools that you can use as a company to assess forced labour within your value chain. Sunil will be talking about the regulations. There’s a significant amount of regulations upcoming within the forced labour space, the EU forced labour regulations, existing ones as well. So the wing of forced labour Prevention Act in the United States, and other regulations that are happening in Canada and Mexico and New Zealand, the changes to Australia’s modern slavery Act. There are a lot of regulations focusing as well within the forced labour space, such as the corporate sustainability due diligence directive has very specific aspects to do with forced labour. So we’ll be talking about some in general, but specifically deep diving into the EU forced labour regulations as well, which is upcoming after our presentation, just so you know, the presentation itself today is shortened, so there’s a an extra time for questions, so there will be a Q and A session at the end, and we hope to dedicate 20 minutes at least to the Q and A session. So please feel free throughout this webinar to put your questions in the chat, we’ll be addressing them at the end, and we’ll be dedicating at least 20 minutes to those questions. I’m sure there will be a lot of questions. So yeah, put them in the chat and we’ll address them at the end, and you can keep them coming throughout the session. So if I say something, put it in the chat and we’ll address it at the end, perfect. So let’s start by talking about forced labor and what it is. It really permeates every aspect of our society. It is woven throughout our clothes. It lights up our electronics, and it seasons our food. At its core, forced labour is a manifestation of extreme inequality. It’s a mirror held to power, reflecting who in any given society has it and who does not. And nowhere is this paradox more present than in our global economy through transnational supply chains and modern slavery, forced labour has many terms. We’ll be focusing on forced labour specifically. But there’s forced marriage, there’s debt bondage, force and sexual exploitation, human trafficking, people smuggling, debt bondage, sale and the exploitation of children. This all comes under the umbrella term of modern slavery. We’ll be focusing on on forced labour, which encompasses debt bondage, etc, as well, in all its forms, it is the systemic removal of person’s freedom. This includes the freedom to accept or refuse a job, a job, freedom to leave one’s employer for another, freedom to decide if and when and whom to marry, etc. It’s all done in order to exploit a person for personal or commercial gain. Really, forced labour is fundamentally characterized by certain characteristics. It is through coercion, deception, deceptive practices, force and abuse of power. They take advantage of individuals vulnerabilities, and it’s that term vulnerability which is core to why forced labour occurs and why individuals are more susceptible to forced labour. So really the most important driver. And the message you should take away in this webinar is that the person’s vulnerability is the enabler for all components of forced labour. And one message, one key message, is that exploitation is by design, not default. So the official term that the ILO International Labor Organization defines as forced labour in Article Two in the 1930 convention is all work of all service which is extracted from any person under under the minutes of penalty, and for which the said person has not offered himself or herself voluntarily. There is significant amounts of forced labor throughout the world. It’s estimated by the ILO in 2021 that there are around 27 point 6 million people in forced labour in modern slavery conditions, so including forced marriage, etc. That figure increases significantly, up to about 50,000,063% of these are in private sector, and 14% of those of these figures are in state sponsored forced labour. A recent study done last year noted that approximately $236 billion worth in illegal profits was generated from the use of forced labor. It really does permeate all value chains. Almost one in eight of those in forced labour are children. So around 12% migrant workers are three times more likely to be in forced labor than non migrant adult workers. Again, going back to that word vulnerability, they are much more vulnerable to exploitation and therefore forced labor. The Asia and Pacific region has the highest number of people in forced labour at around 15 point 1 million. And the Arab states has the highest prevalence, 5.3 per 1000 people, according to the ILO in 2023 however, a key message here is that forced labour, and the vulnerabilities which are at the heart of forced labour permeates all supply chains in all countries.

James Hollins 

So really, when we hear the term forced labor, so our mind immediately goes to what are the drivers here? Why? Why does it occur? And many of the highest risk countries share similar political, social, economic characteristics. They have limited civil liabilities, volatile regions. They’re politically unstable and conflict affected some countries across the world, such as Eritrea, have state sponsored forced labour. So the government perpetuates the situation of forced labour, and it forces people to work. Certain countries are home to significant numbers of highly vulnerable demographics, so migrant workers refugees, where forced labour is significantly higher and many have unequal labour laws and vulnerable workers are not afforded the same legal protections as citizens.

When we hear the term forced labour, our mind immediately goes to shackles and slavery, and we think this is surely a relic of the past happening only in the most desperate of places. However, as James has described, forced labour is prevalent, pervasive and pernicious. The International Labor Organization that the ILO has identified 11 indicators of forced labour to help us uncover and assess the degree of forced labour in the supply chain. It’s not enough to directly ask the company if they have forced labour in their supply chain, because their answer will almost always be of course not. These 11 listed can point the science to forced labor carrying and especially in an audit, it’s important to dig even deeper. Modern slavery is happening in every country, but the degree and likelihood and risk of forced labor will vary depending on several factors, including political instability, rule of law, vulnerable demographics, and as you see from this TDI global risk tool map, the vulnerability on modern slavery is presented. And please note that the green doesn’t mean that there’s zero risk of forced labour or modern slavery. The risk is still present, and forced labour is present in many goods and services, with some industries having a higher risk of forced labour and modern slavery. This chart highlights industries where forced labour has been reported. In a country with the larger-sized blocks representing forced labour a particular industry has been reported so the larger blocks is where it’s been reported in several countries. For example, we can see forced labour in garments, bricks, cotton, sugarcane and fish and these have been reported in several countries across the world. However, the goods represented by smaller blocks have had less forced labour reported. This doesn’t mean the likelihood of forced labour is less. It can just mean the systems used to report forced labour may not be mature enough to uncover it. Forced labour can and does occur across the value chain, across many commodities and throughout the world. I’ll hand over and hand over to James. We’ll discuss a case study in the USA.

James Hollins 

So just going back to that map on the previous screen, USA, in terms of prevalence for forced labour, was a was a low risk country, as Sunil mentioned. That doesn’t mean that forced labour doesn’t exist. In fact, there’s approximately 1.1 million people in forced labor conditions within the United States. If we were to deep dive into the US and go down into industry risk. You would look at agriculture as a key high risk industry within the United States. Farm workers in the US, especially immigrant workers, have very few protections. Some examples of this which have slightly changed over the last 10 years, but they were entirely excluded from the National Labor Relations Act. They were excluded from Fair Labor Standards Act, although that’s been reformed recently, they still do not have any access to overtime payments or entitlement to overtime pay. Work in agriculture is often minimum wage on temporary employment, non standard employment terms and these temporary contracts and have significant exposure to poor working conditions. What perpetuates this and what perpetuates poor slavery in the United States is often things like the visa system in 2020, around 213,000 people were employed on a H to a temporary work visa. Almost 50% of those on this visa system were completely undocumented, and because they don’t have access to freedom of association, the vast majority are not unionized as well. Only 1.7% of farm workers in the US were unionized. So what’s key here with this case study is that even though the United States is generally deemed to be a low risk country for forced labour, there are very high risk pockets within a low risk country, agriculture is a very high risk industry in a low risk country. So if you were to deep dive into industries, agriculture within the US, it would be a significant risk for forced labour and things like the HTA visa, which is tied to employment, giving workers no ability to change employment if condition conditions are unbearable and essentially making temporary workers. They’re on a permanent temporary status, essentially. So if a worker goes to a farm 10 years in a row or does a job perfectly every year on that visa, they are back to square one. They have no rights to citizenship, etc. And these sort of visa systems perpetuate forced labour, because when when the system don’t protect them, they don’t speak up about their conditions. They don’t speak up about being exploited. They don’t want to speak up, because if they were to speak up, they often be deported back to their country of origin, etc. So these sort of things allow forced labour to to run rife below minimum wage payments, etc. They have no ability, no protection, to to look at their rights and speak up about it. So what I want that message to come across is that even though some many countries are deemed low risk, there are very high risk factors within countries, and forced labour still exists in high numbers in in these low Risk countries as well.

James Hollins 

So what is the current situation with how forced labour is dealt with in the majority of value chains? And I wanted to talk about, is it a hidden risk? Many organizations, NGOs deem forced labor to be a hidden risk, and even the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said this about forced labour, that although found in every country, in every region, trafficking persons remains, remains a hidden crime with perpetrators operating in the dark corners of the internet, under belly of the global economy to entrap victims for sexual exploitation, forced labour, domestic servitude and other forms of exploitation, it really is. Is it? Is it deemed to be a hidden risk? Is the question, and we don’t believe it. So hidden risk at all. It’s entirely surrounded by predictable business models. It’s just the current approach to detecting forced labour in corporations and multinational corporations value chains, is reliant on audits and the audit approach, which is inherently weak at detecting forced labour. So this diagram on the right hand side, which actually is taken from my essay 8000 many, many years ago, lead order manual, you can see that audits rely on the availability of evidence and the reliability of evidence, so if in during an audit that is not detected, non conformances are not raised. The issue with global auditing as a tool for detecting forced labour is that it relies on a snapshot in time and does not present a pattern of abuse. Forced labour is significant exploitation over time. Audits often turn up for one day in one year, and they don’t detect the risks of forced labour. Often audits themselves. Sites are made aware of the audits beforehand. They’re not unannounced, and they can game the system. Often, auditors do not have the time mandate or even the training to deep dive into risk specific factors which determines whether forced labour would be occurring or not due to knowing little less. Victims of forced labour do not self identify their circumstances in auditor interviews, auditor interviews, particularly in social audits. Human Rights audits is one of the tools that auditors use, really to to triangulate risk. Victims of forced labour, often, in the vast majority of cases, do not even know they’re being exploited. Evidence is hard to gather, hard to verify. It’s often deemed unreliable, and it’s not admitted to in reports. So often, this tool that is so used throughout value chains isn’t is not sufficient to triangulate findings and come to conclusions that forced labour is occurring. So going back to that forced labour is associated with entire entirely predictable business models and patterns that are sound indicators and that should be used in conjunction with other due diligence approaches for assessing forced labour risks in supply chains. For example, forced labour thrives in labour-intensive, low skill production, activities such as informal raw material extraction, as well as industries with immense time and cost pressures, including aspects such as consumer electronics, there are such obvious risks that don’t get deep dived in value chains and rely on these audits to actually detect them and doesn’t detect them. We know that work authorities that are most vulnerable to forced labour include Indigenous Peoples, migrants, women, LGBTQ, plus individuals, low caste, racialized workers. And the kinds of jobs associated with this crime really comes under the term non standard employment. These are not salaried workers, like many who are on this call. You know, they’re temporary day labor, informal workers, through intermediaries, through these recruiters, through out of country recruiters, they are highly, highly vulnerable to being exploited and and this should be considered when assessing your value chains as to where these risks will be occurring.

James Hollins 

So going back to forced labour and and individuals in forced labour conditions, why audits often do not work, and the current approaches really are quite weak at detecting forced labour. Is primarily down to actually the nature of forced labour itself, the lack of awareness that they are a victim of a crime, fear or suspicion of authorities. So going back to the USA, example of the H to a visa, actually disclosing that you’re being exploited can get you deported, as the visas tied to your employment, there’s often language barriers. Many of these, as I mentioned, migrant workers are significantly, three times more likely to be exploited. Migrant workers often do not understand the language in the country that they’re working, that they’re temporary for six months during seasonal work, for example, the movements are often controlled as well. If they’re being controlled by traffickers, etc, they’re often being controlled. They’re often accompanied by traffickers in situations, and they actually often accept their current situation as favourable to their home conditions and the victims of force favour that I’ve come across, even though being heavily exploited their their conditions are still better than where they’ve come from. So they often don’t realize they’re being heavily exploited. Again, mentioning that immigration status is often tied to employment, which significantly reduces people speaking up. It’s tied to criminal activity. There’s often a fear of speaking up and self blame. Often victims blame themselves for getting into this situation, there’s fear of retribution from traffickers and fear of discrimination from their community, back at home, from their families that they’ve got themselves into this situation. So really, what I say is the barrier to disclosure for forced labor are so significant that things like audit interviews are not going to detect this sort of thing during an audit. So Sunil is going to talk about the regulations and the current situation in terms of the upcoming regulations as well.

Sunil Abeyasekera

Thanks, James. Yeah, in this section, I’ll discuss how forced labour is being tackled globally, and the approaches used to both identify and deter and prosecute those engaged in forced labour practices. So how is forced labor being addressed? We need cooperation from countries to firstly agree that forced labour should be abolished and agree upon the definitions of forced labour. The earliest and most widely adopted convention is a forced labour convention of 1930 and it’s been ratified by 181 of 187 ILO members, with members agreeing to suppress the use of forced labour in all its forms, irrespective of the nature of the work or the sector of activity. So then the responsibility passes on to national and supernational entities to develop legislation and regulations, to enforce policies and administer penalties for those engaging in forced labour. One approach that has typically been adopted has been the has been several modern slavery acts that require companies to disclose and report compliance. More recently, some countries have adopted trade based legislation that seize, impound, fine and destroy forced labour-associated goods, and these will be discussed in the upcoming slides. And finally, what do companies need to do to ensure forced labour isn’t in their supply chain. It began with adding no forced labour into policies and cascading these requirements along the value chain. Then companies have started using force different kinds of voluntary standards to certify that supply chains are free of modern slavery. However, legislations and regulations have required companies to do more proactively to understand the risks in their supply chain with zero with serious penalties for non compliance. The last 20 years has seen a widespread adoption by companies to address forced labour, both within their country and entering their country in 2004 Brazil established the National pact for the eradication of slave labour, whereby a dirty list of companies are mentioned and published each year in 2007 the UN established the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery. And the 2011 California passed a law requiring companies to to disclose information regarding their efforts to eradicate human trafficking and slavery within their supply chains. Things change in 2014 when the UN passed the ILO protocol of the forced labour convention that required countries to provide protections and remedies to victims of forced labour sanctions, sanction perpetrators of forced labour and develop national policies and plans To suppress forced labour. The following year, the UK passed the modern slavery act that required some businesses to report and disclose efforts on reducing forced labour. Over the subsequent years, many more countries adopted civil and similar laws, including France, Australia and the Netherlands. Things changed again in 2021 when the US announced the Uyghur Forced Labor Act, which seized and physically blocked forced labor associated goods from entering the country. I’ll discuss this a little bit more in the slides as well. Following on, Germany, Norway and Mexico announced their modern slavery act. And in 2024 the European Union announced the forced labour regulation, which will also delve into during this call. And Japan, Korea and New Zealand all have upcoming forced labor legislations in development. However, as you see, there has been significant development in addressing forced labour however, the US Forced Labor Act, the EU forced labour regulation, physical, physically block the trade of forced labor associated goods from entering the country. And these will be the two legislations that we’ll be focusing on during this presentation. So the read the wing of force Labor Act in Xinjiang 1.8 million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kurds, Tibetans and members of other Muslim minority groups are arbitrarily detained in mass entanglement camps, former prisons and detention centers. They’ve been subjected to forced labour, torture, political indoctrination and severe human rights abuses, many factories and other suppliers in Xinjiang are engaging in force labour, with these items appearing on our shelves and wardrobes. So to combat this, especially in the US, on the 23rd of December, 2021 the US announced the Uyghur Forced Labor Act, and it came into force whereby goods are made with forced labor in Xinjiang cannot enter United States market. And due to the severe nature of of the situation, the scope of the act is wide. That prohibits in the importation of goods from Xinjiang, whether mined, produced or manufactured for the US border control to enforce and verify claims of forced labour. Organizations like the Xinjiang data project have used satellite images and official construction tender documents to identify re education camps and detention centers. Currently, there are 11 companies subjected to the withhold release orders. These products include hair products, garments, apparel, silica paste products, computer parts, cotton and tomatoes. If you are a company that have import had that has important for Xinjiang, there are serious consequences. The US government will seize the goods, place the products under Custom holds, and you will face fines or commercial fraud and negligence. You may also lose your importing privileges. This approach has far reaching consequences, and the EU has recently passed similar legislation. This similar legislation is a forced labour regulation. The Forced Labor Act was announced on the 24th of April this year, and it will be, in fact, in by 2027 the scope includes products of any type, regardless of the sector or origin, as long as it’s been linked to forced labour. This includes products that have been produced domestically, imported, placed or made available on the market, exported. And this includes distance selling, for example, online selling, whereby the product is considered to be made available in the market, or if the offer of sale is targeted at the end user in the union. So just like the do your force Labor Act that are serious penalties if you if you are, if there is forced labor in your supply chain, the penalty for non compliance for perishable and products. For perishable products, they will be donated. For non perishable products, they’ll be recycled or destroyed, however, for supply chains of strategic or critical importance, for example, materials required for the net zero technology and also critical raw materials. The products won’t be disposed of or destroyed, but they’ll be held for a defined period at the cost of the economic operator. So what do you need to do to comply the EU forced labour regulation bolsters and complements the EU’s existing due diligence legislations. Over the last 15 years, the EU has passed due diligence legislation for conflict minerals, batteries and deforestation associated covid The addition of the EU fr will mean companies will need to address forced labour in their supply chains or face serious repercussions, and companies can’t feign ignorance that they didn’t know the force labour was present. The main changes the EU is introducing is providing custom authorities with more information. Custom authorities lack information on the manufacturer, producer, the product suppliers, as well as information about the product itself. And the EU fr will introduce better by product identification, requiring product descriptions, names, brand, the product type, reference, model, batch and serial number. Additionally, the EU fr will require details on the manufacturer or the producer or the product suppliers. Over the next few years, the EU will provide guidance on the types of information that will be required. Additionally, the EU will also provide a database of forced labour risk areas or products. However, this list won’t be exhaustive, and it’ll be linked to specific products in the market. So as part of your own due diligence, you as a customer will need to understand the risks within your supply chain, and TDI. And TDI can help you, especially with our forced labour risk tool. So in terms of reporting and how forced labor will be found within your supply chain, the EU and fr will have proactive monitoring of the supply chains through whistleblowers. Whistleblowers are invaluable, and they’ve uncovered forced labour happening across the globe. The EU are the EUFR allows people to submit allegations to the forced labour single portal where companies will be able to see the list of see the list of forced labour associated companies. This will bring new information to competent authorities to help them to detect and investigate the infringements of this regulation. Any submissions that are incomplete, unfounded, made in bad faith, will be discarded, however, we should make sure that we that the whistleblower whistleblowers are protected. Whistleblowers can face retaliation for disclosing injustices, including the termination of employment, unreasonable workloads, threats and bullying, companies may institute a culture of intimidation to dissuade employers from whistleblowing. The EUFR will then protect whistleblowers from retaliation with the protection of persons who report from breaches the Union law directive. So once you have found forced labour, what do you do next? The EU fr will also require companies to remediate forced labour if it’s found within the supply chain. And James will expand upon this in the next section, remediation is a restitution to a situation equivalent, or as close as possible, to the situation they would had been in if the force labour hadn’t occurred. Examples of remediation include financial or non-financial compensation or reimbursement of the costs incurred by public authorities. I’ll pass over to James, who’ll delve deeper into the due diligence and tools.

James Hollins 

Thanks, Sunil. Are we going into diligence approaches for forced labour, talking about best practices as well? I’m sure there’ll be lots of questions on this. You could probably spend over an hour on each one of these numbers identified in essentially the UN GP approach, the OECD approach to due diligence. This is a quick whistle stop tour for how how you can apply tools to your due diligence management systems. If there’s any questions, you can ask me questions at the end, or can send me an email as well, because there really is quite a significant amount of information that you could put here, and I’ll just be doing a light touch, but essentially, due diligence begins with risk identification and assessment, so identifying specific forced labour risks and impacts throughout the value chain, assessing and prioritizing these risks according to your defined criteria and essentially having a zero risk tolerance for forced labour, as mentioned in a previous slide, forced labour is entirely predictable and surrounded by predictable business models. So it’s looking for those predictable business models in your value chains, which is where you really should begin, and mapping risks and identifying hotspots. The next slide is really where you should begin your due diligence journey if you haven’t already, to meet these upcoming regulations, and really, how you can determine this is looking at key factors that can increase the risk of forced labour and mapping those and collecting data on it within your value chains and using that data effectively. Geography is a core aspect. Many countries have weak regulations when it comes to the labour market aspects perpetuate forced labour in certain countries. Some countries have state sponsored forced labor, etc. Geography is a key aspect where you should begin your journey and tracking the risks of of your sourcing countries, the labour market structure itself is another factor. What I’ve done here is listed really key factors, which are things that you should be collecting, looking at getting numbers for and building this risk journey and things like migrant workers, occurs much higher in certain industries than others. For example, agriculture uses temporary workers much more so than other industries. So building this picture up is really very key. So not building out just from a country perspective, but also from a business activities perspective, and even from a work employer perspective as well, so you can capture information from different scales. And that’s really the core message here with the risk application, it’s not just based on geography, it’s also based on business activities, etc, which really perpetuate the potential for forced labour. And just on the next slide. This isn’t an example of the lithium supply chain. Lithium in itself, is a heavy industry extracted from lithium ore grime or clay. At that point, it’s a very heavy industry. It’s not really associated with high risk factors such as artisanal, small scale mining. There is some in Zimbabwe, but it’s very minor compared to other supply chains, like cobalt, which is much more associated with ASM compared to lithium. So those sort of factors in terms of raw material sourcing make lithium less of a risk at its raw material extraction point than other metals, such as cobalt, as mentioned. However, there are much higher risks within the lithium value chain, much further up. And when we’re talking about apps like the battery pack manufacturing, the battery pack assembly, these factors really increase the risks of forced labour occurring in that value chain because it’s associated often with low skill temporary work and migrant workers, etc. So you’re really building this picture up of where are the risk factors within the value chain, and this really should be done for your value chains, and building a picture up about where the hotspots occur. What is causing that hotspot? Is it geography? Is it the business activity? Is it other factors? And working with experts in this field who who really can identify these hotspots throughout the value chain, or using tools and that data to really assemble a bigger picture, and I’m going to quickly just show you TDIs forced labor inherent risk tool where we talk about country forced labour index across the world. We have a risk factor for every country in the world for forced labour and how prevalent it is throughout the world, but also building up that business activity risk as well. So whether it’s lithium raw material extraction versus cobalt raw material extraction, you can build that picture up and give a risk factor as well as actually worker, employer forced labour indexes using those IELTS 11 in the case of forced labour, actually they’re not too practical. Those 11 indicators of forced labour at the ILO gives so you can break them down much further and looking at those factors in potentially at a site level, and building this picture up triangulating risk. So what this is doing is allowing the key areas and hotspots to be prioritized within a value chain. So this is it can be quite daunting when you’re looking at your whole value chain, but when you’re using data and looking at risk factors, it is identifying these core hotspots which then dedicate time for the next phase of due diligence and digging deeper and deeper in order to build this picture of forced labour. And this is really quite core to the due diligence cycle. And in light of the regulations, this is how it should be approached. The next aspect of due diligence is policies and commitment and governance from a corporation in terms of policies, quite often, companies have very broad policies that there should be no forced labour in a value chain. Well, that’s generally obvious. There should be no forced labour in a value chain, but that’s not addressing the risks at its heart. What does the risk look like for your value chain, what should the policy be addressing? So the risks needs to be understood, which is done in the previous section, in order to create policies to address those risks. So things like the recruitment fees are much higher risks in agriculture and for migrant workers. So if you’re in that industry, those sort of policies should be in place, compared to, say, raw material extraction in mining. So understanding the supply chain is really key, and understanding the risks in supply chain is really key to address those salient risks to then develop policies from which you can then adhere to. So back to the previous slide. So you should also be aware of the legal complexities. Lots of countries have regulations that perpetuate forced labour, that make it much more difficult or or or for migrant workers, for example. So building that legal database is really key, actually, to understanding the difference between, say, the UK versus Morocco and how legislation changes, and what are the risk factors that increase forced labour in a certain country compared to another. So remediation, which is key to this as well, should this is really a best practice approach, I’ll be honest, this is the best practice approach to remediation, which is the next aspect of due diligence, and it should enable victims and stakeholders to determine the appropriateness of remedies. It should go beyond standard corrective action plans, which is often how it is done in audits, which often leads to termination of relationships with suppliers. And it should focus on, instead of mechanisms to engage and support suppliers. And in fact, the UN GP says this is a core element, you should not just drop suppliers because the risks are so severe based on certain factors. You should work with them, build capacity, etc, and you should foster trust with suppliers, to encourage suppliers to identify issues and work towards continual improvement. You should adopt a bottom up approach, utilizing on the ground support, collaborating with local NGOs, with workers themselves, building capacity internally to support supply development and embed these practices of spotting the signs, etc, for forced labor, and it should be a worker driven monitoring approach for remediation, open grievance mechanisms, etc. Open grievance channels, live monitoring or grievance having forced labour champions at supplier factories, and this is really tied to awareness and training, which I’ll talk about next. But that really is key. Just taking an audit approach, a top down approach, and assessing a supplier is not going to detect forced labour, as mentioned in previous slides, how that is quite a weak approach and has traditionally failed at detecting forced labour. It really should focus on worker empowerment and profit pension tactics, and consider collaborating with other stakeholders. I’ll be honest, some of this is very complex, and there are organizations and institutions which are making allowing the pooling of resources to allow for the establishment of appropriate remedies for for that value chain. So this is sort of our best practice approach, but this, this should be taken away as a sort of how remediation should be done for forced labour. Next slide, sorry, as mentioned, training and awareness raising absolutely is really key for understanding forced labour some, sometimes the suppliers and people working at the farms and raw material extractions are are the core individuals who will be there to prevent forced labour occurring, and what the signs look like, understanding when exploitation is occurring. So really, awareness and training really is key here, as well as training procurement and sourcing teams as to you know that this really is a very prevalent risk throughout value chains. It is, it is very rife throughout almost every single supply chain, and it will be occurring in certain areas, in certain countries, in certain supply chains differently as well. So awareness raising and training is key, communicating your policies, communicating complaint procedures, building that trust and awareness raising, as mentioned, is one of the key factors in enforced labour and forced labour remediation, and and then finally, monitoring. So this really is, once you’ve built the picture up, you can raise awareness, you’ve got the policies, you understand the risks, actually what? Then you know, what should a company be doing? And traditionally, there’s the social and human rights auditing is very dominated, and is one of the sole techniques for detecting forced labor. Actually, you should be asking the question, well, what needs to be monitored and measured, and why? Where should I be prioritizing my time at this point? Who is responsible for that monitoring, the methods for monitoring, measuring, analysis and data collection and building that picture up should be asked, How often should it be performed? What should it look like? You know, if it was, if all the previous steps has identified that migrant workers are at the highest risk in that aspect of the value chain, doing a general one size fits all, social audit is not going to detect forced labour. So aspects like deep diving into recruitment practices and recruiter audits and actually recruiting these, auditing these third party recruiters and collecting data, that’s where your time should be spent, not these. One size fits all, social audits. So deep dive assessments are such a crucial tool into the relevant risks of full labour, and that should be used much more so monitoring and active engagement of grievances, real time monitoring. There’s a lot of technology out there which does real time monitoring of grievance processes. What a work is saying building up, but that sort of worker, sort of surveying, and then doing regular surveys at times where I’ve come across forced labour in agricultures is always through targeted surveys when the risk factors have said this is likely to be forced labor. So doing targeted surveys in local languages and building up that picture, seeing what their answers are, making it anonymous so they trust the system, and monitoring that data builds up this risk profile, and that is how monitoring should be done for forced labour. Unfortunately, that is not the current situation. It is a one size fits all social audit, where you know half the time might be spent on health and safety, and not looking at recruitment practices or the real high risk factors for that supplier. So I could probably talk about this one for for a long time, but, but as a takeaway message is it’s really how monitoring should be done for forced labour throughout value chains. So we’re going to have a session. I think we’re we’ve got 10 minutes left, so we’re slightly shorter on time than than I thought, but we will open the floor to questions from from yourselves. Feel free to ask any questions about what you’ve seen on screen, or any questions you might have, and we’re happy to answer answer them as well.

James Hollins 

Okay, any specific statistics on women in modern slavery forced labour is the first question. That’s a good question. I think, in terms of modern slavery as the umbrella term, 71% of females are in modern slavery conditions, but that’s because they’re much more likely to be in sexual exploitation than men. But in terms of specifically forced labour, there are when I mentioned vulnerabilities, and the vulnerability being the key word with forced labour, females are more vulnerable in global value chains. They’re often much more likely to be in temporary employment. They’re much more likely to be victims of discrimination. They’re also, in developing nations, more likely to not be in school, which perpetuates poverty, which perpetuates the vulnerabilities. So actually, yes, females are more vulnerable to forced labor because of the vulnerabilities that that entails, unfortunately. So it’s a good question, and there are key risk factors as to why females are more likely to be in conditions of forced labour than men.

James Hollins 

I think we had a question, ften sgency works are more at risk of forced labour. Yeah, so good question. Agency workers are much more likely to be in risk of forced labour. Agency workers, temporary workers, etc, are more likely to be migrant workers. They’re more likely to have traveled for work, crossing borders. That, in itself, is a factor which makes an individual more vulnerable, they’re less likely to speak the local language, they’re less likely to know local laws. They’re less likely to know understand that sort of the minimum wage situations in the country that must be upheld, they’re less likely to know to go to if they’re being exploited. So aspects like agency work, third party, intermediate really, I think I mentioned at the start that they’re three times more likely to be victims of forced labour. Is because there’s so many risk factors with agency workers, migrant workers, which perpetuates about increases the vulnerability and thereby increases forced labour so, yeah, it’s there’s so many factors as to why an agency worker would be more of a victim and like, more likely being in forced labour conditions. How would I start to use your tools? Where do we start? And how can I embed this into my supply chain management information systems? Yeah, good question. So we developed, I think I mentioned on the slides, the TDI force labour inherent risk. We mapped out all business activities risk and and tied that to mining commodities. So we looked at significant numbers of sort of the value chains within lithium cobalt, aluminum, etc, and tied it to a risk. So if you would like more information on the tool itself, we actually did release in light of this webinar three downloads, and one of them is about the tool itself, the TDI inherent forced labour risk tool. So that would be a good place to start. But you can also email me. My email will be on the slides at the end. So yeah, feel free to email me how to get access to that tool. The acceptance of forced labour among the supply chain is very challenging. What is your thoughts on this? It’s such it’s a very challenging risk. In terms of it is one of the more complex risks, because I think, as mentioned, people consider it to be hidden. Well, it’s, in fact, the current methodologies, the audits, are just not sufficient for detecting forced labour. So it really is using data actually is the crucial thing here, much more so than other risk factors is data. Building up that data picture. What is making the risk higher in a country, in a business activity, in a commodity, and building that picture up? So actually, it’s much more it’s much more suitable to be building data up in that picture than, say, health and safety. Whereas health and safety is much easier to detect in a social audit, you know, as a human rights auditor, you dedicate a lot of time to picking up health and safety risks, they’re generally very obvious. They present themselves to you in an audit very easily, documentation or they’re just there in in the site tour. But when it comes to forced labour and triangulating that risks, auditors tend to be very poor at triangulating risk, because they’re there for 123, days. They’re limited in terms of on site. They don’t pick up factors outside the audit, such as recruitment practices. They don’t look at things like agency workers. There’s so many factors as Yeah, it is a challenge, but I would say it starts with data and data collection and then prioritizing how you should be monitoring it.

 Sunil Abeyasekera

I can also speak a little bit to this as well. So yeah, finding forced labour in your supply chain is worrying, but we know it’s there, just like child labour, especially in cocoa, the identification of having child labour monitoring systems, by being able to see child labour or forced labour, it means the tools we have been working, so we shouldn’t discount or if you do find forced labour, it means what we’re doing is working while there are risks. It means that these risks are now being uncovered. So don’t fret too much if you are beginning to see forced labour. It just means we will be able to find ways to address it and then hopefully remediate it, and especially in industries where forced labour is systemic, it is likely to be found.

James Hollins 

Yeah, that’s a really good point. So now I would say where forced labor is likely to be occurring. It probably is occurring the it is, as mentioned, entirely surrounded by predictable business models. It’s just finding those predictable business models. So yeah, it’s capacity building in terms of internal due diligence management systems as well, and understanding what the risk could look like with your suppliers, which is really key as well. Yes, so in terms of posting the links, yeah, I think on our social media there were all the links for for the downloads, but I think we can send them via email to all attendees as well.

Sunil Abeyasekera

We will also be sharing a Q A after this, after this webinar as well. So in the next couple of weeks, along with the recording, we’ll be sharing a Q A and we’ll embed those links.

James Hollins 

And there was a podcast as well on this topic, which we went slightly more in depth for the tool. But as well, feel free to email me, Jay Hollins at TDI sustainability.com, as well ask any further questions. We are coming up to time. I appreciate this. Literally only one minute left, so if there’s no other questions, what I’ll say is, thank you for your your attendance. Thank you for being part of this forced labour. We shall stop tour in terms of what it is, what the regulations are saying, how I should be doing my due diligence management system. We appreciate your attendance. These are our forced labour services on screen. We do all aspects of forced labor in terms of scoping, building capacity training. We also build that data as well, and have significant tools in this area. We do audits for subcontracted labour intermediaries, that sort of thing as well. So we were very experienced at doing those sort of audits and responsible recruitment audits. So all aspects of forced labour we’re happy to help with, from terms of UN GPS that risky identification all the way through to reporting. So feel free to contact us post webinar, and my details are on the screen as well. And me and some of our open to any questions via email so happy for you to contact us after this webinar. So thank you very much for your attendance, and we appreciate your time.