In July 2020, the UK’s Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner recommended in her report ‘Preparing for Impact’ that in order to make progress in the fight against modern slavery researchers and stakeholders must ‘take proactive steps to understand each other’s worlds’. Elaborating further, the report noted that this should involve ‘devot[ing] time to making sense of each other’s work and the context within which it is set.’

The report made reference to a pilot ‘buddying scheme’, established in March 2020 between the Rights Lab’s and the Home Office, established with the purpose of pairing academics from the Rights Lab with policy officials in the Home Office’s Modern Slavery Unit and the then-Department for International Development (DfID). The aim of the pilot was to transform policy officials’ understanding of how to work with academia and make best use of research, and transform researchers’ understanding of the policy environment and how best to craft research for use by Government.

The six-month pilot ended in October 2020, and the successes and shortcomings found in the subsequent evaluation of the programme provide useful insights into how a robust, mutually beneficial version of this scheme might be implemented going forward.

Over the course of the six-month period, selected participants met with their assigned ‘buddy’ to discuss their work, share insights and challenges, identify and work to answer research questions of shared interest, and generate ideas for future collaboration.

Whilst the timing of the global Covid-19 pandemic put unforeseen constraints on the running of the scheme and meant that face-to-face meetings were an impossibility, many participants still managed to forge important relationships with their ‘buddy’, had many fruitful exchanges and crucially gained much needed insight into the world of academia and policy, respectively.

The ten participants in the scheme were matched on the basis of relevance to each other’s work and, out of the five pairs, all but one found participating in the buddying scheme beneficial. In particular, six participants commented that participating in the scheme was an educational experience and that they learnt about the work, timescales, goals and issues of their partner’s organisation. A civil servant participant described it as lifting their head ‘above the parapet’.

One pair in particular identified a shared area of research interest and embarked on a collaborative research project. This ongoing project is believed to prospectively impact future policy, with the policy official in the pair remarking that the scheme enabled ‘a piece of work that has the potential to help us understand the scale of an issue and potentially lead to a rethink about how we prioritise resourcing between Romania and Moldova’.

When asked to reflect on aspects of the scheme that could be improved in the future, most participants’ suggestions centred around the need for greater guidance and structure and longer timeframes for involvement in the scheme. The full list of recommendations for how the buddying scheme can be strengthened can be read here – Briefing – Evaluating the ‘Buddying Scheme’.

Vicky Brotherton, Rights Lab Head of Policy Engagement & Impact, commented, “We are grateful to Home Office colleagues for partnering with us on this scheme. The findings from this pilot have shown that there are clear and tangible benefits to allowing researchers and policy officials to connect and learn from each other. The Rights Lab is now taking forward these recommendations into our ‘buddying’ initiative, and also hope the findings from this pilot will be of use to others looking to implement similar schemes.”

The post Lessons from the Rights Lab/Home Office Buddying Scheme appeared first on The Rights Lab.

In conversation with Executive Director, Minh Dang

In the three years since its inception, Survivor Alliance has grown its membership base to 300 members in over 20 countries. The organisation, led by its Executive Director Minh Dang, unites and empowers survivors of slavery and human trafficking around the world, focusing its programs on meaningful survivor inclusion, economic empowerment and wellbeing. Survivor Alliance works to ensure that people with lived experience of modern slavery are supported to play a leading role in the anti-slavery movement.

In summer 2020, the organisation embarked on a Strategic Planning process, designed to support Survivor Alliance’s transition from a start-up NGO to an established organisation. As part of this process, an ‘Appreciative Inquiry’ [https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/beacons-of-excellence/rights-lab/resources/reports-and-briefings/2021/january/survivor-alliance-an-appreciative-inquiry.pdf] was undertaken by the Rights Lab, to hear from key stakeholders and partners, offering them the opportunity to reflect on their interactions with Survivor Alliance and how these interactions had influenced their organisational culture, policies or practice.

Nineteen individuals responded to the Inquiry; five based in the US, and fourteen in the UK, which included staff working within anti-slavery organisations, academics, and a human rights consultant. The ways in which Survivor Alliance had worked with respondents ranged from collaborating on research design and delivery, programme design, advising on campaigns, delivering training to event planning.

When asked whether they had benefited from engaging with Survivor Alliance, participants were united in their positive response. Respondents talked about having:

• Improved individual and organisational knowledge regarding survivor involvement and survivor leadership, and increased confidence in undertaking this work;
• Improved research, projects and programme design as a result of Survivor Alliance input;
• Access to timely resources and a trusted source of knowledge and support for the antislavery sector;
• Increased credibility and buy-in from NGO partners and funders for specific projects and for survivor involvement more generally.

To find out more about the findings from the Inquiry [https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/beacons-of-excellence/rights-lab/resources/reports-and-briefings/2021/january/survivor-alliance-an-appreciative-inquiry.pdf], and how Survivor Alliance intends to use them, we spoke to Minh Dang.

Q: What was your immediate response to reading the findings of the Inquiry? Did anything about the findings surprise you?

I was surprised to hear that our referrals for direct service were of note to some of our partners. We are very clear that we do not provide direct services and that we provide referrals to members who need support. Because it is not at the centre of what we do, we rarely consider that some partners might solely relate to us by receiving referrals, rather than sending referrals to us for potential members.

I was also surprised to hear Survivor Alliance credited with playing a part in the increase of interest in survivor engagement. I am very aware that I am a part of a long-lineage of survivor scholar-activists and our work builds on those who have come before us.

Q: Participants were asked to comment on whether they felt Survivor Alliance had any notable strengths or qualities. Some of the key strengths mentioned included integrity, representation, collaboration and the organisation’s ethos and values. Were the 10 key strengths identified the ones you would have expected to see?

I am not sure if I had any expectations, but I am very pleased to have some affirmation of these 10 strengths. I am especially glad to see Integrity and Collaboration emerge because we place high values in these and they are markers that are best assigned to us rather than by us. We want to believe we act with integrity and collaboratively but to have others say this is really reaffirming and encouraging.

Q: This Inquiry was undertaken as part of a wider strategic planning process. Have the findings influenced your organisational strategy for 2021 and beyond?

Yes, absolutely. It has given us the information we needed to confirm that our intended role in the anti-slavery field is (1) needed and (2) already having an impact. One of our key strategies for the next three years is to focus our Consulting Services on a few core issue areas, one of them is Allies Training and Development. We hope that in the next three years, we can raise the capacity level of professionals in the field on ethical and meaningful survivor engagement. The Appreciative Inquiry indicated that we are on the right track with this work and our current training offerings are well attended.

Q: Participants were unanimous that they wished to continue working with Survivor Alliance, and other survivor-led groups, in future, but recognised that there needs to be better support and funding to meet the ever-growing demand for survivor-informed and survivor-led antislavery work. Do you agree with this? Beyond funding, what other support and opportunities do survivor-led organisations and survivor leaders need to play a leading role in the antislavery movement?

I agree whole-heartedly. Anti-slavery scholars and leaders have indicated that the global anti-slavery movement is underfunded and will not be able to meet its aims of ending slavery and supporting survivors to recover without an infusion of much more financial capital. Unfortunately, the lack of capital is built into the global economic system that allows enslavement to occur. Anti-slavery efforts are subject to the ever-changing tides of political interest and will, continued support of philanthropists and individual donors, and the ability of governments and public institutions to provide adequate care and social services.

The remains a huge gap in provision of basic needs and most funding is directed there. This means that a focus on survivor leadership and survivor-led antislavery work takes a back seat because it is not an already established intervention or best practice. However, we believe that survivor involvement and survivor-led anti-slavery work is central to the aims of ending slavery and supporting sustainable freedom. The process of survivor engagement can contribute to the healing journey of survivors as well as contribute to more culturally sensitive, contextual, and effective anti-slavery interventions.

In addition to funding, the support that I think survivor leaders and survivor-led organisations need comes in the form of committed allyship. As individuals and institutions, we need others to:

(1) Challenge the exclusion and tokenisation of survivors with us. Don’t leave it to survivors to constantly be the challenging voice in the room.

(2) Proactively create opportunities to engage survivors. Start from the assumption that including survivors will be beneficial to your program, project or organisation, and

(3) Commit to trauma-informed, equity and inclusion practices. By being allies to Black, Indigenous, and people of colour, women, LGBTQI folks, people with mental and physical disabilities, and other systemically oppressed communities, we as individuals and our organisations will have greater capacity to interact with survivors of slavery. There is trauma in surviving racism, sexism, etc., just as there is trauma in survivor slavery. If we are not trauma-informed, we are ignoring many people in our communities, including survivors of slavery.

(4) And lastly, as we become more trauma-informed, we need to refrain from pathologizing people. Everyone response to trauma differently, but every response is what it had to be, in order for people to survive. To turn this against survivors and treat us as less than or fundamentally broken is an assault on our dignity, and I submit, an attempt to continue to alienate us from the rest of society.

To treat survivors as fully equal to non-survivors in the anti-slavery movement is to enact these four behaviours and quite literally, to invest time and resources into survivor leaders.

The launch of Survivor Alliance’s 2021-2023 Strategic Plan will take place on Monday 11^th of January at 7pm GMT. The event is free to attend but you must first register here https://www.survivoralliance.org/spevent 

The post “Survivor-Led Anti-Slavery Work is Central”: The Impacts and Future of Survivor Alliance appeared first on The Rights Lab.

On this International Day for the Abolition of Slavery, two of the world’s leading antislavery institutions are proud to announce a new partnership to merge research, community activism and global advocacy.

Free the Slaves, headquartered in the U.S., and the Rights Lab, based at the University of Nottingham in the U.K., will work together as active change agents by creating conditions that foster collective action to help bring an end to modern slavery.

The new team will work with local communities to understand what works to prevent and/or end modern forms of slavery, pioneering new antislavery techniques to support this understanding, and engaging in research that can inform policy and practice.

The Rights Lab will support Free the Slaves to develop its community-based research capacity through the development of new antislavery tools and ways to apply those tools, alongside providing advice, guidance, training and mentoring support around data and research methods.

Free the Slaves will support the Rights Lab to test its antislavery data methods and tools in countries where it operates, and will facilitate collaboration with its in-country partners.

The two organizations will collaborate on plans to expand the annual Freedom from Slavery Forum as a movement-building initiative that strengthens civil society’s capacity to confront modern slavery.

“Today’s announcement is an expression of our common determination to eradicate modern slavery around the world,” said Free the Slaves Executive Director Bukeni Waruzi. “Free the Slaves, a leader of the modern antislavery movement, is delighted to join forces with the University of Nottingham Rights Lab to achieve that goal. Research and innovation in modern slavery are critical aspects that will strengthen local communities to be more resilient and resistant to modern slavery and thus change the conditions that allow modern slavery to exist.”

“The Rights Lab has long admired the world-leading work of Free the Slaves, with its focus on empowering at-risk communities,” said Rights Lab Director Zoe Trodd. “Our own focus includes research on how to create resilience to slavery in a community-based way. We were thrilled to begin our first major joint project with Free the Slaves this year, funded by U.K. Research and Innovation. That project is about building local resilience to slavery after the COVID-19 pandemic, and includes innovative action-research with Free the Slaves in Senegal and Kenya. We’re thrilled to build on this joint work. Partnership is key to the global antislavery movement; we won’t reach the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal of ending modern slavery without it. During the 20th anniversary year for Free the Slaves and at the moment when we enter the ‘decade of delivery’ for the 2030 goals, I am really excited that the Rights Lab and Free the Slaves will be working together.”

About the Partnering Organizations:

Free the Slaves is a leading organization in the modern antislavery movement and is dedicated to changing the conditions that allow modern slavery to exist. Through innovative programs, it works at the grassroots level to build resilient communities that can resist modern slavery, and bring that knowledge to inform and lead antislavery advocacy at the global level.

The Rights Lab at the University of Nottingham is the largest and leading group of modern slavery researchers in the world. It works in close partnership with NGOs, survivor groups, businesses and the policy community on new research discoveries, intervention techniques and rigorous evaluation processes.

The post Free the Slaves and the Rights Lab Form New Partnership to Combat Modern Slavery appeared first on The Rights Lab.

Today we are engaged in a global antislavery movement. But there have been at least four large antislavery movements in human history. We are part of a long tradition of brilliant antislavery activists. By studying the history of the antislavery movement and the actions of our antislavery ancestors, we can find valuable, practical lessons.

One of the key outputs of our Antislavery Usable Past project is a free eBook, The Antislavery Usable Past: History’s Lessons for How We End Slavery Today. Edited by Kevin Bales and Zoe Trodd, the book is available for everyone. You can download a PDF copy or an ePub copy for your kindle, iPad, or other e-reader.

It’s full of crucial lessons from the past – offering a toolbox that we can apply to our work today and in the future, in order that we can build on past successes and not repeat past mistakes.

For example, there is material on:

• How antislavery activists can recognise and prevent burnout and build resilience
• The importance of language and visual representation in antislavery campaigning
• Antislavery organisational culture and opinion-building

You can find the download link here – http://antislavery.ac.uk/ebook – and after you’ve downloaded a copy feel free to share it with others!

The post Antislavery Usable Past eBook appeared first on The Rights Lab.

Do you work in a government department, a public authority or business and does your work focus on addressing modern slavery? If so, to what extent can you say that your work is currently survivor-informed, or even survivor-led?

The likelihood is that your work currently isn’t, or not to the extent that you would like it to be. The truth is that those with lived experience of modern slavery are still, for the most part, being asked only to retell their experiences of exploitation and trauma, and are rarely invited to participate in conversations about policy development or service delivery, or sit on advisory boards or steering groups. This is a missed opportunity to hear from and use survivors’ invaluable insights in shaping policies and services, and a missed opportunity to support survivors to move beyond their trauma story.

At the Rights Lab we understand the trepidation that some may feel about involving survivors in their work, so we’ve partnered with Survivor Alliance, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) whose mission is to unite and empower survivors of slavery and human trafficking around the world, to develop practical guidance to support policy-makers embarking on this work.

The guidance, published today, provides an overview of some of the key questions to consider before involving survivors, such as, ‘Are you clear why you are seeking survivor input?’ and ‘Has sufficient time been allocated to enable survivors to fully participate?’. The guide contains practical tips to ensure your consultation meetings with survivors run smoothly, as well as ideas for consultation follow-up.

We are encouraged by the recent interest of leaders in the anti-slavery field to involve survivors in their work. Minh Dang, Executive Director of Survivor Alliance said, “We are very pleased that policy makers are heeding our call to include survivors. This guide provides important tips for how to do so with the appropriate levels of respect and foresight.”

This guidance is not meant to be the definitive guide to working with survivors, and is not intended to be a substitute for face-to-face training, but we hope it is a useful starting point for policy makers to help them develop an anti-slavery response that is truly survivor-informed.

For further information about the guidance, please contact Vicky Brotherton, Rights Lab Policy Engagement Manager at Vicky.brotherton@nottingham.ac.uk.

The post ‘Nothing about us, without us’ – New guidance for policy makers on working with survivors appeared first on The Rights Lab.

Modern slavery is one of the most pressing human rights issues of our time. As such, target 8.7 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) challenges the international community to, by 2030, ‘Take immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking…’. It is therefore vital that today’s anti-slavery movement has access to as many tools as possible to both understand and prevent this crime. We at the Rights Lab have been investigating how the multitude of Earth Observation (EO) remote sensing satellites can add to this toolbox. For more than half a century, satellites have been monitoring the Earth’s surface. The remotely sensed data collected by sensors on these satellites have been used to investigate a myriad of features on the planet, from environmental change to the development of cities and population growth. The ability to monitor the Earth has developed rapidly in the past 40 years, and this rich history is now frequently applied to work in the field of human rights. In the Rights Lab we have used this as inspiration for our Slavery from Space flagship project.

This includes harnessing available satellite technology to investigate industries, countries and regions where modern slavery practices are commonly reported. Remote sensing can provide evidence to support new forms of advocacy, accountability and action in the effort to prevent slavery and support survivors. In fact, remote sensing technologies are already being implemented to support anti-slavery action. Our work on the brick industry across the so-called “Brick Belt” of south Asia (Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Nepal) has used machine learning and citizen science to map and age every brick kiln across this 1.5ma km² region. We have done so as this industry in this region is known for widespread and ongoing exploitation and abuse of workers, as well as situations of forced labour via debt bondage following trafficking. The latter has been estimated to affect up to 70% of the workforce, including children. With this mapping of around 66, 000 brick kilns we can start to understand the driving forces for slavery in this region better; other forms of satellite data have afforded an insight into supply chains. This sort of insight can be extended beyond bricks to any material that is extracted from the ground thus leaving some sort of impression – both above and below ground. We are keen to tie this to a new ground breaking initiative that some of my colleagues and I have been involved with on Essential Geodiversity Variables.

The ability to monitor the surface of the Earth and link any change to modern slavery practices will only improve due to the technological innovations taking place on satellite platforms, including improvements to the spatial, spectral and temporal resolutions. Just this week Planet Labs, the innovative satellite company, announced its superdoves constellation taking global daily multispectral imaging of the whole Earth from 4 to 8 bands. Airbus, one of our partners, are constantly innovating. Of course the use of satellite data will not be applicable for the measurement of all forms of modern slavery and indeed “sky-high solutions, even smart ones, aren’t a cure all”. As such we are advocating that an Anti-Slavery Digital Observatory be established – a digital platform that will combine novel, non-traditional data streams to allow for increasingly-sophisticated analyses of modern slavery. This we hope will enable better decision making with respect to the sourcing of any material and goods.

Professor Doreen Boyd will be discussing this project as part of the “Data and Research Panel” at the Responsible & Ethical Leadership in Global Supply Chains Conference on 6 November in central London. For further information and to register, visit ow.ly/f4Af30owEwt

The post Bricks: the building blocks for construction (but also for the Rights Lab’s flagship project: Slavery from Space) appeared first on The Rights Lab.

A recent report from the Rights Lab at Nottingham has found that less than 50% of agricultural businesses in the UK are compliant with the terms of the 2015 Modern Slavery Act, and that the quality of the reporting is low. This is a cause for concern for a sector with the fourth highest proportion of victims of forced labour worldwide.^[1]

The study, led by Andrew Phillips and Dr Alex Trautrims from the University of Nottingham’s Rights Lab, assessed the number and quality of modern slavery statements from 44 UK agricultural businesses and identified some concerning results.  Looking at both compliance[2] and the quality of ‘Transparency in Supply Chains’[3] (modern slavery) statements, the report shows that the UK’s Modern Slavery Act is not inspiring the race to the top it was hoped for, and that engagement of the sector in this issue is simply not where it should be. Whilst 89% of agri businesses now have some form of statement published (compared to just 51% in 2017[4]), only 46% of these actually meet the Act’s minimum requirements, meaning that overall only 41% of the agricultural sector is abiding by the terms of the legislation.

More worrying still is that the quality of reporting (including commentary on due diligence processes, policies, training and effectiveness measures) is dropping year on year. This average is mostly driven down in part by companies publishing weaker first statements, however this highlights that companies are not attempting to learn from their industry peers, nor engaging with the proliferating amount of support and guidance available. Reporting tended to be ‘tick-box’ in nature with plenty of references to ‘zero-tolerance approaches’, but was disappointingly sparse on commitments to take concrete actions. Effectiveness measures and performance indicators persist as the least well addressed area – a critical element if year on year improvement in addressing modern slavery is to be achieved.

Those working directly in agriculture, or indeed those buying from agri businesses, may be well aware of the increased risk of modern slavery in such operations. Reliance on low skilled seasonal labour, coupled with increasing cost price pressure from above, make the workforce in agri businesses more susceptible to exploitation. With this in mind, it’s crucial that the sector takes modern slavery reporting seriously.

Whilst the study indicates clear room for improvement from the agricultural sector in general, it also highlights a pressing need to strengthen the legislation to address the current lack of government enforcement and oversight of modern slavery reporting. The study insightfully compares reporting on modern slavery with Gender Pay Gap (GPG) Reporting, showing the stark difference that effective regulation, including mandatory reporting requirements, can make in a comparable area of corporate social responsibility: 87% of companies with a responsibility to report under the GPG regulations did so on day one of the first year of reporting, versus a mere 19% compliance rate for reporting under the Modern Slavery Act by the agricultural sector. This underscores the importance of ensuring compliance and improving the quality of statements, the main focus of the Independent Review of the Modern Slavery Act[5] on the issue of transparency in supply chains.

Given the risk of exploitation and abuse that workers in the agricultural sector face, urgent action is required from businesses and policy makers alike to stop the downward trend identified in this research. To read our full list of recommendations, you can access our Briefing for Policy Makers here, our Business Briefing here, and the study is available in full here.

If you’d like to know more about the Rights Lab or find out how we might be able to support your business in its efforts to tackle modern slavery, get in touch: rightslab@nottingham.ac.uk.

[1] International Labour Organisation. (2017). Global Estimates of Modern Slavery: Forced Labour and Forced Marriage. Figure 9. http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—dgreports/—dcomm/documents/publication/wcms_575479.pdf

[2] The requirements considered here are that the statement is signed by a director, approved by the board and linked from the company’s homepage

[3] Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act

[4] See the first report of this kind undertaken by the Rights Lab in 2017, at https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/beacons-of-excellence/rights-lab/mseu/mseu-resources/2018/november/modern-slavery-act-and-agriculture.pdf https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/beacons-of-excellence/rights-lab/mseu/mseu-resources/2018/november/modern-slavery-act-and-agriculture.pdf

[5] Independent Review of the Modern Slavery Act 2015: Final Report. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/803406/Independent_review_of_the_Modern_Slavery_Act_-_final_report.pdf

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By Sacha McGowan-Crewe, Rights Lab Intern

The fashion industry is worth £32 billion to the UK economy, yet is the second highest at-risk sector for modern slavery. The International Labour Organisation defines modern slavery as a ‘situation of exploitation that a person cannot refuse or leave because of threats, violence, and abuse of power’. It is estimated that 40.3 million people are entrapped in modern slavery globally, with 71% of them being women. The global fashion industry remains one of the biggest drivers of modern slavery.

The pace of the fashion system is remarkable. The emergence of fast fashion pioneers such as Zara and H&M have enabled garments to move from design to sale in as little as five to twelve weeks, significantly outpacing the six to twelve-month cycle of traditional retailers. More recently, with the emergence of social media and digital communications a ‘new breed’ of fashion players have emerged: ‘ultra-fast’ online brands including Boohoo, Missguided and Pretty Little Thing, which can bring products from design to sale in as little as one week. Product regimes have responded to the expectations of consumers who want to follow fashion trends immediately, but at a fraction of the cost of traditional fashion prices. Ultra-fast fashion retailers are offering tops for £10, and bikinis for £1. Their fashion cycle operates on an occasion-driven basis, whereby consumers are buying new clothing for holidays, Bank Holidays, festivals, Christmas, Valentine’s Day and a range of other ‘occasions’ – to wear once and then to throw away. The instantaneous digital relay of fashion information without time-space barriers has fueled this ultra-fast fashion desire. In the UK consumers purchase 400% more clothing than we did just 20 years ago. If the recent past is any measure of the near future, this pattern of consumption will use ¼ of the world’s carbon budget by 2015 (Fashion Revolution 2018). 

Safia Minney (2017) Slave to Fashion

There is emerging evidence that a geographical ‘re-shoring’ of production is underway as ultra-fast fashion brands locate close to market to avoid lengthy and expensive transportation costs. Having locations closer to home makes it relatively easy (and quick) to manage short supply chains and to deliver new items to websites (and into the hands of consumers) as quickly as possible. Fast fashion is never free and the demand for cheap labour has led to the rise of exploitative employment practices much ‘closer to home’ where there is an absence of employment contracts, breaches in health and safety practices, and poor enforcement of regulation and labour standards. Ultra-fast fashion retailers operate at such speed that their warehouses in the UK can be seen as ‘dark factories,’ where workers are paid on average £3 to £3.50 an hour – well below the National Living, which stands at £8.21 an hour for workers aged 25 and above. ‘Made in the UK’ should guarantee that workers are paid at least the minimum wage in a safe workspace. It is unacceptable that some workers in the UK are suffering serious breaches of health and safety laws in their places of work. The demand for cheap labour has created a race to the bottom and puts factory owners under pressure to offer garments at the lowest cost possible, meaning corners are cut, wages are kept at poverty levels and the temptation to engage in illegal employment practices is high

Whilst some enforcement action has been undertaken in the fashion and textile sector over recent years, it has clearly not had an effective impact on overall compliance. The 2015 Modern Slavery Act attempted to end slavery in global supply chains. It requires companies who turnover more than £36 million to report on their efforts against modern slavery annually. It has been argued that this is not robust enough to stop wage exploitation in UK clothing factories. A campaign group – Labour Behind the Label – launched a petition in 2019 calling for ultra-fast fashion brands to deliver a living wage to workers in supply chains. The fashion supply chain is spatially highly variegated and complex, with many aspects of the process contracted out to different suppliers. This lack of supply chain transparency makes exploitation, unregulated practice and illegal activity endemic. Therefore, it is essential to develop national and international legal frameworks, to eradicate modern slavery, and exploitative employment practices from the fashion industry.

Contemporary fashion has blurred the connection between consumer wants and needs. By treating clothes as disposable, we are fuelling a system that oppresses and exploits workers. The fashion industry churns out endless cheap clothes for ever-changing trends and does so at multiple costs. Consumption needs to be slowed down and use fewer resources. Fashion must be designed with longevity, resource efficiency, and good ethics in mind. It is vital to ensure that fashion retailers make drastic changes to improve their corporate social responsibilities. Together, consumers, NGOs, and governments have a responsibility to challenge corruption and strengthen human rights laws and codes of practice. Without this, people will remain dislocated and disconnected from power, resource, and opportunity. This dissociation inevitably leads to poverty and exploitation. The fashion industry has profited from the exploitation of workers and the environment. It is time to connect consumers, companies and the people who make our clothes.

The post From fast-fashion to ultra-fast fashion: it is time to reveal the true costs appeared first on The Rights Lab.

By Sarah Kerr, Rights Lab Deputy Director and Modern Slavery Evidence Unit (MSEU) Director, Tuesday 29th January 2019

The Rights Lab Modern Slavery Evidence Unit (MSEU) is the interface between the Lab’s research base and modern slavery change agents in government, business and civil society in the UK and internationally. Domain specialists from each of the Rights Lab’s four research programmes (Data, Survivors, Governance, and Business) work in the Unit and focus explicitly on translating research findings for key stakeholder groups. New MSEU Fellows will join later in the year, adding vital new capacity in systematic review, policy analysis, monitoring and evaluation, and translation and impact.

This MSEU comes at a pivotal stage of the global antislavery movement’s history, says Rights Lab Director, Professor Zoe Trodd: “With a rapid proliferation of actors in the field, and legislation on modern slavery and human trafficking being drafted in an increasing number of states, there is an urgent need for a reliable evidence base to underpin effective and sustainable solutions. The Rights Lab Modern Slavery Evidence Unit is helping to deliver this evidence base.”

To achieve Sustainable Development Goal 8.7 (ending slavery by 2030), 9,000 slaves would need to be freed every day, and 25,000 children would need to be prevented from entering the worst forms of exploitative labour every day. The magnitude of this challenge will require a step-change in global antislavery activity and coordination underpinned by a robust evidence base, open sharing of monitoring and evaluation data (to establish and then diffuse promising practices), and the full power of innovation in the application of technology. Universities have the human and technical resource to help address this challenge.

Rights Lab Executive Director Professor Todd Landman agrees. “Universities as knowledge providers are perfectly positioned to deliver data, analysis and evidence authoritatively and independently. Investment from the University of Nottingham has allowed the Rights Lab to become the world’s leading research base on modern slavery, including the work of. MSEU in translating this research into useful findings and recommendations. World-class foundational research is only half of the impact equation: without the capability to translate this into accessible content, the change we want to see cannot happen”.

Strong Foundations

The Rights Lab Modern Slavery Evidence Unit is built on strong foundations and benefits from an unparalleled network locally, nationally and internationally. Our track record in policy engagement includes work by Rights Lab Research Director Professor Kevin Bales as Special Advisor to the Centre for Social Justice’s Slavery and Human Trafficking Review, which helped to write the UK Modern Slavery Act; as Consultant on the Global Program on Trafficking in Human Beings, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, including an “Anti-Trafficking Toolkit;” as a researcher on the US State Department project “Village resilience to child trafficking”; work by Rights Lab Professor of Modern Slavery Statistics Sir Bernard Silverman as a member of the UK Prime Minister’s Modern Slavery Taskforce and of the UK Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner’s Advisory Board; work by Rights Lab Associate Director Alison Gardner as the evaluator of the national Church of England’s Clewer Initiative; and formal research, advisory or M&E partnerships with the Home Office Modern Slavery Unit, UNU’s Delta 8.7 and Code 8.7, and the Irish, Norwegian and Nepali governments and the Economic Community of West African States on the formulation of policy on slavery and human trafficking.

Consolidating and being challenge-driven

This work has recently been consolidated through Rights Lab training for the Cabinet Office, the Prime Minister’s Implementation Unit, the Department for International Development, the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, the Home Office, and the Modern Slavery Unit on monitoring & evaluation, and data use; through five co-authored reports with the Office of the UK’s Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner (IASC); through the appointment of Baroness Lola Young of Hornsey – a leading antislavery cross-bench peer – as Rights Lab Honorary Professor; and through relationships with other key parliamentarians, including MP for Nottingham North and Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Human Trafficking & Modern Slavery, Alex Norris. Alex feels the MSEU comes at a crucial point in modern slavery legislation development in the UK:

“The Modern Slavery Evidence Unit (MSEU) will be an invaluable resource to parliamentarians and policy-makers as the UK’s 2015 Modern Slavery Act undergoes review and amendment. Having immediate access to expertise across such a wide range of areas – from the terrorism/slavery nexus, to survivor-informed insight into possible future improvements to the National Referral Mechanism (NRM), will help to ensure not only that we have the best possible evidence base for our work, but that we can commission new work in response to anticipated future challenges.”

Growing the Rights Lab’s international policy engagement capacity

The MSEU team has also been mapping and consolidating its Whitehall network, visiting the team at the Parliamentary Office for Science & Technology (POST) and reaching out to the House Librarian in the Commons to start the process of introducing MSEU work as a resource (see a sample report in which the Lab’s research features here). In acknowledgement of the global dimension of modern forms of slavery, MSEU has an explicit focus on models and approaches that can be deployed in or adapted for contexts across the globe. We will host a visit in March 2019 by the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) and modern slavery-focused MPs from Malawi in partnership with local MPs Alex Norris and Vernon Coaker, along with key Nottingham antislavery actors from the local authority. Visits to key legislators (on a local, regional, national and international scale) in the US, Canada, Australia, Norway, and Brazil in 2018 will underpin new legislative development work in 2019.

Key to the deployment and adaptation of new research-informed antislavery approaches is our relationship with the UN University Centre for Policy Research and the UN’s global knowledge sharing tool Delta 8.7. Delta 8.7 fulfils the role for the global antislavery community of hosting data and tools through innovative country-level data dashboards and a research forum. Rights Lab resources are hosted on Delta 8.7, and Rights Lab staff contribute regular articles to its forum. Delta 8.7 and the Rights Lab join other partners in February 2019 to launch Code 8.7: a new Global Working Group on AI and computational science strategies for tackling slavery.

Particularly exciting for 2019 will be work on Antislavery Domestic Legislation. MSEU and Rights Lab Research Fellow Katarina Schwarz’s work maps national laws concerning slavery, related exploitation, and human trafficking globally. Drawing from thousands of legislative provisions across all States, it assesses countries’ compliance with their basic international commitments and uncovers trends in antislavery governance. This reveals a global failure in national efforts to give effect to the prohibition against slavery. To fill this gap, Schwarz and other members of the Rights Lab Governance programme are working with partners to develop model laws and legislative guidelines, helping States create the laws necessary to eradicate slavery. What of its potential utility? Schwarz says “Law is a stepping-stone for antislavery work, and a fundamental first step in achieving change. This project allows us to target advocacy to the areas most in need of reform, shaping that change in line with best practice and international law.”

The change we will make

So what will the change be? Over the next two years, our work in the MSEU will serve to shorten the intelligence corridor between the antislavery research base and policy makers in the UK and internationally. Operating in thought leadership and responsive mode, we will publish briefings on areas we identify as important, and we will also listen to the policy base and undertake necessary research to fill evidence gaps. We will synthesise and evaluate a growing international evidence base, and we will share the findings in the form of reports and recommendations with policy makers and parliamentarians, civil society actors and the global business community.

Look out for our next blog on MSEU and NGOs featuring partnership work between MSEU and Freedom Fund, Walk Free and the Clewer Initiative.

The post The Rights Lab Modern Slavery Evidence Unit (MSEU)- research in the service of ending slavery   appeared first on The Rights Lab.

Victim and survivor care is an area which needs urgent improvement in the fight against modern slavery, say frontline staff working with perpetrators and survivors.

This is just one of the findings from a series of workshops which brought together local agencies to help them better understand how they can fight modern slavery in their communities.

Multi-agency work is frequently said to be critical in developing coherent national and local responses to slavery, but until recently little guidance has been available on what partnerships should do and how they  should carry out their work.

In 2017 the Rights Lab and the UK’s Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner produced research which identified a gap in the evidence available to partnerships in identifying and delivering effective anti-slavery interventions.

Now, a series of workshops hosted by experts from the Rights Lab have enabled 67 frontline practitioners from anti-slavery partnerships across the East and West Midlands to talk about how they can improve their work and what success should look like in multi-agency working.

The five workshops allowed researchers from the Rights Lab to work alongside colleagues from the police, local authorities, academia and NGOs to identify opportunities to improve the evidence-base for local partnership interventions.

As a result of the discussions, experts from the Rights Lab have produced a report with key findings on  strengthening existing partnership work:

• Partnership goals need to be shared, and include the development of improved processes such as governance and information sharing as well as monitoring of activities, outputs and outcomes across the system.
• Victim and survivor care: improved information-sharing is needed between national and local systems, and we need to see greater input from survivors. Participants recognised that victim liaison requires a systemic, multi-agency approach, as police by themselves are unable to provide for survivors’ diverse needs.
• Modern slavery should be embedded in mainstream service provision, rather than being treated as a ‘specialism’.

Policy recommendations that came from the discussions included:

• Monitoring the progress of victims and survivors longer term
• Strengthening legislation and standards to underpin implementation and monitoring.
• To enable survivor engagement, more resources are needed to help with legal advice, translation and accommodation

Dr Alison Gardner from the Rights Lab said: “There are no simple answers to combating modern slavery. Partnerships and their frontline staff are integral to dealing with the complexity of modern slavery and human trafficking. Opportunities like this are vital in order for us to learn about how we can work better together.”

A full copy of the report can be found here.

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