Welcome to the Slavery Research Bulletin, the Freedom Fund’s monthly brief designed to bring you new & compelling research from the global anti-slavery movement.

Laws fail to protect millions of girls against child marriage

Many countries still allow underage girls to marry with parental or judicial consent. Close to 100 million girls globally are not legally protected against child marriage, according to a research brief by the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, the Global Partnership for Education, Save the Children and the World Bank. The analysis suggests that legal reforms are not sufficient to end child marriage.

ILO/Walk Free methodology paper released

The complicated task of measuring modern slavery is fraught with the challenges of investigating hidden criminal activities. The International Labour Organization and Walk Free Foundation have released a report explaining the methodology behind their recently published Global Estimates of Modern Slavery, which found that approximately 40 million people were in modern slavery in 2016.

Tech sector dominates rankings of supply chain due diligence reporting

The 2017 Mining the Disclosures report by the Responsible Sourcing Network finds a decrease in companies’ efforts to provide strong supply chain due diligence regarding their use of conflict minerals. Despite this disappointing trend, the report notes that high performing companies, mostly in the tech sector, keep pushing for more transparency to mitigate risks in global supply chains.

Majority of British FTSE 100 show “lacklustre response” to the Modern Slavery Act

Although a handful of leading UK companies are taking robust action to identify and respond to modern slavery risks in their supply chains, the majority are not doing enough, according to a​ report by the Business and Human Rights Resources Centre. Half the companies provided no meaningful data on whether their actions were effective in addressing risks.

Over 70% of Nepal’s migrant workers experienced “life under duress”

An article in BMJ Open details research findings on the prevalence of forced labour among Nepali migrant workers. Overall, 73% of the 194 respondents experienced forced labour during their most recent labour migration. Forced labour was more prevalent among those who had taken loans for their migration.

Read on…

• A report by the Business and Human Rights Resources Centre sets out the legislative and regulatory steps that governments are taking to tackle modern slavery in global supply chains.
• Research from the Federation of State Massage Therapy Boards finds that human trafficking is prevalent in the U.S. massage therapy industry.
• The UK’s Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner released his 2016-2017 annual report, noting efforts to improve victim identification and care through a reformed National Referral Mechanism.

And finally

The Freedom Fund is pleased to unveil our latest impact numbers. Since the Fund’s inception, our partners have liberated over 13,000 people from slavery.

News & updates

For more news and updates about the Freedom Fund, visit our Newsroom. You can also view archived issues of our bulletin here.

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