The international spotlight that is now shone on modern slavery globally is increasingly focused on abuse and exploitation of workers in global supply chains. However, not enough attention has been given the role of multi-stakeholder initiatives to prevent modern slavery in global supply chains. Current efforts to undertake ‘due diligence’ in companies to identify risks of modern slavery remains focused on corporate risk management and compliance.

This is also little focus on the underlying drivers of forced labour and modern slavery today, such as company business models and labour market dynamics. And there is little effort focused on the importance of collective action and organisation by workers themselves to negotiate their own terms and conditions of work as the most effective prevention tool in the long term.

With this grant, the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) will convene a one-day stakeholder meeting in October 2015 to discuss the role of multi-stakeholder initiatives in mitigating and preventing modern slavery. The meeting will help to inform ETI’s priorities and partnerships over the next five years to support global efforts to tackle modern slavery, with particular focus on improving working conditions and workers rights in global supply chains.