Open Democracy

Slavery Proposal in Australia Lacks Due Diligence

Komala Ramachandra, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, reports that Australia’s justice minister proposed a new legislation in August [...]

Ethiopian migrants forced to work without pay under Lebanon’s kafala system

Ethiopians make up the majority of the foreign domestic work population employed in Lebanon. The majority of these domestic workers are [...]

U.S. anti-trafficking organizations constrained on sex workers’ rights

The U.S. government makes around $300 million in funding available annually for anti-trafficking organizations, a significant amount [...]

Is the anti-trafficking sector ready for real survivor leadership?

“Survivor leaders are too often viewed as incapable of learning or doing effective anti-trafficking work, and they are tokenised in [...]

New President of Uzbekistan Fails to Keep His Promise

President Shavkat Mirziyoyev of Uzbekistan, promised to outlaw forced labor in his country, but institutions–schools, faculties, [...]

Concerns for migrant workers in U.S. farms and meat plants as COVID-19 spreads

COVID-19 is spreading rapidly through the largely immigrant workforces of U.S. farms and meat factories, but insufficient protections [...]

Institutionalized victimhood: debating sex work in the Philippines

The Philippines enacted its own anti-trafficking law in 2003 with a core focus on ending the sexual exploitation of women and children. [...]

Trafficking survivors in East Asia need greater representation

The majority of people who experience modern slavery are in the Asia Pacific region, nearly 60% of the estimated 50 million according [...]

Misuse of Indian Law May Lead to Forced Child Marriage

The 2012 Protection of Children against Sexual Offences Act (POSCO) in India is intended to safeguard children from sexual abuse. Among [...]

With Brexit, U.K. has key opportunity to take a stand on Uzbek cotton

In an opinion piece for openDemocracy, a human rights lawyer called for the United Kingdom to end its complicity in forced labor in [...]

Empower and protect: rethinking bans on child labor

“Child labor isn’t going anywhere, so children’s safety in work must become the priority.” Writing in Open Democracy, [...]

Better economic prospects would help prevent re-trafficking in India

Survivors of human trafficking and exploitation in India face significant hurdles in accessing the support they need to rebuild their [...]

Confronting the Root Causes of Forced Labor in Global Supply Chains

Where does forced labor come from? What are the root causes? Often this is traced back to two explanations: poverty and globalization, [...]

Pandemic could be opportunity to improve plight of migrant workers in Middle East and North Africa

Across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, the COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the exploitation, inequality, and [...]

The U.K. is turning its back on modern slavery survivors

Trafficking survivors in the United Kingdom already face many barriers to receiving the support they need to recover and to better [...]

Former child soldiers struggle to be treated as modern slavery survivors

Though child soldiers are subjected to horrific conditions including forced labor, sexual exploitation and gender-based violence, too [...]

Domestic Worker-Employer Solidarity in the Philippines

There are over 2 million domestic workers in the Philippines, but many of them continue to face the same problems as their peers around [...]

Pandemic worsens exploitation of migrant farmworkers in Greece

Undocumented migrant workers that provide the bulk of seasonal labor in Greece’s strawberry farms have reported suffering increased [...]

U.K. rule change leaves survivors at increased risk of detention and deportation

U.K. immigration bill obscures reality of trafficking offenders

In an opinion piece for openDemocracy, researchers Rose Broad and David Gadd explore how the U.K.’s controversial Nationality and [...]

How changing U.K. drug laws could prevent child exploitation

The U.K. is struggling with a serious child exploitation crisis with children as young as seven being used on the frontlines of drug [...]

Domestic Worker Organizing in France for C189

France has made great progress in advancing domestic workers’ rights through union organizing, but the government still has yet [...]

Sex workers continue to be excluded from anti-trafficking movement

Writing in openDemocracy’s Palermo Protocol 20th anniversary special last week, the International Committee on the Rights of Sex [...]

Listening to child workers to understand child labor

Children’s experiences of work and the effects of anti-trafficking interventions are explored in openDemocracy’s new series [...]

Unsubstantiated claims endanger trafficking victims

The U.K.’s Home Secretary Suella Braverman has repeatedly come under fire for making baseless claims about modern slavery and human [...]