Speak Free

Thursday October 15, 2026

The 2026 Trafficking in Persons Report (TIP) is out—here’s what you need to know

Every year, the US State Department releases its Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report1 —a global scorecard on how governments are tackling human trafficking. Those who perform poorly can expect restrictions on foreign assistance from the US. This year, three countries were upgraded to the highest ranking, Tier 1: Norway, Ghana, and Israel. But Israel’s upgrade raises serious questions. Even as it receives the highest possible ranking, the Israeli government was replacing Palestinian workers with newly recruited migrant workers—reviving for-profit recruitment practices that had previous

Supply Chain

Thursday September 24, 2026

Who recruited your workers? Most boards don’t know.

Millions of people enter global supply chains not through a job centre or an HR portal, but through a chain of brokers, agents and informal intermediaries that the company at the top may have never heard of. By the time a migrant worker arrives at a factory, farm or construction site, they may already be in debt—and that debt may be used to trap them in debt bondage, a form of modern slavery. This is the central argument of ‘The Labor Supply Chain’, the second paper in Freedom United's Governance & Supply Chain Series, authored by Freedom United’s board director Kamil Gerard Ahm

Anti-slavery activists

Thursday August 20, 2026

What does it mean to remember slavery?

On August 23, 1791, enslaved people in Saint-Domingue began an insurrection against the most profitable slave colony in the world. Within thirteen years, they had defeated the forces of France, Britain and Spain, abolished slavery, and established Haiti: the first independent Black republic and the only state in history founded by people who had emancipated themselves from slavery. It is the beginning of that revolution that we choose to commemorate the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition. But why do we do so? The transatlantic slave trade ended more t

Forced Labor

Tuesday July 21, 2026

Forced labor import prohibition fever

Laura Murphy

Over the last several months, a hundred-year-old legal concept has taken hold of governments like a fever seemingly overnight—forced labor import prohibitions. Forced labor import prohibitions are a trade law mechanism that allow governments to bar the entry of goods deemed to be made with forced labor. The US has had such a prohibition since 1930, but it essentially did not enforce that law until 2016. Then, under a multilateral trade agreement with the US, Canada and Mexico adopted similar prohibitions in 2020 and 2023, respectively. The EU passed its own forced labor regulation in 2024 t

Law & Policy

Tuesday June 30, 2026

War, work, and who gets left behind: Israel and Palestine

Joanna Ewart-James

Listen here. When wars dominate headlines, labor exploitation rarely makes the cut. But a new study1 by Dr. Maayan Niezna and Dr. Yahel Kurlander, shows why we need to be paying closer attention to what's happening to non-citizen workers caught up in the war in Israel and Palestine. Israel's economy depends on non-citizen labor Before October 2023, Israel's economy relied heavily on non-citizen labor: around 150,000 migrant workers, mostly from Asia and Eastern Europe, and well over 100,000 Palestinian workers from the West Bank, doing the "dirty, dangerous, and difficult" jobs in agriculture,

Law & Policy

Thursday June 18, 2026

Why Juneteenth matters more than ever

For generations, Black Americans and their allies have called for reparations for one of the greatest crimes in human history. Millions of people bought, sold, brutalized, and forced to labor for the enrichment of others. Families were separated. Lives were stolen. Vast fortunes were built. On June 19, 1865, Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas, and announced that enslaved people were free.1 The Emancipation Proclamation had been issued more than two years earlier. The Civil War had effectively ended months before. Yet thousands of enslaved people in Texas remained in bondage because t

Forced Labor

Wednesday June 10, 2026

When clean reports hide dirty supply chains

Joanna Ewart-James

Imagine you are a hospital in early 2021. The pandemic is raging. Your staff need gloves—millions of them. You have contracts in place. Audits have been carried out. Compliance certificates have been issued. Somewhere up the chain, a board of directors has reviewed a report and ticked the box. Then the US government seizes your shipments. That is exactly what happened when US Customs and Border Protection issued a formal import ban against Top Glove, one of the world's largest disposable glove manufacturers, after finding evidence of forced labor: debt bondage, confiscated passports, and wor

Forced Labor

Thursday June 4, 2026

Who is the US protecting with its new forced labor tariffs?

Krysta Bisnauth

The Trump administration has proposed new tariffs on imports from 60 countries, including major trading partners like Canada, Mexico and the European Union. This is the second time that the administration has tried to increase import taxes after previous attempts were struck down by courts as unlawful. This time around, the administration claims the tariffs are for failing to do enough to stop goods made with forced labor from entering global supply chains. Tackling forced labor is worthy goal and deserves to be taken seriously. It is real, widespread, and the world has not done nearly enough

Child Slavery

Thursday May 28, 2026

When parents disappear: how ICE operations are leaving children vulnerable to exploitation

Krysta Bisnauth

Across the United States, tens of thousands of children are living in homes where a parent was there one day—and taken by federal agents the next. According to new reports by the Brookings Institution[1] and ProPublica[2], an estimated 145,000 American children have had a parent detained during the current immigration crackdown. Of those, more than 22,000 live in what researchers call "total loss" households—meaning every adult in the home was arrested at the same time. Widespread protests across the country have demanded their release and numerous reports have revealed horrific condition

Forced Labor

Wednesday May 20, 2026

Shein and Everlane just priced ethics at $100 million

Dianne Pratt

Everlane built its entire brand on three promises: Keep earth clean. Keep earth cool. Do right by people. It was the fashion label you could feel good about buying from. Now, a deal to sell Everlane has been struck with notorious fast fashion Chinese brand Shein for $100 million. The sale was reportedly approved last Saturday. [1] This is the same Shein that couldn't tell a parliamentary committee where its cotton comes from. The same Shein whose supply chain has been linked to the forced labor of over one million detained Uyghurs in the Uyghur Region of China. And the same Shein that Freedo