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Men lining at at a checkpoint in the West Bank

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

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

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,

Shipping container being pushed into port by small boats

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

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

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