There are 4300 identified cases of modern slavery in Australia.
Before you say to yourself we don’t have slavery in Australia you should be aware that modern slavery is defined as:
- Forced labour –work or services which people are forced to do against their will under the threat of punishment.
- Debt bondage or bonded labour – when people borrow money they cannot repay requiring work to pay off the debt losing control over conditions of their employment and debt.
- Human trafficking–transporting, recruiting or harbouring people for the purpose of exploitation, using violence, threats or coercion.
- Descent-based slavery –people born into slavery because their ancestors were captured and enslaved;.
- Child slavery – child slavery occurs when a child’s labour is exploited for someone else’s gain including child trafficking, child soldiers, child marriage and child domestic slavery.
- Forced and early marriage – when someone is married against their will and cannot leave the marriage. Most child marriages can be considered slavery.
Until now, governments have focused resources on reducing the demand for the use of modern slavery, which is hoped would decrease both the price and demand for modern slaves. However, there has been a change in how to combat Modern Slavery and the Australian legislators are considering enactment of anti-modern slavery legislation along the lines of the UK Modern Slavery Act, 2015.
Where this could affect your business and being ready to consider whether you have human rights in your business should be addressed in two areas
- Internal to the company – identification of risks, development of management system, training and tracking
- External to the company – management of human rights risks within the supply chain.
Most companies find that implementing human rights risk management processes within the supply chain daunting due to the complexity of the supply chain. For example large companies have around 3,500 suppliers and to implement risk management processes need careful planning.
The prioritisation process (or human rights risk assessment process) will go a long way in helping to identify
- key areas of risks, and
- identify high risk suppliers.
At the end of the day, the development of a human rights management framework should be able to demonstrate conformance to the following 8 questions:
- What does the company say publicly about its commitment to respect human rights?
- How does the company demonstrate its human rights commitment?
- Does the company have any specific policies that address respecting human rights and, if so, what are they?
- What is the company’s approach to engagement with stakeholders on human rights?
- How does the company identify changes in the nature human rights over time?
- How does the company integrate its findings about each salient human rights issue into its decision-making processes and actions?
- How does the company know if its efforts to address each human rights issue are effective?
- How does the company enable effective remedy if people are harmed by its actions in relation to human rights?
Would you like to know more? Contact Oy-Cheng Phang at Zoic Environmental