Exposing modern slavery in global supply chains
Slavery was never abolished – only transformed. Today, millions suffer silently in supply chains worldwide.
In a nutshell
- Forced labor and slavery are behind extremely low prices of imported goods
- China is using slavery to wipe out competition globally to become a hegemon
- Consumers can vote with their wallets and say no to slave-made goods
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Three days before he died, in July 1833, William Wilberforce was brought news that the House of Commons – to which he had been elected as a member of parliament in 1780 – would enact the Slavery Abolition Act, ending slavery in most of the British Empire.
Nearly half a century earlier, in 1787, Wilberforce had met Thomas Clarkson and they created a formidable alliance of abolitionist campaigners – including Hannah More, Charles Middleton, Granville Sharp, John Newton, Henry Thornton and Olaudah Equiano, pitted against huge political and vested interests.
Between 1640 and 1807, Britain transported over 3 million Africans as slaves to the Americas and the Caribbean – many died en route. In 1789, Wilberforce told the House of Commons that he had been so shocked by the evidence he had collected that the trade had to be abolished, it being “so enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable in its wickedness, that my own mind has been completely made up for its abolition. A trade founded in iniquity … must be abolished.”
The first great milestone in achieving that objective came in 1807, with the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. Their work culminated in 1833 with the abolition of slavery in Britain.
Yet Wilberforce spoke too soon. In the 21st century, slavery remains a phenomenon which would surely have him angrily turning in his grave. Depending on the methodology and the definition of enslavement used, the numbers of contemporary people affected worldwide reach as many as 50 million people.
People’s lives come cheap when profits come big.
The International Labor Organization estimates 40 million people are trapped in modern slavery – 25 million of those in forced labor (including sexual exploitation and state-imposed forced labor). The term “modern slavery,” by their definition, includes human trafficking, involuntary servitude, debt bondage, forced labor and practices associated with slavery.
Although the world has changed since Wilberforce and his friends enacted the abolition of legal ownership of another human being in Great Britain, slavery continues for the same reasons as it did in his day. The crude economic advantages gained by enslavers continue to trump the ethical objections. People’s lives come cheap when profits come big.
Professor Kevin Bales of the University of Nottingham says the average modern-day slave “is sold for $90-100 compared to the equivalent of $40,000 some 200 years ago.” Plummeting costs of procurement range from $7 quoted for a Rohingya refugee to $750 for a North Korean “slave wife.” He cites the treatment of Nepalese boys sold by their parents for $5-10 and used to haul rocks, with the price of children so cheap that their slave master abandons them if they get injured or fall in a ravine: “[I]t’s less expensive to acquire a new child than to call a doctor.”
I founded and chair the All-Party Parliamentary Committee on North Korea, at a meeting of which one escapee, Jihyun Park, described being trafficked to China and spending six years enslaved after being sold for $750 to a farmer who was violent toward her.
She told us that thousands of North Korean women were trafficked into forced marriages and sex work as a consequence of the one-child policy in China, which distorted the country’s demographics, leading to 30 million more men than women – and creating the demand and a route for the enslavement of other Asian women.
Modern slavery can be a consequence of totalitarian dictatorship, but, equally, it can be a feature of capitalist economies, especially those that have weak governance. It is often an attribute of dirt-poor societies which place little value on human dignity – especially when a caste system or easily exploited minority is present.
Modern slavery can be seen in sweatshops, agriculture, mines and factories – producing items for domestic consumption and far away, prosperous countries that hide behind legislation and slogans about fair trade. The exploiters and slavers use a lack of supply-chain transparency to fool consumers into believing that they are choosing an ethically neutral option when they select the “best deals” off the shelves or online. Modern slavery has at its heart the bottom line. It is about profiteering and is rightly considered an economic crime as well as an assault on human dignity.
In the United Kingdom parliament, I chair the Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR)– comprising six members of the House of Commons and six members from the House of Lords. From work on that committee and other inquiries in parliament, let me give you three examples from the inquiries in which I have been involved over the past year: China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Pakistan.
China
In July the JCHR published its report arising from its inquiry into modern slavery and supply-chain transparency. China was a principal focus of our attention.
Witnesses have reminded us that goods produced using forced labor are, by definition, dependent on lower manufacturing costs and overheads. We have evidence pointing to significant levels of forced labor in China. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) sees this as an opportunity to destroy competition and to entrench forced labor and cheaper prices.
What has become clear during our inquiry is that in the developed democratic West our national resilience has deteriorated and we have become dependent on imports from China. It becomes a vicious cycle making it impossible to sustain manufacturing and jobs for our own citizens.
Why did we not believe Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2020, when he said that China will form a counterattack and deterrence against other countries by fostering killer technologies and strengthening the global supply chain’s dependence on China? He has been as good as his word.
On June 11 of this year, a new report from Global Rights Compliance entitled “Critical Minerals and Forced Labor in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region,” found that despite global condemnation and efforts to block forced labor, “exports are growing” and that China’s critical minerals operations in Xinjiang rely heavily on “state-imposed forced labor programs.”
It found that titanium mining in Xinjiang is set to rapidly expand, with its magnesium output expected to double in 2025, making democratic countries even more dependent on slave-made products.
About 3 million people are subject to forced labor in China. This phenomenon is at its worst in Tibet, Hong Kong and in Xinjiang province, where Uighur Muslims and other Turkic Muslims are the greatest source of slave labor.
Labor transfers are deployed in the Uighur region within an environment of unprecedented fear and coercion. Refusal to participate in any government programs, such as labor transfers, is viewed as equivalent to aligning oneself with the three “evils” of separatism, terrorism and religious extremism.
Anyone who refuses to work or attempts to walk away from their job risks internment or imprisonment. These programs are tantamount to the forcible transfer of populations, forced labor, human trafficking and enslavement.
Globally, it is estimated that one in five garments made from cotton has been linked to forced labor in Xinjiang. Some products sold in the UK and labelled as being from Europe were likely to have been produced in China by forced labor. Deception has become a bulwark of modern slavery.
Online shopping has made product identification even more problematic. By 2024, 27 percent of total retail sales in the UK were conducted online, with Britons spending nearly 9 percent of their annual income on online shopping – the highest proportion globally. Companies like China’s Shein and Temu, or Amazon of the United States have massively profited from this shift.
In the automobile industry, Audi, Honda, Ford, General Motors, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, Tesla, Renault, LEVC – who make electric London black cabs – Aston Martin, Bentley, Daimler, Jaguar and Rolls-Royce all have supply chains at high risk of being compromised by Muslim slave labor.
Slave labor is in agriculture and food supplies as well. China grows about a third of the world’s tomatoes. Most Chinese tomatoes come from Xinjiang and last year the BBC World Service found that several house brand “Italian” tomato purees sold in UK supermarkets are likely to contain tomatoes grown and picked in China using forced labor. One laborer said that if they failed to pick 450 kilograms a day, they would be strung up by chains from the ceiling and beaten until they fainted.
The BBC showed huge factories linked to the detention camps, part of a vast complex that aims to undercut all competition and create a world dependent on an authoritarian state with hegemonic ambitions.
The CCP regime is the world’s biggest polluter, and it uses the Uighur region as its national hub for oil, gas and coal, fueling their oversized factories with cheap coal and forced labor. The solar panels of Xinjiang are not only made by slave labor but have a higher carbon footprint than those manufactured elsewhere in the world. It is estimated that 97 percent of the world’s solar panels could contain polysilicon made in the Uighur region of China.
There is no contradiction between pursuing environmental sustainability and standing for human dignity.
I was encouraged that the chair of the new Great British Energy Company (GBE), Jurgen Maier, told me that GBE is “entirely comfortable” with this amendment and “will put measures in place to prevent slavery. We are a publicly owned company, and we have to live up to that. So, we are comfortable and committed to this amendment. We will have to allocate resources and will do so.” Yet within weeks of the new law being passed the government announced it was spending GBP 200 million on China-made solar panels for British schools and hospitals. Ministers have given no indication of how they have verified that these goods are not tainted by slave labour or why the money could not have been used to repurpose industry in the UK to make the panels in-country and to employ British workers to do so.
There is no contradiction between pursuing environmental sustainability and standing for human dignity. On the contrary, the two are indivisible. Our new green economy must be not only carbon-free but also cruelty-free. There are alternative markets, and we need to use the purchasing power of companies like GBE to grow them. We must lay the foundations for a green future that is truly just – for people and the planet.
Having pioneered legislation such as the 2002 Proceeds of Crime Act and the 2015 Modern Slavery Act, the UK has subsequently failed to move from self-regulation and goodwill to something more tangible and effective. It has been the purpose of our inquiry to change that. I have been struck by the contrast between our approach and tougher legislation in the U.S. and European Union.
In the U.S., the 2021 Uighur Forced Labor Prevention Act created the presumption that all goods originating from Xinjiang are the product of forced labor and may not be imported into the U.S. unless there is compelling evidence to show otherwise. By November 2024, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection had apprehended 10,633 shipments of goods with 4,524 subsequently denied entry.
Similarly, the EU forbids any product made using forced labor. The European Parliament claims that a phenomenal “86 percent of all forced labor cases occur in the private sector, affecting 17.3 million people.”
Commonwealth countries are also tightening their laws to combat modern slavery. Canada’s 2024 Fighting Against Forced Labor and Child Labor in Supply Chains Act requires entities with significant operations in Canada to annually report on measures to prevent forced and child labor in their supply chains. Companies must set out what they are doing to address those risks, file their reports with the federal government and make them publicly available – with significant consequences for incorrect or false reporting. If we fail to act, the UK will become a dumping ground for products banned in more slavery-averse jurisdictions.
We must learn from best practice in combatting modern slavery. We must use new forensic technology to identify the places of origin and require companies to identify whether slave labor is likely to have been used. And we must also open our eyes to the umbilical cord linking China’s supply chains to countries which provide raw materials required to accelerate Beijing’s economic and military dominance.
Democratic Republic of the Congo
In recent months, I have also been involved in an inquiry into the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), looking at conflict-related sexual violence, and have heard evidence of the links between conflict, minerals, modern day slavery, sexual violence and human rights violations more broadly. At the time of writing this essay tragic reports have been emerging of significant fatalities in mines caught in terrible floods.
I also recently met two British men who had bravely taken a concealed camera into a mine in DRC. They saw children standing knee-deep with their bare skin in toxic pools mining for cobalt. After witnessing that firsthand, they are now making it their business to challenge the absurdity of companies relying on assurances from state-run Chinese companies operating in DRC that human rights norms are met. They are working with former congressman, Ambassador Tony Hall, who led the campaign against Africa’s “blood diamonds.” Wilberforce would be proud of them.
They had been persuaded to undertake their investigation after reading Professor Siddharth Kara’s book, “Cobalt Red.” The formidable professor of Nottingham University told me:
Based on several months of ground research, which I detail in Cobalt Red, I believe the presumption should be that the cobalt used in the batteries of rechargeable gadgets or EVs [electric vehicles] is in fact tainted by human rights violations and environmental destruction.
Independent, third-party schemes should be established to provide more trustworthy auditing of these supply chains.
Consumer-facing tech and EV companies should not simply rely on assurances from state-run Chinese mining companies that human rights norms are maintained in the DRC – they should get on the ground themselves and ensure their supply chains adhere to international human rights norms and sustainability practices.
Professor Kara describes “babies carried in slings on their mothers’ backs into pits. Female miners, who earn less than the average two dollars per day paid to men, typically work in groups as sexual assault is common in mining areas.”
Similarly, a 2022 U.S. Bureau of International Labor Affairs report found that DRC has made minimal progress in eliminating the worst forms of child labor and the problem persists because of the “national army’s complicity in the worst forms of child labor.” The report found that children in mining communities have been born with birth defects, developmental damage, vomiting and seizures from direct and indirect exposure to the heavy metals.
Yet, despite all of this, the UK authorities (along with others) are doing precious little to identify which imported cobalt-containing products are tainted with child labor from DRC. Countries like the UK – one of the 196 countries party to the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child – have a duty to ensure that products arriving in the UK have not been produced by child labor. But how many of the signatories ensure that commodities contain correct information about the supply chain; that any falsified information is fully addressed; that at a minimum, where it is not possible to give assurances on legal and ethical sources, this is clearly disclosed on the products?
Pakistan
My third example of modern slavery is taken from the brick kilns of Pakistan. Last year I chaired an inquiry in the UK parliament looking at minorities in Pakistan. Some of the evidence was heart-wrenching.
Although religious minorities, including Hindus and Christians, comprise less than 5 percent of the country’s total population of 230 million people, the percentage of religious minorities in brick kilns is often as high as 50 percent, especially in Punjab and Sindh, where most religious minorities live. This finding is corroborated by Anti-Slavery International.
Women and girls from religious minorities remain at the very bottom of the societal hierarchy in Pakistan, and we saw disturbing evidence of child mortality rates higher than the national average.
Pakistan has one of the highest numbers of bonded laborers in the world – many of them used in the brick kilns. With over 20,000 brick kilns, the country produces 45 billion bricks per year. It is the third-largest brick producer in South Asia and its kilns employ more than a million workers.
A brick kiln needs to produce around 50,000 bricks per day to be economically viable, which requires 200-250 laborers. To get this number of workers, owners rely heavily on jamadars (minor officials and brokers). On average, a single person can make around 200 bricks a day, so making 1,000 bricks requires 5-6 people – a family.
The government of Punjab has calculated that 1,000 bricks are valued at 1,110 Pakistani rupees. But a family making 1,000 bricks may be paid as little as 500 rupees for their work, which is equal to GBP 1.31 or $1.50. The brick kiln owner is able to make huge savings from unpaid and underpaid wages each month.
The jamadar receives the equivalent of 20 bricks from every 1,000 made by each family they bring in for work, for as long as the family works for the kiln owner. While such exploitation relying on bonded labor is technically illegal, it is pervasive.
UNICEF says that bonded labor – a system in which a middleman arranges the advanced loan (in Pakistan, where a jamadar arranges a peshgi) – is an “abuse analogous to slavery.” The often-illiterate worker must work exclusively for that employer until the loan has been paid off, including interest at high rates. It is a vicious cycle, trapping workers and their families across whole generations.
According to the 2023 Global Slavery Index, an estimated 10.6 of every 1,000 people in Pakistan were in modern slavery. Bonded labor was made illegal under Pakistan’s Bonded Labor System (Abolition) Act in 1992. The country has signed international treaties that outlaw slavery, as does its constitution. But in practice, successive governments have lacked the political will or capacity to implement and enforce the law on bonded labor.
Among the evidence we received, the most shocking of all are the stories of young children – born into a life of slavery, destitution and abject misery. They should be in schools, not servitude. For too long a blind eye has been turned to owners who treat employees as subhuman – a throwback to the degrading inhumanity of the caste system and “untouchability.”
Iqbal Masih, a Pakistani Christian child laborer, was taken into bonded labor at the age of four. He later escaped and campaigned against modern slavery, helping 3,000 children escape bonded labor. He was murdered at the age of 12.
In the documentary series “Bonded by Brick,” the Pulitzer Centre on Crisis describes the harsh, severe, often inhuman conditions in the brick kilns: “Workers have no guarantees and no rights. They are chained to the places that employ them – or bonded by the bricks they manufacture.”
It features the work of Syeda Ghulam Fatima, the general secretary of a Lahore-based human rights organization, who has bravely managed to save 85,000 enslaved people from brick kilns. For her activism, the filmmakers say “she has been shot, electrocuted, and beaten several times.” The documentary also tells the story of Naveed, a 17 year-old worker who describes how one of his kidneys was forcefully taken from him by the kiln owners to pay back a debt his family owed.
But it is not only brick kiln workers who are exploited and violated. We also heard evidence from a female agricultural worker who is a bonded laborer. Her story was truly shocking and too awful to repeat here.
Our inquiry concluded that the treatment of bonded laborers at brick kilns is a continuing challenge that continues to be neglected and is a serious concern, especially for already marginalized and vulnerable communities in Pakistan, such as religious minority communities. We set out 10 practical recommendations to the UK and Pakistan governments which could be adopted to provide relief to victims and end the practice altogether, from ethical buying standards to confiscation of assets. There is little evidence, however, that either government has done anything at all to act on the recommendations.
Modern slavery has made Pakistan’s brick kiln owners into rich men. Their wealth has been accumulated on the broken backs of millions of the poorest and helpless laborers who have paid a high price in human misery.
The role of consumers in combatting slavery
These examples, from China, DRC and Pakistan, are by no means isolated cases – they are the tip of a global iceberg. To tackle this contagion, and if they are to defeat the scourge of modern slavery, democratic states which uphold human rights, human dignity and the rule of law will have to work together and take concerted action.
But consumers must play their part too. And here we can be encouraged. According to one poll, nearly three-fourths of Gen Z consumers are willing to pay more for products that are environmentally sustainable. Might that be good news for the victims of slavery if Gen Z – and the rest of us – were also willing to pay more for products that are not produced by slaves? Would this rising generation be willing to boycott products made in countries credibly accused of human trafficking?
I have little doubt that if Gen Z knew the horrific origins of many of the products they purchase, the answer would be a resounding yes, and that would hold true for the rest of us. In this case, making it easy for people to “put their money where their mouth is” is not as far-fetched as you might think.
I began by recalling the work of William Wilberforce and the abolitionist alliance. Those men and women in 19th-century Britain gathered evidence about how human beings were trafficked and enslaved on Caribbean plantations. It led to mass boycotts of sugar products.
Education changed people’s hearts and minds and led to the abolition of the slave trade. That could be done again today – especially with the use of social media to spread information about the origin of products and marking goods tainted by modern slavery. More recently, labels carrying health warnings have led to a radical drop in tobacco usage worldwide. Both of these examples targeted ordinary people and made doing the right thing very easy.
Read additional essays by Lord David Alton of Liverpool
- The threat from China is no fairytale
- Global tensions: Parallels between the past and present
- Mental health crisis: Societal cohesion vs. economic progress
Today, if there was a legal requirement to label products as coming from Xinjiang, or as goods produced using children working in mines in DRC or products identified as made by slave labor in brick kilns in Pakistan – many people would think twice before purchasing those products.
Some may object to this truth-in-labelling approach as simplistic or point out that governments have already enacted laws to this end. Yes, these are important steps, but we also need ordinary people to make the sacrifice of passing over products made in places like Xinjiang. And make no mistake, many of the imported goods we order online or buy in our local stores are produced by slave labor.
Harnessing the sheer power of the philosopher Edmund Burke’s “small battalions” of community associations could radically tip the scales against injustice. Consumers and their spending power could bring about change.
Making it easy for people to “put their money where their mouth is” is not as far-fetched as you might think.
This could reshape the economics of multinational corporations that are complicit in slavery and hit the bottom line of countries, like China, which are the beneficiaries. We should also recognize the power of faith communities to change consumer choices, as Quaker women and evangelical Christians did in mobilizing millions of people against the transatlantic slave trade.
If the four out of five members of the world’s population who profess a religious faith were to demand clearer information about the origins of what they buy, they could also move us closer to restoring the basic human rights of millions of people who are needlessly suffering.
The great American president and liberator Abraham Lincoln, at a moment of great soul searching before the U.S. Civil War and the battles that raged over slavery, said “Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves.”
We, too, must see slavery as an evil and extreme violation of fundamental human rights and human dignity. It is an affront to the principles of equality, freedom and justice which are the bedrock of all civilized societies.
Let me end as I began with the great MP and reformer, William Wilberforce, who said, “You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again that you did not know.” True then, and true now.
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