Private Sector urged to up efforts to tackle Modern Slavery

We have seen a number of articles in the last week detailing challenges back to the private sector and governments to up the efforts in tackling Modern Slavery. 

In the UK Sustainable investment firm CCLA, alongside a coalition of investors, has been engaging with companies as part of an initiative to combat modern slavery in their supply chain, strengthen public policy and develop better data.

We also saw a group of investors representing over $1 trillion in assets under management has published a letter to the IFRS Foundation’s International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), urging it to prioritize the development of global reporting standards for companies to disclose on human capital and human rights.

The CCLA’s released a report where they analysed the 2021 Modern Slavery Statements of FTSE 100 companies. They found that the majority of the companies had published a  statement and average compliance with the Act was 89%. However, only 20% reported action to find cases in their supply chain, 3% reported action to fix it and 18% reported action to prevent it.

With the pressure of CSDDD (Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive) I hope we will see a way for the world to come together on this topic and have more consistent pressure to tackle specifically modern slavery. 

Companies need to start mapping their supply chain, setting human rights expectations and demanding change.