UC Irvine Journal of International, Transnational, and Comparative Law

Not a day goes by without a sensationalist report on the travails of modern slaves, be it the saga of Indian teenagers trafficked into sex work as depicted in the Hollywood movie Love Sonia, or workers trafficked into the UK’s nail bar and car wash shops, or the 2018 Global Slavery Index released by the Walk Free Foundation founded by mining magnate Andrew Forrest which estimates that there are 40.3 million modern slaves around the world. Anti-slavery groups remind us that modern slavery afflicts almost everything that we consume on a day-to-day basis. This includes basic commodities like tea, sugar, coffee, prawns, chicken, eggs, onions, mushrooms, “slave chocolate” from Cote D’Ivoire and cotton from Uzbekistan. Exploitation is also rife in wartime captivity in Nigeria, bonded labour in Pakistan, fishing boats in Thailand, households employing overseas migrant domestic workers, Qatari construction sites with Nepali workers, the brick kiln industry in India, Brazilian garment factories employing Bolivian workers, in Unilever’s supply chain in Vietnam, and in Kenyan flower and green bean cultivation.