26 January 2021           

It may surprise many to learn that slavery is still practiced in the 21st century – it certainly surprised me when I first heard experts talking about this cruel phenomenon in recent virtual fora on BHR. I’ve also been surprised to learn about slavery in the Philippines and Southeast Asia from my pandemic reading pile. I grew up in a country where labor is relatively cheap and stories of abuse that employers inflict upon household servants are commonplace.

 In school, I vaguely remember learning in social studies classes that, while many of our free pre-colonial forebears had alipin workers who were not free, they were fed and treated kindly, sometimes almost as members of families, and therefore were unlike black slaves imported from Africa to Europe and the Americas who were starved, whipped and lynched.

Perhaps because of class and cultural factors, I did not readily see slavery even when it was broadcast on TV or practiced in places around me.

Tea and Slavery in 18th-19th c. Southeast Asia

In NHCP’s Journal of Philippine Local History & Heritage (Vol. 2, No. 2, August 2016), Hawaii Pacific University’s social anthropologist Eric S. Casino writes about the escalation of slavery in 18th-19th c. Philippines and Southeast Asia with the arrival of the British East India Company. The title of his article is:

“Mangayaw and Banyaga: Moro Wars, China Trade, and the Shifting Hermeneutics of Piracy, Slavery, and Ethno-Nationalism.”

Citing Philippine and Southeast Asian Studies scholar James Warren, Casino writes about:

“British intervention into the commercial affairs of the Sulu Zone and North Borneo in connection with the China trade”:

 Around the middle of the 1700s there was in Europe a noticeable change in the drinking preference from ale to tea, particularly among the commoner class, and thus the demand for it had a mass basis. To meet this growing European mass market for tea, the British had to devise a better method for obtaining a large volume of this and other Chinese goods. It became less and less practicable to continue the older system of using silver currency to buy these Chinese products, for it would have depleted British reserves of this precious metal over the long run. The British merchants in Asia gradually learned that it was possible to obtain Chinese products by barter – that is, tea in exchange for Southeast Asia’s natural products, such as tripang (sea cucumber), shark fins, bird’s nests… agar-agar (seaweeds)… and turtle shells and mother-of-pearl shells… In exchange for the maritime and forest products of maritime Asia, the British were prepared to sell Indian products, such as opium and textiles, and European industrial goods, such as guns, gunpowder, ammunition, and other war materials; these were increasingly in great demand among native Southeast Asian rulers in their effort to expand power over their subjects or defend themselves against local rivals and foreign colonizers. This three-sided trade strategy meant cutting into the preexisting trade nexus between China and Southeast Asia…

To meet increasing European and Chinese demands for marine products… and forest products… the Tausug (in the Sulu zone, Southern Philippines) needed to recruit more workers from outside Jolo… This led Tausug entrepreneurs to systematise and intensify their slave marauding in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia in order to bring in more manpower…        

For a British perspective, listen to BBC’s In Our Time podcast on the global impacts of the above growth in demand for tea:

Modern Slavery

Slavery has survived into modern times.

BHRRC has a page devoted to campaigning against modern slavery.

According to International Labour Organisation (ILO), around 40 million women, men and children are victims of modern slavery. The illegal profit is estimated to be $150 billion yearly, much of it in corporate supply chains. BHRRC says that among the factors that have contributed to its growth in recent years are: increasing poverty and inequity; global conflicts that have caused widespread migration; and consumer demand for cheaper and cheaper products.

In the UK, BHRRC advises the government in implementing the Modern Slavery Act, particularly S.54 on transparency in supply chains. Nonetheless, BHRRC has concluded from years of research and analyses that transparency-based regulation is not enough. They now campaign with partners and allies in lobbying for mandatory human rights due diligence laws to protect workers in global supply chains.

Cambridge English Dictionary defines slavery as

“the activity of legally owning other people who are forced to work for or obey you” or “the condition of being legally owned by someone else and forced to work for or obeythem.”

The layperson’s definition above is consistent with the emerging international legal consensus on what modern slavery is.

US Department of State explains on its website:

 “Trafficking in persons,” “human trafficking,” and “modern slavery” are used as umbrella terms to refer to both sex trafficking and compelled labor. The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (Pub. L. 106-386), as amended (TVPA), and the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime(the Palermo Protocol) describe this compelled service using a number of different terms, including involuntary servitude, slavery or practices similar to slavery, debt bondage, and forced labor.

Anti-Slavery International, meanwhile, defines modern slavery as:

“severe exploitation of other people for personal or commercial gain.”

It also lists the most common forms of modern slavery:

• Human trafficking. The use of violence, threats or coercion to transport, recruit or harbour people in order to exploit them for purposes such as forced prostitution, labour, criminality, marriage or organ removal.
• Forced labour. Any work or services people are forced to do against their will under threat of punishment.
• Debt bondage/bonded labour. The world’s most widespread form of slavery. People trapped in poverty borrow money and are forced to work to pay off the debt, losing control over both their employment conditions and the debt.
• Descent–based slavery. Most traditional form, where people are treated as property, and their “slave” status was passed down the maternal line.
• Slavery of children. When a child is exploited for someone else’s gain. This can include child trafficking, child soldiers, child marriage and child domestic slavery.
• Forced and early marriage. When someone is married against their will and cannot leave. Most child marriages can be considered slavery.

Jean Allain clarifies the element of exploitation in slavery and its relation to human trafficking in his comprehensive study, Slavery in International Law: Of Human Exploitation and Trafficking (Leiden, 2013).

What is the relationship of modern slavery to business and economics?

In his 22 October 2020 BHRJ article online, “Working with the Financial Sector to Correct Market Failure of Modern Slavery,” James Cockayne links human exploitation for commercial gain to the failure by markets to accurately price in the social costs of production: 

Like many human rights abuses linked to corporate activity, modern slavery is in part the tragic result of a market failure: a failure by markets to accurately price in the social costs of production. In the case of modern slavery, the prices of goods – from cocoa to precious metals to fast fashion – fail to reflect the true social costs of the labour exploitation involved in their production. These are significant. UK researchers estimate every case of modern slavery costs the UK public purse over GBP 328,000;³ while a recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) paper suggests that child marriage costs countries around 1 per cent of their GDP.

As appreciation of these externalities grows, there is growing compliance pressure on firms to identify and address modern slavery risks in their operations and business relationships. This has given rise to corporate disclosure requirements specific to modern slavery, increased attention by investors to environmental, social and corporate governance concerns and a growing focus on forced labour in trade regulation.

Cockayne explains the two phases of a new framework for mobilising the financial sector to help eliminate slavery against trafficking, called the Liechtenstein Initiative for Finance Against Slavery and Trafficking (FAST Initiative).

The author writes,

The first phase of the FAST Initiative involved a year-long consultation by a Financial Sector Commission, consisting of 25 experts from finance, the anti-slavery movement, and the business and human rights field. This group was convened by the Prime Minister of Liechtenstein, Foreign Ministers of Netherlands and Australia, and Professor Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel laureate and microfinance pioneer. Beginning consultations in 2018, the Commission ultimately produced a report, Unlocking Potential: A Blueprint for Mobilizing Finance Against Slavery and Trafficking, released at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2019. Drawing on the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Guidelines, the ‘FAST Blueprint’ – as the report is now known – proposes a collective action framework based on five goals and thirty actions. To aid in Blueprint implementation, the Commission also released a series of tools dealing with financial investigations, risk-mapping, and good practice in leverage, available at the Initiative’s website, www.fastinitiative.org.

The Blueprint covers a diverse array of financial sector connections to modern slavery and human trafficking, ranging from handling proceeds of crime, to investment decision-making, to the role of fintech. Detailed discussions of the actions required to implement the five FAST goals explore issues ranging from pre-competitive collaboration to facilitate due diligence, to best practice in divestment, to use of investor leverage to enable remedy.

FAST Initiative’s second phase involves implementing the above Blueprint through a spectrum of sector-led projects and initiatives.

The FAST Secretariat collaborated with the Association of Anti-Money Laundering Specialists (ACAMS) to create a free online training course that provides certificates. 12 banks in four countries are coordinating with survivor support organisations to provide survivor access to bank accounts, help prevent becoming victims again and enable remedy. European Banking Federation is promoting Blueprint implementation across the region.

Humanity United, Freedom Fund, and UBS Optimus Foundation launched a pooled fund, Moving the Market, to fund projects that promote investor use of reliable social metrics on forced labor. In the UK, charity fund manager CCLA convened investors to develop the Find It, Fix It, Prevent It model for engaging with invested companies and helping them identify and address modern slavery in their operations and business relationships. The model is spreading in the Netherlands and the Asia-Pacific, with the establishment of chapters.

FAST Initiative is coordinating with regulators, as well. With Minderoo Foundation’s Walk Free, it is engaging 49 countries and international organisations involved in the Bali Process on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons, and Related Transnational Crime. The FAST Blueprint has also been presented to policy actors in various fora, such as the Hong Kong Legislative Council, US Treasury, US Chamber of Commerce, Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and Davos’ World Economic Forum.

Conclusion

History shows that business can drive the demand for slaves. In 18th c. Philippines and Southeast Asia, European trading companies such as British East India Company traded guns and ammunition with local rulers for marine and forest products, the collection and processing of which required more and more slaves.

Equipped with greater knowledge on the relationship between business and human rights violations like slavery, as well as clarity on international norms brought about by the UN Guiding Principles on BHR, 21st governments, businesses, civil society organizations, and international organisations are promoting public awareness on modern slavery and creating laws and other initiatives that would hopefully eliminate this centuries-old global scourge.