Modern Slavery & Remediation – An Investor’s Guide
Background
Modern slavery impacts every country, region, company and supply chain in the world, with almost 50 million people estimated to be living in modern slavery globally. As business and investors may be exposed to modern slavery and forced labour through their operations or supply chains, they are increasingly expected to assess and address modern slavery risks and provide or enable remediation of modern slavery cases in their operations and investments. Investors can leverage their role as stewards of capital to enable and encourage best practice in providing redress and resolution for adverse human rights impacts.
Meaning of remedy
Remedy is the provision of redress and resolution for human rights impacts incurred as a result of business activities.* It can take a variety of forms such as an apology, prevention of future harms, financial or other compensation, access to healthcare services, repatriation of affected individuals, and other forms of remedy agreed by the parties. Actions should be informed by the affected stakeholders such as workers, and care should be taken to ensure that remediation is always adequate and appropriate – remedy ultimately aims to make amends. A key component of remedy is the prevention and mitigation of future harm. Measures may include conducting due diligence to detect business practices that could be placing workers at risk and introducing additional safeguards to mitigate that risk.
This report analyses the role that investors can play in facilitating remedy and provides case studies which demonstrate examples of remediation in practice.
Remedial actions investors can pursue before, during, and after finding cases of modern slavery
Remedy stage | Examples of how investors can enable remediation |
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1. Before – to prevent investee companies causing or contributing to harm and prepare for finding and fixing cases |
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2. During – to support investee companies through the remedy steps a. Investigate and verify |
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b. Remediate harm |
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c. Mitigate and prevent future harm |
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d. Escalation |
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e. Incident reporting and tracking |
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3. After – to assist investee companies to learn lessons to better prevent cases |
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Key takeaways
Recommendations that investors can consider in providing or enable remedy can include:
- Understanding existing obligations for businesses to provide or enable remedy, including relevant international frameworks, and national legislation including human rights due diligence laws.
- Maximising leverage to influence company behaviour to effectively facilitate provision of remedy.
- Being prepared to engage with companies across various stages the remediation process.
- Considering wider stakeholder cooperation to strengthen the remedy ecosystem and joining innovative initiatives that aim to enable or provide remedy, such as collective remedy schemes.
* Walk Free: Modern Slavery response remedy framework