A Comprehensive Approach to Combating Modern Slavery

In order to combat modern slavery we need to be clear about its complexity and the many various forms it takes in our troubled world. I have been to India and observed the rag-pickers, the children who roam the streets looking for discarded scraps of cloth that can be made into garments once enough is assembled, we have seen on film the children in the wider Indian sub-continent who work in the tanneries and stitch shoes as well as being involved, working by candlelight, in delicate work where the dexterity of young hands is essential. In other parts of the world modern slavery takes on different forms: for the Uyghur it is forced labour camps and the extinction of their culture akin to the re-education camps we saw under the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.  Then there is the appalling obscenity of trafficking girls for prostitution often with the promise that they will be working in hospitality or as shop assistants.

The Global Slavery Index, from the Walk Free Foundation in Australia, defines slavery as "situations of exploitation that a person cannot refuse or leave because of threats, violence, coercion, abuse of power or deception". Modern forms of slavery can include debt bondage, where a person is forced to work without pay to satisfy a debt, child slavery, forced marriage, domestic servitude and forced labour, where victims are made to work through violence and intimidation. In a report on 31 May 2016 the BBC concentrated on five areas such as the seafood industry where thousands of people are trafficked and forced to work on fishing boats, where they can be kept for years without ever seeing the shore,  about 3,000 children from Vietnam alone thought to be working in British cannabis farms and nail bars, the International Labour Organization’s estimate that there are 4.5 million victims of forced sexual exploitation, the many children across Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East who are forced to beg on the streets by criminals and what the BBC called “behind closed doors” in which domestic slaves are being exploited in our own very neighbourhoods. 

Anti-Slavery International adds forced and early marriages and those born into slavery to the list. Walk Free’s Global Slavery Index lists the 10 countries with the highest prevalence of modern slavery as North Korea, Eritrea, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, Tajikistan, United Arab Emirates, Russia, Afghanistan and Kuwait and states that four of the five world regions — Africa, Arab States, Asia and the Pacific and Europe and Central Asia — are represented in the list of countries with the highest prevalence. In some countries modern slavery is institutionalised. Eritrea, for example, has the world’s second highest prevalence of modern slavery (9 per cent of the population), representing an estimated 320,000 people. The Eritrean government runs a mandatory national conscription program through which citizens between the ages of 18 and 40 must undertake military service but typically are forced to perform work of a non-military nature.⁷ The length of this national conscription is indefinite, with reports of Eritreans spending decades in service of the government.

All this sets a dilemma for organisations like ours wishing to end this continuing indictment on humanity. Where to start first or must we conduct our campaigns on a broad front? Take child labour: to ban the use of children condemns them and their families to starvation whereas tolerating it in its fullest extend condemns them to a continuing life of slavery, never able to escape from it. We should applaud the increasing numbers of employers who can be persuaded to allow children time off to study and improve themselves with the greater prospect of securing better and more remunerative work. We should concentrate on encouraging this. Although it may not end child exploitation overnight it creates an opportunity for them while enabling them still to feed themselves and their families. We should take a different approach, however, where governments either condone or themselves practice modern slavery. For them we should employ the full capacity of sanctions, banning imports of goods and services obtained through modern slavery and exposing them politically to universal moral obloquy. I fear that for many countries their own narrow commercial interests prevent this being applied – so it is not just the countries from which such goods and services come but also those who purchase them who should be put under the spotlight.

I have set out previously our four-point approach which is, first, to draw up a list and then write or otherwise communicate to certain domestic suppliers of goods and services a request that they publish overtly either on items they supply or in some other generic way a statement that they can certify that such items have not been produced using modern slavery. This would be the kite mark. We do not want to impose added unnecessary burdens on businesses but we should seek to persuade them that this is in their own best interests of marketing their products in the way in which it is now compulsory to state on labels the contents of foodstuffs etc. A further approach would be to collective representative organisations such as the CBI, Federation of Small Businesses, Institute of Directors etc, not least to get them on our side and them to persuade their members.

A corollary and the second of our four-point approaches is the engage with the general public: to get them interested in purchasing goods and services that are certified as being free from modern slavery, to invite those who are shareholders of public companies to attend their AGMs and otherwise engage with them in the same way that environmentalists and others are doing over company attitudes towards carbon emissions etc. By encouraging the general public to take such an interest will reinforce our message to companies that it is in their commercial interests to certify that they are not, however inadvertently, engaged in modern slavery. It is also a way of gaining greater publicity for the general campaign.

Thirdly, we must identify and work with other existing organisations that are seeking to combat modern slavery, not least so that we can co-ordinate our activities and not merely duplicate them. This is all about building a coalition of like-minded organisations to bring about change which is so much more effective and likely if it is planned in co-operation.

Finally, our fourth limb is to engage with policy makers, Parliamentarians both nationally and internationally to seek to persuade them that regulations should be introduced to require producers to publish “no slavery involved” notices on their products in the same way in which they are required for reasons of health and safety. Hopefully, this may lead not only to domestic legislation in many countries but also an international treaty setting out these objectives.

We now have the excellent 2025 CCLA UK Modern Slavery Benchmark report launched on Thursday 20 November which shows that while companies are improving their compliance with modern slavery regulations, many are not advancing to leadership positions on the issue. Progress includes more companies achieving compliance, but gaps persist in areas like transparency, remediation, and comprehensive risk management. As a result, CCLA is increasing engagement with underperforming companies to encourage improvement. 

Unseen, which is a UK charity providing safehouses and support in the community for survivors of trafficking and modern slavery as well as running the UK Modern Slavery & Exploitation Helpline and working with individuals, communities, business, governments, other charities and statutory agencies to stamp out slavery for good has commented on the report.  It states that CCLA’s benchmark remains one of the most influential tools for assessing how companies address modern slavery. It evaluates organisations on their compliance with the Modern Slavery Act, alignment with Home Office guidance, and the steps they take to identify, address, and prevent exploitation in their operations and supply chains. Rather than simply checking for the existence of policies, the benchmark looks at how well companies are putting commitments into action. This makes it a valuable source of insight for businesses seeking to understand where they stand. These are the sorts or organisations with whom we should seek to work so that overall, working together, we can move inexorably and comprehensively towards the elimination of modern slavery as our forbears did 200 years ago to rid the world of slavery itself. Theirs and our work on this will never be finished but if we can make significant advances we shall have not only alleviated the suffering of millions but also moved humanity towards a greater civilisation.

"A comprehensive approach to combating Modern Slavery: the next steps"

This is part of a speech by Keith Best to the webinar of Stop Trafficking Worldwide on 29 November 2025

Keith Best TD, MA is a former Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for Anglesey/Ynys Môn and served as the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Wales. Major in airborne and commando (artillery) forces, practising barrister, liveryman (Loriner), and Freeman of the City of London, Keith was named one of the 100 most influential people in public services in the UK by Society Guardian. Keith has made significant contributions to international refugee and human rights initiatives, including serving as Vice Chair of the European Council on Refugees and Exiles and as a member of the Foreign Secretary’s Advisory Panel on Torture Prevention. He is the Chair & CEO of the Wyndham Place Charlemagne Trust, Chair of the Universal Peace Federation (UK), patron of TEAM Global, and a trustee of several national and international organisations. 

The views and opinions expressed in our International Insights are strictly those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views, policies, or positions of TEAM Global or its affiliates.