Harnessing UK trade and investment to address Indo-Pacific modern slavery risks

Can the UK's trade and investment arrangements in the Indo-Pacific help reduce modern slavery risks? Given the Indo-Pacific is the region with the highest rates of modern, how can UK businesses and investors avoid exposure to modern slavery when they trade with and invest in the region?

Our project seeks to develop answers to these questions, and use them to help the policy actors in the UK and the Indo-Pacific that are developing new trade and investment arrangements.

To do this, we need to understand when foreign trade and investment increases the risks of forced labour and modern slavery, and when and how foreign trade and investment arrangements can be used to reduce those risks. We need to consider which legal and policy arrangements - such as bans on trade in goods made with forced labour, labor clauses in trade deals, or investor arbitration mechanisms - protect people and businesses against modern slavery risks, and which make it more likely. And we need to consider what role survivors, vulnerable populations and other people affected by modern slavery play in shaping trade and investment arrangements to prevent modern slavery.

We will do this through four different areas of work.

First, we will organize the first major global conference on these issues, online over 2 days in October 2022. This will bring together researchers, government practitioners, business and civil society to share new scholarship and develop new policy thinking. We will include representatives from affected communities, including survivors of modern slavery and affected Indo-Pacific communities. This conference will lay the groundwork for future exchange of knowledge and policy research collaborations, through a network of scholars and practitioners who will keep working on these issues after the project is complete.

Second, we will build new data sets to help us understand how different trade and investment arrangements shape modern slavery risks and outcomes in the Indo-Pacific. One dataset will include international trade and investment agreements from across the Indo-Pacific, recording how those agreements handle modern slavery related issues. Another dataset will focus on the domestic laws and policies relating to trade and investment of countries in the Indo-Pacific. And third, we will update and develop a dataset recording government and company responses to allegations of large-scale forced labour in China's Xinjiang province. We will use each of these datasets to conduct original research into the questions we posed earlier.

Third, we will conduct four in-depth case studies on China, India, Malaysia and Thailand. Working with our project partners Anti-Slavery International and the University of Nottingham Malaysia, the project research team will study how issues relating to modern slavery risks have been addressed when trade and investment arrangements have been developed and implemented. This will include direct, careful and safe engagement with stakeholders from each of these countries, including people vulnerable to modern slavery, to understand how these issues have been perceived and managed.

Fourth, we will use the data and evidence developed in the previous work to produce policy findings and recommendations. Working closely with Anti-Slavery International and the Modern Slavery Policy and Evidence Centre, we will share these policy findings with policymakers, business leaders, civil society and researchers in the UK, in the Indo-Pacific, and in relevant international forums such as the United Nations and World Economic Forum.