Modern Slavery in the Global Supply Chains: The Challenges of Legislations and Mandatory Disclosures

Abstract

The chapter examines the challenges of the legislation and mandatory disclosures in the elimination of modern slavery in global supply chains. There are upsurge of new domestic legislations and policies such as the California Transparency in Supply Chain Act and Dodd-Frank Act in the US, the UK Modern Slavery Act, the French Corporate Duty of Vigilance and the UN/OECD Due Diligence Principles to deal with the prevalence on modern slavery practices including forced labour, child labour, sexual exploitation, debt bondage, domestic servitude, organ harvesting and human trafficking. Although the modern slavery legislations require firms to make mandatory disclosures regarding labour issues which could also help to bring corporate accountability and transparency in the supply chains to the limelight, the paper highlights some of the challenges of these laws like industry actors sought to derail efforts to raise public labour standards, business opposition to these legislations and the fact that disclosures may fail to highlight and address human rights abuses and not also improve sustainable business practices.