Speakers

Colleen Theron, Ardea International

Colleen is a tri qualified lawyer with over 25 years of legal and commercial experience of working with business, organisations and NGOs across sectors on both a strategic and operational level. She provides advisory services, training and online resources to both directors and employees on human rights, modern slavery and sustainability issues. Colleen has an LLM (with distinction) in Environmental Law from the University of Aberdeen. She sits on the advisory board for LexisPSL Environment and was nominated as one of the Top 100 Corporate Modern Slavery influencers in the UK in 2018.

Neill Wilkins – Head of Migrant Workers Programme: Institute for Human Rights and Business (IHRB)

Neill manages all aspects of the IHRB Migrant Workers programme and helped oversee the development of the Dhaka Principles for Migration With Dignity – a set of human rights based principles that offer a clear framework for understanding the recruitment and employment of migrant workers worldwide. The current focus for the programme is ethical recruitment and in particular the payment of recruitment fees by migrant workers. IHRB are working with others to promote increased due diligence by business and establish the principle of “employer pays” (the cost of recruitment) as the norm across all industry sectors and locations.

Shan Saba – Director at Brightwork, Founder Scotland Against Modern Slavery (SAMS)

Shan has worked in the Scottish Recruitment Industry for over 20 years, Brightwork are the largest recruitment agency in Scotland and have led the social agenda in the sector. Shan founded the movement Scotland Against Modern Slavery (SAMS) and works with the Scottish Government, Police Scotland, and Migrant Help in order to raise awareness of Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery in the business community in Scotland and also to support those victims into becoming survivors with meaningful work to assist their rehabilitation.

The webinar will last 60 minutes and includes a question and answer session. At the point of registration you will have the opportunity to submit questions you would like to our speakers to respond to on the live webinar.

Unable to join us on the day? We will record this webinar. If you are unable to attend live, please register and we will send you a link to the recording after the webinar and a link to download the speakers’ presentations and other outputs.

Context

Recruitment and employment practices are core contributing factors to labour exploitation worldwide that the Global Slavery Index estimates enslaves more than 24 million people globally (60% of the 40 million people who are enslaved at any given moment). These practices lead to people being expected to pay recruitment fees to obtain work, being forced into debt bondage (having to pay for their travel, food and lodgings) in return for a job, and facing exploitation of their human rights on a daily basis. The impacts can be inter-generational as the debts imposed on workers outweigh the income they are able to earn and are forcibly passed on to the next generations. 

Such practices generally (but not exclusively) occur in the developing world. The relevance to Western-based consumers and businesses is both one of responsibility – existing voluntary human rights due diligence frameworks from organisations include the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP), the Ethical Trade Initiative (ETI) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) – and increasingly regulation. Legislation, such as the Modern Slavery Act (2015) in the UK, the Duty de Vigilance law in France, and the recently introduced German corporate due diligence in supply chains legislation, known as Leiferkettengesetz, complies organisations to conduct and report on the due diligence they are conducting in order to understand, manage and mitigate their environmental and human rights impacts in their entire business including supply chains.  

Specifically with regard to recruitment practices, the Dhaka Principles for Migration With Dignity is a set of human rights based principles that offer a clear framework for understanding the recruitment and employment of migrant workers worldwide. The current focus for the programme is ethical recruitment and in particular the payment of recruitment fees by migrant workers. Our guest speaker Neill Wilkins leads this programme for IHRB who are working with others to promote increased due diligence by business and establish the principle of “employer pays” (the cost of recruitment) as the norm across all industry sectors and locations. This has seen the establishment of a business focussed initiative The Leadership Group for Responsible Recruitment – a group of leading brands and other stakeholders including IOM IRIS, all committing to responsible recruitment as a way of preventing forced labour and trafficking in their supply chains.

Now you’ve registered you might be interested to read the following related article “Who Should be Concerned About Modern Slavery?”