Beyond trafficking and slavery policy debate

Dr Joel Quirk together with eight other leading experts on modern slavery in supply chains will contribute to an online written debate.

The debate is convened by two leading academics: Dr Genevieve LeBaron, University of Sheffield Department of Politics (UK), who currently holds a UK ESRC Future Research Leaders grant and a British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award to research the business of forced labour; and Dr Joel Quirk, University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa) Department of Political Studies, who is the author or editor of six important books on slavery. Dr LeBaron and Dr Quirk are editors of the Beyond Trafficking and Slavery section of openDemocracy.net, a London-based global digital commons with over nine million readers.

The debate is co-sponsored by openDemocracy and Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance & Abolition (information below).

The debate will kick off an important public dialogue - between activists, corporations, and international organizations working to tackle modern slavery - about whether voluntary corporate efforts are enough to combat modern slavery, or whether a new approach is needed to effectively govern global supply chains and prevent modern slavery. The International Labour Organization estimates that there are over 21 million victims of forced labour in the global economy today, producing illegal profits of over US$150 billion per year.

Participants include:

• Anannya Bhattacharjee—President of Garment and Allied Workers Union (GAWU) and Executive Council Member of the New Trade Union Initiative (NTUI).
• Urmila Bhoola—United Nations Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery. @ubhoola62
• Anna de Courcy Wheeler—Senior Program Officer for the Freedom Fund. @Freedom_Fund
• Houtan Homayounpour—Technical Specialist within the Special Action Program to Combat Forced Labour at the International Labour Organization (ILO)(Geneva). @ILO_EndSlavery
• Hugh Helferty—Executive-in-Residence at the Smith School of Business, Queen's University. 

• Cathy Feingold—Director of the AFL-CIO’s International Department. @AFLCIOGlobal
• Ed Potter—former the Director of Global Workplace Rights at the Coca-Cola Company. @ed__potter
• Leonardo Sakamoto—activist, journalist, researcher and Director of the NGO Repórter Brasil. @blogdosakamoto
• Lara White—Senior Labour Migration Specialist for the Labour Mobility and Human Development (LHD) division of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). @IOM_news

The debate format will involve a first round of statements from participants published on September 14, 2016, with rebuttals published on 28 September 2016.

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