Modern Slavery in Transition featuring Mallesons | Geopolitics, trade and supply chain due diligence - When modern slavery becomes a trade issue

I mean, we both, Jasmine worked in this field for many years, and in the early days, I think modern slavery was an issue which really struggled to have much cut through on the world stage or with companies, despite the estimated 50 million people living in conditions of modern slavery globally, and 28 million of whom in conditions of forced labor.

So really a, a topic which should be on companies' radar.

So let's go through some of the recent ways in which this is changing.

In our last episode, Jasmine, we covered proposed changes to modern slavery legislation impacting corporate reporting and due diligence in Australia and the UK, and we talked about what was driving these changes and whether or not it was a criticism in various local influential reports that we identified.

But I think it's important to remember some of the backdrop.

Many jurisdictions introduced reporting obligations similar to those in the UK and Australia, and each time it seemed like each legislature introduced slightly different requirements and areas of focus.

For example, the US introduced the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, and that was actually introduced by the Biden administration and came into effect in 2022.

And what it did was create a model which presumes that products from the Uyghur autonomous region of the People's Republic of China are made with forced labor, unless it can be shown otherwise through clear and convincing evidence.

Failure to provide this evidence means that the products are banned from being imported into the US, and this legislation has really influenced global policy and the EU's very similar f- forced labor regulation, which we touched on in the last episode.

But that legislation in the EU takes effect from December 2027, and it is a bit of a different model.

So it doesn't specify a particular region of origin for products, it applies to any jurisdiction where the products have been made.

And the second important difference is there's no rebuttable presumption of forced labor, so im- competent authorities will investigate based on risk indicators and a database of geographies.

Now, both those risk indicators and the database were due to be published in June 2026, but so far the EU commission has only published guidance on the legislation.

And I think the other important point on the EU FLR is that you have to bear in mind it applies to all economic operators.

There's no size threshold, unlike what we've seen with, for example, the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive.

So I think when you take these two pieces of legislation together, there's definitely much more of a focus on trade and operational impacts on companies, rather than the measures that we discussed in the last episode, which predominantly so far have been focused on reporting and potentially duties based on a failure to prevent modern slavery.