In a constantly changing world, financial institutions must continually adapt to new risk factors. Regional or global crises like war or natural disasters, in particular, can trigger or fuel criminal activity and related risks,1 including MS/HT. Increased vulnerability during crises can expose people to exploitation by criminal actors, often resulting in a rapid increase in traf- ficking and/or exploitation activities. For financial institutions, a crisis-driven increase in MS/HT raises the risk that they will become inadvertently involved in associated criminal activities via the banking services they provide.
A recent example is the war in Ukraine and the resulting ref- ugee flows to safe countries. As of early February 2023, more than 8 million people who fled Ukraine – mostly women and children – have been registered in other European countries.2 Despite their increased risk of falling victim to MS/HT,3 conver- sations between the Finance Against Slavery and Trafficking (FAST) initiative and members of the financial industry suggest that most financial institutions were not prepared to identify and mitigate the related risks in a timely way.
International migration has become a ‘mega trend’ of our times, with more than 260 million migrants living outside their country of origin in 2017. Some move in search of better livelihood opportunities, others flee conflict, environmental degrad...Read More
COVID-19 has put under the spotlight the fast fashion industry in Leicester East, and its exploitation of thousands of (mostly immigrant) workers. Exploitation that ranges from unsafe working conditions through to slavery; from staff being paid belo...Read More
The engagement of children in domestic work in third-party households is mostly conceived as a decision that benefits adult actors – employers, intermediaries and/or parents – at the expense of young people. Thus, child domestic workers are ...Read More
A LOT CAN CHANGE IN A DECADE. FOR BETTER, AND FOR WORSE. Ten years ago, in the early hours of April 24, 2013, a garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, crumbled. Within its walls were thousands of workers, many of whom never returned home to their ...Read More
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