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Close up of women marching with raised fists Activists
Monday March 6, 2023

International Women’s Day: a story of collective power

 Are you planning on marking International Women’s Day? Share your thoughts and questions in the comments!    When 15,000 women, the majority being immigrant Jewish garment workers, marched through New York City in 1908, they sparked the call for an annual observance of International Women’s Day.   These women in New York were demanding the right to vote, better working conditions, shorter working hours, and better protections from exploitation through the initiation of the first labor unions.  More than 100 years later we remember that International Women’s Day is

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Cooked prawn on a fork resting on a white plate next to an open tin of tuna surrounded by barbed wire and drops of blood Slavery-Free Goods
Friday February 10, 2023

Does it do what it says on the tin?

Joanna Ewart-James

This is the republication of the foreword to the report published by Human Rights at Sea entitled "Does it Do what it says on the Tin? Fisheries and Aquaculture Certification, Standards and Ratings Ecosystem: An Independent Review 1.0"  available here. As consumers we are led to believe we hold the power to ensure the goods we buy are not harmful to humans and the planet. In classic economics, companies simply supply what the market demands. We are ‘the market’ and it is the market that sets the price. And we are increasingly aware, in this information age, that price goes far beyond

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Forced Labor
Thursday December 22, 2022

The unusual break the World Cup 2022 brought

Joanna Ewart-James

With Lionel Messi captaining, Argentina’s third win at the World Cup 36 years after their second, may not be considered especially unusual. What about the host country Qatar? The first tournament to be held in a Muslim nation is a break from a history of past locations – predominantly Europe and the Americas. The break I am referring to is the unusual focus on the experience of exploited laborers. Major sporting events and trafficking tropes Before Qatar 2022, extreme exploitation in the context of major sporting events that caught public attention was limited to the topic of

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Other slavery
Friday December 16, 2022

Open letter to FIFA and Qatar ahead of the World Cup final and International Migrants Day

To Gianni Infantino, President of FIFA; Dr Ali bin Samikh Al Marri, Minister for Administrative Development, Labor and Social Affairs in Qatar: We are writing on International Migrants Day as a group of human rights advocates and over 100,000 supporters around the world urging Qatari authorities and FIFA to commit to protecting migrant workers from exploitation and remedy human rights abuses endured as a result of the 2022 World Cup. We call on FIFA to: Set up a dedicated compensation fund for migrant workers and the families of those who have died. This amount should at least be

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Supply Chain
Wednesday December 7, 2022

Chocolate companies must pay a living income price for cocoa, says 2022 Cocoa Barometer

Sustainable chocolate won’t become a reality until companies start paying a living income price for cocoa, according to the 2022 Cocoa Barometer. The biennial report, developed by the VOICE Network, which Freedom United is part of, shows that cocoa production continues to cause major social and environmental harm and that current efforts to tackle core issues are failing. Authors Antonie C. Fountain and Friedel Huetz-Adams also explore the role racism and colonial-era dynamics play in the industry. Problems in cocoa persist; some are getting worse The report finds that endemic

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