Authored By: Arailym Zhumakan
University of Turin
Introduction
Forced or compulsory labour affects at least 27.6 million people on a global scale. Of those affected, approximately 7.3 million people were exploited through forced labour in the private economy, nearly 4 million were subjected to state-imposed forced labour, and over 6 million suffered commercial sexual exploitation. Modern slavery or forced labour exploitation is most prevalent in industries with weak regulatory oversight and characterized by informal labour, which include fields like domestic work; construction, mining, and brick kilns; sex work, including sexual exploitation; hospitality and transport services; including but not limited to…
International Labour Organization (ILO) defines “Forced labour or Exploitation” in its Convention on Forced Labour, 1930 (No. 29):
“Forced or compulsory labour is all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the person has not offered himself or herself voluntarily.”¹
According to international treaties and conventions “Slavery” as such may seem to belong in the past but as we speak more than 50 million people worldwide are unable to escape slavery and it is not a problem confined to one region, but global phenomenon affecting every country, even if it remains hidden from public view.
In response to concerns regarding global supply chains involvement in human rights abuses, the European Union has introduced mandatory human rights due diligence rules that aimed at growth of corporate accountability. However, question remains as to whether these measures are useful to prevent company accountability in modern slavery and if slavery has been prohibited under international law for nearly a century, why do millions of people remain trapped in forced labour today?
From the Abolition of Slavery to Corporate Responsibility: The Evolution of the Legal Framework
The international legal framework governing slavery has evolved considerably over the past century, shifting from the formal prohibition of slavery to addressing contemporary forms of exploitation. The Slavery Convention of 1926 provided the first internationally recognised legal definition of slavery, defining it as “the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised.” This definition reflected the traditional understanding of slavery, which was primarily characterised by ownership and the exercise of control over another person. Individuals subjected to slavery were treated as property rather than as holders of fundamental rights.
Although the legal abolition of slavery was gradually achieved through national legislation during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, international and European human rights instruments later reinforced this prohibition. Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) prohibits slavery, servitude, and forced or compulsory labour, establishing one of the fundamental guarantees of the European human rights system.
Similarly, Article 5 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union explicitly prohibits slavery, forced labour, and human trafficking. Together, these instruments demonstrate the continued commitment of European legal systems to protecting human dignity and safeguarding fundamental rights.
Despite these legal developments, modern slavery differs significantly from its traditional form. Contemporary exploitation rarely involves the formal ownership of individuals. Instead, it is commonly characterised by coercion, deception, abuse of vulnerability, debt bondage, restrictions on freedom of movement, and various forms of forced labour. Consequently, although slavery has long been prohibited under international law, contemporary forms of exploitation continue to persist in practice, particularly within increasingly complex global supply chains.
2.1. The Shift from State Responsibility to Corporate Accountability
For decades, the protection of human rights was viewed primarily as the responsibility of States. However, globalization has fundamentally altered this landscape. Today, multinational corporations often operate through complex cross-border supply chains where labour exploitation may occur far beyond the reach of effective national oversight. Economic incentives frequently encourage businesses to prioritize efficiency and cost reduction. In the absence of effective legal obligations and enforcement, these commercial pressures may contribute to labour exploitation within lower tiers of global supply chains. These soft-law instruments established an expectation that companies would respect human rights throughout their operations. Although compliance remained voluntary, many businesses lacked a legal obligation to identify, prevent, or remedy human rights abuses within their supply chains. This limitation became one of the principal reasons for the European Union’s shift toward mandatory human rights due diligence.
This demonstrates a significant weakness within global supply chains, where economic incentives frequently overweigh effective protection of fundamental human rights. The hidden nature and lack of transparency of global supply chains allow labour exploitation to persist regardless of the existence of international legal restrictions.
The issue is bigger than it seems, multinational corporations may avoid legal accountability because existing compliance measures often fail to extend beyond existing enforcement mechanisms. These developments raise important questions in relation to the extent of which multinational corporations should bear legal responsibility for human rights abuses committed within their global supply chains.
The continued exploitation of children and other vulnerable workers demonstrates that the formal abolition of forced labour has failed to guarantee actual protection in practice, particularly when routed through multi-tiered corporations.
2.2. The Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD)
The adoption of Directive (EU) 2024/1760 on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence (CSDDD) marks a decisive structural shift in European Union corporate law. Moving away from reactive disclosure models, the CSDDD establishes a mandatory legal framework that obliges large Union and non-EU undertakings operating within the single market to conduct comprehensive human rights and environmental due diligence across their global “chains of activities.” Under the Directive, companies must systematically identify, prevent, mitigate, and terminate actual or potential adverse impacts including forced labour and child labor within their own operations, subsidiaries, and direct or indirect business partners.
To enforce compliance, the Directive relies on a dual mechanism combining administrative supervision and civil liability. Member States must designate national supervisory bodies empowered to conduct investigations, issue injunctive orders, and impose pecuniary sanctions reaching up to 5% of a company’s net worldwide turnover. Furthermore, Article 29 introduces a statutory civil liability regime allowing victims of human rights abuses to claim compensation in national courts if a company intentionally or negligently failed to comply with its due diligence obligations, thereby directly causing harm.
Although political compromises during final negotiations narrowed the Directive’s scope to companies with over 1,000 employees and €450 million in global turnover, the indirect legal reach remains vast. Primary contractors are legally compelled to pass contractual cascading clauses down to lower-tier suppliers, establishing a binding standard of care throughout complex multi-tiered global production networks.
2.3. The Shift from Soft Law to Hard Law
For decades, international standard-setting in business and human rights relied almost exclusively on soft-law instruments, notably the 2011 United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises. These frameworks established the international expectation that commercial enterprises should respect human rights and exercise due diligence throughout their supply chains. However, because these instruments lacked direct legal enforceability, statutory sanctions, or judicial recourse for victims, corporate compliance remained largely voluntary, selective, and superficial. Many multinational corporations engaged in procedural “tick-box” auditing and public relations declarations while structural labor exploitation continued unchecked in lower supply chain tiers.
The clear inadequacy of voluntary measures led directly to the transition toward hard-law regulation across the European Union. Soft-law expectations have now been transformed into binding statutory obligations through legislative instruments such as the CSDDD, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), and Regulation (EU) 2024/3015 on prohibiting products made with forced labour. In practice, this shift fundamentally changes the legal framework governing corporate accountability within the European Union. Failure to exercise effective due diligence is no longer merely a reputational risk, but a direct source of statutory administrative fines, market exclusion, and tortious liability. By codifying international soft-law standards into positive EU and national legislation, the law transforms corporate social responsibility from discretionary corporate ethics into enforceable corporate legal accountability.
Case Studies
3.1. Xinjiang
State-sponsored forced labour in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) represents a major test case for international supply chain regulation. Extensive documentation from the United Nations and the ILO have reported that systematic forced labour in agriculture (specifically cotton) and manufacturing is deeply embedded in regional industrial policy. The geopolitical reality of Xinjiang creates severe legal challenges for corporate compliance: pervasive state surveillance and worker intimidation make independent, reliable third-party social audits functionally impossible.
Different jurisdictions have developed contrasting legal mechanisms to address goods originating from Xinjiang. In the United States, the Uyghur Forced Labour Prevention Act (UFLPA) creates a statutory rebuttable presumption that any goods mined, produced, or manufactured in Xinjiang involve forced labour, placing the burden of proof squarely on importing corporations to demonstrate clean supply chains before customs clearance. Conversely, the newly adopted EU Forced Labour Regulation (Regulation EU 2024/3015) prohibits the placing and making available on the Union market of products made with forced labour, as well as their export. While the EU model empowers the European Commission to investigate state-imposed forced labour outside the Union and order product withdrawals, it places the initial burden of proof on investigating authorities rather than establishing an automatic statutory presumption.
These judicial and statutory developments demonstrate that traditional audit-based compliance is legally insufficient. Multinationals sourcing from high-risk regions like Xinjiang face an operational mandate to either establish full traceability or completely disengage from tainted supply chains.
3.2. Italian Fashion Supply Chains
Domestic legal enforcement against supply chain exploitation has intensified within the European Union, as demonstrated by landmark judicial interventions in Italy’s luxury fashion sector. Investigations by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Milan uncovered a systemic reliance on unauthorised subcontracting networks within the supply chains of several luxury fashion brands operating in Lombardy. In these shadow workshops, undocumented migrant workers were subjected to severe labour exploitation, wage suppression, unsafe working conditions, and extreme working hours violating basic statutory rights while producing high-end goods at artificially low costs.
To combat this, Italian courts applied domestic criminal and anti-mafia legislation rather than traditional commercial remedies. Under Article 603-bis of the Italian Criminal Code (which criminalizes illegal labour brokerage, or caporalato), combined with Legislative Decree 231/2001 on corporate liability, courts imposed Judicial Administration (amministrazione giudiziaria) under Article 34 of Legislative Decree 159/2011 on non-compliant luxury entities. Crucially, this preventive measure does not require proof that the parent company actively committed criminal acts. Instead, courts establish that the company negligently failed to prevent labor exploitation by maintaining inadequate organizational controls and auditing mechanisms over its third-party suppliers.
Under judicial administration, court-appointed commissioners take temporary control of corporate governance to restructure procurement processes and enforce legal compliance. This Italian case law provides a crucial judicial precedent: major companies can no longer hide behind complex sub-contracting chains to shield themselves from legal accountability for severe human rights violations occurring on domestic soil.
Conclusion
Modern slavery is no longer characterised by legal ownership of individuals, but by hidden forms of exploitation embedded within global supply chains. While international law has prohibited slavery and forced labour for decades, voluntary corporate commitments have proven insufficient to prevent human rights abuses in practice. The adoption of the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive marks an important shift from voluntary standards to binding legal obligations for businesses operating within the European Union.
However, legislation alone cannot eliminate modern slavery. As the Xinjiang and Italian fashion supply chain cases demonstrate, effective enforcement, corporate transparency, and meaningful accountability remain essential to ensuring that human rights due diligence produces real change. Ultimately, the success of the CSDDD will depend not only on the obligations it creates, but on how consistently those obligations are enforced in practice.
Bibliography
Legislation
Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union [2012] OJ C 326/391.
Directive (EU) 2024/1760 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 June 2024 on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence [2024] OJ L.
Regulation (EU) 2024/3015 of the European Parliament and of the Council on prohibiting products made with forced labour on the Union market [2024] OJ L.
Treaties
Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (European Convention on Human Rights, as amended).
Convention to Suppress the Slave Trade and Slavery (Slavery Convention) (adopted 25 September 1926, entered into force 9 March 1927) 60 LNTS 253.
International Labour Organization, Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No 29) (adopted 28 June 1930, entered into force 1 May 1932) 39 UNTS 55.
Other Materials
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Assessment of Human Rights Concerns in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, People’s Republic of China (2022).
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct (2023).
United Nations Human Rights Council, Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UN Doc A/HRC/17/31, 2011).
