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Beyond Extremes: What Forced Labour in Asian Supply Chains Really Looks Like
Forced labour is often imagined through its most extreme examples: trafficking networks, violent coercion, and workers trapped in places beyond public view. However, these cases represent only one end of a much broader spectrum of labour exploitation. This was the focus of our recent fireside chat, Human Rights in Value Chain: From Awareness to Collective Action.
In conversation with Sammie Ho Dumas of Thai Union, Matt Friedman of The Mekong Club opened with the story of a 15-year-old Cambodian boy who crossed into Thailand looking for work. Promised employment, he instead spent four years trapped in exploitative and violent conditions, with little food, forced stimulant use, and no realistic way to leave. The story is horrifying because it is unmistakably forced labour.
The discussion, however, challenged a more difficult question: what happens when coercion becomes less visible?
A Widespread Problem that Remains Largely Unresolved
The scale of the issue is striking. Around 50 million people are estimated to be living in modern slavery globally, including 27 million in forced labour, with 52% concentrated in Asia. Despite these figures, only around 133,000 people were documented as rescued last year, representing roughly 0.2% of those affected.
Friedman argued that this gap reflects more than weak enforcement. Modern slavery generates an estimated US$236 billion annually, while the resources dedicated to tackling it remain comparatively limited. The imbalance helps explain why progress continues to lag behind the scale of the problem.
Looking Beyond the Language of Slavery
This becomes harder to recognise because the term "slavery" itself encourages people to think only of the most extreme scenarios.
Instead, Friedman pointed to the International Labour Organisation's (ILO) 11 indicators of forced labour, which capture a much wider range of coercive conditions, including debt bondage, passport retention, intimidation, isolation, and restricted movement. The more useful question, he argued, is whether someone can genuinely make free decisions about their own work.
Ho Dumas illustrated this with examples that sit much closer to ordinary working life. In some jurisdictions, employers are legally permitted to hold migrant workers' passports for "safekeeping". While this may appear administrative, it can also limit a worker's ability to resign freely after serving the required notice period.
Friedman shared a similar example from Singapore. By considering only its directly employed workforce, a law firm initially believed it had no material forced labour risk. One simple question exposed an overlooked area of exposure: who cleaned the office? Investigating its cleaning contractor revealed labour issues hidden within an outsourced service many employees had never considered.
Climate and Labour Rights are Becoming Increasingly Connected
The conversation also highlighted an often-overlooked connection in sustainability: climate change can heighten vulnerability to forced labour, making environmental and human rights risks increasingly difficult to address in isolation.
Climate-related disasters can displace communities, disrupt livelihoods, and leave people more vulnerable to exploitation by traffickers.
The clean energy transition brings these tensions into sharp relief. Technologies and materials central to decarbonisation, including solar panels and cobalt used in electric vehicle batteries, carry documented labour risks in parts of their supply chains. Ho Dumas stressed that the answer is not to boycott these sectors, but to identify and address the human rights impacts within supply chains intended to support a more sustainable, decarbonised future.
She connected this tension to a broader shift in ESG reporting. Companies are increasingly expected to assess environmental and social risks together, rather than highlighting climate progress while overlooking labour conditions deeper in their supply chains.
Regulation Alone Does Not Remove Complexity
Audience questions turned the discussion towards regulation, particularly the tension between China's restrictions on sharing certain audit information and overseas laws requiring supply chain transparency.
Friedman's assessment was pragmatic. There is no universal formula. Therefore, companies operating across multiple jurisdictions must navigate competing legal obligations while meeting the minimum requirements of each.
Ho Dumas added that compliance is only part of the equation. Customer expectations, particularly in US and European markets, often go beyond legal minimums, making stronger labour standards increasingly important for maintaining market access.
Looking Beyond Tier 1 Suppliers
A recurring theme throughout the discussion was the need to look beyond surface-level indicators of compliance and examine how working conditions operate in practice—from the underlying causes of long working hours to labour risks hidden beyond Tier 1 suppliers.
Excessive overtime provided a useful example. Friedman distinguished between workers who voluntarily seek additional hours to increase their earnings and forced overtime, where workers are required to work beyond their agreed hours.
Ho Dumas argued that excessive overtime often reflects weak workforce planning rather than deliberate exploitation. Many suppliers simply lack sophisticated human resource management capability to forecast labour demand accurately, meaning capability building can become as important as enforcement.
Both speakers agreed that companies cannot stop at Tier 1 suppliers. Some of the most serious labour risks emerge further upstream, where raw materials and components are sourced. Cooperation between businesses, including sharing insights and aligning due diligence efforts where appropriate, can make it more practical to identify and address risks deeper in shared supply chains.
Building Systems that Workers can Trust
Technology also featured as a practical tool for improving worker voice.
Friedman introduced Apprise, an app developed by The Mekong Club that allows migrant workers to answer questions privately in their own language using headphones and simple yes-or-no responses. Because managers cannot see individual answers, the system reduces the pressure workers often feel during traditional audits.
QR code grievance mechanisms serve a similar purpose by allowing workers to raise concerns directly without relying on supervisors.
Importantly, Friedman also described a shift away from automatically terminating suppliers when problems emerge. In many cases, remediation produces better outcomes than immediate disengagement.
He illustrated this with an example involving passport retention. What initially appeared to be forced labour turned out to involve workers voluntarily asking management to store their passports because they lacked secure lockers. The practice still needed fixing, but the example demonstrated why context matters before drawing conclusions.
Turning Commitment into Organisational Practice
The conversation ended by returning to a broader question: how do organisations sustain this work beyond individual champions?
Friedman suggested that the strongest advocates are not always those formally assigned responsibility for human rights. Often, they are individuals who feel a personal connection to the issue and use their position within the company to build awareness, influence decisions, and encourage wider organisational commitment.
Ho Dumas offered a complementary perspective. Some companies start with the reporting requirements rather than the strategy those disclosures are meant to reflect, concentrating on what they must disclose before deciding what they are trying to achieve. Without a clear approach to identifying, prioritising, and addressing the most significant human rights risks, disclosure can become a box-ticking exercise. Effective human rights due diligence must come first, providing the substance and priorities that reporting should then communicate.
The discussion's strongest message was ultimately a simple one: forced labour risk is not unique to any particular industry. In any sector, looking beyond policies into recruitment practices, outsourced services, and upstream supply chains is likely to reveal risks that might otherwise remain hidden.
The tools discussed throughout the conversation, from deeper supply chain due diligence and worker-centred technology to stronger internal leadership, are not complete solutions. They are, however, part of a broader shift towards treating human rights due diligence with the same seriousness that businesses increasingly apply to climate commitments and environmental governance.
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