In 2018, we conducted ground-breaking research, amplified our impact, and engaged with multinational brands to help eliminate labor and human rights abuses in global supply chains. Explore a selection of our achievements in assessments, consulting, policy, research, and training below.
Australia’s Modern Slavery Bill Passes Parliament: The new bill requires approximately 3,000 large businesses and entities in Australia to publish annual statements on measures taken to address modern slavery.
Japan’s steadily declining native workforce has created a dependence on low-skilled foreign labor. This, in turn, has created a vulnerable foreign workforce at risk for suffering myriad labor abuses. Japan’s Technical Intern Training Program (TITP) attracts hundreds of thousands of workers each year, primarily from other Asian countries. From 2015 to 2017, Verité collected and analyzed testimonies of Chinese trainees in the TITP program who had submitted complaints to a local migrant advocacy organization. The findings are available in the new paper Forced Labor Risk in Japan’s Technical Intern Training Program: Exploration of Indicators among Chinese Trainees Seeking Remedy.
Iju-Sha is the term for Filipinos in Japan, most having come for work. Like the tens of millions of people around the world who migrate for a job, they arrive in pursuit of the promise of better wages, skills training and career opportunities. As Verité shows in our new documentary, Iju-Sha: Reportage on Migrant Workers in Japan, this may not be what they find.
Forced labor risk is not usually associated with Japan. With preparations for the 2020 Olympics underway in Tokyo, the spotlight is turning to the so-called ‘internship’ program through which Japan has brought tens of thousands of guest workers annually over the past five years to fill the labor shortage resulting from its aging population.