In Episode 4, James speaks with Chloe Cranston, Business and Human Rights Manager at Anti-Slavery International. James asks Chloe about what companies are doing in response to allegations of Xinjiang forced labour, and we he  ar about a new initiative in Brussels to prevent goods made with forced labour entering the European market.

Transcript

James Cockayne  0:00  

Welcome to Xinjiang Sanctions, a podcast looking at the global response to forced labour in Xinjiang, China. I'm James Cockayne, a Professor of Global Politics and Anti-Slavery at the University of Nottingham. I've been working on modern slavery and forced labour issues for the last decade and researching Xinjiang forced labour for the last year. You can see the results of that research at www.xinjiangsanctions.info. In this short podcast series, I speak with global experts to understand why forced labour emerged in Xinjiang and what governments and business are doing to try to address it. I'm pleased to be joined on this episode by Chloe Cranston, Business and Human Rights Manager at Anti-Slavery International. Welcome, Chloe. 

Chloe Cranston  0:44  

Hi, James. Thanks for having me. 

James Cockayne  0:46  

Tell us about Anti-Slavery International Chloe.

Chloe Cranston  0:48  

So Anti-Slavery International is considered the world's oldest human rights organisation. It was set up over 180 years ago as part of the original abolitionist movement. And it's worked all through that time in one form or another. And we now work to end contemporary forms of slavery. And we have four strategic themes which are: responsible business (which I manage), climate change in modern slavery, migration & trafficking and child slavery.

James Cockayne  1:17  

So almost two centuries of expertise then in fighting slavery and forced labour. Recently, Anti-Slavery International has helped mobilise an effort responding to Xinjiang forced labour. Can you tell us about that?

Chloe Cranston  1:29  

Yes. So we co-founded something called the Coalition to End Forced Labour in the Uyghur Region. And that coalition came about towards the end of 2019, the beginning of 2020. And essentially what happened there is various groups, labour rights groups, investors, anti-slavery groups, human rights groups, which have focused heavily for decades, on how the fashion industry is tainted with human rights abuses, complicit in human rights abuses. They we increasingly saw all the evidence that the fashion industry was directly tied to the forced labour of Uyghurs. And at the same time, obviously, and evidently, the Uyghur community was watching in horror as the fashion industry was failing to take action. So what we had was essentially, a group of us came together with this common objective, to unite to end the state's imposed forced labour and other human rights abuses against Uyghurs. And it's not only Uyghurs, it’s other Turkic and Muslim majority peoples in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. So we united and brought brought these groups together with this common cause. And I would say, you know, arguably, it is one of the biggest formalised human rights movements now in recent times. So the coalition is now supported by over 400 organisations, and that's faith based organisations, investors, as I said, many human rights and human rights organisations such as Human Rights Watch, in over 40 countries. So really a worldwide movement, and we have various focus areas. One is we're calling for companies to exit the Uyghur region. For governments and institutions such as the UN and the ILO to put pressure on the Chinese government, ultimately, to end the forced labour in the Uyghur region.

James Cockayne  3:16  

So as you mentioned, one of the key things the coalition has done is issue a call to action to companies to exit the Uyghur region. Are they listening?

Chloe Cranston  3:25  

So I would definitely say yes, so we publicly launched the coalition in July 2020. And when we launched that call to action companies, and we were initially focused on the fashion industry, our focus has obviously expanded looking at solar looking at agriculture, at PVC, all the other industries. But initially, we were focused on fashion. And when we first launched it, we were doing extensive private engagement with many, many leading companies in the fashion industry. And honestly, many companies really did not understand the scale to which they were exposed to Uyghur forced labour across their supply chains. So how I would explain that is many were looking at it solely in terms of their direct business relationships in the region. So did they have a tier one supplier in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and at that time, some companies still did, I think that has very much significantly changed in the past two and a half years. So many of it, we're looking at really just these direct business relationships, but the exposure was much more complex. And this is what we laid out in our call to action. It's about direct business relationships, it’s about wherever companies are in financial relationships with a facility say elsewhere in China or even elsewhere in the world, the parent company of which is involved in supporting the Uyghur forced labour systems and that’s still being in a financial relationship with a complicit company. Then in early 2020, we had the expose about the forced transfers of Uyghurs from the region to elsewhere in China. So that was also part of how it was tainting supply chains. And then obviously the sourcing of goods. So cotton and yarn and if we are talking about other sectors, you know, polysilicon, PVC, and so on. So we really set out in these kind of the way I have said it, it's kind of four different ways that companies were very, very exposed in their supply chain. I'm not even speaking about the value chain side, which is obviously be about exporting goods and services to the region. And so by setting out those four areas that you know, what we did is we definitely set the bar. We know that companies took the steps we demanded, we know that companies were taking these, really understanding these different layers of how they could be exposed. And even if companies weren't being public about it, a year on many of the leading companies that we were engaging with, we know were taking these steps. And crucially now, and I know you probably want to talk about this, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in the US essentially makes our call to action binding law. And what that shows is companies can't be completely complicit in Uyghur forced labour, not even if it's just a small part of their supply chain.

James Cockayne  6:09  

You mentioned the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. Was the Coalition involved in its, its development?

Chloe Cranston  6:15  

Yes, of course, so many, there's many, many US based organisations in the coalition. And those organisations did a huge amount of work to advocate for the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, and also to push it forward when it was stalling. 

James Cockayne  6:29  

So as you've explained that that law, in a way makes mandatory some of the things that you are calling on business to do. Which of the steps that business now have to undertake as a result of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, do you see as having the most impact?

Chloe Cranston  6:45  

So you know ultimately what the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act does is it makes it that companies cannot source anything from the Uyghur region, essentially, because there's this rebuttable presumption and only if the company can prove it wasn't made with forced labour would they be able to import it into the United States. However, the crux of it is, and this was really the basis of our call to action, is due to the levels of repression and surveillance and control in the region, no company can go there and actually meaningfully identify whether there is forced labour happening. And if they actually did, there's nothing they can do to prevent it, there's nothing they can do to mitigate it, and there's nothing they can do to remediate it, i.e. they cannot act in accordance with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. And that's, you know, was really seen as well, in September 2020, if I get my timelines, right, that many auditing companies, six auditing companies announced they would no longer audit in the region due to you know, the threats on auditors and so on. So with that, if we have this rebuttable presumption, the only way a company can import its goods into the United States now is if it can prove that none of the inputs in that good were made in the Uyghur region, because they are not reasonably going to be able to prove it was not made with forced labour. And that is, you know, what we need to see happening and that needs to, you know, put the pressure on the Chinese government to allow access to the region to allow for an enabling environment for human rights.

James Cockayne  8:17  

So you mentioned there Chloe that the situation in Xinjiang makes effective due diligence very difficult and you also mentioned that it makes remediation very difficult. So what can be expected in terms of remediation of the problems in the supply chain and also remedy to people who have been affected by these abuses?

Chloe Cranston  8:41  

So it's a really interesting question, remedy for victims of state imposed forced labour, which is what this is, is a really unexplored area. So this is not the only example of state imposed forced labour in supply chains we've had. There was decades of state imposed forced labour in Uzbekistan. That situation has now reformed we need to see m