Verité News from our Vision Newsletter
Verité Paper Explores Challenges in Formal and Informal Labor Migration to Thailand
Verité conducted desk and field research to map out how jobseekers in Cambodia, Myanmar, and Lao PDR learn about jobs in Thailand, weigh risk factors and choose among the routes open to them, as well as what those routes – formal or informal – entail. Through 168 interviews with people on or connected with this journey, a picture emerged of a highly complex and dynamic arena in which the needs of jobseekers, job-finders, employers, regulators, facilitators and profiteers meet.
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Improving the Enforcement of Child Labor Laws in Five Countries
The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that 152 million children worldwide are engaged in child labor. For the past four years, Verité partnered with Winrock International and Lawyers Without Borders to address this problem by providing technical assistance to governments in five countries: Burkina Faso, Liberia, Nepal, Belize, and Panama. The CLEAR II project (Country Level Engagement and Assistance to Reduce Child Labor), funded by the US Department of Labor, had three goals: to improve governments’ response to child labor, decrease the number of children exploited, and increase awareness of child labor in the private sector.
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What We’re Talking About in June
Companies in Southeast Asia Lag on Human Rights | Netherlands Adopts Child Labor Law Due Diligence | New Belt and Road Tracker by Benn Steil | Germany Aims to Use Strict Law to Improve Work Conditions in Africa
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14 Free Online Tools Help Food & Beverage Companies Combat Human Trafficking
Created with support from the U.S. Department of State’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, Verité has published a new set of free online tools designed to help food and beverage companies better identify, prevent, and address human trafficking or trafficking-related practices in their global supply chains. The suite of tools also provides implementation guidance for the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) “Ending Trafficking in Persons,” which requires U.S. federal contractors to take concrete steps to address and prevent human trafficking in their supply chains.
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Verité Speaks at Duke University on Modern Slavery in Supply Chains
This past April, Erin Klett, Senior Director of Research and Policy at Verité, addressed Modern Slavery in Supply Chains at an event organized by Duke University Center for International and Global Studies. Klett was invited to campus and introduced by Piotr Plewa, visiting research scholar at the center. The following article is by Vivian Wang for Duke University’s Duke Today.
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What We’re Talking About in May 2019
Has Bahrain’s Flexi-Permit Lived Up to Its Hype? | Labor Department Says Workers at a Gig Company Are Contractors | International Worker’s Day Around the World | US Ban on Slave-made Goods Nets Tiny Fraction of $400 Billion Threat | How Apparel Brand Purchasing Practices Drive Labor Abuses | High Court Rules Chicken Catcher Bosses Exploited Workers in Modern Slavery Case
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Remediation and Elimination of Recruitment Costs Charged to Migrant Workers
Migrant workers are frequently confronted with a choice: pay illegal or unethical recruitment fees for employment abroad or go without work altogether. To finance these exorbitant costs, they may take out loans that leave them vulnerable to debt bondage, a form of forced labor. For more than a decade, Verité has worked with global companies in diverse sectors to ensure their suppliers and business partners absorb the true cost of recruitment and prohibit the charging of recruitment costs to workers, in accordance with international standards and regulations.
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Verité Addresses Gender Inequity & Forced Labor in the Seafood Sector
Seafood supply chains are complex and rife with vulnerability to human trafficking risks and other labor problems (see infographic below). This past March, Verité attended Seafood Expo North America in Boston, speaking on panels about gender equality and social responsibility in supply chains.
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Introducing the Journal of Fair Trade
Companies don’t doubt they have to play a role in solving social, labor, and environmental problems in their supply chains: But how? What works? Definitive answers are needed on what socially and environmentally safe business looks like. The Fair Trade Society, a new global membership organization, is proud to announce the launch of the Journal of Fair Trade.
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What We’re Talking About in April 2019
Full Disclosure: Toward Better Modern Slavery Reporting | Conflict and Mass Displacement Increase Child Labor in Middle East and North Africa | New Report: Realizing the Benefits of Worker Reporting Digital Tools | “Apple Deserves Kudos for Doing Right by Workers” | The Software that Shapes Workers’ Lives
read moreVerité in the News
Read coverage of Verité’s work in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Associated Press, The Los Angeles Times, and more.
