Sky writing on National Sorry Day, an annual event held in Australia on May 26 to apologise for "Stolen Generations" of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. butupa/flickr. (CC BY 2.0)
On 19 September 2017 the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the Walk Free Foundation released the Global Estimates of Modern Slavery, a new report suggesting the world contains over 40 million victims of ‘modern slavery’, with about 25 million of them entrapped in situations of forced labour. In a second report released at the same time, the two organisations further estimated that 152 million child labourers are also at work around the world. The reports conclude that without dramatically increased efforts, the world will not achieve target 8.7 of the UN sustainable development goals, which looks to eradicate forced labour, human trafficking and child labour.
The advocacy of the Walk Free Foundation, founded in Australia by Andrew and Nicola Forrest, has helped position Australia at the forefront of global efforts to combat modern slavery. The foundation engages with governments (via the Global Slavery Index), businesses and corporations (via the Bali Process Business Forum), and global faiths (via the Global Freedom Network). The Australian government has also been extremely active in this area. In August 2017 alone the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade issued the interim report Modern Slavery and Global Supply Chains, as part of its on-going inquiry into establishing a Modern Slavery Act in Australia; the attorney-general’s department released a public consultation paper, Modern Slavery in Supply Chain Reporting Requirements; and Australia hosted the Bali Process Government and Business Forum on people smuggling, trafficking in persons, and related transnational crimes in Perth. The influence of the Walk Free Foundation is never far away in these governmental initiatives – sometimes the language deployed by politicians such as Julie Bishop and Michael Keenan and Andrew Forrest are almost identical.
