National Action Plan to Combat Modern Slavery 2020–25

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

National Action Plan to Combat Modern Slavery 2020–25 NATIONALNATIONAL ACTIONACTION PLANPLAN TOTO COMBATCOMBAT MODERNMODERN SLAVERYSLAVERY 2020–252021–25 © Commonwealth of Australia 2020 With the exception of the Coat of Arms and where otherwise stated, all material presented in this publication is provided under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence at www.creativecommons.org/licenses This means this license only applies to material as set out in this document. The details of the relevant license conditions are available on the Creative Commons website as is the full legal code for the CC BY 4.0 license at www. creativecommons.org/licenses Use of the Coat of Arms The terms under which the Coat of Arms can be used are detailed on the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet website: www.dpmc.gov.au/government/commonwealth-coat-arms DEDICATION The National Action Plan to Combat Modern Slavery 2020–25 (National Action Plan) is dedicated to all who have experienced and survived the egregious forms of exploitation we call modern slavery. The National Action Plan is also dedicated to the people and organisations who work tirelessly to prevent modern slavery, and to support victims and survivors of modern slavery seeking to rebuild their lives. National Action Plan to Combat Modern Slavery 2020–25 1 THE PLAN AT A GLANCE VISION We are committed to a future where no one is subjected to modern slavery and the human rights of all people are valued equally. We must respond We must address We must maintain We must provide to modern slavery the unique needs a strong deterrence holistic, gender- in a manner that of women and framework sensitive, culturally is comprehensive, children, who are which promotes responsive, trauma- effective, timely, disproportionately investigations, informed, victim coordinated and affected by modern prosecutions and centred protection consistent with slavery. the enforcement of and support to PRINCIPLES our international civil sanctions, and all victims and obligations. penalises offenders survivors of modern to the full extent of slavery. the law. PREVENT DISRUPT, INVESTIGATE AND PROSECUTE NATIONAL Implement prevention activities that STRATEGIC combat the drivers of modern slavery and Identify victims and survivors, implement empower individuals and groups that are disruption strategies, and deter perpetrators PRIORITIES vulnerable to modern slavery. by holding them to account through effective investigations and prosecutions. Vulnerable communities and Justice responses are The rights of victims and individuals in Australia and effective and perpetrators survivors, particularly women WHERE WE in global supply chains are are held to account. and girls, are protected WANT TO BE safer and protected from and promoted. modern slavery crimes. 2 MISSION We work to actively prevent and combat all forms of modern slavery, wherever it occurs, including by supporting, protecting and empowering victims and survivors. We must afford We must promote We must strive to be We must promote We must ensure the victims and survivors a collaborative an international and an evidence-based voices of victims and of modern slavery response that regional leader and response to modern survivors of modern access to effective is built on the partner in deterring slavery and its slavery, particularly remedies. participation of and combating root causes and women and children, victims and survivors modern slavery, and drivers, to build our inform our responses of modern slavery, work cooperatively understanding of to modern slavery. government, civil with other modern slavery and society, business, governments both how to prevent it. unions, academia internationally and and the broader regionally towards community working this end. in partnership to prevent and combat modern slavery. SUPPORT AND PROTECT PARTNER RESEARCH Provide holistic and tailored Collaborate across government Strengthen data collection victim centred support and and with international partners, practices to build the evidence protection that meets the needs civil society, business, unions and base to support our response of victims and survivors. academia to ensure a coordinated to modern slavery. response to modern slavery. Victims, survivors and Victims and survivors Australia is an Australia makes a their families and are empowered to rebuild international and regional significant contribution to communities are supported. their lives. leader driving collaborative the understanding of the responses to modern drivers of modern slavery slavery, including human and effective responses to trafficking. these crimes. National Action Plan to Combat Modern Slavery 2020–25 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The Australian Government acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia, and their continuing connection to land, water and community. We pay our respects to them and their cultures, and to Elders past, present and emerging. We acknowledge the victims and survivors of modern slavery. Your voices have shaped this National Action Plan. Through this National Action Plan, we will prioritise your empowerment and focus on strengthening your voices as we work together to prevent modern slavery in Australia. We also acknowledge the civil society organisations, peak bodies, businesses, unions, academics and government agencies that contributed to the development of the National Action Plan. This includes members of the National Roundtable on Human Trafficking and Slavery and the Government’s Interdepartmental Committee on Human Trafficking and Slavery. Combating modern slavery requires a whole-of-community response. While this National Action Plan outlines Government priorities and activities, we acknowledge the unique and important roles that state and territory governments, civil society organisations, peak bodies, business, unions, and academics all play. SUPPORT Help is available for any person experiencing, or at risk of, modern slavery. If you have immediate concerns for your safety, the safety of another person, or there is an emergency, dial Triple Zero (000). You can also contact the Australian Federal Police (AFP) on 131 237 (131AFP) or go to the AFP website at www.afp.gov.au for help. The AFP can keep you safe, provide advice and refer you to other services that provide accommodation, financial support, counselling, and legal and immigration advice. If you are in, or at risk of, forced marriage, you can contact My Blue Sky, Australia’s national forced marriage service. Call (02) 9514 8115, text +61 481 070 844 (9am–5pm Monday to Friday), email [email protected] or visit www.mybluesky.org.au for support and free, confidential legal advice. Free interpreter services are available to help any person communicate with service providers in their own language. Call Translating and Interpreting Service on 131 450. All calls are free and confidential. 4 CONTENTS FOREWORD 6 TERMINOLOGY 7 ABBREVIATIONS 7 1. THE RIGHT TO FREEDOM FROM SLAVERY 8 2. WHAT IS MODERN SLAVERY? 9 The different forms of modern slavery 9 Who can identify modern slavery? 11 What are the causes of modern slavery? 11 Ongoing and emerging challenges 12 Modern slavery in Australia 13 3. NATIONAL ACTION PLAN 18 The National Action Plan 18 Five strategic priorities 19 How we got here 19 Related plans and frameworks 19 Principles 20 National strategic priority 1: Prevent 22 National strategic priority 2: Disrupt, investigate and prosecute 24 National strategic priority 3: Support and protect 26 National strategic priority 4: Partner 28 National strategic priority 5: Research 30 4. WORKING IN PARTNERSHIP 32 Whole-of-community response 32 5. MONITORING AND MEASURING PROGRESS 34 Monitoring and measuring progress 34 New measures 34 Where we want to be 34 6. BUILDING ON AUSTRALIA’S RESPONSE 35 A snapshot of existing efforts 35 Legislative framework 36 7. INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT 38 APPENDIX A: PRACTICES RELATED TO MODERN SLAVERY 40 APPENDIX B: CRIMINAL CODE PROVISIONS 42 APPENDIX C: INTERNATIONAL LEGAL FRAMEWORKS 44 ENDNOTES 45 National Action Plan to Combat Modern Slavery 2020–25 5 FOREWORD We are pleased to present Australia’s National Action Plan to Combat Modern Slavery 2020–25. The National Action Plan sets the strategic direction of our work to combat modern slavery in Australia over the next five years. Modern slavery is a devastating crime that exploits the most vulnerable in our communities. It is a crime that sees women, men and children deprived of their freedom and robbed of their rights. Modern slavery also taints the global supply chains of the goods and services we purchase everyday. The United Nations estimates that over 40 million people are trapped in modern slavery, including 16 million in private sector supply chains. Australia is not immune. There were an estimated 1,900 victims and survivors of modern slavery between 2015 and 2017 alone, with 83 per cent being women and girls. Modern slavery has no place in our society. This is why we have been relentless in our opposition to these grave violations of human rights through implementing a strong program of initiatives to combat modern slavery in Australia and abroad. While we have made significant progress, there is still more work to be done. Under this National Action Plan, we will implement a strategic program of initiatives to prevent, disrupt, investigate and prosecute modern slavery crimes. We will support and protect victims and survivors, and further our understanding of modern slavery through enhanced research and data collection. We will do this in partnership
Recommended publications
  • Inquiry Into Establishing a Modern Slavery Act in Australia Submission
    P a g e | 2 Table of Contents 1. Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 3 2. Summary ......................................................................................................................... 3 3. Methodology & Terminology .......................................................................................... 5 4. Terms of Reference ......................................................................................................... 5 5. History and Background ................................................................................................. 6 5.1 A Short History of Modern Slavery and its Discontents ................................................................ 6 5.2 International Efforts to Combat Modern Slavery: A New International Standard ....................... 8 5.3 Regional Efforts to Combat Moderns Slavery ............................................................................... 9 5.4 Country Efforts to Combat Modern Slavery & Supply Chain Abuses ......................................... 10 5.5 Other Non-Binding Civil Society Developments ......................................................................... 12 5.6 Australian Business Developments to Address Modern Slavery ................................................ 12 6. Modern Slavery: The Australian Context..................................................................... 14 6.1 Identifying the Problem: Recent Concerning Trends
    [Show full text]
  • Australian Parliamentary Inquiry Into Modern Slavery
    AUSTRALIAN PARLIAMENTARY INQUIRY INTO MODERN SLAVERY Prepared in collaboration with 1 Position Overview 1.1 Human rights protection has traditionally been a matter for the State. However, 1due to globalisation, the liberalisation of trade and the immense economic power of corporations, it is now well recognised that there is a crucial link between the way in which businesses conduct their operations and human rights. In the list of the world’s top 100 economic entities, 31 are nation states and 69 are corporations.1 1.2 STOP THE TRAFFIK Australia is part of a global coalition that aims to stop and prevent human trafficking and slavery. In Australia, this coalition consists of 30 organisations. We collectively aim to work with corporations to increase transparency in their supply chains and introduce measures to eliminate human trafficking, slavery and slavery like practices. Our efforts are particularly focused on the cocoa, tea, garment and fishing industries, although our work is not confined to these sectors. 1.3 We very much welcome the Joint Standing Committee’s inquiry and applaud the Australian government’s efforts to identify international best practice in preventing human trafficking, slavery and slavery like practices. Human Trafficking, Slavery, and2 Slavery-like practices in corporate supply chains. 2.1 The United Nations defines trafficking in persons as ‘the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of people through the use of threats, force, coercion, abduction, fraud or deception, for the purpose of exploitation.’ This definition has thus far also been employed in the Australian context.2 2.2 From the outset, we consider it pertinent to note that the term “Modern Slavery” has gained popular usage.
    [Show full text]
  • Ian Love Slavery and Victim Protection – Legal Research Paper 2016
    Ian Love Slavery and Victim Protection – Legal Research Paper 2016 VICTIM PROTECTION MEASURES IN AUSTRALIA ARE NOT CONSISTENT WITH THE UNITED NATIONS PREVENTION OF HUMAN TRAFFICKING PROTOCOL This paper proposes that Australia’s implementation of the Trafficking Protocol 1 is not consistent with the victim protection articles,2 which seek to ensure that victims are protected and not re-victimised. Every State is obliged to criminalise slavery and protect victims from further victimisation,3 yet there remain an estimated 21m to 35.8m people living in some form of slavery.4 Slavery situations range from small operations involving a few women and a massage parlour in Melbourne,5 to operations sourcing thousands of young boys to work on fishing boats in Thailand6 to large illegal mining and ecocide in Eastern Congo7 and to industrial scale slavery, such as that practiced by Boko Haram and ISIS.8 There is no published data showing how the 35.8m people are distributed within these situations, but it is not relevant for the purpose of this paper. No matter the scale or context, the offence basically comes down to slavery and the 1 United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime and The Protocols Thereto, Annex II, Protocol to Prevent, suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention Text against Transnational Organized Crime herein after referred to as the ‘Trafficking Protocol’. 2 Ibid art 6-8. 3 United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime and The Protocols Thereto, Annex II, Protocol to Prevent, suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention Text against Transnational Organized Crime.
    [Show full text]
  • A-Governmental Coordination and Years’ Imprisonment Or a Fine Under This Law Are Not Cooperation in Vulnerable Southern Border Prov- Sufficiently Stringent
    COUNTRY NARRATIVES 52 AFGHANISTAN AFGHANISTAN (Tier 2) Prosecution The Government of Afghanistan did not provide Afghanistan is a source, transit, and destination sufficient evidence of efforts to punish traffick- country for men, women, and children trafficked for ing over the reporting period. Afghanistan does the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and not prohibit all forms of trafficking, but relies forced labor. Afghan children are trafficked within the on kidnapping and other statutes to charge country for commercial sexual exploitation, forced some trafficking offenses. These statutes do not marriage to settle debts or disputes, forced begging, specify prescribed penalties, so it is unclear whether debt bondage, service as child soldiers, and other penalties are sufficiently stringent and commen- forms of forced labor. Afghan women and girls are surate with those for other grave crimes, such as also trafficked internally and to Pakistan, Iran, Saudi rape. Despite the availability of some statutes, Arabia, Oman, and elsewhere in the Gulf for commer- Afghanistan did not provide adequate evidence of cial sexual exploitation. Afghan men are trafficked to arresting, prosecuting, or convicting traffickers. The Iran for forced labor. Afghanistan is also a destination government reported data indicating traffickers had for women and girls from China, Iran, and Tajikistan been prosecuted and convicted, but was unable to trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation. Tajik provide disaggregated data. There was no evidence women and children are also believed to be traf- that the government made any efforts to investigate, ficked through Afghanistan to Pakistan and Iran for arrest, or prosecute government officials facilitating commercial sexual exploitation. trafficking offenses despite reports of widespread complicity among border and highway police.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction Modern Slavery in Australia
    To: Morry Bailes, President, Law Council of Australia Memo From: Belinda Wilson, President, Law Institute of Victoria Subject: Modern Slavery Bill 2018 Date: 13 July 2018 Introduction 1. The Law Institute of Victoria (‘LIV’) welcomes the opportunity to provide comments to the Law Council of Australia (‘LCA’) on the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee’s inquiry into the Modern Slavery Bill 2018 (‘the Bill’). These comments are informed by members of the LIV’s Workplace Relations Sec- tion. 2. Although the LIV supports the Bill, it is submitted that: • The revenue threshold be reduced from $100 million to $25 million; • A list of entities required to report be publicly available, noting those enti- ties that have and have not complied with reporting requirements; • An Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner be appointed; and • Penalties for non-complying entities be introduced. Modern slavery in Australia Domestic business operations: 3. As relayed in Article 1 of the International Convention to Suppress the Slave Trade and Slavery of 1926, slavery is ‘the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised’. The term ‘modern slavery’ refers to activities of slavery that exist in contemporary society.1 1 Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, ‘Hidden in Plain Sight: An inquiry into establishing a Modern Slavery Act in Australia’ (2017) 1. 1 These activities, which include servitude, forced labour, child labour and exploita- tion, present serious human rights concerns.2 According to the 2016 Global Slav- ery Index, 58% of the total number of people experiencing modern slavery live in India, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Uzbekistan.3 Although modern slavery is more likely to occur in countries where corruption is widespread, and the rule of law has broken down, it can happen in Australia where vulnerable groups are discriminated against, live in impoverished conditions, or are weakly protected by existing laws.
    [Show full text]
  • THE CASE for an AUSTRALIAN MODERN SLAVERY ACT a Tea Worker Picking Leaves in a Tea Plantation
    THE CASE FOR AN AUSTRALIAN MODERN SLAVERY ACT A tea worker picking leaves in a tea plantation. Sri Lanka is the world’s fourth largest producer of tea. Overwhelming evidence has documented the many exploitative practices hidden within the tea supply chain in many countries, including Sri Lanka, with cases of forced labour, child labour and trafficking. In response to public outcry and consumer campaigns, some businesses have begun to clean up their supply chains and provide sustainable working conditions for workers. (2013) Copyright © 2017. The Minderoo Foundation Pty Ltd. All rights reserved. Printed in Australia. Photo credit, mattjeacock FOREWORD can collaborate to find creative, commercial and long lasting solutions. Who is better placed than large companies to review supply chains, with demonstrated success at managing global networks to transform sectors, not only to protect victims but because it makes business sense? When better than now, in an era where an email can be sent instantly across the world to suppliers, allowing us to engage in regular and accountable dialogue with business partners? Conversations around modern slavery have dramatically increased with the appointment of an independent commissioner in the UK and emerging laws in the UK, USA and Europe. Successive Australian governments have Across the nation, from school assemblies to football already introduced stronger laws to criminalise human matches, Australians proudly sing our national anthem, trafficking and slavery. Australian companies including Qantas, Wesfarmers and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia are already filing slavery statements under laws Australians all let us rejoice, overseas. The Attorney General, Senator the Hon George for we are young and free.
    [Show full text]
  • Australian Afterlives of Atlantic Slavery: Belatedness and Transpacific
    “Australian Afterlives of Atlantic Slavery: Belatedness and Transpacific American Studies” Clare Corbould (Monash University) and Hilary Emmett (University of East Anglia)1 This paper takes up the concept of the “afterlife” in order to reflect upon the logics of exclusion, belatedness, and succession that have characterised key interventions in transpacific American Studies. That transpacific American Studies might be thought of as “belated” is less to do with the actual chronology of the field than with the way that even early, ground-breaking scholars situated themselves in the field on the one hand and the way that others have engaged and, at times, celebrated the fantasised atemporality of the region itself on the other.2 For Rob Wilson in 2000, the American Pacific was excluded from the “Eurocentric and/or ‘exceptionalist’” models that governed American Studies.3 Paul Lyons (2006) identified ignore-ance “as a constitutive component of American studies work in Oceania,” a concept that resurfaces in Mari Yoshihara’s Editor’s Note to Lyons’ and Ty P. Kawika Tengan’s 2015 special issue of American Quarterly on “Pacific Currents” in which Yoshihara proposes that the absence implied by the notion of a Pacific “Rim” is perpetuated by the neglect of the region in Americanist scholarship.4 Yunte Huang (2008) (after James Clifford) returned to the imagined Pacific’s premodernity in order to celebrate “aprogressive narratives” as a form of poetic resistance to imperialist and nationalist discourses of the transpacific, even as Alfred W. McCoy and Francisco A. Sacarano’s Colonial Crucible 1 We acknowledge gratefully the comments and suggestions of the following people as we wrote this essay: Warwick Anderson, Michelle Coghlan, Kate Fullagar, Sarah Gleeson- White, Marilyn Lake, Christina Twomey, and members of the “Place, Nation, and Environment” research group at the University of East Anglia.
    [Show full text]
  • Convicts, Coolies and Colonialism: Reorienting the Prisoner-Of-War Narrative
    Convicts, Coolies and Colonialism: reorienting the prisoner-of-war narrative FRANCES DE GROEN University of Western Sydney espite its remarkable scope, popularity and durability, the Australian prisoner�f­ D war narrative from the Pacific War, in both documentaryand imaginative forms, has generated little critical attention.1 Scholarly interest in it (as in prisoners-of-war more generally) is a relatively recent phenomenon, identifying it as a dissonant sub­ genre of Australian war writing's dominant 'big-noting' Anzac tradition . Drawing on Carnochan 's concept of 'the literature of confinement', this paper aims to enrich the dialogue about the Pacific War captivity narrative by reading it as 'prison' literature rather than as a branch of 'war' writing. It will also consider the significance of allusions to the Robinson Crusoe myth (a core trope of confinement literature), in the Australian convict and prisoner-of-war traditions. Due to constraints of space, the approach adopted is somewhat schematic and impressionistic and represents ·work in progress' rather than final thoughts. Robin Gerster ( 1987) established the prevailing terms of reference of the Pacific War captivity narrative. For Gerster, because the prisoner-of-war narrative allegedly fo cuses on the captive's 'shame' at being denied his rightful place on the battlefield, writers of prisoner-of-war narrative face 'an acute problem of "public relations"': how to make the non-combatant role attractive.2 Their strategies for dealing with this problem include 'special pleading of passive suffering' (i.e. exploiting the horror and hardship of captivity) and seeking 'vicarious vengeance through mercilessly attacking [the] old enemy in print'.
    [Show full text]
  • Submission to the Inquiry Into Establishing a Modern Slavery
    Inquiry into establishing a Modern Slavery Act in Australia Submission 199 Submission to the Inquiry into Establishing a Modern Slavery Act Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Sub-Committee on Foreign Affairs and Aid Inquiry into establishing a Modern Slavery Act in Australia Submission 199 Inquiry into establishing a Modern Slavery Act in Australia Submission 199 Table of Contents INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................................... 4 RECOMMENDATIONS ...................................................................................................................................... 6 TERM OF REFERENCE 1. THE NATURE AND EXTENT OF MODERN SLAVERY (INCLUDING SLAVERY, FORCED LABOUR AND WAGE EXPLOITATION, INVOLUNTARY SERVITUDE, DEBT BONDAGE, HUMAN TRAFFICKING, FORCED MARRIAGE AND OTHER SLAVERY-LIKE EXPLOITATION) BOTH IN AUSTRALIA AND GLOBALLY .......... 10 TERM OF REFERENCE 2. THE PREVALENCE OF MODERN SLAVERY IN THE DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAINS OF COMPANIES, BUSINESSES AND ORGANISATIONS OPERATING IN AUSTRALIA .............................. 17 CASE STUDIES OF MODERN SLAVERY IN AUSTRALIAN SUPPLY CHAINS .............................................................................. 17 FORCED LABOUR IN SUPPLY CHAINS INTO AUSTRALIA ................................................................................................... 28 TABLE 1: LIST OF SELECTED GOODS PRODUCED WITH HIGH RISK OF FORCED LABOUR OR CHILD
    [Show full text]
  • Moe Turaga, Slavery Survivor Advocate
    Page 1 of 5 Good morning. My name is Moe Turaga. I acknowledge the traditional owners of this land – the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation and pay my respect to elders past, present and emerging. I also recognise and remember the 62,000 people who were blackbirded here from the Pacific nations as indentured and forced laborers and the significant contribution they have made to Australia's economic, cultural and social development. I am both a survivor of modern slavery in Australia and an advocate for change. I’m here today to tell you my story. – the short version! Of course I had no idea what forced labour or human trafficking was when I was trafficked to Australia at the age of 17. My father died when I was a teenager in Fiji. A cousin approached me to go to Australia, where he said I could study and earn money that he would send back to my mother. Like most boys I wanted to do the right thing by my Mum. When I arrived, my cousin took my passport and gave it to a migration agent, and told me I had a debt to pay off for my travel and visa costs. Soon I was on a grape farm in Victoria, living in a pickers hut with a bunch of other Fiji boys. We worked from dawn to dusk, seven days a week. We would all jump on a truck at 6am and picked or pruned grapes that went to the big markets in Melbourne and Sydney. 1 Page 2 of 5 When there were no grapes, I picked watermelons and lettuce at other farms, some of which went to fast food restaurants.
    [Show full text]
  • Visa Simplification: Transforming Australia’S Visa System
    Department of Immigration and Border Protection Submission to the public consultation Visa simplification: transforming Australia’s visa system Anti-Slavery Australia Faculty of Law University of Technology Sydney PO Box 123, Broadway NSW 2007 www.antislavery.org.au Anti-Slavery Australia welcomes the opportunity to provide submissions to the Department of Immigration and Border Protection public consultation on reforms to modernise Australia’s visa system, and the related policy paper ‘Visa Simplification: Transforming Australia’s Visa System’. Established in 2003, Anti-Slavery Australia is a research, policy and legal centre at the University of Technology Sydney with the mission to abolish human trafficking, organ trafficking, slavery and slavery-like practices such as forced labour and forced marriage in Australia. Anti-Slavery Australia provides legal advice and representation to men, women and children who have experienced human trafficking, slavery, slavery-like conditions and forced marriage in Australia. Acknowledgements Jennifer Burn, Director, Anti-Slavery Australia, University of Technology Sydney. Joanne Pugsley, Lawyer and Migration Agent, Anti-Slavery Australia, University of Technology Sydney. Elizabeth Sheridan, Researcher, Anti-Slavery Australia, University of Technology Sydney. Anti-Slavery Australia submission to the Department of Immigration and Border Protection Page 1 of 10 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This submission is made in response to the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (the Department) public consultation on reforms to modernise Australia’s visa system and the associated policy paper ‘Visa simplification: transforming Australia’s visa system’. This submission draws upon Anti-Slavery Australia’s research and publications, as well as advocacy and legal casework experience with survivors of modern slavery in Australia.
    [Show full text]
  • 170519 AIA Submission to the Inquiry Into Modern Slavery Act in Australia
    Submission to the Parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade inquiry into Modern Slavery Act in Australia 19 May 2017 Submitted by Amnesty International Australia Contact: Peter Thomson Title: Advocacy and Government Relations Adviser | Email: [email protected] Phone: (02) 6202 7504 1 About Amnesty International Amnesty International is the world’s largest independent human rights organization with over seven million supporters in more than 160 countries around the world, and has over 500,000 supporters in Australia. Amnesty International is a worldwide movement to promote and defend all human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and other international human rights instruments. Amnesty International undertakes research focused on preventing and ending abuses of these rights. Amnesty International is impartial and independent of any government, political persuasion or religious belief. Amnesty International Australia does not receive funding from governments or political parties. 2 1. Summary 1.1 Amnesty International welcomes the opportunity to provide this submission to the Modern Slavery Act inquiry referred to the Parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade by the Attorney-General on 21 February 2017. 1.2 With estimates as high as 45.8 million individuals in modern slavery worldwide, modern slavery affects almost every sector, region and company. 1 Modern slavery covers a wide spectrum of crimes, but includes human trafficking, slavery and slavery like practices such as servitude, forced labour, forced or servile marriage, the sale and exploitation of children and debt bondage. 1.3 Modern slavery is often hidden across a number of supply chains.
    [Show full text]