Industry initiative formed to tackle modern day slavery

CCLA, in association with the Principles for Responsible Investment, has invited the investment industry to join a new coalition of investors, NGOs and academics to address the issue of modern day slavery. The initiative, entitled “Find It, Fix It, Prevent It”, will use the power of investors to encourage businesses to find, and then support rehabilitation, of victims of slavery within their supply chain.

The UK imports over $18 billion worth of goods annually that are very likely to have incorporated slave labour in their production, and it is thought that nearly every company has connections to slavery somewhere in their supply chain. Despite the UK Modern Slavery Act coming into force in 2015, few companies have made significant progress on tackling the issue.

CCLA is one of the UK’s largest charity fund managers managing investments for charities, religious organisations and the public sector, and its chief executive, Peter Hugh Smith, said: “Quite simply, this is a moral case – as ‘good investors’, we don’t want to profit from slavery. Instead, we want to praise companies for finding it in their supply chains as we know that it is there.”

Principles for Responsible Investment CEO, Fiona Reynolds said: “As proponents of responsible investment, we are very pleased to support this initiative to ’Find It, Fix It, Prevent It’ in relation to modern slavery and human trafficking. Whilst the investment industry alone can’t solve the problem of human trafficking and modern slavery, the problem can’t be solved without investors urgently addressing and eradicating trafficking and slavery within the supply chains of the companies they own.”