The Anti-Trafficking Review calls for papers for a Special Issue themed ‘Corporate Accountability and Forced Labour in Value Chains’.

Governments, predominantly in the Global North, have seized on transparency and corporate sustainability due diligence laws, trade agreements, and import bans to tackle forced labour in supply and value chains...These instruments are designed to have a cross-border effect. While many advocates in the Global North support them, little is known about how labour and migrant rights advocates or governments in other regions of the world view these measures. Indeed, there is little research about the political mobilisation that led to these initiatives or their impact on workers in or from the Global South.

Focusing on the role of MNEs [multinational enterprises] and labour and supply chains in creating conditions of precarity and exploitation, this special issue of Anti-Trafficking Review will explore how these cross-border governance mechanisms came to be adopted in different countries and how they are viewed in the countries and regions where they are designed to take effect. It will also compare different initiatives and their impact on the workers they are supposed to protect.

We welcome submissions comparing what led to different or similar regulatory initiatives across different countries and the impact of similar regulatory initiatives in different countries. We also invite submissions examining the regulatory interaction of different initiatives in one country or sector and whether these initiatives empower workers, prevent human trafficking, forced labour, and other forms of exploitation, and lead to justice for perpetrators and victims...

Deadline for submissions: 1 June 2025

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