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Stop Slavery Award 2017

Introduction

The Stop Slavery Award is an initiative from the Thomson Reuters Foundation. The Award recognizes the "best in class" of the corporate sector: companies that are leading the fight against modern slavery in their supply chains. Conferred for the first time in November 2016 at the annual Trust Conference, the Award honors corporations that go above and beyond their peers in the effort to eradicate forced labor, the worst forms of child labor, and other forms of slavery.

The Stop Slavery Award aims to create a virtuous cycle or positive paradigm by demonstrating that businesses can indeed play a critical role in stopping the tragedy of modern slavery worldwide.

Slavery is illegal everywhere. Yet, slavery NGO Walk Free estimates that there are currently 45.8 million people trapped in modern slavery in the world today. This is the largest number of slaves in history.

The global demand for cheap labor is fueling the slave trade. Market forces create both the supply and the demand for slaves. This is why corporations need to take the lead in the fight.

The Stop Slavery Award helps guide consumers’ and customers' decisions on what goods they decide to buy or use, and raise awareness about the issues of forced labor, the worst forms of child labor, and other forms of modern slavery, inspiring more companies to investigate and improve the working conditions of those at the bottom of their supply chains.

We have chosen to use the term ‘slavery’ for the purposes of the Award to fully encapsulate both the UK Modern Slavery Act’s ‘modern slavery’ definition and the US Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) ‘trafficking in persons’ definition, which include all forms of slavery, servitude and forced or compulsory labor, human trafficking, and child labor. Examples of ‘slavery’ include the following, with the full definition available at Annex A of the downloadable version of the questions HERE.
 
  • Forced labor, meaning all work or service that is exacted from any person under the threat of penalty and for which the worker has not offered himself voluntarily (including debt bondage and other forms of servitude);
  • Other forms of servitude include any practice by which an individual exerts ownership or control over another in such a way as to significantly deprive that person of his or her use, profit, transfer or disposal; and
  • The worst forms of child labor, meaning the ownership, sale, trafficking or forced labor of children; the use, procuring or offering of children for prostitution, pornography or illicit activities; or the use of children in work which, by its nature or the circumstance in which it is carried out, is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children as a consequence.
     
The following questions are designed to highlight best practices relating to different elements of corporate behavior and transparency, focusing on corporate commitment, reporting, performance measurement, business partner engagement, training, risk assessment, business authentication, and investigation and remediation; as well as eliciting responses relating to leadership and innovation in the space.

Please respond to the questions as concisely as possible, uploading supporting documents where you feel it relevant. There is no requirement to upload documents at each question throughout the questionnaire, though we do ask that all internal policy documents referenced in your responses are uploaded at the end of each section of the survey. These policies will not be made publicly available but will be used during the judging process. We are looking for companies that demonstrate strong transparency through specific examples provided in the free response sections and/or any attached documentation.

Unless otherwise specified, please provide answers based on the most recent financial year, or such other 12 month period you prefer to choose. Please ensure that the same 12 month cycle is used for any subsequent submission for the Stop Slavery Award. Please indicate what 12 month period your submission relates to.

These questions are designed to encourage organizations to do more to try to eradicate slavery from their operations and supply chains. The bar has intentionally been set very high, and we do not expect or require that nominees are able to respond affirmatively to every question or to have instituted policies relating to each issue highlighted. We welcome nominations from every organization, irrespective of how comprehensive their activities have been to date, and through the Stop Slavery Awards will look to reward innovative and high impact approaches.

Please click HERE for a downloadable version of the questions.

Applications are strictly confidential; only shortlisted companies will be announced to the public.

Please see the Stop Slavery Award website, or contact the Stop Slavery Award team.