Modern Slavery in 2025: Overcoming Persistent Legal and Practical Challenges in Brazil and Beyond

Luiza Rocha is a PhD Candidate in Law at NOVA School of Law and a Research Associate at the NOVA Knowlegde Centre for Business, Human Rights and the Environment

 

Introduction

This blog post discusses how evolving laws increasingly seek to address the contemporary and complex issue of modern slavery. It starts by using the example of the Brazilian coffee industry to show how deeply rooted and well-documented related problems still fall within the same pattern. Next, it dives into Brazilian national measures that aim to tackle these issues, and discusses global initiatives combating modern slavery, showcasing efforts that span across borders. Finally, this piece explores some of the gaps and challenges in these frameworks, uncovering opportunities for combining the use of these frameworks to effectively fight modern slavery.

 

The Example of the Brazilian Coffee Industry

Brazil is the top coffee producing country in the world, accounting for approximately 35% of the production of coffee consumed world-wide.[1] This particular sector is highly susceptible to exploitative labour practices, rendering coffee production particularly prone to modern slavery in all its forms, including forced labour, child labour, and other exploitative working conditions. The U.S. Department of Labor has included coffee production in Brazil in its List of Goods Produced with Child or Forced Labor from 2018 to 2024, recognising the prevalence of such practices and the need to increase the efforts to address these labor abuses[2], and most recently the UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery has opened a call for inputs to prepare a country visit in Brazil, seeking detailed information on the issue aiming to improve protection for victims as well as promote policy change.[3]

Since the beginning of 2025, media sources have been reporting on the recurring issue of modern slavery in Brazil. [4][5][6] Large multinational companies which publicly committed to uphold the prohibition of forced labour in their supply chains have been linked to coffee farms implicated in modern slavery, even though since 2016 different reports and documentation prepared by NGOs outline instances of forced labour on Brazilian farms.[7]

It is often the case that companies trading with Brazilian coffee suppliers adopt different measures to try ensuring their supply chains are free from modern slavery. For instance, the adoption of supplier code of conducts in which they set forth expectations, requirements, policies, guidelines and operational standards applicable to suppliers, as well as practices such as third-party verification, transparency reporting, and certification and verification of their suppliers.[8][9]

Despite these measures, the effectiveness of these mechanisms varies. The most recent scandals highlights that slave-like conditions and child labour are found in certified coffee farms in Brazil, even after certifiers confirm to conduct audits diligently and on site.[10] These incidents highlight some of the practical challenges in monitoring and enforcing ethical labor practices across global supply chains, which coupled with structural factors such as socio-economic inequality, weak labor enforcement in rural areas, racial inequalities, and the prevalence of informal labor in the agricultural sector, exacerbate the occurrence of modern slavery in Brazil.

 

National Measures to Tackle Modern Slavery in Brazil

Combatting modern slavery in any sector requires efforts from multiple actors, as the issue is persistent and also highly lucrative. A report from the ILO revealed that modern slavery is estimated to generate profits of $150 billion per year globally, reinforcing that the enduring nature of the issue concerns several factors.[11] The World Economic Forum asserts that addressing contemporary forms of slavery demands cross-border collaboration among stakeholders in law enforcement, civil society, academia, and the private sector, requiring also the effective exchange of data and expertise.[12]

Brazil is a signatory to key ILO conventions, such as Convention n. º 29 on Forced Labor, Convention n. º 105 on the Abolition of Forced Labour, and Convention n. º 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labour. It has also established legal frameworks to combat modern slavery, such as Article 149 of its Penal Code which criminalizes reducing someone to a condition analogous to slavery[13], law nº 13.344 which addresses human trafficking committed within national territory, including with the purpose to subject people to slavery conditions, and it has introduced an initiative to make a “Dirty List” public with the registry of employers found to have subject workers to conditions analogous to slavery.[14]

Additionally, it has established a national commission for the eradication of slave labour (CONTRAE) aiming at implementing actions to eliminate slave labour[15], as well as a similar national commission for the eradication of child labour (CONAETI).[16] Furthermore, other mechanisms such as supervisions and labor inspections, targeted eradication programs, social assistance initiatives, reporting channels, and collaborative forums, are in currently in place to help tackling modern slavery in Brazil.[17]

Among these initiatives, a national framework on business and human rights is currently under consideration by the National Congress, aiming to establish due diligence duties on companies of all sizes and sectors operating in Brazil and abroad, and covering companies own operations, their subsidiaries, subcontractors, suppliers and other entities in their value chain.[18] The Draft Bill nº572/2022 provides for a mandatory human rights and environment due diligence framework covering broad terms of human rights, social and labor rights, and the environment. [19] In this regard, the expectation that companies uphold human rights standards has gained significant traction at the international level in the recent years, most notably after the endorsement of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) in 2011. The UNGPS are recognized globally as a foundational reference in the field of business and human rights, and have spurred legal and policy developments in various jurisdictions, including Brazil. Although Brazil has legislative frameworks in place to combat exploitative labour practices, this is not solely a domestic concern. Addressing the issue effectively demands coordination of legal and policy efforts that extend beyond Brazil’s jurisdictions, requiring the active engagement of both corporate actors and the home states of multinational enterprises whose operations contribute to or benefit from such practices.

In particular, different laws have recently emerged world-wide to incentivise companies to prevent modern slavery from happening within their own operations and their global supply chains. Examples include transparency and reporting laws, such as the UK Modern Slavery Act (2015), the Australian Modern Slavery Act (2018) and the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (2022), and also include mandatory human rights due diligence laws, such as the French Duty of Vigilance Law (2017), the German Supply Chain Due Diligence Act (2023), the Norwegian Transparency Act (2022), and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (2024)   as well as the import bans linked to forced labour that tackle modern slavery specifically, such as the recently adopted the EU Forced Labour Regulation.

 

Legislative Measures to Tackle Modern Slavery in Europe and Beyond

Transparency and reporting laws require companies to publicly disclose how they address major ethical and sustainability risks in their operations and supply chains. The UK Modern Slavery Act (2015), for instance, requires large companies (annual turnover of more than £36 million) operating fully or partially in the UK to publish an annual statement on their measures to ensure slavery and human trafficking do not occur in any of their supply chains or in any part of their own business[20]. Similarly, the Australian Modern Slavery Act (2018) creates reporting obligations to large companies (consolidated revenue of over A$100 million in Australia) which are based or operating in Australia, regarding the risk of modern slavery in their operations and supply chains as well as the measures taken to respond to the risks identified.[21]

Mandatory human rights due diligence laws, unlike transparency laws which require companies to solely disclose their actions, require large companies to take active steps to identify, prevent, mitigate and remedy human rights violations, including modern slavery, in their operations and supply chain. The EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), for instance, which was adopted in 2024 but is currently under re-negotiation due to the Omnibus Package (proposing to drastically reduce the scope and due diligence assessment in supply chains)[22] establishes legally binding obligations for large companies in the EU to carry out human rights and environmental due diligence in order to identify and address actual and potential adverse human rights impacts in their own operations and across their global value chains.[23] The Annex, Part I of the Directive includes a detailed list of international human rights instruments that form the basis of the due diligence duty, which includes reference to the ILO’s core conventions such as the Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29) and its 2014 Protocol, the Abolition of Forced Labour Convention, 1957 (No. 105), and the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182).[24]

In 2024, the EU also adopted the Forced Labour Regulation, which is a trade-based measures that prohibits the importation of goods made with forced labour into a country. It should apply from December 2027, banning the placement and sale of products made with forced labour on the EU market. This includes goods sold online and products intended for export from the EU. Economic operators must take steps to identify, prevent, mitigate, or eliminate the use of forced labour in connection with any product entering or leaving the EU market, and the ban applies to all stages of a product’s life cycle, as well as any part of its supply chain. The regulation applies even if only part of the product involves forced labour. Under this regulation, companies are encouraged to carry out due diligence in line with international standards, including those issued by the UNGPs, ILO, and the OECD, or other recognised frameworks, to minimise the risk of forced labour in their supply chains.[25]

A similar initiative is the U.S Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA, 2021), which aims to ensure that goods made with forced labor in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China do not enter the U.S market.  The U.S. Customs and Border Protection determines whether a shipment violates the UFLPA, and whether it should be detained, excluded, or seized. The Act also allows for monetary fines and in case of severe violation civil and criminal charges.[26]

These legislative initiatives differ in their enforcement design. Transparency and reporting laws generally impose no affirmative duty to prevent slavery, only requiring companies to report on the measures undertaken in this regard, rarely penalizing companies on the content or adequacy of the adopted measures. Due diligence instead, establish stronger framework for accountability either by imposing civil liability (French Duty of Vigilance Law and CSDDD – now under revision due to the Omnibus Package)[27] or administrative supervisory bodies (For example the German Federal Office for Economic Affairs and Export Control (BAFA) and Norwegian Consumer Protection Authority (NCPA), as well as the CSDDD)[28]. Yet, due diligence laws vary depending on the scope of the obligation in supply chains. For instance, some apply only for part of the supply chain, while others cover the entire supply chain.

As for the Forced Labour Bans, they commonly give administrative authorities the power to investigate, prohibit, order withdraw/destruction of goods, but the investigations will be conducted by different authorities depending on whether the risk is located. For example, the EU Forced Labour Ban attributes different authorities to supervise acts happening inside and outside the EU: outside the EU the European Commission will be responsible, and for risks are located on the territory of a Member State, the competent national authority will take the lead. [29]

Despite some divergences among the existing legal instruments, which may represent a challenge for coherence and put uneven obligations on companies operating across jurisdictions, these differences can also work in a complementary manner creating an integrated system of information sharing, prevention and remediation, and enforcement. One of the biggest challenges of all these initiatives is their corporate-centric design, which rather than focusing on access to justice and tangible outcomes for affected individuals, their legislative architecture tends to prioritize risk mitigation and management of these risks from the corporate perspective. This design orientation risks sidelining the core objective of these measures: the protection and remediation of human rights harm.[30]

Remediation and access to justice, in particular, remain a persistent and cross-cutting gap. Even in frameworks that provide for access to justice though civil liability, such as the CSDDD, access to remedy is hindered by various structural barriers and material conditions which make it extremely difficult for affected individuals to initiate and succeed in legal proceedings .[31] However, these limitations do not render these legal instruments ineffective in principle. Rather, they underscore the need for a dynamic use of existing laws, rethinking the interaction between laws, corporate practices, and institutional structures to close the gap between formal rights and real-world outcomes.

Together, these diverse yet complementary approaches highlight that no single instrument suffices alone. Instead, their dynamic interaction, supported by robust institutional frameworks and active stakeholder participation, can be essential to translate formal legal rights into meaningful protections and remedies. In short, to overcome persistent legal and practical challenges concerning modern slavery, the real breakthrough might come from using these laws smartly, recognizing their gaps and opportunities, and making them work hand-in-hand with other essential tools to drive meaningful change

 

Conclusion

Eradicating modern slavery completely is a challenging task. Legislative measures are a critical step in tackling forced labour in Brazil and across the world, but they are not a silver bullet. On their own, laws often do to reach the informal and hidden corners of labour exploitation. In practice, effective implementation, political will, adequate funding for inspections, and strong enforcement mechanisms are all necessary to make these measures impactful. Yet, when national efforts are supported by international frameworks and pressure from global supply chains, especially in high-risk sectors like coffee, agriculture and mining, the potential for real change grows. With continued commitment, these measures are essential to contribute to drive real change in the fight against modern slavery.

 

Note: A longer piece about this issue is being prepared together with Dr. Laura Íñigo Álvarez and will be published soon

 

Suggested citation: L. Rocha ‘Modern Slavery in 2025: Overcoming Persistent Legal and Practical Challenges in Brazil and Beyond‘, Nova Centre on Business, Human Rights and the Environment Blog, 25 June 2025