Human rights experts call on the World Bank to divest from companies in the Uyghur Region
A new report urges the World Bank’s private-sector lending arm to divest from companies complicit in Uyghur repression, OSCE analyzes policy and legislative approaches to technology-facilitated trafficking, and rights groups warn of the mistreatment of Hong Kong’s COVID-positive domestic workers.
A new report from the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, in partnership with the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice at Sheffield Hallam University and NomoGaia, calls on the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) to divest from any companies that have proven to be complicit in China’s program of repression in the Uyghur Region of Xinjiang.
“Financing & Genocide: Development Finance and the Crisis in the Uyghur Region” has found that the IFC has several significant investments in the area, where indigenous peoples have been subjected to what international legislators, legal scholars and advocates have determined to be genocide. Evidence suggests that several of the IFC’s clients are active participants in this campaign of repression, which includes forced labour, forced displacement, cultural erasure and environmental destruction. According to the report, “IFC’s failure to adequately safeguard communities and the environment affected by its financing in the Uyghur Region makes the institution complicit in the repression of Uyghur, Kazakh and other minoritized citizens.”
The IFC, the private-sector lending arm of the World Bank Group, has committed to upholding the human rights of populations affected by its investment projects since at least 2012, with the launch of its updated Performance Standards. These mandate adequate assessment of project risks and management planning, as well as rigorous oversight of labour conditions, community safety and security, indigenous and cultural rights, protections against economic and physical displacement, and environmental factors.
However, evidence drawn from various sources, including corporate disclosures, government directives and state media, reveals that the IFC currently has around US$486 million in direct loans and equity investment in four companies operating in the Uyghur Region – Chenguang Biotech Group Co., Ltd., Camel Group Co., Ltd., Century Sunshine Group Holdings, Ltd., and Jointown Pharmaceutical Group Co., Ltd. – which have, among other human rights violations: directly participated in and benefited from state-sponsored forced labour programs and compulsory land expropriation; recruited workers through overtly racist hiring practices; assigned minoritized citizens to do hazardous work without safety equipment; and failed to fully implement IFC’s required monitoring and assessment of its Performance Standards.
The authors now call on the IFC to apply these Performance Standards to investments in the area – if the IFC is to uphold them, and serve as a model for responsible development finance, it must divest from any companies that have proven to be complicit in China’s program of repression, they say. Other Development Finance Institutions have significant investments in the Uyghur Region that are potentially similarly engaged in state-sponsored repression, and financial institutions with commitments to environmental and social performance standards are heavily exposed in their current portfolios.
Bans on loans and investments for companies that benefit from state-sponsored forced labour and labour abuse could be an effective way to fight the repression of vulnerable and minority communities, in the same way that bans on the imports of products made with forced labour have substantial potential to improve the treatment of workers. Withhold Release Orders issued by U.S Customs and Border Protection have led to bans on several products from Xinjiang, as well as Malaysia and Mexico, and the European Commission is currently considering a similar mechanism.
Although it is not possible to conduct on-the-ground due diligence in the Uyghur Region, the report shows that desk-based scrutiny can expose the disinformation campaigns the Chinese Government uses to justify its repression, and reveal the companies that are intertwined with them. This may be of use to both companies investigating their suppliers and to investors for which environmental, social and governance standards matter.
Here’s a round-up of other noteworthy news and initiatives:
The newly released OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) publication, “Policy responses to technology-facilitated trafficking in human beings: Analysis of current approaches and considerations for moving forward”, provides an analysis of the ways in which technology-facilitated trafficking has been approached from the perspective of policy and legislation across OSCE-participating states.
A new briefing by ECPAT UK focuses on concerns about immigration decision-making for child victims of trafficking and modern slavery in the context of proposals contained in the Nationality and Borders Bill to legislate, for the first time, specific entitlement to immigration leave for confirmed victims of modern slavery.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), an arm of the Department of Homeland Security, recently released a breakdown of 14 years of human-trafficking visas, and a fact-checker article examines the new details. The percentages suggest labour trafficking is a bigger problem than sex trafficking and, in any case, the number of visas given to victims of human trafficking is relatively small — an average of about 600 a year, which is far below the annual cap of 5,000.
At least 10 foreign domestic workers have been forced to sleep on the streets or were denied treatment after testing positive for the coronavirus amid a surge in infections in Hong Kong, several migrant workers’ rights groups warned on Friday. The Philippine and Indonesian consulates and local authorities have warned employers of legal violations if they break contracts with infected helpers.
A new policy brief based on research conducted by ENACT in Ethiopia discusses the state’s growing political will to prevent and prosecute transnational forms of trafficking in persons, while legal and institutional gaps in Ethiopia’s criminal justice system hinder opportunities for prosecuting and ensuring access to justice.
Chinese online classifieds platform 58.com, China’s equivalent of Craigslist, has come under heavy criticism after a Chinese national said he was tricked by one of its job advertisements – and became the victim of a human trafficking ring in Cambodia.
Join the Network for Migration Matters for a webinar entitled “Dangerous journeys: the vulnerability of women and children in the context of displacement”, taking place on 7 March.
STOP THE TRAFFIK is seeking an experienced Communications Project Officer to join its team based in Central London. For this role, applicants must have a high level of fluency (spoken and written) in both English and either Farsi or Arabic.
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