Topic in Focus

How can companies and their partners combine collective action, human rights due diligence (HRDD) and skilled worker engagement to strengthen human rights outcomes across Asia-Pacific supply chains, where forced labour and unethical recruitment risks are most prevalent?

Overview

Forced labour and unethical recruitment risks in Asia-Pacific supply chains are often hidden within complex supply chain networks, including beyond Tier 1 suppliers, and cannot be effectively addressed by any single organisation acting alone. Collaboration means different things to different stakeholders. In the context of human rights due diligence, it spans collaboration across industry, companies, suppliers (Tier 1 and beyond) and workers. When these efforts are connected, they create a more holistic approach that places workers at the centre of effort to prevent, detect and address exploitation.

This session brings together The Mekong Club, LRQA and psychologist Galina Panina-Sineau to explore how collaboration across industry and supply chains creates collective leverage, how field-based due diligence reaches beyond conventional audits and Tier 1 suppliers to identify and verify risks, and how interview psychology, including micro-expression analysis and cross-cultural communication, helps workers speak safely and truthfully.

The moderated discussion will draw these threads together into practical guidance for strengthening collaborative, worker-centred human rights due diligence across increasingly complex supply chains.

Why it matters

The ILO estimates that 28 million people are in forced labour worldwide, generating USD 236 billion in illicit profits. The gravest indicators, recruitment fees, contract substitution, document retention and debt bondage, arise at recruitment agencies, subcontracted worksites and worker dormitories, one to three tiers above the audited factory. No single company, method or discipline reaches these actors alone. Connecting them credibly is now a defining implementation test.

Who should attend

This session is designed for practitioners who own or deliver supply chain human rights due diligence: responsible sourcing, sustainability and human rights leads at brands and manufacturers sourcing from Asia-Pacific; practitioners in the civil society organisations (CSOs) and multi-stakeholder initiatives that partner with them; and the assessors and investigators who engage workers in the field.

What participants will gain

• A practical view of how collaboration, worker engagement and human rights due diligence work together to strengthen resilience across complex supply chain.

• The case for collaboration: why risks in shared labour markets and recruitment corridors exceed any single company's reach, and what collective action makes possible.

• How investigative due diligence actually works: hearing workers continuously through voice channels, meeting them off site where they can speak freely, verifying what they share and carrying findings through to remediation.

• Worker-interview techniques from psychology: creating the comfort that opens candid conversation, communicating effectively across cultures, reading non-verbal cues such as micro-expressions, and recognising when accounts have been coached.