Powering Performance

What parts of your car were made by Uyghur forced laborers?

If you have bought a car in the last five years, some of its parts were likely made by Uyghurs and others forced to work in China. The Chinese government has deliberately shifted raw materials mining and processing and auto parts manufacturing into the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR or Uyghur Region), essentially making international supply chains captive to repressive programs and systematic forced labor. 

The German government’s Supply Chain Due Diligence Act, which addresses human rights in the supply chain, went into force on January 1, 2023.

The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights are a set of guidelines for states and companies to prevent, address, and remedy human rights abuses committed in business operations. They were proposed by UN Special Representative on Business and Human Rights John Ruggie and endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council in June 2011. In the same resolution, the UN Human Rights Council established the UN Working Group on business & human rights.

The German Supply Chain Due Diligence Act went into effect on January 1, 2023, to help address human rights in the supply chain.

The Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILB), which operates under the U.S. Department of Labor, publishes three reports on international child labor and forced labor that serve as valuable resources for research, advocacy, government action, and corporate responsibility.

• Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor
• List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor
• List of Products Produced by Forced or Indentured Child Labor

Human trafficking victims are often held in slave-like conditions and forced to work in the sex trade or other servitude. One international organization estimated about 25 million people were trafficked in 2016.

When the European Union embraced the concept of double materiality in the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, which mandated that investors consider risks corporations externalize onto people, the business and human rights movement notched a significant win. Now the notion of double materiality is also taking shape in a different guise beyond Europe:  Investor concerns around systemic risks, including inequality, are rising.

Signed into law by President Biden in December 2021, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA, or “the Act”) establishes a rebuttable presumption that all goods manufactured (in whole or in part) in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) are the product of forced labor, and not permitted entry into the United States. This rebuttable presumption will go into effect on June 21, 2022.

As our industry continues to evolve and expand, it’s become more critical than ever for companies to establish comprehensive human rights due diligence. Along with a growing, global demand to uncover all human rights abuses within the supply chain, recent and emerging legislation in both the U.S. and EU has also increased – further emphasizing the necessity of identifying and addressing these violations.