Modern Slavery PEC partner workstrand: Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law
States worldwide are increasingly developing or considering developing mandatory human rights due diligence legislation and forced labour import (trade) bans to tackle human rights abuses in global supply chains such as forced labour. However, evidence of the impact of these regulatory measures on rightsholders remains limited for various reasons including their relatively recent implementation, the lack of an agreed framework for stakeholders to measure such impacts, and the lack of empirical research (in some cases due to the impossibility of speaking to affected people).
This research aims to contribute to fill this gap by providing an analysis and empirical evidence of (positive and negative) impacts of mandatory human rights due diligence legislation and forced labour import bans on rightsholders. This evidence is expected to inform UK policymaking and business practice to better address modern slavery in UK business supply chains.
The project started in December 2025 and will finish in September 2026.
The research is led by Dr Sofia Gonzalez De Aguinaga, a project partner of the Modern Slavery and Human Rights Policy and Evidence Centre, and based at the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law, part of the British Institute for International and Comparative Law (BIICL).
The study is divided into two research stages: a desk-based and an empirical phase.
- In the first phase a global and cross-sectoral desk-based review of evidence of impacts on rightsholders of mandatory human rights due diligence legislation and forced labour import bans will be undertaken. This will be complemented with key stakeholder consultations to identify worker-level outcomes, develop indicators and metrics to measure impact, and inform specific aspects of the research design of the empirical study.
- In the second and empirical phase, interviews and focus groups with multiple stakeholders—including workers and people with lived experience—will be conducted to collect the experiences of affected and potentially affected rightsholders in relation to supply chain legislation and selected sectors.
Across the two stages, the research will be supported by an expert consultant with lived experience of modern slavery in business supply chains.
Expected outputs include a summary with key findings from the evidence review, a final report including the findings from the empirical study, a policy brief, and an article for submission to an academic journal.
This project responds to the evidence gaps found in previous PEC research on the effectiveness of mandatory human rights due diligence legislation and of forced labour import bans respectively, and complements BIICL’s research project on the impact of human rights regulatory models on corporate behaviour.
