Location: Egypt and other countries worldwide
Summary: Combating human trafficking will take the efforts of people working across business, government and other sectors of society. We seek to recognize how human trafficking can surface in our supply chain and take steps to stop it.
The United Nations estimates that at least 2.5 million people around the world are currently victims of human trafficking. And yet, it is a problem with no easy solution. As we have delved deeper into what it takes to improve working conditions, we have sought to understand the problem, how it could turn up in our business and what we can do to help stop it.
Human trafficking can occur in a wide range of contexts and countries, and can affect people of vastly different cultural and economic backgrounds. Trafficking is generally defined as the sale, transport, and profit from human beings who are forced to work for others.
Gap Inc.’s Code of Vendor Conduct (COVC) explicitly states that factories producing Gap Inc. branded product must “not use involuntary labor of any kind,” of which human trafficking is one kind. Our COVC also has stringent requirements around “contract labor,” which can be exploited to create instances of indentured servitude for workers. Gap Inc.’s Social Responsibility Specialists are trained in how to identify the use of involuntary labor. Gap Inc.’s Human Rights Policy also seeks to ensure that human trafficking does not enter our supply chain through our commitment to the International Labor Organization’s Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, and the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We also collaborate with both local and international NGOs that are experts in this field, and multilateral institutions, to help align our efforts to address human trafficking with broader efforts to end this unacceptable practice.
The complex reality behind human trafficking was explored in depth at an international conference held in Egypt in 2010. In attendance were Dan Henkle, Gap Inc.’s Senior Vice President of Human Resources, who for years oversaw our Social Responsibility efforts; Bob Fisher, who sits on our Board of Directors; and Loay Tolba, Social Responsibility Specialist at Gap Inc. who is based in Egypt and monitors factories that produce our branded clothes in Middle Eastern countries. The conference addressed the elusiveness of the problem, enforcement of laws and other actions needed to address it, and how business can help.
Contract labor is not always negative. “You cannot say, ‘There won’t be any migrant workers,’” says Loay. “If someone is working in Egypt and gets $20 dollars and can go to Qatar and make $300, that’s an opportunity.”
But Loay stresses the need to ensure that such workers are treated fairly. “They come from Bangladesh and India, hoping for better working conditions,” he says. “Agents tell them, ‘You’ll be paid a lot and food is for free.’ But they come and find that the situation is not what they were told.”
In many countries, a common practice is for employers to take workers’ passports upon arrival for “safekeeping.” When the workers want to leave the job or country, they can have difficulty getting their passport back and are forced to stay and work against their will.
We closely track how foreign contract labor is used at factories that we monitor to ensure that people are free to work as they choose. Loay and our other Social Responsibility Specialists have a deep knowledge of the issue from interviewing workers, gaining their trust, and learning over time about which agents and factories have good or bad reputations. Workers often fear opening up about the problem, a key factor in why it often remains out of sight.
“Imagine that you don’t know about the country where you’re going and your source of support is the factory. If anything goes wrong in this relationship, you feel you could lose everything,” Loay says. He has worked over time to connect personally with workers. “When you make it about the worker, he becomes more open to speak to you.”
More broadly, part of combating trafficking is talking openly about it and coming together with others. Loay says the sessions at the conference in Egypt challenged his own thinking, as he learned about a wide range of scenarios in which people could be working against their will. “The idea with trafficking is looking at it from the point of view of the victim,” he says. “Being at a conference like this is a way to show our support and help increase awareness.”
A major theme to emerge from the conference is that trafficking is not a problem for any one sector, company, or even country to act on alone. As Loay puts it, “human trafficking is a global issue. It’s about everyone. The question is how can we all play a role in fighting this?”
We will continue to explore this question by having the right policies in place and enforcing our COVC by empowering people like Loay to monitor the treatment of workers.
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