While no country has a fully comprehensive response to modern slavery, most countries within the Index are taking some action to respond to the problem.
All countries, with the exception of North Korea, have domestic legislation which criminalises some form of modern slavery. This ranges from articles in their penal codes criminalising forced labour or child commercial sexual exploitation, through to fully fledged counter trafficking legislation. Australia and the United Kingdom currently criminalise all forms of modern slavery, including forced marriage. While in most countries there is room for improvement, some laws do exist to hold perpetrators to account in almost every country, which suggests much more could be done within existing frameworks.

Many countries have developed a national action plan to respond to forms of modern slavery (101 of 167 countries), and some have a national coordination body (140 of 167 countries). Nearly all countries participate in a relevant regional response (165 of 167 countries).

Identifying victims is a critical first step to ensuring that they are removed from harm and provided with support. Most governments provide some training to front line law enforcement on how to identify victims (150 of 167). In 2014, the Index does not take into account the scale or quality of the training. Fewer governments, however, are providing training for other potential ‘first responders’, that is those in the health and social services, teachers, or those who work in the tourism industry, who may also come into contact with victims. Ireland, Argentina, and Montenegro are particularly strong in running regular and systematic training for ‘first responders’.

Victim assistance for men, women and children is a weakness of all government responses. No country scored 100 percent on these activities while the majority of countries scored 50 percent or lower. Most countries either only provide short term assistance, neglecting long-term reintegration, or provide support solely for female or child victims.

Many countries are taking steps to respond to attitudes or institutions that enable modern slavery to exist (165 of 167). Of these governments, approximately 93 percent run public information campaigns to raise awareness of modern slavery, while only eight percent focus on behaviour change. Many countries also have in place safety nets, such as child protection systems, and protections for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), asylum seekers and stateless people (120 of 167 countries). While these protections may exist in paper, the challenge is how to assess if such protections operate in reality.

Globally, only three governments are making some efforts to prevent the use of forced or slave labour in their supply chains, and in the supply chains of businesses operating in their country. These include the United States, Brazil and Australia. These countries have either made a public commitment to address modern slavery within their own supply chains, such as Australia, or have taken more active steps to ensure supply chain transparency, such the United States’ Executive Order, or Brazil’s Register of Companies (the Dirty List).

The Netherlands has the strongest response to modern slavery of the 167 countries examined, scoring highly across victim assistance programmes, criminal justice responses, and responding to institutional risk. The Netherlands includes the private sector in its National Action Plan and conducts independent evaluations.

Other governments in the top ten responses are, Sweden, the United States, Australia, Switzerland, Ireland, Norway, the United Kingdom, Georgia and Austria. Common characteristics of each of these countries are a strong political will to respond to the issue and a strong rule of law. These countries are also starting to take ownership of the link between business and modern slavery. In Brazil, companies that profit from slave labour are named and shamed. In the US, the government has taken steps to ensure its procurement practices are not contributing to modern slavery. In Australia, public procurement rules identify modern slavery as an important issue when considering the ethical behaviour of suppliers, but it is not clear if this has translated to action yet.

While these efforts are commendable, most countries within the top ten responses have strong economies, and also benefit from low prevalence and low risk across all vulnerability dimensions (indicating state stability, respect for human rights and rule of law). Despite these strong economies, none of these countries have a perfect response to modern slavery. In the US, victim support services are currently underfunded, and skewed towards supporting victims of sexual exploitation, but not forced labour despite recent studies confirming the significance of this problem. Victim support services in the Netherlands also focus predominately on those who experience commercial sexual exploitation.

The actions of Georgia deserve credit – despite having a weaker economy than many countries covered by the Index and ranking 78th in the Global Slavery Index for prevalence, the government has taken some strong steps to eradicate modern slavery. More, however, could be done to provide training to those who would ordinarily identify victims, and to address vulnerability factors.

In several of the countries in the top ten of responses, there is evidence of discriminatory migration policies, deportation of potential victims without sufficient screening, or criminalisation of victims for actions whilst under the control of criminals. The United Kingdom, for example, has been accused of deporting, or detaining in immigration detention centres, foreign migrants who are potential victims of modern slavery. There are inconsistencies in Australia’s screening processes of vulnerable migrant populations, such as asylum seekers, for indicators of trafficking. There have also been reports of children being treated as offenders in the United States for conduct committed as a direct result of being sold to others for sexual exploitation. Unaccompanied minors can also be subject to fast track screening and deportation at border points making it very unlikely for modern slavery to be detected.

Countries at the lower end of the ranking include North Korea, Iran, Syria, Eritrea, the Central African Republic, Libya, Equatorial Guinea, Uzbekistan, the Republic of the Congo and Iraq. These countries are characterised by weak economies, high levels of instability caused by recent conflict, such as Libya and Syria, or government complicity in modern slavery. Uzbek cotton, produced with forced labour, is exported to Bangladesh, South Korea and China. In North Korea, prisoners in the gulag system – or forced labour camps – produce hardwoods for export to Japan. The forced labour systems in both Uzbekistan and North Korea are major contributors to their national economies.

Hong Kong, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia each have either a strong or middle range economy, but have a particularly poor response to modern slavery. The kafala system, which ties an employee to an employer, has facilitated significant abuses of domestic and construction workers in the Middle East. Hong Kong is part of a small group of countries in South East Asia, such as Japan, Malaysia and Singapore, who, despite their relative wealth, have done little to respond to the problem within their borders.

Overall, many countries appear to have responses in place on paper, yet modern slavery still persists. This indicates that these responses are either not fit for purpose, or are not being fully implemented, or a combination of the two. Countries in South East Asia, such as Thailand and Indonesia, appear to have strong responses on paper, but these are often poorly implemented, or are hampered by high levels of corruption.