Business & Society with Senthil Nathan

#24 The Hidden Chains: Modern Slavery in Global Supply Chains with Justine Nolan

• Senthil Nathan

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Hidden beneath the glossy surface of our global economy lurks a devastating reality: 40 million people trapped in modern slavery. In this eye-opening conversation, Professor Justine Nolan, Director of the Australian Human Rights Institute, reveals the complex web of exploitation that permeates supply chains across industries.

Modern slavery isn't a relic of history—it's a present-day crisis hiding in plain sight. Justine expertly unpacks how today's slavery manifests through psychological coercion, deceptive recruitment, and economic vulnerability rather than physical chains. From agricultural fields to electronics factories, she traces how workers become ensnared in systems they never chose and cannot escape.

What makes this conversation particularly compelling is the examination of modern slavery from multiple perspectives. We explore how profit-maximizing pressure from corporations meets desperate economic circumstances on the ground, creating perfect conditions for exploitation. Justine doesn't just identify problems—she evaluates regulatory approaches worldwide, from disclosure-focused laws in the UK and Australia to more comprehensive due diligence requirements emerging in Europe.

The most powerful insights come when discussing solutions. Beyond legal compliance, truly addressing modern slavery requires companies to engage meaningfully with stakeholders, examine how their business models might perpetuate exploitation, and embrace empathy as a business skill rather than a weakness. Justine's recommendation of "Conscience Incorporated" by Michael Posner provides listeners with a roadmap for aligning profits with principles.

Whether you're a business leader, conscious consumer, or human rights advocate, this conversation will transform how you view the products you purchase and the companies you support. Listen now to understand your connection to one of today's most urgent human rights challenges.

Please visit our website, www.businessandsociety.net, for more inspiration.

Senthil:

Hello everyone. Welcome to the Business and Society podcast, where we discuss ideas at the intersection of business and society. I'm your host, Senthil. Today's episode will discuss modern slavery in global supply chains. An estimated 40 million people are trapped in modern slavery globally. What is modern slavery? Where and why does it exist? What can governments and businesses do to address this problem? Joining me today to discuss them is Justine Nolan. Justine has been a key driver of the Australian and global business and human rights movement. She is the director of the Australian Human Rights Institute and a professor in the Faculty of Law and Justice at UNSW Sydney. I personally learned a lot about modern slavery from her scholarship. Justine, thank you so much for joining me today.

Justine:

Thanks, great to be here.

Senthil:

Tell us what is modern slavery.

Justine:

So modern slavery is a term that doesn't have just one definition and that sometimes can confuse people, but the way to think about it is it's basically an umbrella term that has components of all sorts of other exploitative crimes, basically. So modern slavery as we understand it today, includes slavery, servitude, forced labor, human trafficking, debt, bondage, the worst forms of child labor and forced marriage. So most of those, with the exception of forced marriage, intersect with the business world, and the easiest way to do it is to sort of think about that. When people think about slavery, a lot of people hark back to the transatlantic slave trade, which was very is to sort of think about that. When people think about slavery, a lot of people hark back to the transatlantic slave trade, which was a very much a sort of physical form of ownership of another human being, and sadly so, some of that form still continues to exist.

Justine:

But it's also true now that aspects like forced labor, where someone is forced to work under the threat of penalty, or debt bondage, where someone pays a fee or a significant amount of money perhaps to get a job and then is trapped by circumstances unable to ever repay that. These are all forms of what we call modern slavery, a term that was sort of really came to prominence, I think, with the UK Modern Slavery Act in 2015. But it's best understood as including all these component parts and the idea that slavery as we knew back in hundreds of years ago still continues to exist. But the terminology is broader and the fact is that today some of that coercion might be psychological as much as physical, but it really exists on what we might call a continuum of exploitation. So there's different types of modern slavery that exist and you have to get your head around in some ways different forms, but it's basically a very serious form of exploitation of a human being and in the business sector, usually for the purpose of sort of making money.

Senthil:

So it's a serious form of exploitation. So that's the key, isn't it? So let's suppose an employer pays less than minimum wage to an employee. That's not modern slavery, is that correct?

Justine:

Yeah, no, not by itself. So what tips a sort of a bad or unsafe workplace over into modern slavery is often a combination of factors, and so it might be that if workers are being underpaid or their wages are being delayed, that's an indicator of something that you need to look at more closely. And if you see that often there might be a combination, sometimes in the workplace, with threats, physical or psychological, or it might be that there's a deliberate withholding of wages so that the worker is unable to freely leave that job, then that might tip it over into modern slavery. So you know, paying below the minimum wage by itself will not transform, you know, into modern slavery, but that, combined with other factors, may then tip it over the edge.

Senthil:

Is there a global consensus on the definition of modern slavery? You talked about UK's Modern Slavery Act. Is there a body like the UN and that define this is modern slavery?

Justine:

No, interestingly there isn't. At the international level, I mean there's various international treaties and conventions of the International Labor Organization, the UN Convention Against Slavery. The ILO has conventions around forced labor and worst forms of child labor. But you see, in both the I mean sort of in the UK, the Australian and now the Canadian Modern Slavery Acts, they all refer to this modern slavery as this umbrella term, with these components underneath it which are these individual aspects like forced labor, that are very clearly and well defined at an international level. So it's almost like the label has brought them all together. So there's no one UN convention called the Modern Slavery Convention. But you see that these national acts build in a number of these types of crimes.

Senthil:

How does modern slavery occur, Justin? you talked about transatlantic slave trade, and there was a time it was legally allowed to own another person, but we live in a world where it has never been this prosperous. So walk us through what drives this modern slavery phenomenon.

Justine:

It's a really interesting question that you know. A lot of the time some of these laws that have come through don't actually get to the root cause of what's driving this, and there's two aspects of it. I think it's you know what's driving it from a bottom-up perspective. How does someone end up in this position? And that's usually a situation of sort of economic desperation where they might need to take a job because there is no other choice, or it might also be a situation where someone has been forced into or deceived into something.

Justine:

But also the interesting angle of what drives it in a top-down way why would companies use this type of approach or this type of business model that is clearly exploiting other humans for cheaper prices? And the very simple answer is the pursuit of profit above all else. So in some cases a company may be deliberately making that decision. In other cases they might not knowingly be doing it, but then it becomes part of their supply chain and we can talk about why they should know this type of thing. But there are different drivers of it and I think from a top down level it is trying to cut costs, trying to increase profits, and from the bottom up profits and, from the bottom up, it's often poverty, aspects of discrimination that lend people into a workplace. That is a system of exploitation.

Senthil:

Are there any specific regions where modern slavery is predominant?

Justine:

Yes, and so every sort of few years or so, there's something published called the Global Slavery Index and that's published by the Walk Free Foundation and the International Labour Organisation, ILO, and those reports and the website that provides you sort of details of numbers et cetera.

Justine:

round this and in the context of business, it shows that you know about more than 25 million people are working in situations of forced labour. It shows that you know about more than 25 million people are working in situations of forced labour, usually in global supply chains and different regions have different preponderance around it. Asia is the region with the highest number of estimates of people trapped

Justine:

in modern slavery, but you'll also see that no continent is immune. So you might think a very wealthy country might not have a problem of modern slavery and that we really should just be looking to other places, but you'll see, in countries like Australia or countries like America, there are still instances of modern slavery that are happening. It's a global problem. It is just more going to be at higher levels in situations particularly where there's a higher degree of manufacturing, because that's where we're finding more people are trapped in sort of the bottom layers of supply chains.

Senthil:

We'll get into business and supply chains in a minute. You said 25 million are trapped in modern slavery and supply chains. What are the rest? I mean you also cited some examples in your work about state-owned enterprises or forced labor at a country level in North Korea. Could you break this 40 million into sectors and tell us how big the problem is in the business sector?

Justine:

So the Global Slavery Index basically divides it between forced labour and forced marriage and their more recent estimates around 50 million people are roughly half and half between those two. So as relevant to the business sector is really to focus more on the forced labour side as opposed to the forced marriage side. And that component includes some people who are also in state-trapped or state sort of indentured forced labour, and the classic example of that has often been given as North Korea, but also not so much now but previous, in earlier years was also around cotton picking places like Uzbekistan, parts of China and the Xinjiang region have also been identified as state-sponsored forced labor. It can be very difficult to get a firm number on those figures and you know it must be shown that all of these are estimates. Around it, the ILO and the Global Slavery Index show why you know they're coming up with these numbers, but they are estimates because this is a problem that is often very hidden. It's not a problem people necessarily want to be identified with, and so you are extrapolating. You know the estimates.

Justine:

We know it's, we know, you know, we know it's a serious problem. Is it exactly one number here and here? That's hard to figure out because it is such a hidden crime in relation to it.

Senthil:

So it could be way higher or lesser as well, because it's

Justine:

yeah, often you see, with official estimates in countries they are often quite low because sometimes they might take their official estimates from, for example, numbers that were reported to the police or cases that were pursued, and we know that those numbers are not an accurate reflection of the true situation.

Senthil:

Right, let's get into modern slavery and global supply chains. Help us understand the sectors. You touched upon manufacturing very briefly. We also know that it's a big problem in agriculture. Give us a broader overview of which sectors where this practice is prevalent in global supply chains.

Justine:

Yeah, so there's a number of ways of looking at sort of what constitutes high-risk sectors and there are various sort of resources you might look to.

Justine:

You know, obviously there's the Global Slavery Index, which I've mentioned, but you'll also see things like the US State Department will often put out an annual list of goods that were made with forced or child labour, and so then you can see, you know, the sort of sectors that are coming up in it. But it's pretty well documented that you have high risks in sectors such as agricultural and fishing industries, apparel industry particularly in things like sourcing cotton, leather, et cetera the development of like construction sector and the building material industry, the mining industry and that's often where you have mines such as copper, gold, tin, cobalt, you know sort of the open-cut type mines. The electronics industry is, and also one that came to prominence particularly during COVID was the glove manufacturing industry. So that's not to say that if I haven't suddenly lifted off a sector that it's immune from it, but what we've seen is that those sectors have been perhaps more recently documented and accepted as high risk but there are many others .

Senthil:

Let's take agriculture. I want you to walk us through just one individual example. It could be hypothetical. How does a common man living in X place or country makes this decision to walk into this problem and get into this trap and eventually becomes a slave?

Justine:

Yeah, so I mean, I guess the first thing to point out is that's not a decision they are making. No one, I would think, would willingly go into a situation where they know they're going to be in slavery. And so this where you come into this notion of forced labour involving a threat or a penalty or deceptive recruiting. So it might be that you think that there is a someone who you know wants to earn money, that is, you know they look abroad often that they might be coming from a country in the global south or a country in Southeast Asia and they're looking to go to a wealthier country. Maybe it's to be involved in construction or to be involved in agriculture. For example, in Australia you have many people who have come from the Pacific to work in the agricultural industry in Australia. You might have a number of people going from Nepal to work in the construction sector in the Middle East, and so you go from different regions. But it can also be inter-regional and it might be that in both of those cases there's a worker who has been recruited for a job who understands that they're going to be paid a certain wage and they understand the general parameters of the job and they might even have signed a contract in their home country as to what that job looks like, but they then and often at that point they may then be paying a fee in order to get that job. So they're already paying a recruitment fee. And then they get to the place where they're working and it turns out that the rate that was promised is quite different. They might be asked to sign a completely different contract of employment. For example, perhaps the living conditions they were offered as part of their job might be non-existent or in appalling conditions, and that money is coming out of their employment and so that it might be at a higher rate than what they were promised.

Justine:

So all of a sudden, you see that perhaps a worker has traveled to a job, either regionally or inter-country or across borders, and they've got to a situation where perhaps they've incurred a debt or taken out a loan to get that job and they're in a position now where they can't actually earn enough money to repay that debt. So they're in, and that this employer is charging them interest on the loan in relation to it. So they're in this situation where they're never quite making enough money to repay their debt and so they're forced to stay where they are, so it's not a choice of theirs. They might not speak the local language, they may not have any support system in place, but they've been deceptively recruited to that role and they also may then have a threat of penalty around. They might not have the right visa for that job, so they can't easily move to another job. In some situations it might even be that their employer is holding on to their form of identification as a form of security, maybe a passport or a work permit, so then the worker isn't even able to move to another job in the same region.

Justine:

So any of these factors alone could end up being an explanation of how a worker was trapped in a situation of forced labour. They might all happen, or it might be one of those things that happen, but that would sort of constitute sort of an example of modern slavery. But it's not something that people walk willingly towards. It's usually something that you know. We often use the word trapped in. and that's the reality of that type of workplace.

Senthil:

How big is this problem in Australia?

Justine:

So it's hard to know. The Global Slavery Index estimates that the number is around 15,000 people in Australia. So compared to some countries and some regions, that's very small. But if you think about the context of potentially 15,000 people working in a country as wealthy as in Australia as slaves, the number should be zero in relation to it. So I think there's no great comfort from thinking our number is smaller than others. It's thinking about you know what are the sort of systems we have placed to prevent this and what do we have in place to remedy it when the problem is there? And that's still a work in progress in Australia.

Senthil:

Yeah, we'll get to the remedy in a minute. So there's 15,000, predominantly in agriculture.

Justine:

It's different sectors in Australia, so risky areas in Australia might be agriculture, the meatpacking industry, the construction sector, the cleaning industry. So that would be in terms of people within Australia, not the supply chains that are coming into Australia.

Senthil:

Right. Tell us a little bit about how government regulations are catching up to address modern slavery in supply chains.

Justine:

This has been a really interesting development, a lot of emerging and emerged regulatory action against modern slavery. The UK Act in 2015 was one that caught a lot of people's attention because they used the term modern slavery. Prior to that, you had seen California have its own state act around forced labour in global supply chains in 2012, but it really was probably the use of the sort of sensationalist term of modern slavery that got people's attention and the idea that the UK companies had to think about the issue that was beyond their borders, that you know, how might this work in a global supply chain. Then Australia followed that with a very similar act, with some differences, in 2018. And then, more recently, Canada has also developed its own act Modern Slavery Act as well . So that's the regulation that's often focused on companies having to produce an annual report, so building in the notion that companies have a responsibility to publicly identify risk of modern slavery in their operations and global supply chains and issue a report on those risks.

Justine:

Alongside that sort of what's often called transparency or disclosure type regulations, some countries take different, other ways of looking at it. For example, the US has something called a forced labour import ban in relation to one particular region of China, the Xinjiang region, where Uyghur people have been identified as working in forced labor, and the idea of that particular act was that countries coming out of that region have to show that they were actually not made with forced labor in order to get entry. The US also employs its Customs, border and Protection Service to more generally accept complaints or allegations that goods have been made with forced labour or child labour, and they have an ability to stop those entering the country. Europe, more recently, has also developed a forced labour import ban for the region as well. So you see these types of, you know, working side by side, but different modes of regulation.

Justine:

And then another aspect of sort of regulatory sort of innovation in recent years has been to move beyond a singular theme, just focus on one aspect, or allow more than slavery, to think about business and human rights more generally and to think about how to improve working conditions in global supply chain.

Justine:

And on that aspect, you've seen laws come out of France, germany and Norway in the last about eight years, and each of them has a singular national act that is looking at improving working conditions, that ask companies not only to report but also conduct what's called human rights due diligence to identify risks in their supply chain.

Justine:

And most recently last year, you saw the EU develop the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, which is a regional sort of version of those national laws, which combines reporting and due diligence to sort of to have a mechanism throughout the region to deal with this broader problem. That, of course, is a bill that's still under negotiation with the EU, so it might change in terms of what it's targeting and its scope, but many of them are sort of developed and works in progress. They're still trying to figure out what works, what doesn't, et cetera, and so there's various, I would say, levels of efficiency between these types of regulations

Senthil:

... and while reading your book, one of the dissatisfaction you expressed is most of these regulations are not enforceable.

Senthil:

Is that correct?

Justine:

I mean so the Modern Slavery Acts. I think that critique is often made around the Modern Slavery Acts. The three laws that I've mentioned are really reporting mechanisms. They don't have enforcement frameworks built into them.

Senthil:

Right? Are governments realising that it's important? Do you see that shift happening? Because this book has come in 2018 and things have changed a lot.

Justine:

Yeah. So if you use Australia, for example, the Australian Modern Slavery Act has obligations on companies who have a revenue of more than $100 million a year to basically identify the risks of modern slavery and issue a report. That's kept on a public register by the Commonwealth Government. And since that act was brought in in 2018, there's been a number of studies looking at how effective is that approach at addressing modern slavery and moving it from beyond awareness raising and discussions in the boardroom to actually looking at down the supply chain and see how you actually address and support the people who are suffering with this on the ground.

Justine:

And there was an independent review done of the Australian Act in 2022 by Professor McMillan and he basically has developed a really extensive report highlighting a lot of limitations of this type of reporting approach. The Australian government has then responded and sort of said you know, recognised that there's some valid critiques around this and, in particular, noted that there needs to be stronger enforcement and has suggested that they will bring in a penalty regime to ensure that, for those who don't report, there are penalties that can be brought in. So that may deal with strengthening the reporting regime, but it doesn't deal with the critiques around what we're asking companies to do is report, not actually take action or remedy the problem. So the modern slavery acts in the UK, Australia and Canada are very useful at promoting a greater understanding, socialising the idea within companies, and some companies have run with that and done more than perhaps the Act requires. But they're not of the scope that the European legislation is looking to do in trying to, you know, have a more comprehensive approach to this issue.

Senthil:

So regulations and adhering to it is, of course, one part of the story, but in general, how are businesses tackling this modern slavery issue and are you happy with the progress or unhappy why?

Justine:

I think you're never happy with progress, that it's never quick enough, and I think you can't talk about you know sort of business as a monolith, so it's very you're seeing different approaches in different sectors and different companies around it. I think there's a greater realization now that to do this well, you have to understand that to you know, to comply with social, sort of human rights and environmental standards, that it costs the money to the company, that you actually have to build it into your business model, into your budget, that compliance has to be. There's a cost to that. And so I think some companies see that sort of a tick box approach to just reporting, tick and flick and not remember it for another year is not something that will address the root causes of this problem. And so some companies have taken more comprehensive approach to really think about how we are working with suppliers. What's our relationship with suppliers? Do we need to think about how we consolidate our supply chain so it's not so diffuse? Do we really have traceability over our supply chain? Do we know beyond our tier one suppliers where our goods are coming from and have started to delve into that? Is there some sort of grievance mechanism that workers could access if a problem went on.

Justine:

So the first reaction from many companies was to sort of think about okay, let's change our policy, let's develop a modern slavery policy, let's have trainings in our headquarters, all things that need to be done, let's potentially put it into a contract with our suppliers, again a useful aspect.

Justine:

But if you leave it there, you often won't then actually get to the root cause of the problem, because something like modern slavery often happens further down a supply chain. So a company that sort of is willfully blind to where your goods are purchased and where they're stemming from, beyond that final tier, where it's often if you think of a T-shirt tier one might be the final assembly product, et cetera, as opposed to the spinning and weaving mills or the sourcing of cotton, et cetera. That if you're not looking down that supply chain, then there's a degree of sort of willful acceptance of the problem without actually looking into it. So it varies, I think, very much by company by company and sectors, and some companies have more resources, have devoted more resources to it, but that's not the situation where every wealthy company has decided I've got the money, I'm going to go into this. It's very contextually different.

Senthil:

How do consumers or civil society take this problem? Is it even in their mind? Given this?

Justine:

Oh yeah, I mean civil society has been a huge driver of getting this issue on the agenda of companies, getting the issue, you know, on new regulation around it. I would say it's civil society has been sort of one of the strongest forces which has been which has driven the greater awareness around this. We exist in a world of business and human rights where you don't have a lot of hard regulation. It's the notion that there's guidance, there's international documents, there's national documents, but a lot about it is seeing how you can both support and threaten, when necessary, companies to move along and take different approaches. So civil society sometimes it's really well-developed. You know civil society, large groups, et cetera, but there's also a lot of small. You know groups and unions in countries who are working really diligently at the worker level. So civil society has been really important to addressing this issue.

Senthil:

Interesting From your work. Could you talk about one or two specific interventions, examples that were most effective in addressing modern slavery and supply chains? It could be regulations or a business's initiative or a nonprofit's initiative, it could be anything.

Justine:

Yeah, it's an interesting question. I think there's lots of things that have led to this becoming a more prominent issue. You know, it does help to have regulation, to have laws around it, and so the development in different countries of having laws that really connect business with the problem of human rights where it's just you know, where it might just be modern slavery, we can easily point to all the deficiencies in those laws. But it also means that when it becomes a law that you get a level of attention that otherwise it doesn't. I think the challenge then is to often say well, these laws can only go so far and we have to look at their limitations. Then how do we supplement that or how do we look at what the next version of these is? So I think regulation is a useful but not sufficient step, but it's really helpful in that. I think something where you see the needle moving a little bit is where companies are really willing to engage over a sustained period with stakeholders, so sort of often moving out of their comfort zone and thinking about who are the experts that know about this issue, who are the people on the ground I need to connect with, and not so much as a one off consultation. Let's come in and talk to you and then move on, and not and talk to you in one years. But to think about what do you? How do you see the problem from your perspective? How do we change this from the ground up so companies that are doing better than others have really demonstrate that there's this sort of sustained engagement with key stakeholders like workers, unions, civil society, and that they're really willing to invest in those relationships.

Justine:

I think, a third factor might be where companies actually think about costing and business models.

Justine:

How do you actually ensure that what we're doing is not causing or contributing to this problem? So if we are working with a supplier and we're always giving them last minute changes to an order or changing the amount or changing the specs, then that's often going to require overtime very quickly in that factory and it might be a situation where workers are given no leeway in relation to that. So forced overtime happens because the company at the very end of the supply chain is basically saying we're using the same contract, we see you, we want the same product, we've made these changes and we still want it tomorrow, and so you have to look at the model that we're adopting and how those business models are actually, you know, perpetuating systems of exploitation. So I think there's lots of factors, but I think they're some of the more interesting aspects we've seen where companies are more clearly thinking about the financial relationship, the relationship with suppliers, as to how that might impact. You know how their goods are being made.

Senthil:

Super useful. Justine, Let's move to the last set of questions. We call it as How I Did It and we ask all our guests three personal questions to draw lessons from their lives and career. How do you handle differences of opinion and setbacks?

Justine:

Handle setbacks. I think the first thing that most people do is sort of tend to beat themselves up a little bit over it and sort of say what did I do wrong? What could I have done different? How did I contribute to this problem? And I think that's a useful form of self-evaluation, as long as you sort of draw a line under it and then start to think about it's rarely one person doing something that has created sort of some structural system of setback, and it might be then trying to step back in a calmer moment and think about how would I do this differently next time? What lesson did I learn from that?

Justine:

But I think there is this inevitable moment of trying to sort of take the blame, accept the problem, which I think is useful, but then trying to figure out if I'm going to avoid this or I'm going to try and improve the situation I'm in. How do I think more positively about, how do I change this and move on? So I think for me it's trying to get a balance between those two things and not dwelling too much in the negative other than and also trying to separate a little bit the emotion away from the facts, and for that you usually need a little bit of time with a setback to be able to dwell in it, feel sorry for yourself or worry about things and then start to think about okay, what's next?

Senthil:

Excellent In the world we live in today what are one or two essential skills you think business leaders need.

Justine:

I think they need to be able to listen. I think that to me, one of the most important aspects of doing business these days is to understand and to employ empathy in business. And you know, it's interesting to me.

Justine:

I see now, particularly in some places around the world, as seeing, you know, empathy as a weakness, empathy being disregarded.

Justine:

But to me, empathy is trying to understand the situation of which the other person you're dealing with is in.

Justine:

And it might not be that you're in a situation where you can necessarily accede to all their demands or say, oh, I can see that it's very difficult for you to come up to my price because you've got all these other pressures, but it changes the negotiation, I think, if you can understand the situation from which they're coming, and so it changes your approach to this thing. And I think that there's too much aspect in most of our lives of people, particularly in this polarized world, where people are unable to see the other person's perspective and the situation from which they're coming, and I think we could all try and do that more, not only in business but in our lives, that we'd probably then be able to have more open and transparent discussions and even if we choose to disagree, we can at least understand perhaps why, where they're coming from and you know, we still might think our position is right, but it tends to lead to a less sort of combative approach to negotiations.

Senthil:

That's profound. One final question, Can you recommend a book or two to our listeners?

Justine:

Sure. So one I'm reading at the moment is a recent book out in this sector that Michael Posner has written. He's a professor at NYU and has been working in this sector for decades, had also previously worked in the US in the State Department, and his book is called Conscience Incorporated and it's basically trying to think about and basically uses a lot of examples from his career of how business can sort of align profits with principles, and he provides different examples, you know, of hard things, of you know how do you deal with aspects of you know, state sponsored forced labor or issues where you don't have a lot of transparency, and his book has a lot of practical examples. And so I'm finding that and you know disclosure, I disclosure, I know Michael well, he's a wonderful guy, I've worked for him, but I'm finding his book a great read and I would recommend it to your listeners.

Senthil:

Excellent. Are you a visiting fellow at NYU as well?

Justine:

Yes, yeah, so I've known. Many, many years ago I worked for an international human rights organization, now called Human Rights,F irst of which Mike was the head of the executive director of that. So I first sort of cut my teeth in the international human rights system, working in the US for that organization, and it was a fantastic experience for me and that's where I first got into working on the field of business and human rights more than sort of 25 years ago.

Senthil:

Lovely, and what contributions you've made. Justin, thank you so much for all the great work you're doing. It's an absolute honor talking to you today.

Justine:

Pleasure. Thank you so much.

Senthil:

Thank you so much for tuning and listening to our podcast today. When you get a chance, please do not forget to leave a rating and review of this podcast and feel free to write to me if you have any thoughts or comments or what kind of episodes you'd love to hear in the future. Thank you.