 Welcome. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm the CEO of Anti-Slavery International. My name's Jasmine O'Connor and I'm joined by my colleague Claire Shakaia who is the Director of Climate Change at the International Institute for Environment and Development. So it's a pleasure to be here and to be welcoming friends and colleagues and hopefully some newcomers from far and wide to discuss the issue of climate induced migration and modern slavery and indeed to be able to share with you the findings of the new report that we are launching today. So welcome if you are joining us do pop in the chat. Say hello, say where you're from, let us know how you're feeling today and maybe even why you found this subject interesting want to join us. We've got a brilliant lineup of speakers and panellists to take us through the findings and myself and Claire will be tag-teaming as co-chairs throughout this event. I'll hand over to Claire in just a second but just to say a very brief word about anti-slavery international. We've been working to end slavery in all its forms around the world for 181 years and this groundbreaking research that we've participated on with IED is I guess just an evolution of that journey in trying to understand some of the systemic causes of slavery so that we can tackle them at their root and indeed the groundbreaking research that we're launching today is clear that climate change is both an ecological and a human disaster that can lead to modern slavery and the partnership with IED I just want to say a word about that because you know we're bringing 181 years experience of ending slavery they're bringing 50 years environmental experience at the forefront of campaigning for action on climate and so together we really hope to further this debate. So welcome to you all I'm glad to see you here and I hope that together we can consider the action that we all need to take in the run-up to COP. On our hand over to Claire to kick us off with the show. Claire. Thanks so much Jasmine and so happy to be here. Welcome to everyone also from our side and we're really hoping that today will be an interactive session so please do use the chat to put down your questions and we'll pick them up and seek to address them at the end of the session at the panel. So first with them I feel that we should get on with our speakers there's a lot to talk about today so I'm delighted to introduce our first keynote speaker Philippe Gonzalez Morales. Philippe was appointed by the Human Rights Council in June 2017 as United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants so delighted you can join us today Philippe. Thanks for the invitation to this event to launch the report decoding the nexus between climate change, migration and more slavery. I highly appreciate this initiative to call on the attention about this issue from Anti-Slavery International and the International Institute for Environmental and Development. As the report points out there are several emerging pathways of the links between climate change, migration and modern slavery. Migrants are particularly vulnerable to modern slavery and climate-induced migration places migrants at the particular risk of becoming victims of more forms of slavery. The main problem in establishing a definition of climate migration lies in the monocausality that is presupposed as it is not simple to isolate the environmental and climate factor from the political, economic, demographic and social factors that pre-exist and that together determine the form and quality of life. It is usual that the episodes of environmental degradation will have an incidence in the country, consequences that will depend on the infrastructural, socioeconomic and political conditions. These in the same way that states in crisis usually have many political, economic and environmental migrants and it is often difficult to clearly distinguish one cause from another. Coses of migration are often multifactorial so that they interact successfully or simultaneously. Pneumatic migrations can be associated both to the lack of job options in agriculture or to uncertainty of harvest times due to rains or draughts as well as those directly related to climate change or worsening environmental conditions either gradually or leading to an extreme degradation. Therefore, it is not so obvious to distinguish what we call traditional migration from climate migration because it is usual that people who are forced to move because of environmental degradation do not refer to it when they explain their reasons for migrating. They tend to emphasize the socioeconomic reasons despite the fact that poverty and unemployment may be caused by environmental degradation and that is why for the study of environmental migrations a broad analysis is required one in which the interactions of viral factors are taken into account. The debate on climate change and migration must be a driving force that will lead a better consideration of the rights of migrants in the different categories, avoiding a rigid distinction of specific causes that singularize each one. In this sense, policies must be formulated to strengthen the protection of human rights for people who are forced to leave their place of origin. One of the most evident examples of the interaction between political and environmental causes is war due to the use of weapons such as napalm or herbicides like Agent Orange during Vietnam War or the Black Rain provoked in the Gulf Wars. These types of weapons made the places where they were used and their surroundings unavailable, provoking the movement of the population. On the other hand, environmental degradation will increase the wars for access to increasingly scarce resources such as those already known for wars over oil or diamonds. Throughout the 21st century, water wars are expected to become a growing phenomenon as water resources are increasingly exploited and contaminated. Environmental migrations caused by tidal waves, volcanoes and earthquakes do not cover direct origin in human intervention, but their effects do depend on their management both before and after the event. They can influence measures for the recovery of the associated areas and to ensure that displaced migrants do not stay in refugee camps with unworthy living conditions for a long time or even permanently as after the tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004. Despite the increasing number of recent predictable events given the global ecological crisis, most environmental migrants flee as a result of anthropic environmental impacts or environmental mismanagement that interact with natural phenomena, causing displacement by the rising sea levels and hurricanes, droughts and fruits, decreased drinking water or desertification, whose human and material damage could be reduced with wood management. In general terms, acting preventively is much less costly in both human and economic terms, which is why good planning seems a relevant way to deal successfully with situations like this. The causes of climate change in their various forms are already factors that affect the lives of a large number of people, forcing them to seek a new place to live, and although this is a phenomena already underway, there are still important variables that depend on political decisions. The dispossession of the natural means of survival constitute a cost of displacement for millions of people. It can include diverse reasons, such as the implantation of large infrastructures like dams or reservoirs, tourist zones, transnational companies that settle their use of facilities in Polish countries, material extraction, or intensive cultivation. Frequently, these events lead to the eviction of populations that have occupied and cared for these lands since the memorial times without titles of possession. They are also forced to abandon these lands due to the sudden increase of contamination levels and generation of toxic waste, which caused a gradual departure. This modification of land use brings it forced relocations that pose many problems for affected populations. It is important not to neglect that in this context of migratory movements, due to global climate change, there are factors that restrict mobility. For example, the trapped populations, which are the populations that lack the resources to leave the dangerous zone, despite environmental deterioration and imminent threat, will be forced to stay. Another factor causing the increase of trapped populations is the closing of borders and the increase of water security. It is a reality for many populations, such as those in the Sahel region, affected by desertification and changes in rainfall patterns. Similarly, migration forecasts are always marked by a deterministic bias that presupposes that the entire population at risk will move. As the report being launched today rightly points out, climate and development policy makers and planners urgently need to recognize that millions of people displaced by climate change are being and will be exposed to slavery in the coming decades. Recognizing slavery as a mainstream policy issue alongside poverty and climate change will help to develop understanding of the underlying drivers that push disadvantaged communities into slavery. I congratulate again the organizations which produce this timely and important report. Thank you very much. Thanks, Felipe. It's a pleasure to have heard your opening remarks and I think it really sets the tone very well for us to begin to unpack the report. But I'd love to turn now to Cecilia Silva Bernardo, who is our second keynote speaker. Now, Cecilia is the climate negotiator for Angola and for the least-developed countries and co-chair of the Adaptation Committee of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. And as such, she's a strong advocate for least-developed country leadership on climate adaptation and an important critical voice on finance for adaptation. And so really, there's a great amount riding on your words, I think, Cecilia. And as we approach COP, I'm delighted to have you here looking at this report, understanding this report and being able to share your thoughts and indeed hopefully take some of those perspectives forward into the negotiations. So, Cecilia, you're most welcome. Do please share your thoughts with us. Thank you. Thank you very much, Jasmine, for the wonderful words. Good day, dear all. First of all, I would like to thank Anti-Slavery International and IED for the invitation to be part of this important dialogue. Colleagues, we may recall that in 1990, the IPCC noted that the greatest single impact of climate change could be on human migration. With millions of people displaced by shoreline erosion, cost of loading, and agricultural disruption. Since then, various analysts have tried to put members on future flows of climate migrants, sometimes also referred to as climate refugees. The most recent assessment by the World Bank Ground Soil Report put the number as 216 million people by 2050 with the most vulnerable regions being sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia, and Pacific, South Asia, and North Africa. Also, one of the poorest regions of the world. Despite those numbers, the international policy discourse is still debating about the causal link between climate change and migration. While we are still struggling with the development deficit in LDCs, we were hit by climate impacts that has impacted our ability to deal with poverty and marginalization. Climate is now acting as a stress multiplier to all the factors that were already driving vulnerability while adaptation measures continue to be critical for addressing climate impacts. The problem is one of time, which means because of the speed of climate change, and scale, which means the number of people it is affecting. So the simplistic image of a coastal household, depending on subsistence, firming, being forced to pack up their bags and move to a rich country, does not happen in real world. On the contrary, as it is already the case with political refugees, it is likely that the burden of providing for climate migrants will be burned by the poorest countries and communities. Those least responsible for climate impacts. They are left to fend for themselves, exposed to issues of exploitation, often leading communities in slavery and slavery-like situations. This climate-inducing distress, migration, and displacement is hindering the development of the society and community in LDCs by increasing pressure of urban infrastructure and services, by undermining economic growth, by increasing the risk of conflict, and by leading to worse health, educational, and social indicators among migrants. And in this stress situation with no other option left, they are either forced to undertake dangerous coping strategies that expose them to slavery or places them at the mercy of traffickers at refugee camps. Here again, I will reiterate that the people who are exposed to these consequences of climate impacts were not responsible for causing them. Furthermore, the developed countries are struggling of their responsibility. So far, they have not even met their commitment of 100 billion targets for climate finance support. Let alone the fact that a very minuscule amount of what they are providing as climate finance is available for climate adaptation that can help the communities better prepare or cope with climate impacts. So far, there is no home for climate migrants in the international community, both literally and figuratively. There has been a collective and rather successful attempt to ignore the scale of the problem. Falsed climate displacements fall through the cracks. Well, I'm happy to see this issue finally is getting recognized here and we are discussing today this issue. So based on current climate change scenarios, a certain amount of falsed climate migration is locked in. But how much depends on the international community support for adaptation? It is clear that the international community has to face up to prospect of large scale displacement caused by climate change. There is a need for international recognition of the problem, a better understanding of its dimensions and a willingness to tackle it is also necessary. As a voice of LDC country, I feel there is a need for the international community to firstly acknowledge formally the predicament of falsed climate migrants and the vulnerabilities and risks of slavery they are exposed to. And secondly, extend financial, technical and policy support for development of adaptation. Sorry, effort in LDCs for falsed climate migrants to reduce people's vulnerability to climate change, moving people away from marginal areas and supporting livelihoods that are more resilient so that they are not exposed to issues like trafficking and slavery. In the end, I will say that we can no longer close our eyes to the plight of the climate induced migration and displacement and wish for it to go away or close our boundaries to them. There are human lives we are talking about and the international climate discourse needs to recognize and act on this issue. I thank you again Jasmine for the opportunity to speak here in this very important dialogue. Thank you very much. Thank you so much Cecilia. I think you've set out the human challenge very, very clearly and it's a compelling case. I would love to thank both of the keynote speakers now and begin to introduce our panel. But before I do that, I'd like to just spend a moment or two just to share a little bit from anti-slavery international's perspective and also to invite Claire to share a little bit from IID's perspective as to why this is such important research for us both as organisations and also as individuals because I know that Claire and myself are passionate advocates for these issues. So really I think it starts from anti-slavery's perspective with the fact that there are currently 41 million people in slavery and we know from our experience that when a person is controlled and exploited for personal or commercial gain the drivers are often complex and multifaceted. It could be discrimination, it could be weak rules of law, it could be poor enforcement of laws or indeed poverty. They all play a role in actually creating the kind of conditions that sort of push people to slavery and indeed to allow traffickers to trick and entrap people who don't have their basic human rights and needs met. And indeed COVID as we know is exacerbated many, many of these factors but this research tells us how climate change is adding a multiplier effect on top of these existing conditions that drive slavery, a domino effect that displaces people both internally and across borders and increases their vulnerability to slavery. The World Bank estimates that by 2050 climate change will have forced more than 143 million people in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America from their homes. Now add that vulnerability of 143 million people to the 41 million people who are currently enslaved and understand that this is a human disaster beyond anything we've ever seen. The Sustainable Development Goal 8.7 focuses on ending forced labour, modern slavery and human trafficking as well as the worst forms of child labour. And if we don't take bold actions understand and to ameliorate the conditions that are being created by a climate crisis and climate impacts there is no way that we're going to come anywhere close to ending those forms of slavery and indeed reaching the Sustainable Development Goal 8.7. So unless we really take serious action the progress that has been made on ending slavery to date is going to go you know into reverse and indeed the climate crisis will create a problem, a challenge that moves beyond borders creates a in a sense a sort of ticking time bomb of slavery in the making and so you know we thought that we needed to understand more about these interactions so that we were able to be in a position to you know add our voice to those calling for bold action to get to net zero and to make sure that we understand how we can address these these impacts for some of the most marginalised people in the world. So from my perspective this is a timely report and is absolutely critical in our 181 year fight to end slavery where we seek to get systemic change and not just move the sort of bits and pieces around but we go for the big issues and this is this is by far the biggest issue certainly that I know I will see or I hope I will see in my in my lifetime. So Clare we'd love to get your perspective from IID as to why you found this such an important piece of research to undertake. Thanks so much Jasmine and yes absolutely I think I think it really is the international community is recognising that environmental degradation and climate change can result in population displacement and can do so at really fast rates as we've heard from our keynote speakers and the issue is as you say Jasmine we're just not equipped to address this issue effectively currently we don't have an adequate framework for policy planning and responses and leaving this issue unattended could have dangerous consequences for the poorest and most marginalised at risk of trafficking and various and from the various forms of slavery. Today where we have seen action on climate induced migration it's been largely reactive responding to humanitarian crises in developing countries after a disaster strikes and then the absence of preventative measures the future of many vulnerable communities and particularly in the poorest countries the LDCs as Cecilia was speaking to are likely to continue to see these issues become more intangible so what we see is land degradation or drought leads to food insecurity which in turn is leading to people needing to move needing to find jobs elsewhere and in that movement they're being exposed to the risks of modern slavery and because policymakers are seeing migration and relocation as the sort of last resort options they're often not thinking about how to respond how to help how to make it safer but with climate change we're going to see more not less families on the move individuals on the move so we need to start planning preemptively and put in place the support mechanisms needed to for rehabilitation to support them to recover from having to move but also to help them shift into new sustainable livelihoods where they are or in new locations and these relocation programs can't be quick fix options they need we need to start thinking now about how to attract people into safer locations in and help them move safely and then provide support to strengthen their livelihoods build resilience improve their living standards and restore the local environment invigorate the local community they need to be an asset where they arrive and proactive intervention is now essential at IID with our work on loss and damage with co-developing solutions with vulnerable country representatives exploring how early action for relocation could be used as adaptation or a risk minimization strategy and that can be through government planned relocation to move households out of harm's way it could be government driven relocation after disaster or it could be through supporting voluntary migration by households or individuals and we do have some good examples already one is the Danish refugee councils program in Burundi which is a resilience project aimed at enhancing livelihoods increasing food security and building climate resilience but what's special about it is the community is made up of internally displaced people and the host community and another example is the Uruguay national resettlement plan which has been considered a lighthouse in these types of approaches and they're planning to relocate thousands of households focusing on families that live in extreme poverty out-of-flat pro flood prone areas and intersecure housing so at IID we're working hard with our partners to secure fair and equitable solutions to climate change and we work hand in hand with the progressive countries looking to act early and particularly the least developed countries to find these solutions the issue of climate change induced migration and displacement and it's nexus with slavery is high on our agenda and we'll continue to raise this issue at policy fora and amplify the evidence and voices of those with lived experience so thank you Jasmine that's where we are on why we see this as an important issue fantastic and it reminds me of why this is such a dynamic partnership we're on the same page fantastic um so look without further ado I'd love to just introduce our panelists and we can kick off with some questions to them from myself and Claire which will begin to unpack the findings of the research so first up is Rita Barahad watch I'm sorry oh senior researcher climate change group international institute for environment and development from IID I'm sorry I massacred your last name I apologize sincerely Rita I've been talking to you all week um and I hadn't even looked at your last name until just now but it's a pleasure to have you with us and Rita has has absolutely kind of been a leading light in this research um driving it forward and making it what it is today um Somnath Hasra consultant economist and visiting faculty from West Bengal India it's a fantastic pleasure to have you with us Somnath and you're most welcome James Kofi Annan who's president of challenging heights in Ghana as a society partner that we've been working with throughout this work and indeed have engaged on some other pieces Enoch Pufa senior manager impact and strategic relationships challenging heights Ghana great to see you as well and Framwit last but no least our very own anti-slavery international climate change and modern slavery advisor it's wonderful to have you all here I hope you can hear me and I'm looking forward to hearing what you've all got to say but starting with Yuri too I you know I know that you've you've led this research that you've driven it forward and you've been immersed in the in the findings for quite some time now pulling it all out helping us to to sort of make sense of it so really first up what links did you observe between climate change migration and modern slavery tell us about it thank you so much jasmine very good question actually I'll have a blast responding to that question so our research and evidence indicated that the relation or the nexus that exists between climate change migration and severe forms of exploitation that we term as slavery exist along three pathways or three circumstances firstly in context of sudden or extreme climatic events for example cyclones or floods or hurricanes which leads to displacement of communities now this first pathway is I would say most well documented very strong evidence exist to show that this nexus exists between under these circumstances and especially indicating that human trafficking increases in the aftermath of such extreme events now for example many survivors in the wake of typhoon haia in philippines found themselves with no viable alternative or in term they're cursed into working as prostitutes or laborers there are many more examples like this and I can go on for example in Bangladesh women left widowed by cyclones they're targeted by traffickers and driven into prostitution and hard labor and similarly from my own country in in India in northeastern India Assam women and girls are forced into child slavery and forced marriages to make ends meet so this is the first pathway indicating the nexus in the aftermath of a sudden or extreme climate event now the second pathway or second situation where this nexus was seen to exist was in the event of a slow onset disaster like a drought desertification salination and so on now this pathway exists when climate variability such as increasingly higher than normal temperatures or erratic rainfall leads to drought like situations resulting in crop or pasture loss drinking water shortage or food insecurity and in situation like these it pushes communities dependent on natural resources for their livelihoods to look for alternate sources of subsistence now and this happens in absence of any other viable local option and that's why we need policy support and these communities are left to fend for themselves and they're often pushed into dangerous or risky migration opportunities or incurring debt now the research in the brick sector in Cambodia which is also known as blood bricks maps this intricate detail of how farmers whose livelihood had been undermined by climate change were forced into intergeneration bondage by kiln factory owners who'd often buy their debt and then force them into working in subhuman conditions they had absolutely no control over their rights decision making and so on and the third pathway the third situation where we saw this nexus existing was shown to exist when slow onset event like the one that I just talked about is combined with conflict or forced displacement now this final pathway normally exists when a large-scale incremental forced displacement due to conflict is precipitated by slow onset natural disasters such as drought leading to family life situation now typically conflicts weaken institutionals local institutions markets or livelihood support systems that communities have and it is and since countries are in conflict like situation they are not able to provide community with the means to adapt or cope with climate shocks or stresses now the resulting income loss displacement or high level of food insecurity forces community again to pursue risky coping strategies that lands them into bondage slavery like situation now all the three situations or the three pathways that I just talked about they're not standalone they they quite often they overlap and they intersect with each other even the third pathway which clearly overlaps with the second pathway that I talked about and in each of these circumstances similar dynamics to vulnerability to modern slavery exist for example enhanced marginalization inequity poverty which are drivers of modern slavery I would say and then climate change impacts them then it exacerbates all that so in conclusion I would say that climate change is is like a stress multiplier placing people who are already in precarious situations in positions where they reach the limits of coping capacity and then exposed to slavery and second and very important point to note here and especially for the policy makers is the links between climate change migration and modern slavery it's rooted in power balances within the society and vulnerability to climate induced migration is evident most in those who are already marginalized by either gender ethnicity age socio-economic status and the umpteam if you look at our research document there's so many evidences which have shown that women girls who are already marginalized they were more exposed to slavery or slavery like situation when clamp when they were exposed to climate change and and also as I kept talking about policy makers here the role of policy makers is very very important because lack of priority and recognition to this issue is resulting in absence of strong policy environment where workers and migrants right abuse it if everyone knows that it exists but it largely remains unregulated and they are disregarded quite often especially as at an expense of achieving rapid economic growth and infrastructure development so in many places you know in order to achieve that rapid infrastructure growth whether it's through brick sector or through rapid industrialization urbanization they turn a blind eye to the plight of the workers the the exploitation that they're subjected to so I'll stop there Jasmin and going back to you thanks so much Ritu that was that was fascinating um so I guess um I'd be interested here from you Somnath um in your experience in um the Sundarbans which obviously cut across both India and Bangladesh um what's what are those issues have come up there and did it differ between India and Bangladesh yeah very good question clear I must say that it's a very good question for the Indian Sundarman Delta as well as the Bangladesh Sundarman Delta so if you go with this nexus already Ritu talked about this nexus globally so if we go with this that in our research research study center study area so that we should talk about that what is the what are the climate stresses they're facing they're facing basically that that that they're sea level rise sea level rising floods cyclone and and storm surge these are the these are the issue they are they are facing the and as well as not only that salt water inclusion is also another and problem they are facing water logging is another problem so these are the environmental challenges they are facing due to climate change okay so this the the same problem exist in the Bangladesh as well as in the Indian Sundarman but now we I come to the point that is the what livelihood options they have right now so in both the deltas in Bangladesh Sundarman Delta as well as in the Indian Sundarman Delta the livelihood options basically they have two livelihood options one is agriculture another is fishing so both are natural resource based livelihood option so when they received any any type of disaster so they're basically they don't have any no no other and at the time of at the time of like summer season this agriculture basically based on this rain-fed agriculture so summer season they're going to do some collection of in non-timber forest product like honey v-works like in that way and when both the delta we can see the same situation but why they're migrating right so if they have like a livelihood options because when they're facing any disaster situation then they're losing everything losing their houses losing their livelihoods and losing their aquaculture farm also if they have so this is the situation right now so that due to losing their livelihood they're going outside they're migrating from their region so this is the situation this is the link between this climate change and migration and if like and where they're reaching they're reaching nearby peri-urban and urban areas so they're reaching peri-urban and urban areas as a urban slum and they're facing a lot of problems a lot of problems means they're facing they're fighting with the extreme poverty they're fighting with the health hazard they're fighting with human trafficking and other other issues so now they're coming into the point that how they're linked with this slavery so if they're like we have seen as far our research we have seen that that migration in the Sundarban delta it was specifically in the Indian Sundarban delta it's basically both push migration and the push factor and pull factor both are working push factor means that if the climate change is happening there the climate change is pushing them to going outside and the pull factor the in other part of the country or the outside the country they're getting very much amount of wage so they're that that much of wage in the southern India and other parts of India they're getting so this is attracting them so this is the pull factor so this pull factor and the push factor both are working for them and if we go with this like when the when the disaster will happen then main main male person male person going outside in the Indian Sundarban delta so the other other other family member like the woman and children and the aged population are staying at home so here the trafficking trafficking agent will started their operation so when the people going outside when the male person going outside male person is not there male person is facing outside in the poverty and something like health hazard is on all and the same time their family is also facing their equity poverty situation and at that time the trafficking agent will come and they will say that he can help them to going out out of this poverty situation and in that way they're asking their family that might come to come to with them come with them and and they will take them and sell them in the prostitution area and sell them as a bonded labor to the employer to the other other other region so this is the situation in Indian Sundarban delta how trafficking how slavery is comes here and not only that if we if we if we if we if we like human trafficking and there are two types of trafficking I can I can say there is two types one is the sex based trafficking and other is the non sex based trafficking so we have already talked about the sex based trafficking that is prostitution selling in the prostitution area and all and the non sex based trafficking this is basically the different types of slavery one I can say that domestic labor and I can say industrial labor I can say some some some marriage related brackets and so on so and if we if we come if we come to the point like if we go back at the at the time of ILA in 2009 we have hard we have we have already talked about this people in the Sundarban they said that at the time of ILA there is a push factor comes in so just because of the climate change even they have to this is the force migration they have to migrate from the other places from the region so there is a force migration and at that time the traffickers at that time that trafficking agents have come come to their place and only for the woman and girl child so that is the situation when the traffickers when the when the trafficking agents comes into the picture and how trafficking is continuing and what is the relation between the climate change gives us the migration and how migration creates the anti-slavery slavery and trafficking so this is the this is the situation in and we have seen that at that time some of the area I can tell you that one thing that that at Sondaskali Sondaskali Kultali Gosaba these are the blocks community development blocks where you can see this the the high concentration of of that trafficking agent and this type of activity in case of Bangladesh that something little bit different I can say I can say there is little bit different that Bangladesh only the weaker section those who are staying in the vulnerable situation vulnerable places they are only the they are migrating to other places other other place of the country and not only the other place of the country they are sometimes they cross in the border to come to the India also so and and and since there is a some immigration immigration restriction in all the countries not only India they are going some girl countries also so if there is since there is some in many of the countries there is some immigration restrictions so they are at that time they want to go to going outside they want to earn some money they want to feed their family so this is the current situation of them them and on the on that part they are basically compelled to rely on the group group group of the that trafficking agent and and accidentally the they come to the place of the slavery they come to the place of the forced labor due to that that correlation with the corrupt agent corrupt trafficking agent so this is the situation and the I have seen that the main drivers of the Bangladesh slavery or whatever I can tell you that Bangladesh modern slavery that property loss and and and loss of economic other economic options other economic opportunity are the main reason main drivers for the slavery I can say and and if we if we come to the like trafficking who are who are who are the major major they are at window we do we do are the main main agent what they are in Bangladesh we do are the we do we do are the they are very much at the trafficking agents have started their operation in the disaster affected regions and and they are targeting basically widows in Indian Sundarbans they are targeting women and girl child in Bangladesh Sundarbans they are targeting basically widows always obviously their girl child also there so so this is the situation and and and and in Indian Sundar we have seen two types of situation and one is the male person is migrating outside at the same time the trafficking is happening in their family but in Bangladesh this situation is different like trafficking there since they are correlating since they're rely on the corrupt groups and since they're doing some activity with the corrupt groups to to getting a job in abroad to getting going to abroad or something like in that way so in that way they're they're into the trap into the into the trafficking into the forced labor into but this is this is the situation so I can tell you I can tell you that that sometimes sometimes in in in Indian Sundarbans their their the family the head of the family also are in the group are in the group their family also helping helping the trafficking agent to sell his children or sell his wife like to go outside to earn some money in that way so this is the situation this is the linkage I can tell you that wow climate change creates migration and how migrants migration go farther like slavery so this is the situation right now that's all thank you thank you thank you so much um so nothing I think um there's a lot in that to to unpack and understand and I think um yes it's um it really does illustrate the human impact and the real life impact of of modern slavery and the intersections with climate change and migration I'm going to pass now to um James and Enoch actually to answer um this next question in in tandem um we we really would like to understand a little bit more um about the kai and the enterprise that that happens in in Ghana um of young women um having the kind of role of of porters that carrying carrying things and and understanding really what what's occurring in relation to those women and um often children being forced into situations of of debt bondage uh in in Ghana and how how does climate change act as a sort of stress multiplier in that particular context increasing their their vulnerability so give us give us a little bit of an insight into that case study that the um research looked at I don't know who wants to start first whoever's quickest to unmute maybe James this is different from uh zoom so I'm struggling a bit to understand it okay so uh thank you for the opportunity to be part of this research work and I would like to acknowledge my colleague uh Enoch who um work a lot with all of us on this project the poverty situation in northern Ghana is worsened by the unfavorable weather and environmental conditions which are further worsened in recent years due to climate change and environmental degradation farmers in this zone unlike in southern zone have only one season of rainfall usually from may june to august september followed by a prolonged period of drought irrigation facilities are limited with the few drying up quickly due to high temperatures in addition rainfall patterns have become unpredictable both in occurrence and duration migration of people from northern to southern Ghana is therefore seen as an adaptation strategy to fighting poverty in the area and also as a coping strategy to the single season of rainfall wildfire migrants from northern Ghana usually work as slavers on farms and in mines female mostly work as headquarters commonly referred to as kairi and you will see uh this word coming through quite often kairi is not an english word but it's a coined word in the major cities of Ghana the study found evidence that women and young girls working as kairi headquarters um that sky is usually referred to as headquarters uh become victims of modern slavery and work in slavery life conditions in destination towns so we have some of the destination towns such as um kumase akra tapyade and other places the kairi has been meant to be an enterprise that now involves the use of deception to traffic unsuspecting young girls into labor exploitation the enterprise usually involves an adult female at the destination town who receive unsuspecting young girls and pose as their guardians in the end these girls and young women become enslaved to their masters and would have and would have to work for them under exploitative conditions these are usually older women who with businesses in the destination towns they often create enterprises out of the girls but pretend they are acting in their interests profiting from the gallability of the girls young girls and women engage in kairi usually do not have accommodation they sleep in kiosk kiosk are very small uh containers um usually meant for stores small stores uncompleted buildings and in front of shops making them vulnerable to sexual exploitation and abuses and uh we um we wanted to get this particular case study a salamu 22 year 22 year old is from northern Ghana she has been working as a kairi in akra serving years and this is what she has to say the decision to migrate to akra was influenced by the lack of job opportunities in my village farming the main livelihood is carried out by men while women only support with their labor my village suffered flooding in each of the past three seasons and i must say that as i speak to you now this flooding has raked and in the last couple of weeks we are seeing a lot of flooding pushing a lot of girls to the south farmlands were submerged and eventually destroyed farming is a good livelihood option but the cultural system and bad weather is destroying the crop it is no longer conducive for me and other young people especially women to earn a living at home i use my enemies as a kaya to fend for myself and support other family members including buying food maize beans and gary for them during the dry season working as a kaya has not been easy for me when i came here that's in akra i did not know anything about the work i was told that the woman providing our parents a pants are the one the thing that the container they use to carry the goose will also feed us and give us accommodation however all my earnings go to her and only sometimes will she give me a small part of the money i've earned uh the money i've earned before you can leave her camp you have to work and pay for the plan and also the accommodation she provides so basically i was not getting anything from my hard work to make things worse i dropped someone's items from the pan in the market for which i had to compensate when they estimated the cost of the items it was very expensive and not something i could afford the woman who controlled me paid on condition that i work and repay that amount to her i have been working endlessly and i have not been able to repay so this is this is one case study when we have a number of them uh that's where we could get um fuseni is from northern garna she is about 21 years and has been working as a kaya for about six years now i migrated to akra by following my friends when i completed junior high school and could not continue my education to the senior high school level due to poverty at some point food was becoming scarce um for my family a typically large polygonal family in northern garna i also observed that although her father and brothers worked hard on the family lands they got far fewer food crops after harvesting as a result of the low and short rainfall seasons behind um um being experienced i therefore decided to follow my friend to akra to work as a kaya so i could support myself my mother and also help my younger siblings three of them for further the education uh to further the education when i first came here i was like faridah or even younger and then he was laughing i was in group of other girls mostly those from my hometown i was new to the business so sent so they sent me to one hajia and told them i was their sister who has come to join them they told me it was hajia who takes care of them by giving them a place to sleep and also buys the headpan for them so i got a new headpan which i used for the work however at the end of the day i have i have to send my money to the hajia as payment for the headpan and also for the sleeping place i was not told the price of the headpan i was just a small girl and did not know much i did not know when i will finish paying too so i worked for a long time and was never told anything when i realized i was being cheated i ran away from that group to another so these are you know classical cases of how climate change effects drive young people from the northern gana to the southern parts of the of the country and then they fell they fall victim to slavery and slavery like practices thank you very much thank you james thank you inock did you have any words to to add to that i think we've got a few we've got a few minutes before we need to to move on to the next yeah okay all right thank you very much um just to say that what's um james has presented is a clear demonstration um of how climate change is a strength multiplier in in in the in the context of the discussion that we are having so it is clear from ritu's presentation the three faces you can see that although it cuts across um all the three faces but it is lightly situated within the second phase where um a number of factors first called by climate change make uh cause people to migrate and in the end they find themselves in modern slavery situations thinking that they are working and making a living but because of their the peculiar circumstances they they they are exploited and they have basically cannot do anything about it you can look at if someone is 21 years and has been engaged entirely for like seven years and you're looking at someone who is about 13 14 years and of age and to what extent can that person exercise agency to what extent can that person be ascetic before an adult and say that i deserve to repay this amount i ought to have this i ought to have this that cannot be done so in in the end it falls within the visual cycle that was captured in the study and basically this is what we we are presenting or we found in this um aspect of the study so this is what i have to say for now thank you thank you thank you you know kind of course if somebody's in debt bondage um that they're not realistically able to pay that that debt back that is essentially a form of slavery they're forced to keep keep working whether they whether they want to or not um fantastic thank you very much um i think i'm coming back to you now Ritu and uh really asking us to sort of get down to you know the the sort of business side of things if you will um what do we want policy makers to do to address the issues that have just been outlined from from Ghana uh and and Bangladesh what what what what means to happen uh thank you so much jasmine and a very important question um and the three speakers before me uh james enok and somnath have very clearly illustrated the the link that exists and that needs to be prioritized at least taking into consideration by policy makers policy makers need to work out targeted action at national and international levels on how to address this issue which is impacting the most vulnerable population and you know we have we had worked out within our report a a set of actions that policy makers need to take and they lie on both sides of the of the table like both on the anti-slave not both sides of the table but on both aspects both on slavery issues tackling slavery issues as well as the climate change issues and and unless they are dealt with in a in a coordinated fashion we will not see much results on the ground so some of these set of actions that we have suggested for policy makers is one to recognize this as a priority in both development and climate policy and integrate these priorities and actions in urban and rural climate resilience plans almost every country is coming up with these plans they now need to recognize this nexus within these plans also in migration response plan they have to they have to acknowledge that slavery and trafficking issues exist and migration response plan has to address those risks as well and we also need to recognize them beyond the climate plans beyond the migration plans into the national development plans as as well the second area of action that we have identified for them is to allocate firm targets and actions to be considered within the UNFCCC mechanism for climate change and in line with the sustainable development goals sustainable development goals they recognize this issue UNFCCC mechanism has not recognized this issue so far and and I'm sure many of you would know that a task force on displacement was created in line with the Paris agreement within the within the area of loss and damage to develop recommendations for integrated approaches to avoid minimize and address displacement related to adverse impacts of climate change now that's the that's the purpose of this task force on displacement now this task force on displacements even though they have consulted both people who are working on migration on climate change but somehow this issue of this nexus has not been included or ever discussed in any of their meetings they need to include this issue within the action plan so that it can be considered not just in their in their support areas but also within the framework of UNFCCC the third action area that is needed is the is we require a coordinated international effort which is and we are not saying create new initiative we are saying this coordination needs to be rooted within the existing initiative currently there are so many efforts which are ongoing on this issue we talk I just talked about the task force and displacement there's SDG there's Sendai framework there's earlier Nancy initiative then there's a platform on displacement disaster displacement and so on I can go on with a list of few more which deals with these issues but they're quite scattered across several sectors and different actors and they target different stakeholders there's a need for a more joined up approach around with a more inclusive approach within these different initiatives so that it complements and draws upon the work of the existing bodies and expert groups to specifically deal with this nexus or this the overlapping issues that exist right now that we have highlighted through these two case studies fourth area that policymakers need to see is that they shape these policy intervention they while I'm talked a lot about these international and national level action but these policy interventions needs to be based on local level research and evidence especially addressing the risks of slavery in context of climate change across a wide range of national and local context where it may occur it requires the need for a more for inclusion of those communities which are affected within the decision making and the openness to include local forms of resilience and adaptation what they are currently doing can be built on them and use that as an evidence to inform national and international policies and practices the fifth area I would say is to integrate slavery issues within the nationally determined contribution right now almost every country there they have started to revise their NBCs on climate change action many of them have been submitted but our request to countries would be the NBCs they need to identify policies and actions for providing safe migration pathways addressing vulnerabilities to trafficking and slavery in context of climate change and to implement these plans they can converge the existing development as well as climate finance and and and we can always explore whether we can reach out to other parts of climate finance as well to address this next issue sixth area I would say would be the list is long just name because the issue is very complicated so the sixth issue would be to strengthen the social safety nets for climate risk management in both case studies we saw that you know they're forced into pursuing these risky or dangerous coping mechanism that lands out lands them into into slavery or trafficking like situation because they don't have social safety nets they can rely on so when their vulnerability to slavery should be I would say it should be considered within the way social protection initiatives are framed and even climate risk management frameworks are framed to specially create a rights based approach for providing access to basic services basic minimum services and social safety nets when they are faced with these crisis and it could be you know of course climate crisis but even if you look at the current COVID crisis in our safety net really helps in supporting communities in a big way to help them not feel as if they have been completely you know left to themselves at least they have something to fall back on and besides this you know something which has really gained traction with some policymakers started to gain traction is the issue of within the social protection program because we are talking about migration and displacement portability of these rights and entitlements within the social protection initiatives would become extremely important because you know when they are moving these migrant and specially in context of climate change when they're really pushed just like Somnath was saying explaining that the push factors climate change creates push factors and when the people are pushed to migrate they should be able to carry the safety net with them so that when they are at destination site they have access to those basic minimum services and finally I will close by highlighting the same point which Claire had highlighted in our opening remarks that preventative measures are needed and advanced planning to relocate and resettle displaced communities is really neat of the art because you know there's so many figures we have we've heard since the event started about more than 200 million people expecting to get displaced so anticipate reaction to move people to safety before the faster strides can really help them help reduce the exposure to slavery not all situation they are they are the leads to slavery but if they are some chances of them getting exposed to slavery this these advanced measures anticipate reactions will help in minimizing those risks so I'll close there Jasmine unless you have any further questions thanks Ritu well no doubt we come back to you shortly after this panel when we get to the question to the panel but Fran I know that at IID we're you know super committed to continue working on these issues I'd really love to hear what anti-slavery international plans are to take the findings of this research forward and what action points do you feel are particularly important or we should really be advocating for yes thank you so much I think to start with just recognizing that organizations that traditionally work on climate change and environment and human rights organizations like anti-slavery have recognized that there's an issue that really hasn't been addressed yet by the international community is absolutely critical and in the presentations we've heard about the importance of bold action and about the fact that slavery is a bit of a blind spot in development circles and that's something that we really need to address so in tackling climate change we need to be thinking about the most severe impacts of climate change on the most vulnerable communities and to my mind and in the mind of anti-slavery those are people who are in or vulnerable to modern slavery and I think the fact that we can demonstrate that there's a nexus between climate change and modern slavery demonstrates the importance of tackling climate change at the root and doing everything possible to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees as a first and important step and that would be something that we would be taking to the climate talks or the COP in November in Scotland. I think there needs to be an equitable response to climate change and human rights so when people are and policy makers are thinking about what they need to be doing to respond to climate change they need to be thinking about the human impact and who's being affected and particularly on thinking more fully about migration, climate change hot spots, migration pathways and responding to people who are vulnerable to modern slavery because of climate change. So my vision is that we begin to start to pull together a network of civil society organisations like our own both in the global north and in the global south building on this experience finding out more about where there is an understanding or an understood nexus between climate change and modern slavery in different parts of the world beyond the countries that we've already studied and to call out international community starting at the UNFCCC and with the climate talks but also towards the World Bank towards the G20 and asking for concerted demonstrated action from civil society who are witnessing on a day-to-day basis these devastating impacts on the human condition and on the right to decent work. So from my point of view if out of this research we could begin to build a coalition of organisations and civil society who are interested in demanding urgent change on this issue we would have done very well and I would invite people who have joined the meeting today to get in contact if they'd be interested in taking that work forwards and helping us to shape how we might call for dramatic urgent and bold action. Thank you so much Fran, very concise as well. So we do have some questions from the audience but we are short of time so if I could ask our respondents now to be quite concise but the first question is for you Sunna, can you talk about the social structures of the communities living in the Sunderbent Islands? Have you got many Dalit or indigenous or religious minority in that region and how would you suggest we address the power imbalances within those social structures in tackling these issues? Thanks. There's already very good questions already we have that already we have talked about this social structure that there is like socio-economic structure I can say socio-economic structure that would be a good term but maybe so that there are most of the major two livelihood options one is agriculture another is fishing so this is totally based on natural resources and social structure there there are we have in India we have caste situation there are ramen there are other castes also so and in terms of indigenous population I can tell you there are Santas we have indigenous population in Sunderbent around around 10 percent of the population are indigenous population so if we go with the economic situation of different social category like in Sunderbent we have boat owners we have hotel owners we have agricultural family we have fishing family or fishing farmer whatever so if you go with the economic situation that fishing or crab petting or or or crab collection or this this is the very very lucrative lucrative activity for them because annually they are getting around 76 to 80,000 INR they are getting and if they are doing some agricultural activity I can say one thing that 50 percent of the agricultural they are basically the agricultural worker they don't have any land 50 percent of population they don't have any land also so they are basically the agricultural worker and and they are they are getting annually around 50,000 to 60,000 money INR so this is the economic situation and and other caste like other other other status of the population like boat owners and the hotel owners they will get some more money and if we if we come already to talk about the power game there is the power game also there is a power game because but how the trafficking agents comes into the picture because there is a power game because if the the the news that the family is getting having some problem in the poverty so the news comes from this maybe the some some other other other families so that that is the that is the case the power game the the persons who are sitting in the the top side of the economic situation so they are basically treating this poor families just like the regional slave slave population so this is there is also the power game there is also power game thank you fantastic thanks thanks so much I think it's very it's very useful to understand something around the the the sort of power balances and the social structures and actually similar questions come up for um James and Enoch for us to understand the exclusion and the systemic oppression the kind of historical discrimination that that needs to be addressed in the context that you're you're talking about I wonder if one of you would like to just give us uh sort of 60 60 seconds on on on that all right so on the issue of power balance and the social structure um in northern Ghana the society is basically and most part of Ghana the society is basically structured in such a way that women do not have um do not participate or participate or take decisions especially relating to farming and here is the case the communities that these girls come from are mainly farming communities the land belongs to the men the men takes their decision regarding farming even if there are irrigation facilities for dry season farming it is done by the men the women only provide labor and whatever happens is the so progressive of the the men so in this perspective women and young girls are quite removed from decision making relating to farming so when they reach a certain if you look at the the quotations most of them go to junior high school that's a very critical moment of a Ghanaian child junior high school transitioning to senior high school your where your needs become clear and your parents are unable to meet them then they begin to work in order to obtain these needs and then that motivates them or forces them to migrate to migrate to the southern cities to engage in other activities that they can generate money to cater for themselves or their families um on the other aspect of exclusion a systemic operation i want to wrap up so that if james can come in from this one we can look at it from national perspective even starting from the prehistoric i mean the colonial days the british government had a policy of not providing enough infrastructure in education for the northern part of the country so that that part of the country will become the labor reserve of the country so that is a bit of historic and the recent colonial governments have not also been doing enough in terms of vision of job opportunities and infrastructure to to to support the development of the place so if you look at Ghana there we have genes the five most underdeveloped are the five northern regions followed by the central region here we are challenging height is so this is just uh but maybe james can wrap it up quickly on this i think enough you you've um touched on the most essential ones and for one of time i wouldn't want to see um um anything in addition i mean i think you have first substantially theirs for that thank you fantastic thank you i think it's always um extremely important to understand the systemic um challenges that there that there are um and and indeed to be able to look at those alongside this kind of multi-layering of of climate change on top um so we've got i think probably time just for one more question i'm just whizzing through to see um what's been being dropped in the chat what we might be able to to look at i mean a lot of the questions require almost a university thesis i think to to fulfill and to answer but i think there's one that's come up here that that's quite interesting which is um listening to the drivers of trafficking and modern day slavery it seems that some of the un anti trafficking structures such as the Palermo protocol which emphasizes a law and order response which of course is necessary but is much too too limited um i wonder if somebody wants to share any any thoughts on on that uh fran are you able to to share some perspectives uh yes yeah a few thoughts on that i think um i think it's absolutely right obviously that there needs to be legal frameworks to support people who are subject to trafficking that's absolutely vital but as the person who who asked the question suggests there needs to be a much broader response to that um and the recognition that we now have that there's likely to be a vast increase in stress stress migration because of climate change um means that we also recognize that there's likely to be an increase in trafficking as a result of that as people become increasingly vulnerable and so it's going to be really important to address address that specific problem and in in order to do that i think there need to be prevention strategies put in place first and foremost but enable people to um understand their rights and also to be able to demand protection um similarly i think there needs to be efforts made to address some of the other existing vulnerabilities and inequalities that people experience so that they're stronger in a better position to be able to resist trafficking um and i think there's also a role to play for climate adaptation finance to support communities that are becoming vulnerable because of climate change to adapt to the impact of climate change where that's possible um and then there are other elements i think that could be put in place like um training and helplines for people who do become victims of trafficking to support them to claim their own rights um so essentially i think that there's we need to look at the push and pull factors that i think enok mentioned so on on the one hand there are the pull factors which is the the people who are looking for labor that they can exploit which can sometimes result in trafficking or modern slavery but the push factors and i think the push factor for us today is one of the push factors is climate change and now we're recognizing that climate change when led on top of other existing vulnerabilities can increase people's vulnerability to trafficking so we need to be looking at both of those things as well as the legal protection that the the person asked about they're fantastic that that certainly sounds like the the start of a thesis um but i think incredibly important to remember the push and the pull factors we've got to be looking at both of those and at an international and a national and local level if we're going to stand any chance of having the right kind of systemic solutions to to slavery um now we were um i think probably galloping towards towards the end now um and i i really would like to um close bring the panel to a to a close i'm afraid i'm just checking in to see if um if Cecilia is still with us because as i understand it she was called away halfway through um by her minister and so i don't think she's able to say a few closing remarks but um wave at me if you are indeed still here somewhere in the background um Cecilia but um i really would like to just thank um all of our participants um uh in the in the panel debate and but but to sort of launch now into a few final words from uh Philippe Gonzales Morales the UN special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants um just to kind of close us off before um we we begin to uh say our farewells so cue Philippe to produce this report and discuss it at this event i hope it will contribute to create public conscience about the impact of climate change on the situation of persons immobility leading under extreme circumstances to more forms of slavery as the united nation's special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants i make a call for a constant multilateral dialogue among states and international organizations and also for the participation of the civil society their advice strengthening international cooperation in the detection and monitoring of security threats related to climate change as well as the prevention precautionary preparedness mitigation and response capacities that must be provided and articulated in a timely manner on this issue migration can be a strategy for adaptation to climate change if it is carefully managed and supported by appropriate development policies and targeted investments when the limits of local adaptation are expected to be reached world plan migration to more viable areas whether internal or external can be a successful strategy for people to move to areas of low risk and increased opportunity a strong enabled environment for migration is needed supported by direct incentives such as training and job creation programs strategies that support internal migration must safeguard not only the resilience of those who move but also that of those in the communities of origin and destination consequently countries will need to take a proactive and long-term planning approach to include climate induced migrants in overall growth and development strategies understand migration as a solution to climate change while offering opportunities for adaptation to the latter all the components involved in the issue must be observed we must abandon the idea of migration being understood as a last resort states need to develop legal migration channels in the form of visas humanitarian corridors or the evolution of visa requirements for population in vulnerable situations for environmental reasons in addition it will be important that these measures are articulated with our strategies such as city planning the development of public policies for social integration education health among others a holistic approach is therefore indispensable to achieve a solution on this matter and ensure that protection of the human rights of the person's immobility and prevent them from becoming victims of moral slavery as a recognition of the importance of this matter my mandate is working in the preparation of a report on climate change and migration to be presented next year to the United Nations Human Rights Council a public call for contributions to this report will be made soon I look forward to receive such contributions from states the society international agencies and our stakeholders thank you very much thank you so much and now if I could ask Cecilia to say a few words on behalf of the ldc group thank you very much Claire again I thank you for providing a space a space for us to discuss this very important issue and as a final reflection I think it is important that we bear in mind that we are talking about human lives and after all kind of slavery and after all the colonization processes we all have been true for decades in the 21st century we cannot let that happen responsibility needs to be taken I think the international climate community needs to accept the link between climate change and slavery and more the international community needs to accept the solutions to this problem that passes by funding adaptation properly I once again I would like to remind once I had a meeting with donors and I was very surgical and I said if you do what you have to do in future you will not need to deal with LDCs anymore so if we reflect on this there are responsibilities the funding for adaptation and from other forums and sites funding for development are important here it's climate change adaptation is there all of us can see that almost nothing is being done in what refers funding and there are no more ways to show that it's all crystal clear so responsibility needs to be taken from those who knows they have the responsibility to do so I thank you again all for this opportunity thank you very much thank you thank you so very much Cecilia and I'm glad your minister spared you for a few moments just to give us those final words so I really I really just leave me to say thank you to absolutely everybody who's been involved in this to Rita thank you so much for the work that you've done in leading all of this through as the senior researcher on this work to Somnath to James to Enoch to Fran and indeed to our keynote speakers and finally last but by no means least to my co-host Claire and I think we just really wanted to make the commitment from anti-slavery's perspective and from IED's perspective that we're on this we're going to be working to continue to raise these issues and push them forward Claire can I leave you the final word thanks so much Jasmine and just to say I'm delighted to see the number of people in the chat for this event keen to stay engaged I think there's clearly something here so we can all work together on really raising this up the agenda so thank you all for joining us and thanks Jasmine for a great partnership bye all