Opinion | Slavery on the high seas: how Southeast Asia can end forced labour on fishing boats
- Slave labour renders business models in the Southeast Asian seafood sector not only unsustainable but dangerous
- An industry-wide no-slavery policy, greater business accountability and better rehabilitation of rescued workers show the way forward
Business leaders like to talk about business models. Big businesses, in particular, spend a lot of time and money tracking profit and loss, costs and incomes, across often uncountable business units around the world. Generally, twisting a business model into shape to maximise profits is considered the core of good business.
I have seen the eyes of bonded, enslaved and trafficked individuals too many times. The fear, the exhaustion, the sense of hopelessness. It’s a glimpse into a broken life.
These men, women and children are not units on a spreadsheet or mere numbers in a glossy business report. They are real human beings, with families, a childhood, aspirations, and memories.
We have rescued or rehabilitated almost 5,000 former fishermen working in Southeast Asian waters who had been enslaved by fishing boat owners. We see many migrants in our home country of Thailand who have been lured by the promise of hard-to-find work and who do not have the protection of local labour laws or police.