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"Example: Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region – Allegations of Forced Labour
EOS has engaged on forced labour in supply chains following detailed and credible reports of alleged human rights abuses of ethnic minorities from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (“XUAR”). The Chinese government denies any ill treatment. In 2020 the US issued a Xinjiang Supply Chain Business Advisory cautioning companies about the risks of supply chain links to entities that engage in human rights abuses, including forced labour, in the XUAR and elsewhere in China. The US Commerce Department also added more Chinese companies that it said were implicated in human rights violations and abuses in connection with the XUAR, to the US economic blacklist1 . Blacklisted firms cannot buy goods and technology from US companies without US government approval. We engaged with one US manufacturer of farming machinery to learn how these sanctions impacted the company. We asked how it would comply with the sanctions and how it applied its human rights policy to customers and the use of its products, as its policy only referred to oversight of human rights in the supply chain. The company said that it would comply with sanctions but was still working through how to address the issue of conducting due diligence on its customers. We followed up by sharing resources on how to approach human rights in high-risk areas, including sharing the UNGP reporting framework. We sought clarity on how the company would expand its human rights policy to include customers and product use, and how it would disassociate responsibly from business relationships potentially connected to a region. We also wrote to some of the companies mentioned in an Australian Strategic Policy Institute report issued in March 2020 that alleged human rights abuses of the Uyghurs and other ethnic minority citizens from the far west region of Xinjiang2 . The report listed 83 global brands as customers of factories where Uyghurs were allegedly being forced to work. We requested more information from the companies about the due diligence that had been carried out to determine if there were any indications of forced labour in their value chains. We asked if the companies had found any evidence of this, and what action had been taken, given the relative lack of opportunity for leverage or provision of remedy in the region. We also recommended that companies use the UNGP reporting framework and consider responsible disassociation or using alternative providers where necessary. For 2021, we have identified other companies that could be implicated in this issue. One of the most progressive responses came from a fashion retailer, which confirmed that it had no Tier 1 or 2 production in Xinjiang and had stopped sourcing cotton from Xinjiang after the Better Cotton Initiative suspended its licensing of cotton from the region in April 2020. The company also contacted all its suppliers in China highlighting that labour programmes where ethnic minority workers were taken to work in factories in China were regarded as forced labour. Subsequently, the company concluded that there was a heightened risk, and as a consequence it ended its business relationship with a mill in another province, which was owned by a yarn producer mentioned in the report."