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SINCE FOUNDING A GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS ORGANISATION AT 18, GRACE FORREST HAS BECOME A MAJOR FORCE IN THE MOVEMENT TO END MODERN SLAVERY AND IS NOW THE YOUNGEST UNITED NATIONS ASSOCIATION OF AUSTRALIA GOODWILL AMBASSADOR

Talk politics at dinner – with your friendships intact.

“ WHEN I WAS 15, I went on a school trip to Nepal and spent time with girls who had been rescued from child sex trafficking. I couldn’t believe girls as young as three could endure the worst human rights abuses imaginable and be denied their right to an education. I began to think I’d start my own orphanage or do something similar. When I revisited the children two years later, I found they had all been re-trafficked by the institution itself, a practice that is all too common in corrupt segments of the orphanage sector.

That really shifted my perspective of the world and my place in it, and made me realise that we could not turn our backs on these children or others like them. As soon as I started pulling the thread – trying to find out how far-reaching it was, what other kinds of extreme exploitation exist – I learnt that human trafficking was just one part of modern slavery. It was then that I founded the Walk Free Foundation with my father [philanthropist Andrew Forrest], with the aim of ending all forms of modern slavery in our lifetime.

To measure the scale of the problem, Walk Free launched the Global Slavery Index, which is now the world’s leading research on the issue. It found that slavery exists on a scale that is unprecedented; there are more slaves in the world today than any other time in human history. We’ve estimated that 40.3 million people around the world are still living in slavery.

Modern slavery doesn’t just refer to forced labour. It’s is an umbrella term for a range of exploitative practices such as domestic servitude, organ trafficking, debt bondage, forced marriage, child soldiers and state-enforced labour. [Grace is pictured above in Varanasi, India, holding a baby girl who was the first person in her community to be born free from intergenerational debt bondage.]

The vast proportion of modern slaves – 71 per cent – are women and girls, because in so many places they lack basic human rights and the same legal protections as men, which makes them uniquely vulnerable. In Lebanon, I met a mother in a refugee camp who explained, in tears, that the only way to protect her 12-year-old from the risk of exploitation would be to marry her off to a much older man. Imagine being a mother faced with such a set of options.

It’s easy to think of slavery as something that just happens ‘over there’, but it is able to exist because of unethical business practices, which makes it absolutely our problem here. Each year in Australia, we import $12 billion worth of potentially slave-made products – our smartphones, clothes, chocolate and coffee. In a globalised market, supply chains are so complex it’s easy for people to be hidden and exploited. This is why we need strong, national legislation like the Modern Slavery Act, which became Australian law in November. It requires large businesses to report on the risks of modern slavery in their operations and supply chains, domestically and internationally.

The issue can seem overwhelming, but there is so much we can do by supporting brands who are doing the right thing, making more ethical choices in what we buy and getting behind movements (such as Fashion Revolution and the Good On You app) that are bringing the conversation into the mainstream and demanding that brands adhere to basic ethical standards.

Every time we buy something we have a choice to empower or possibly harm another person in the process. As consumers, we hold power and it is our responsibility to consider where our privilege intersects with someone else’s oppression. We should be demanding quality not just in the goods we buy but in the lives of the people behind them.

Through the choices we make, each of us can play a part in creating a safer world. Being aware of the challenges the world faces shouldn’t demotivate or overwhelm us, instead it should give us the confidence and determination to act. We have the tools to end slavery at our fingertips – let’s use them.

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