Modern Slavery is an umbrella term designed to capture a range of unfreedoms prohibited in international human rights laws. It includes human trafficking and forced labour.

Modern Slavery Laws build on global governance initiatives such as the United Nations Global Compact that are designed to spur due diligence for labour rights in global supply chains. Multinational corporations (MNCs) have adopted an array of due diligence or corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, such as supplier codes of conduct, certification schemes and social auditing, to address violations of labour rights in their supply chains. Modern slavery laws are a form of “new” governance, responsive regulation or reflexive law that build upon private CSR initiatives undertaken by some MNCs by imposing minimum obligations on all MNCs to adopt CSR measures. Their goal is to stimulate and steer self-regulation by social institutions. Modern slavery laws differ in terms of coverage, the form, content and stringency of disclosure requirements, and whether or not auditing is required. At the same time as these laws are proliferating, evidence of the ineffectiveness of CSR mechanisms is mounting, and attention is turning away from top-down corporate led-initiatives to bottom-up worker-driven forms of corporate social responsibility.