In a new report, modern slavery experts detail the areas of risk for universities and set out practical steps for institutions to tackle them.
The report includes a new multi-part blueprint, which assigns responsibility to all parts of the campus — from procurement and legal, to estates and HR. The team behind the report, including Dr Lisa Carroll as the University of Nottingham’s Commercial Director, hopes that this new action plan will help all universities, including Nottingham, to do everything in their power to make their campuses free of modern slavery.
To help design this blueprint, the researchers analysed 160 UK universities and the resulting report highlights three main areas of exploitation risk: staff, students, and procurement.
The report set out recommendations for mitigation of the three main areas of risk and also calls for further focus on research into modern slavery as well as engagement by universities with their local communities. This can include partnering with NGOs to deliver training and outreach, offering office space to local antislavery NGOs and supporting local modern slavery multi-agency partnerships - which are now in place in most areas of the UK and address modern slavery in their locality.
The report, The Slavery-Free Campus – a Blueprint: 38 practical steps for universities to tackle modern slavery, can be accessed here.
