Forced Labour Intelligence
Understand forced labour risk before you have to explain it.
Practical, sourced resources for procurement, compliance, legal and ESG teams: what forced labour looks like in supply chains, how to assess it, how to hear from workers, and how the main regulations differ. Written by Libera Europe from primary sources — not legal advice.
Last reviewed 5 October 2026
A reading path
Forced labour fundamentals
Definitions, the ILO framework and the indicators that make an abstract risk specific.
Guide
The ILO's 11 indicators of forced labour
Each indicator explained for supply-chain teams, with what it can look like and where to look.
Guide
Recruitment fees and debt bondage
How worker-paid fees become debt that binds, and how to assess labour-provider risk.
Guide
Passport and identity-document retention
Why holding workers' documents is a forced labour indicator and how to check for it.
Risk assessment & ILO indicators
How to prioritise suppliers, sites and labour providers, and what to look for.
Guide
Forced labour risk assessment: method and template
A step-by-step method and a copyable assessment template for supplier prioritisation.
Reference
Libera's scoring methodology
The weighting and sources behind Libera's structural risk indicators.
Reference
Forced labour data sources
The public datasets Libera draws on, and their limits.
Worker voice & access
Why the people closest to the risk matter, and how to know whether they can reach you.
Investigation & remediation
What happens after a signal: human review, cases, evidence and effectiveness.
EUFLR, CSDDD, UFLPA & modern slavery laws
Different legal regimes with different mechanics, explained side by side.
Guide
EU Forced Labour Regulation: 2027 preparation guide
What Regulation (EU) 2024/3015 does, the timeline, and a preparation path.
Comparison
EUFLR vs CSDDD vs UFLPA vs modern slavery acts
Four different regimes compared: who they bind, what they require, how they bite.
Overview
CSDDD and forced labour due diligence
The EU due diligence directive and where forced labour fits.
Overview
UFLPA screening
The US rebuttable presumption and Entity List screening.
Overview
LkSG (German Supply Chain Act)
The German due diligence law and its complaints procedure.
Procurement & supplier due diligence
Tools and workflows for teams putting due diligence into practice.
Key terms
- Forced labour
- Work exacted under the menace of a penalty and not offered voluntarily (ILO Convention No. 29).
- Indicator
- An observable sign that forced labour may be present. A prompt to investigate, not a finding.
- Debt bondage
- Work demanded as a means of repaying a debt the worker cannot realistically clear.
- Labour provider
- An agency, recruiter or sub-agent that supplies workers to a site.
- Worker access verification
- A dated check that a reporting channel was reachable at agreed points — not a record of who used it.
- Remediation effectiveness
- Evidence that a remedy worked for affected workers, beyond the supplier's attestation.
Editorial standards
Every resource cites primary sources (EUR-Lex, the European Commission, the ILO, US DHS, CBP and DOL, UK and Australian government sources). We do not publish invented statistics or proprietary benchmarks; where we have no data, we say so. Risk indicators are prompts for human review, not findings. Software supports documentation; it does not guarantee compliance.