AB：投资者如何检测和破坏现代奴隶制

当我们总结National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month，我们认识到这个社会问题仍然存在于世界各地。观看AB社会研究和参与总监的视频，萨斯基亚·科特·奇克（Saskia Kort-Chick）解释了投资者如何从意识开始，以及如何将意识转化为行动：https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Pg9r9LPgAU

通常，公司很乐意谈论诸如董事会成分或薪酬计划之类的事情。如今，大多数公司都知道其碳足迹，并且很愿意谈论这一点。但是，对于一家公司来说，就其运营或供应链中可能与人权有关的问题进行公开对话要困难得多。多年来，我们一直在与现代奴隶制问题的公司互动。我们在120多次会议上与19家公司订婚。

There’s a couple of lessons that we’ve learned. So let me start off. In 2021, we included modern slavery in our thematic engagements campaign. There were a couple of objectives as part of that. We worked with investments analysts from the various actively managed equity portfolios and a number of fixed-income analysts. They picked their own target companies who they wanted to focus on to have a conversation around their modern slavery practices. What we learned is that companies with high-risk exposure generally have a better understanding of the risk and are better at managing that. Those companies with less obvious exposure are generally less aware of the risk.

Generally, companies do not want to be associated with human rights abuses either in their own operations or in their supply chain. What we have found, that if you communicate clearly on what your expectations are and not try to single out a particular company and clearly give indication of where you think a company can improve, we have had very positive engagements, and we actually have seen companies making progress on some of the issues that we’ve asked them to take action on. I think in the markets, there’s generally a misunderstanding that modern slavery- and human rights–related risks are not necessarily material.

我们那里的观点可能略有不同。例如，如果您看到与现代奴隶制有关的事件驱动的ESG风险，则有很多例子，您可以看到它对公司产生了影响。例如，有一个金融机构未能报告与儿童剥削有关的大量交易。结果，首席执行官和主席最终都离开了。在大流行期间，许多橡胶手套生产商在美国被进口禁令击中。这对公司本身以及更广泛的医疗行业产生了影响。

Then finally, there have been plenty of examples in the apparel industry that have hit the news lines. If you look at all of those event-driven issues, they do have an impact on companies, and we as active investors are trying to understand these issues. Looking at how companies are managing these issues, we can take that as a proxy for supply chain management more broadly. From the engagements that we’ve had with companies, managing their supply chain well, including modern slavery-related risks, may lead to a more flexible supply chain and may lead to more supply chain stability. All of these factors combined we take into consideration when we’re assessing how companies are managing modern slavery-related risk and how that can impact the financials of a company.

We think that the financial industry can play a role in detecting and disrupting modern slavery. It obviously starts with raising awareness. People need to understand that this social evil still persists. Then it needs to be tied into action, and there’s plenty of action that we can take. For example, we’ve tried to take this through engagement, but we also recognize that this is a big socio-economic issue, and we cannot do it alone. So there’s plenty of industry initiatives that focus on collaborative engagements, as well as investor statements that ask investing companies to provide more transparency. You can also think about collaborating with NGOs and expert organizations both for action as well as raising awareness internally.

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