Download and read the Annual Report here.

In 2018, the Mekong Club continued to grow and to successfully expand its efforts. We consistently engaged the private sector to play a crucial role in the fight against modern slavery and launched innovative projects through strategic partnerships. Our tools and resources have been accessed and used across industries to support education, capacity building and risk assessment on modern slavery. 

We would like to thank our association members, partners, donors and supporters for their trust in our work and their openness to discuss, develop and experiment solutions to modern slavery. See a summary of The Mekong Club’s achievements below.

Some highlights from the report:

Bank Training – Identifying Suspicious Activity: In 2018, the Mekong Club trained 755 financial service professionals from over 60 banks to identify the risks of slavery. This training is tailored to the needs of the audience, ranging from frontline branch staff, to senior leadership, to risk and compliance training

Business Pledge Against Modern Slavery: This pledge represents a short anti-slavery statement, supplemented by actionable steps that take companies on a journey from understanding the problem to eventually becoming a leader in the field. Each company participating in the Pledge signs up and agrees to have its logo publicly displayed on the pledge page; identifies categories in which it’s taking action in the fight against modern slavery; tracks these categories alongside the Mekong Club; and contributes to the overall public score measuring the business community’s aggregated impact. To date, nine companies have signed up. Please see the pledge video for more details.

Moon Goal Program:The goal of the Moon Goal Program is to facilitate the process of putting in place a long-term goal for the private sector to address the issue of modern slavery within supply chains. This includes developing a website portal to link all of the relevant partners together and develop a sense of community. Please see the Stop Slavery Summit Spotlight Session and the Stop Slavery Summit White paper for additional information.

End Slavery App:This points-based app allows our community to find out exactly how their actions are helping to save people from slavery. This is a free resource that can be downloaded from the Apple Store or Google Play. Please see the End Slavery App video for more details.

eMin: Using the eMIN tool, companies can ensure increased transparency in the supply chains by creating an immutable record of a worker’s employment contract to be stored on the Ethereum blockchain. The app will be used by employment agencies and factories that directly employ workers, fitting in to existing recruitment processes. This project is a collaboration between the Mekong Club and Diginex.

ESG and Investments:The Mekong Club has launched an ESG project in an effort to increase the ESG investment based on forced labor factors. In order to achieve this goal, the Mekong Club is spearheading the standardization of the forced labor indicators for stakeholders involved in the ESG reporting and investment such as the ESG data provider, sustainable reporting agency and the asset managers. This project also strives to positively influence the forced labor practices within the private sector while providing the asset manager with a viable investment opportunity.

Best Practice Case Studies:The Mekong Club has completed four ‘Best Practice Case Study’ examples for the following companies: Standard Chartered Bank, H&M, Adidas and Intercontinental Hotels Group.

The Asia Pacific Banks Alliance Whitepaper: The Mekong Club has collaborated with the Thomson Reuters Foundation and a group of financial
institutions across Asia Pacific to produce a set of modern slavery indicators for financial services.

Contact The Mekong Club to learn more about their projects, tools and resources and on how to become a member of our business association: info@themekongclub.org.