This project will promote increased use of forced labor research in policy and programmatic decision-making to help eliminate forced labor around the world. The project will support achievement of this objective by increasing knowledge through robust research on forced labor in the textile and garment sector and engaging decision makers and stakeholders to use this knowledge to take actions against forced labor.

In support of Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative (W-GDP), focusing on women and adolescent girls, EQUAL will increase job quality and safety, create opportunities for economic participation, and address gaps in social programs to reach remote and impoverished families in Mexico.

Senderos is a project in Mexico that involves multiple stakeholders in government, the private sector, and civil society working together to improve adherence to international standards on child labor, forced labor, occupational safety and health (OSH), and other acceptable conditions of work in the sugarcane and tobacco sectors in Jalisco and Nayarit.

In support of the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative, EQUAL/Colombia aims to reduce the risk of child labor, forced labor, and other violations of labor rights by empowering vulnerable women and girls working in the production of unrefined brown sugar (panela) and the cut flowers sector and promoting a better understanding of labor rights.

This project seeks to raise the visibility and understanding of child labor in agriculture in Argentina and contribute to improving the tools and coordination among government entities, the private sector, and civil society to confront the problem.

This project works to build the capacity of labor and agriculture stakeholders to more effectively implement the National Action Plan on Child Labor and coordinate efforts to combat child labor. It utilizes existing structures at the national, provincial, and municipal levels to expand coordination to reduce the risk that children will be harmed by performing hazardous work in agriculture.

This project works to improve the implementation of social compliance systems that promote acceptable conditions of work and the prevention and reduction of child and forced labor in palm oil supply chains in Colombia and Ecuador. It will also disseminate best practices in social compliance systems in these and other palm oil producing countries, particularly Brazil and Peru.

This project enhances governments’ capacity to create, implement, and monitor the application of labor laws by working with ministries of labor, labor judges, and other judicial labor authorities. It seeks to use data collected from labor inspections to identify gaps that facilitate violations and to support legal reforms to address them. The project also uses data analytics to identify and combat labor inspection corruption, waste and inefficiency, and identifies regional inspection units in need of training and capacity building.

The ATLAS project seeks to build the capacity of host governments to more effectively combat child labor, forced labor, and human trafficking by helping them strengthen their laws and regulations, improve their capacities to enforce them, and strengthen coordination between law enforcement and social protection entities.

Workers and civil society organizations help to supplement and support government labor law enforcement efforts by proactively identifying potential labor violations and filing justiciable complaints with the appropriate authorities.  This project works in U.S. trade partner countries to improve labor law enforcement, as well as compliance with labor-related U.S. trade provisions, by improving the involvement of workers and civil society organizations in this process.