Reflections on Modern Slavery: The Role of Coaches and the Profession

A few weeks ago I attended an AoEC-organised webinar on the topic of modern slavery. The AoEC has made a commitment to being part of the international campaign to end modern slavery, which has included their provisioning of training for professionals working in this space.

The webinar contributors included my colleague at the University of York Tomoya Obokata, who is the outgoing UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery; Irin Akkas Rupa at Justice and Care Bangladesh; and Daniel Ogunniyi at the Wilberforce Institute and Law School at the University of Hull.

I left thinking the scale of the crisis is dire, but there is hope. Much of the webinar discussion focused on regulatory responses.

I mentioned some thoughts from a book I've recently finished reading: ‘Ethical Leadership’ by Aidan McQuade, who is former Director of Anti-Slavery International. It describes how slavery is able to flourish on account of vast global spaces where the rule of law is weak or non-existent. Business, corporates operating within and across these spaces find themselves with enormous opportunity to exploit people, cut costs etc. with little or no chance of accountability. The nature of the void seems to mean resisting opportunity and doing the right thing falls on a personal ethic, which is a frightening.

I continue to wonder what the responsibility of coaches, and, collectively, the profession, to refrain from complicity where business decision-making might be associated with systemic human rights violations or suffering.

More than that, how far are coaches effectively challenging decision making that is corrupt, amoral, immoral and harmful (whether legal or illegal)? Challenge strikes me as an embodiment of the professional coaching bodies’ ethical codes. Yet we just need to look at the headlines today to see that 'business as usual' is often built on silence. How can coaching and coaches embrace a role as ethical partners in a global system?