A Critical Legal Study on the Policy of Migrant Workers and Elimination of Forced Labor

Principle Investigator：Yu-Fan Chiu, Associate Professor, & Wen-Chen Chang, Professor, School of Law, NYCU.

When Taiwan enacted and promulgated Labor Standards Law in 1984, we referred to the International Labor Organization's Convention concerning the Abolition of Forced Labor, and stipulated Article 5 of Labor Standards Law："Employers shall not use violence, coercion, detention or other illegal methods to force laborers to engage in labor,” and impose criminal penalties on violators. Enforcement Act of International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), which came into force on December 10, 2009, also attaches great importance to the prevention of human trafficking and the strengthening of human rights protection. "National Action Plan on Business & Human Rights (NAP)" published by Executive Yuan in 2020 and Article 1, Paragraph 2 of the Company Law both ask companies not to cause or contribute to human rights violations. However, in recent years, the issue of forced labor on foreign fishermen or foreign students shows that the policy to eliminate forced labor needs to be strengthened. Therefore, this study expects to study the legal system and implementation status of forced labor elimination in Taiwan and to propose legal and political suggestions as a reference for law revision or policy in the future. Multinational Enterprises’ supply chain may not only impact virtually all internationally recognized rights, but also inflict severe harms upon human rights. As a key mid-stream participant to the global supply chain, Taiwan is the home state to both perpetrators and victims of human rights violations. While Taiwan currently has no regulation on supply chain human rights responsibility, EU, Germany and leading countries of the world have made legislative in regard of legal regulation of multinational enterprises’ supply chain for human rights responsibility. This study aims to explore the force labor in supply chains and provide guidance for provisions on supply chain human rights due diligence and states’ regulation obligations.