In a veiled rebuke of China's crackdown of Uyghurs minorities, trade ministers from the Group of Seven (G7) countries have agreed to eliminate forced labour and shared their concern over state-sponsored practice on minorities.
"We affirm that there is no place for forced labour in the rules-based multilateral trading system," the ministers said on Friday in a joint statement following their virtual meeting.
The ministers also expressed their concern over "state-sponsored forced labour of vulnerable groups and minorities."
"We acknowledge that on any given day there are about 25 million people subject to forced labour worldwide, and call on all countries, multilateral institutions and businesses to work together, including with survivors of forced labour, to eradicateforced labour from global supply chains," the statement read.
The ministers also recalled the 2021 G7 May Trade Communique and the 2019 Report on ending child labour, forced labour and human trafficking in global supply chains by the ILO, OECD, International Organization for Migration (IOM) and UN International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF).
China has been rebuked globally for cracking down on Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang by sending them to mass detention camps, interfering in their religious activities and subjecting them to abuse including forced labour.
Beijing, on the other hand, has vehemently denied that it is engaged in human rights abuses against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang while reports from journalists, NGOs and former detainees have surfaced, highlighting the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) crackdown on the ethnic community.
Many international brands, including H&M, Nike and Ralph Lauren, have also gone on record to declare their products are not made from Xinjiang cotton.
( With inputs from ANI )
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