Submission to the Standing Group on Atrocity Crimes
December 17, 2025
The Coalition to End Forced Labour in the Uyghur Region welcomes the Standing Group on Atrocity Crimes’ review of the UK Government’s approach to preventing and responding to international atrocity crimes. This submission focuses on the question relating to the reform of modern slavery and business supply chain legislation in the UK. Forced labour of Uyghur and other Turkic and Muslim-majority people as imposed by the government of China has enabled, and been enabled by, other egregious human rights violations that may amount to crimes against humanity and genocide.
We recommend that the UK Government adopt an import ban that establishes a rebuttable presumption of forced labour on goods from a region or on specific product groups from specified countries or regions where there is state-imposed forced labour, such as all products made in part or in whole in the Uyghur Region, unless proven otherwise by the importer. This reversal of the burden of proof would require companies and retailers to map their entire supply chain to identify suppliers that are located in the Uyghur Region, have operations there, benefit from state subsidies or state-provided labour, or source from the Region, and end those business relationships.
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