HPE Pacesets ICT Sector in Combating Modern Slavery

We find that HPE has established itself as an industry beacon in combating modern slavery, forced labor, and human trafficking by shifting the corporate responsibility mindset from passive compliance to active operational and technical intervention. Rather than treating human rights violations as primarily legal risks, HPE approaches the challenge systematically, leveraging a multi-pronged strategy that synthesizes advanced data analytics, strict supply chain governance, deep-tier auditing, and global policy advocacy. This comprehensive framework enables the company to address the structural vulnerabilities that allow forced labor networks to persist, earning it prominent industry accolades such as the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s Stop Slavery Award and top placement on the KnowTheChain ICT Benchmark.

Central to HPE’s strategy is the conceptualization of modern slavery as a data and visibility crisis, prompting the company to deploy its technological capabilities to bridge critical information gaps. Through initiatives such as the Global Data Partnership Against Forced Labor (GDPFL), launched in early 2025 alongside the World Economic Forum, HPE uses federated data infrastructure and agentic AI to enable stakeholders across public, private, and civil sectors to securely aggregate and analyze highly fragmented datasets, such as shipping logs and victim statements, without compromising individual data privacy.

This macro-level technological intervention is mirrored at the grassroots level through pro bono partnerships with non-profits such as Allies Against Slavery. By providing specialized expertise in AI training and cybersecurity, HPE has scaled platforms such as Lighthouse, a data ecosystem designed specifically to screen, identify, and protect victims of human trafficking.

Simultaneously, HPE enforces strict human rights governance through its 2030 Worker Empowerment goals, which transition ethical expectations into mandatory operational standards for all direct and indirect suppliers. To systematically dismantle debt bondage, HPE enforces the Employer Pays principle, explicitly banning the predatory practice of charging recruitment fees to migrant or temporary workers. This is reinforced by a zero-tolerance policy on document retention, ensuring that suppliers cannot restrict a worker’s freedom of movement or right to resign by withholding passports or identification. To ensure accountability, the enterprise mandates that suppliers implement proactive human rights training and provide workers with anonymous, trusted grievance mechanisms to report abuses without fear of retaliation.

Recognizing that exploitative labor practices are rarely visible at primary manufacturing plants, HPE focuses its investigative resources on deep-tier supply chain audits and localized due diligence. By conducting comprehensive human rights impact assessments deep within sub-tier operations, such as raw material extraction and third-party recruitment agencies, HPE targets high-risk, vulnerable populations including dispatch labor in China, foreign students in Japan, and domestic migrant workers in India.

This systemic oversight forces suppliers to mitigate their reliance on high-risk, third-party labor brokers. Beyond its own operations, HPE leverages its institutional influence to drive global legislative change, partnering with bodies like the Global Commission on Modern Slavery and Human Rights to advocate for harmonized international due diligence frameworks, thereby elevating the regulatory standards of the entire global technology sector.

Enforcing Accountability: How ICT Industry Players Operationalize Human Rights in Global Supply Chains

While the broader Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector faces ongoing criticism for deficient human rights transparency, a small coalition of prominent technology firms consistently demonstrates that rigorous supply chain accountability is operationally viable. Evaluated by independent oversight bodies such as KnowTheChain and the Thomson Reuters Foundation, companies such as HP Inc., Apple, Dell Technologies, and Intel Corporation have developed human rights frameworks that closely align with the anti-slavery standards supported by HPE. We find that these players distinguish themselves from industry cohorts by shifting from passive corporate policy toward active enforcement, structural transparency, and localized worker protection across their global production networks.

This leadership model manifests through specialized corporate strategies targeting distinct vulnerabilities within the tech supply chain. For example, HP champions structural transparency by remaining one of only four major tech entities to publicly disclose its entire first-tier supplier list with precise names and addresses, while concurrently mandating the Employer Pays principle to eradicate debt bondage among vulnerable migrant laborers. Apple focuses heavily on remedial action and worker education, compelling suppliers to pay out-of-pocket financial restitutions totaling tens of millions of dollars to hundreds of thousands of exploited workers, while enforcing native-language rights training to ensure direct access to grievance channels.

Meanwhile, hardware and component manufacturers such as Dell and Intel direct their auditing resources toward deep-tier supply chain mapping; Dell systematically traces its material dependencies past primary assembly down to specific smelters and refiners, while Intel secures virtually 100% conflict-free mineral sourcing and leverages the Responsible Business Alliance to share data that prevents predatory recruitment agencies from shifting exploited workforces between competitors.

From our perspective, independent human rights benchmarks indicate that the operational divide between this leading cohort and the rest of the ICT sector rests on three fundamental pillars: traceability, financial accountability, and structural purchasing habits. Rather than relying on vague, regionally aggregated data, these top-tier companies mandate the explicit disclosure of factory locations and raw material sources.

Furthermore, while typical industry actors merely prohibit recruitment exploitation on paper, the leading circle actively enforces financial remediation by compelling suppliers to reimburse workers whenever predatory fees are uncovered. We see that these dedicated firms address the root corporate causes of forced labor by granting suppliers long-term, 24-month forecasting windows, preventing the sudden, short-notice production spikes that routinely drive less accountable companies to inadvertently demand excessive or forced overtime from their manufacturing workforces.