Next week, a public hearing in Brazil’s Câmara dos Deputados will explore the issue of modern slavery in the country’s coffee sector. The Human Rights Commission and the Labor Commission have jointly convened the gathering, scheduled for Wednesday, 15 June at 2 pm in meeting room #9. The event was organized by the Articulação dos Empregados Rurais do Estado de Minas Gerais, a network of rural trade unions in Brazil’s leading coffee-producing state.
It will feature testimony from our partners at Repórter Brasil that is based in part on research into isolated cases of modern slavery in the coffee sector that was financed by CRS and allies including Allegro Coffee Company, CRS Fair Trade, Fair Trade USA, Equal Exchange, Farmer Brothers Coffee, Keurig Green Mountain, Lutheran World Relief, the Specialty Coffee Association of America, United Farm Workers and UTZ. That research informed this Policy Brief, which we released in April and whose key findings we presented at Re:co Symposium in Atlanta.