Brazil
Michael Sheridan, director of the Borderlands Coffee Project and the Coffeelands Program for Catholic Relief Services, published a multi-part series on slave labor in Brazil on the Coffeelands blog. In it, Sheridan summarizes the results of a years-long inquiry into what the modern definition of slavery is in Brazil, why it is so difficult to fully document the scope of the problem, and what tactics the country is taking to address it.
The series presents the language of Article 149, the Brazilian Penal Code law that defines slave labor and compares it to the definitions of forced labor from the International Labor Organization. Sheridan describes how modern-day slavery operates in Brazil, always from the perspective of trying to understand the practices as they take place in and around coffee estates.
The background about how “The Dirty List” in Brazil came to be, was suspended, and was reborn with a new name is a compelling read. Sheridan’s reporting and his analysis offers many insights to why the coffee industry should continue to pay attention to this ongoing story.
Read it: http://coffeelands.crs.org/2015/12/modern-slavery-in-the-coffeelands/