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Coffee Watch and International Rights Advocates’ acknowledges the Brazilian government’s recent statement regarding forced labor in the coffee sector as well as the responses by ADERE and by the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC).
Unfortunately, the Brazilian government’s communiqué does not confront the scale of the forced labor crisis in coffee. Instead, it minimizes well‑documented abuses and appears to direct energy toward discrediting civil society rather than protecting workers.
Evidence of slavery, trafficking, and labor abuse in Brazilian coffee is not limited to the recent Business & Human Rights Resource Centre report, nor to the KnowTheChain study that the government selectively cites. The evidence of forced labor in Brazilian coffee is widespread, repeated, and overwhelming — documented for decades by Brazilian labor inspectors, the Ministério Público do Trabalho, Repórter Brasil, Comissão Pastoral da Terra (CPT), academic researchers, Brazil’s own “Lista Suja,” Oxfam, Al Jazeera, Reuters, and Conectas, to name but a few. The evidence spans decades and reveals rampant industry abuse as well as persistent government failure to curb this abuse.
By the government’s own admission, coffee is consistently among the top drivers of slavery‑like conditions in the country. This is not a marginal problem. It is systemic.
Yet the government’s response in this statement is to question the sample size of international studies and warn about “geopolitical risks,” rather than address the brutal reality faced by workers.
What the sector needs is not defensive rhetoric. It needs:
- A living wage for the workers who produce one of Brazil’s most iconic exports
- Independent, democratic unions with real power to organize and bargain
- Mandatory human rights due diligence for Brazilian coffee companies
- Massively expanded labor inspections, given that they have reached only 0.1% of Brazil’s coffee farms — a level of oversight so minimal it effectively guarantees impunity.
Brazil’s coffee industry is one of the most profitable agricultural sectors in the world. Yet the state’s enforcement footprint is so small that most abuses will never be detected, let alone remedied. This is well-known in cattle and soy but it is just as true in coffee.
To suggest that civil society is the problem — rather than the slavery, trafficking, debt bondage, and exploitation that has been documented — is to minimize the suffering of workers and to shield an industry that has benefited from their vulnerability for far too long.
Brazil has every reason to be proud of the inspectors and prosecutors who have risked their lives to combat slavery. But the government’s statement does not honor that legacy. It protects the image of the abusive, exploitative sector instead of the rights of the people who harvest its coffee.
We urge the Brazilian government to redirect its efforts toward solving the problem, not silencing the messengers and pandering to agribusinesses with crimes in their supply chains.
We urge the ILO – as a member of The National Coffee Roundtable – to repudiate the statement that it appears to have signed on to.
We urge the CNC (National Coffee Council), CECAFÉ (Council of Coffee Exporters of Brazil), ABICS (Brazilian Association of the Soluble Coffee Industry), and ABIC (Brazilian Association of the Coffee Industry) to spend their valuable time and energy eradicating slavery, human trafficking, union busting, deforestation, and other widespread problems from their coffee supply chains rather than publishing such deplorable statements.
Workers deserve more than institutional defensiveness and a culture of entrenched abuse. They deserve justice, dignity, and an industry willing to confront the full truth of what is happening in its fields – as well as a government willing to fight for workers and guarantee them a better life.