Accounting for modern slavery risk in the time of COVID-19: challenges and opportunities

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine how the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic affects corporate modern slavery accounting, auditing and accountability, and how a business can take advantage of this situation to ensure a more robust and effective modern slavery response in the long-term. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on recent literature and available statistics about modern slavery in the context of COVID-19 comment is provided on the challenges and opportunities for researchers and business. Findings Given the additional invisibility of modern slavery in a COVID-19 environment as victims move into unemployment and back into vulnerable positions where they are exploited the challenge is how accounting, auditing and accountability can help business break this cycle. Capabilities for business to track and trace victims of modern slavery will be reduced because of the pandemic. Opportunities exist for gathering data and building internal awareness about the problem of modern slavery in supply chains and to reassess operational risk and investment in modern slavery reduction. With the pause in external reporting opportunity exists to obtain views of external stakeholders. Research limitations/implications Because of the relatively short period of the COVID-19 pandemic to date, numeric data on impacts are largely unavailable. Originality/value This is the first paper to consider the challenges and opportunities of COVID-19 on accounting for modern slavery in business. Directions for future research are also considered.