Modern slavery - Navitas

Human rights and modern slavery

Human rights and modern slavery has been identified as one of our 12 priority Impact topics due to the risk of its prevalence in the international education sector. We take our responsibilities to identify and mitigate risks very seriously.

What is modern slavery?

Modern slavery, also known as contemporary slavery or neo-slavery, refers to institutional slavery that continues to exist in present day society. Modern slavery refers to situations where one person has taken away another person’s freedom so they can be exploited. Freedom is taken away using threats, violence, coercion, abuse of power and/or deception, resulting in a person being unable to refuse or leave the situation. Modern slavery is one of the most serious violations of human rights.

Modern slavery information for students

Young people, including students, are at a higher risk of experiencing modern slavery. It is important to stay informed and be aware of the signs of modern slavery or human trafficking, and to know where you can get help if you or someone you know is at risk.

Read our information sheet to learn more about modern slavery and international students.

Read our information sheet

Our Modern Slavery Statement

We recently published our third Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking statement. Publishing a statement that identifies and addresses the risks of modern slavery practices in our operations and supply chains is a requirement of legislation in the UK and Australia

Read our Modern Slavery Statement

Why is Human Rights & Modern Slavery a priority for Navitas?

Research has identified that migrants who rely on third parties (such as migration agents or recruitment agents) are at higher risk of modern slavery, human trafficking and forced labour. Evidence suggests trafficking is often facilitated using student, visitor/tourist or working holiday visas.

We all need to be aware of the signs that indicate someone may be the victim of modern slavery or human trafficking so that we can take appropriate action.

What have we done so far?

Modern slavery training

Increased awareness on modern slavery and human trafficking among staff will help us to mitigate any risks in our operations and supply chain. In 2023, a short modern slavery module was rolled out to all staff in our global network of recruitment offices and all college or campus-based staff in Australia. In 2024, the training will also be rolled out for our European and North American divisions.

Modern Slavery working group

Our Modern Slavery working group was formed to lead, support and progress Navitas in the identification, assessment and mitigation of Modern Slavery risks to students during the student life cycle across the global business. The group is led by our Group Risk & Assurance Manager and has representation from across our divisions. It holds below responsibilities:

to develop a Modern Slavery action plan
to share best practice across the group
to draft annual group Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking statement
to design and implement reporting systems
to develop and share information resources for students
to contribute in the development of training material for staff and agent awareness.

Education agents

Our education agents have been identified as one of the risk areas and we continue to work towards, in areas including:

improving agent awareness on modern slavery and human trafficking risks
analysing trends through data on student behaviour and agents
strengthening our agent monitoring systems to include consideration of modern slavery and human trafficking risk indicators, such as the non-enrolment of a student
ensuring that information relating to agent behaviour is aggregated and shared globally.

Learn more about our impact

Our impact Our FY23 Impact Report Impact news