When Mahendra Pandey was a teenager, he traveled from his home country of Nepal to Saudi Arabia for work. He said his passport was confiscated upon arrival, and he was forced to work until his three-year contract ended. Today, more than 20 years later, Pandey works as senior manager of forced labor and human trafficking at Humanity United, a philanthropic organization focused on combating forced labor, and he’s looking to businesses to play their part.
“When we talk about this, we talk to sustainability people who sit in London or New York City and who have degrees from Princeton and Harvard, but those people don’t tell the supervisors and factory managers in Malaysia what needs to change,” he said. “There’s a huge gap.”
