The world’s solar panel industry is still powered by Uyghur forced labor

September 14, 2023 | The China Project | By Ruth Ingram

“The UFLPA needs to be strictly enforced,” Louisa Greve, the director of global advocacy for the Uyghur Human Rights Project, told The China Project. “Even the industry association in the U.S. has been calling on the private sector since October 2020 to change their supply chains without delay, at least in their public messaging. Is three years not enough?”

Greve added that “partial engagement” with Xinjiang was not good enough: “No profits from forced labor are acceptable,” she said.

Energy companies should conduct businesses in compliance with their own ethics policies as well as the law: “Not only the UFLPA but the German due diligence law and the forthcoming EU due diligence law,” she said.

“If they can’t source from a genocidal region, it’s up to them to find new sources,” Greve said, urging companies to lobby Western governments for policy changes that could pave the way for sourcing solar panels’ raw materials economically someplace outside China.

Read the full article: https://thechinaproject.com/2023/09/14/the-worlds-solar-panel-industry-is-still-powered-by-uyghur-forced-labor/