Remote sensing used to tackle modern slavery in Greece

Leading the study, Nottingham’s Rights Lab combined different data sources and methods to build a set of criteria measuring the extent of labour exploitation in a settlement. They then validated the criteria with a government agency and a non-governmental organisation (NGO) involved in fighting labour exploitation. The ESRC-funded study has been published in the journal of Production and Operations Management.

Described by Nottingham as a ‘world-first in the humanitarian sector’, the method has been used to successfully address labour exploitation in areas where strawberries are harvested through a combination of earth observation data with operations management techniques. 

In May 2013, three local field guards shot and injured 30 Bangladeshi migrant workers in the strawberry fields of Nea Manolada. In March 2017, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled that the workers had been subjected to forced labour and that Greece had violated Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights by not preventing human trafficking of irregular migrant workers.