Despite international instruments on trafficking and forced labour that stipulate the importance of ensuring rightsholders can access effective remedy, instances of remediation for harms including forced, bonded, and child labour, as well as trafficking, have been rare. While remedy is also a common feature of strategies to address modern slavery adopted by nation states and multinational businesses, in practice workers who have been subject to severe forms of labour exploitation in global value chains (GVCs) continue to face significant obstacles to securing redress from those who have violated, or contributed to violation, of their rights.

Obstacles to remedy are multifarious and well-documented (OHCHR, 2016; ICAR et al., 2013). GVCs are complex, involving multiple actors and crossing multiple jurisdictions, rendering it challenging to assign accountability and secure appropriate remedial measures, and most legal systems have not adapted to the reality of service and production within GVCs. Even where powerful (‘lead’) companies in the value chain shape the terms of supply and working conditions and are in the same jurisdiction in which the harm arising from their actions or omissions has occurred, remedial action is often stymied by labour law systems that only allow claims against direct employers. Where claims of joint employment or accessorial liability are possible under labour law, such claims are infrequent because of the stringency of tests of control or contribution, and the costs of such litigation (Marshall et al., 2023). In rare cases where litigants are successful in their legal claims, they often struggle to secure enforcement of any court order. Where the lead company that is influencing working conditions in the value chain is in another jurisdiction to where the harm has occurred, the chances of such claims succeeding are even lower (Fudge and Mundlak, 2023). Key principles underpinning private international law – such as those pertaining to jurisdiction and choice of law – largely operate to the benefit of businesses rather than those affected by their activities.

Chapter 5 shifts focus to the impacts of the regime complex – particularly financial and technical assistance (utility modifier and capacity-building mechanisms) coupled with policy advising (social learning mechanism) – on the removal of barriers to geothermal development in Indonesia. The chapter provides a political economy analysis of the domestic actors and interests involved in the energy sector in Indonesia, and then recounts the history of geothermal development in Indonesia with a focus on the impacts of the clean energy regime complex on the dynamics of barriers to geothermal development. This analysis reveals that the clean energy regime complex, through financial and technical assistance combined with policy advising, is critical to impacting geothermal development in Indonesia by filling gaps in financing for high-risk exploration and early-stage development. This chapter provides insights on how the regime complex impacted domestic politics and geothermal barriers despite the absence of a legally binding framework. It also sheds light on the narrow pathway of change in the face of domestic political barriers and energy security concerns affecting political will.

The construction sector holds great economic importance worldwide. It is recognized as the ‘biggest non-agricultural industry in the capitalist world’ (Srivastava and Sutradhar, 2016: 2). It stands as the foremost consumer of raw materials globally, and it was forecast to achieve growth of 4.2 per cent annually from 2018 to 2023 in terms of market value (Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition and International Finance Corporation, 2018). Furthermore, its interdependence with various sub-sectors – such as cement, iron, steel, and brick production, and service sectors such as education, finance, or health – makes it an important part of numerous global value chains (GVCs). Indeed, major construction companies often serve as lead firms in both product value chains and human supply chains (Gordon, 2017; Crane et al., 2019; Barkay et al., 2024).

This interdependence between the construction sector and numerous sub-sectors involves both vertical and horizontal intersections within diverse value chains. The scale of the processes, phases, and stakeholders involved in the construction process within these diverse value chains – such as design, production, conversion of raw materials into manufactured products, and on-site construction – highlights the sector's economic significance (Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition and International Finance Corporation, 2018: 2). Nevertheless, the sheer number of processes, combined with ‘the fixed-term, project-based nature of relationships along the supply chain’ contributes to a highly fragmented and multi-tiered structure in the sector (Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition and International Finance Corporation, 2018: 2). Construction projects are not only characterized by significant variability in type and scale, ranging from buildings to major civil engineering projects and large-scale infrastructures, but are also at the mercy of ‘local conditions, purpose, regulations, codes, and resources that evolve with time’ (Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition and International Finance Corporation, 2018: 6). Therefore, to understand the complexities of labour exploitation within construction projects, a highly nuanced analysis of GVCs is required.