The 2026 report by the Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (GRETA) highlights a disconnect between the international legal framework and the approach adopted by the MSA 2015 in relation to vulnerability. The idea of an ‘abuse of a position of vulnerability’ is central to how trafficking is understood under international law, as it is one of the means by which trafficking acts are committed. More importantly, the international legal framework adopts a broad understanding of abuse of vulnerability including any situation in which a person has no real and acceptable alternative but to submit to the abuse involved.
Similarly, decisions of the European Court of Human Rights have recognised the occurrence of human trafficking through subtle forms of coercion such as the abuse of economic and social vulnerability. By contrast, the MSA 2015 adopts a narrower approach, limiting the relevant ‘means’ to situations involving force, threats, or deception, or where the victim is a child, mentally or physically impaired, or connected to the perpetrator through a familial relationship. In practice, courts often consider the abuse of vulnerability as an aggravating factor as opposed to a defining feature of modern slavery.
This approach fails to reflect the lived realities of modern slavery in the UK, where multiple forms of vulnerabilities intersect to heighten exploitation. Economic pressures linked to the rising cost of living, high youth unemployment, and a hostile immigration environment intersect to push those with limited choices into insecure and exploitative work. There is an urgent need to align the UK’s legal definition of human trafficking with international standards, particularly by recognising the central role that vulnerability plays in enabling exploitation. This might go some way to cutting off the pipeline that is currently able to source situations of modern slavery in the UK.
Dr Lewis Njabulo Sibanda is a lecturer in law at The Open University.
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