-- About Equidem Research & Consulting

Equidem has a unique and compelling approach because the team is so diverse. For me, it has been essential to work with colleagues who have a depth of experience working with migrant workers – this gives our work real legitimacy.

Christine is an experienced investigator and analyst who has directed and carried out field research into human rights violations for Amnesty International in India, and in Ukraine, Turkey, India and the United States for Physicians for Human Rights. She has collaborated with Equidem since 2016.

A journalist by training, Christine has written for the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Al Jazeera, BBC Hindi, The Hindu, and USA Today. She teaches occasional classes at Syracuse University’s journalism school in upstate New York.

Her work spans strategic research and crisis response on issues including national security and torture, criminal justice reform, extractive industries, forced evictions and land rights, police brutality and violence against women. She has a particular interest in shrinking civic space as government repression of NGOs and journalists grows globally. Christine speaks English and Spanish.

“Working with Equidem was a natural fit for me. Labour rights are a critical human rights issue in an era where global supply chains are opaque and geographically dispersed,” Christine says.

Stephen Winstanley is a business and human rights specialist who has worked for ten years as a civil society advocate, lawyer, and consultant to advance the effective implementation by business of their responsibility to respect human rights. As a civil society advocate, Stephen’s work focused on frameworks for corporate accountability and responsibility ranging from a conflict minerals tracing and verification process, the materiality of human rights reporting under U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission regulations, and the effectiveness of multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) as human rights tools–including assessing the governance and implementation of MSIs such as the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI).  As a lawyer, Stephen has been involved as part of the plaintiff’s counsel team for a transnational corporate accountability litigation in Canada that alleged forced labour, slavery, and crimes against humanity at a gold and copper mine in Eritrea.

As a consultant, Stephen has assisted clients including private equity investors, start-ups, and multinational corporations with human rights due diligence, modern slavery risk assessments and transparency statements, and implementation of policies, management systems, grievance mechanisms, and remedies for human rights impacts. Projects have related to the garment manufacturing sector, the computer software/information and communications technology sector, the beauty and hygiene products sector, extractives sectors, and the infrastructure construction sector.

Stephen has lived and worked all over the globe, including: Canada, U.S.A., United Kingdom, Czech Republic, Sierra Leone, and Australia. His work has also related to the Great Lakes Region of Africa, Pakistan, Eritrea, Malaysia, West Africa, and several states in Europe. He is a lawyer licensed in New York, with a Juris Doctor and Certificate of Transnational Legal Studies from Georgetown University Law Center, and a Bachelor of Arts with Distinction from McGill University.

Norma is one of the foremost experts on migrant worker issues in the Asia-Pacific region. Co-founder of Rights Exposure, she has extensive experience carrying out advocacy on migrant worker rights issues with government and multi-lateral bodies. Norma has designed and delivered several training modules for trade unions and civil society groups in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Nepal, The Philippines and South Korea.

In partnership with the Filipino Progressive Labour Union of Domestic Workers (PLU), Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions (HKCTU) and International Domestic Workers Federation (IDWFed), Norma authored Between a Rock and a Hard Place: The charging of illegal agency fees to Filipino domestic workers in the Philippines and Hong Kong (2016).

Between 2008 and 2015, she was the Asia-Pacific Migrant Rights Researcher at Amnesty International where she produced reports on migrant labour abuse, including Bitter Harvest: Exploitation and forced labour of migrant agricultural workers in South Korea (2014); Exploited for profit, failed by governments: Indonesian migrant domestic workers trafficked to Hong Kong (2013); and False Promises: Exploitation and forced labour of Nepalese migrant workers (2011). Prior to that, she worked as Advocacy Officer at Anti-Slavery International (2007-2004) where she wrote a report on forced labour in North Korean prison camps. Norma is fluent in Korean, English and Italian, and has lived/worked in Asia for over 27 years.

Mike has extensive international research and advocacy experience relating to slavery, forced labour, trafficking, migration and refugee issues.  As Communications Manager for Anti-Slavery International (1997-2008) he authored several reports, including Arrested Development: discrimination and slavery in the 21st century (2008); Poverty, Development and the Elimination of Slavery (2007); Contemporary forms of slavery in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay (2006); and The Migration-Trafficking Nexus (2003). Since 2009 Mike has work as an expert consultant, carrying out evaluations for the UK Anti-Trafficking Monitoring Group, and the Daphne III EU project to prevent and address violence connected to workplace, especially trafficking in human beings.

Mike has provided expertise for projects to combat trafficking and forced labour in Nepal, Indonesia, South Korea and Hong Kong; written a manual on how trade unions can combat forced labour and trafficking, and an action plan to combat the forced labour of indigenous peoples in Paraguay, for the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). Mike has delivered advocacy training to a variety of clients, including ILO Asia-Pacific staff, Transparency International staff in Romania, the Consortium for Street Children in Russia, among others. He is also a lecturers for the Media and Communications Department at Goldsmiths, University of London.

She worked in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala documenting human rights violations during the civil wars (1990-1993) and was subsequently a policy analyst for the Central America Human Rights Committee (1994-1996). He has an MA in Latin American Studies from the University of London and a BA in International Relations from the University of Sussex.  

Dr. Bonny Ling is an expert on human trafficking and contemporary slavery. She is an experienced investigator and writes on human rights, migrants and business responsibilities with a focus on the Asia-Pacific. She is a strong advocate for the responsible recruitment of migrant workers. With a rich and diverse professional background in international diplomacy, Bonny has worked with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, UN Peacekeeping Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina, UN Mission in Liberia and UNESCO. In 2004, she was part of the UN legal team that worked on the Cyprus peace talks. She was also an election observer for the referendum on East Timor’s independence and also for the OSCE in the Republic of Georgia and Albania.

Bonny has a PhD from the Irish Centre of Human Rights on human trafficking and China, and she has taught human rights at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. She has been closely associated with Sciences Po Paris, Centre of International Studies at Cambridge University, Cambridge’s Institute of Criminology and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and the University of Georgia in the US in the past.

A research fellow of the Institute for Human Rights and Business, Bonny is a President Truman Scholar, Gates Cambridge Fellow and a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow, which recognises the contributions made by immigrants to American life. She consults for ECOFACT on ESG regulatory developments in Asia and is an Advisory Board Member of Human Rights at Sea. Her book chapter on the Abolition of Slavery in China has been published in a volume on studies in global slavery on Slavery and Bonded Labor in Asia, 1250–1900.