For more than half a century, under the more than 50-year reign of its founder, Dr Klaus Schwab, the World Economic Forum has portrayed itself as the steward of enlightened capitalism. Its motto, “committed to improving the state of the world,” has framed countless Davos panels, policy initiatives and corporate commitments. Yet during those same decades, the Forum did not even try to eliminate hunger, misery, child labour or forced labour from the coffee, tea and chocolate consumed by the global elite who gather in Davos every January. This failure, visible even in the Forum’s own consumption, exposes the distance between rhetoric and reality.
Behind the language of purpose and progress lies an uncomfortable truth. The global business models championed by hundreds of WEF corporate members, and by the organisation itself, continue to rely on poverty, hunger, child labour and forced labour on a global scale.
Today, nearly 400 million children work worldwide. At least 140 million of them work directly or indirectly in corporate supply chains. More disturbingly still, more than 75 million children work solely for the financial benefit of roughly 2,500 WEF participants, the very companies that shape global trade, investment flows and consumption patterns. This is not an unintended by-product of globalisation. It is a structural feature of how value is created and costs are minimised.
Child labour and forced labour were meant to be eliminated by 2025 under international commitments endorsed by governments, corporations and institutions, including the World Economic Forum. That deadline has now arrived, and it has been missed. Not narrowly. Not accidentally. But comprehensively. The failure is not due to a lack of data, capital or technology. It is the result of deliberate economic choices that allow exploitation to remain profitable.
The World Economic Forum occupies a unique position in this system. Its members do not merely participate in global markets; they design them. When tens of millions of children are working in the supply chains of WEF corporations, responsibility cannot be deflected onto weak governance or distant suppliers. These supply chains exist because they deliver higher margins and lower prices.
A stark illustration of this contradiction is Norway, frequently held up as a global moral authority. Through its sovereign wealth fund, Norway is the largest investor in the world, with approximately $2.1 trillion in assets under management. Yet Norway profits from the exploitation of tens of millions of children and millions of people in forced labour by investing in hundreds of corporations that rely on child labour and forced labour to reduce costs and increase profits.
This is not merely a reputational issue. It represents a clear violation of Norway’s Constitution and of the Norwegian state’s legal obligation to protect, defend and fulfil human rights and children’s rights. When a country celebrated for its ethics profits systematically from exploitation, the problem cannot be dismissed as a failure of the Global South. It is a failure of global capitalism as structured and endorsed by institutions such as the WEF.
This contradiction is visible even within the WEF’s own leadership.
On one side stands Larry Fink, chief executive of BlackRock and WEF co-chair, whose influence over global capital allocation is unrivalled. Under his leadership, BlackRock has consistently prioritised financial returns, resisted binding human rights obligations for investors and retreated from ESG enforcement when it conflicts with profitability. The signal to markets is unmistakable. Sustainability matters until it threatens profits.
On the other side stands André Hoffmann, vice-chair of Roche and also a WEF co-chair, who has repeatedly warned that capitalism is eroding its own legitimacy. Hoffmann has been a strong advocate of the Sustainable Development Goals, long-term value creation and a redefinition of corporate purpose that places human and planetary well-being at the centre of economic decision-making. His position reflects a growing recognition that unrestrained profit-seeking is incompatible with social stability and sustainable growth.
The WEF cannot indefinitely reconcile these two visions.
Another striking contradiction at the top is embodied by Børge Brende, President of the World Economic Forum and a Norwegian national. Norway, through its sovereign wealth fund, invests in more than 9,000 corporations and uses profits generated in part from child labour and forced labour to help finance its national budget, even as the WEF claims moral leadership on sustainability and human rights.
Voluntary pledges, ESG branding and carefully curated panels have failed to dismantle business models that depend on poverty wages, child labour and forced labour. Certification schemes and corporate codes of conduct have not altered the underlying incentives that reward exploitation. As long as companies and investors can externalise human suffering while internalising profits, abuse will persist.
There is, however, another group that must confront its own role in this failure. The thousands of leading journalists who have covered the World Economic Forum since its founding in 1971. Year after year, Davos generates headlines on innovation, geopolitics and sustainability. Yet the exploitation of tens of millions of children, and the persistence of modern slavery in the supply chains of WEF corporate members, remain largely absent from mainstream coverage. Journalism cannot continue to celebrate ambition while ignoring consequence. Looking the other way is no longer neutrality; it is complicity.
Of course, I must also mention the anti-poverty NGOs that some Swiss bankers privately call “pets,” organisations paid to bark, but never to bite the hands that feed them.
If the WEF genuinely intends to honour its founding promise, it must lead a decisive break with the economics of exploitation.
First, it must reject profits generated at the expense of children or the planet. No company, and no investor, benefiting from child labour, forced labour or environmental destruction should be recognised as a sustainability leader.
Second, it must support binding accountability, including mandatory human rights due diligence, enforceable supply chain transparency and access to remedy for victims, rather than lobbying against such measures.
Third, it must champion new business models that guarantee living incomes, food security and access to education as integral components of trade, not charitable afterthoughts.
Improving the state of the world cannot mean improving quarterly earnings while tens of millions of children labour so others may consume cheaply. It cannot mean applauding ESG rhetoric while preserving the economic structures that make exploitation profitable.
The question confronting the World Economic Forum is no longer whether capitalism needs reform. It is whether the Forum, and those who cover it, will continue to tolerate profits at any cost, or finally align global business with the basic dignity and rights of the people who sustain it.
The credibility of the WEF, and the future of tens of millions of children, depends on that choice.
* Fernando Morales-de la Cruz is a journalist, a human rights advocate and founder of the Lewis Hine Initiatives and Cartoons For Change, working on child labour, forced labour and corporate accountability in global supply chains.
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of or Independent Media.
