To what extent can blockchain help fight slavery in the global supply chain?
- Complexity and lack of transparency of the supply chain has fostered slavery, exploiting 25 million people
- Albeit early days, organisations are looking at adopting the technology to instil transparency into the manufacturing process
By merit of its tamper-proof ledgers and immutable and transparent records, blockchain technology is gaining traction as the answer to stamp out an age old and growing slavery problem hidden in the complex and opaque global supply chains which exploits 25 million people.
Even though forced labour or marriage has trapped an estimated 40 million people worldwide, according to the 2018 Global Slavery Index (GSI), the problem is also linked to hundreds of million more businesses and consumers.
With brands wanting cheap labour and workers desperate to escape poverty, it was easy for recruitment agencies, acting as the middle man, to exploit the situation, said William Nee, China researcher for Amnesty International.
“One of the big challenges is when people are recruited, or lured to go and work somewhere, they are often given false promises or exploited by agencies wherever they are coming from,” he said.
Low wages, little compliance to decent working conditions and the relentless drive to produce more as suppliers strive to meet demanding quotas can be commonplace in international supply chains. Employment contracts and records can easily be altered, lost, or different versions shown to brand clients.
Last year, just 66,000 of the exploited 40 million people, or 0.2 per cent, were rescued, according to the 2017 Trafficking in Persons Report.