By Adam Turteltaub

Reports are that there over 50 million people in the world living in modern slavery conditions, and, of those, 60% work in forced labor in the private economy. Ensuring that your organization isn’t sourcing from suppliers who victimize labor is both a moral and a legal obligation, with more and more jurisdictions enacting legislation in this area.

Vera Belazelkoska, Managing Director at Ulula urges organizations to look to balancing this risk with a mixture of boots on the ground and technology. Both, she notes, have their virtues and limitations. While having someone visit a factory provides an eyewitness account, it’s expensive, and unscrupulous manufacturers may hide the truth from investigators. Technology solutions are less expensive, but they are not necessarily as precise as they could be, often providing country data, but not the granularity needed.

Only with a prudent mixture of the two can an organization gain a better understanding of its supply chain and the presence, or absence, of modern slavery in it.

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