WASHINGTON, DC – A new report by the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR) and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)’s Stephenson Ocean Security Project  finds that although the United States has a number of enforcement mechanisms on the books combating forced labor, the lack of clear links to comprehensive supply chain traceability programs limits their efficacy. The report, “Streamlining Government Coordination for Rights-Conscious Supply Chains” explores how to strengthen the impact of these mechanisms by highlighting opportunities for increased interagency coordination across transparency and enforcement programs to keep U.S. supply chains free of forced labor, support fair markets, and strengthen U.S. security.

Forced labor and other labor abuses have become endemic to supply chains around the world, and U.S. markets are increasingly tainted with goods produced using forced labor.  Yet the opacity of complex global supply chains obscures risks to workers and limits corporate accountability. The U.S. government has some transparency and traceability requirements in place, primarily in the seafood and minerals industries, to monitor supply chains for abuses, but these programs are limited , and siloed within different agencies addressing a variety of issues. Moreover, these transparency mechanisms are often not tied to enforcement mechanisms, relying instead on third-party data. Without the ability to effectively identify abuses abroad and trace them to U.S. markets or U.S. firms, the ability of agencies tasked with enforcing laws combating forced labor to move forward with an enforcement action is hampered, limiting the impact of U.S. enforcement mechanisms.

The report examines how forced labor enforcement can be strengthened under existing mandates through interagency collaboration, what barriers exist to advancing such collaboration, and where additional mandates may be helpful. Additionally, the report argues that even with stronger interagency collaboration, significant improvements will need to be made to supply chain disclosure regimes. Without comprehensive supply chain data traceability and disclosure across all industries, agencies will continue to face an uphill battle in gathering data needed to bring enforcement actions. New mandates should shift the burden onto corporations to demonstrate rights-respecting business practices by requiring full supply chain transparency and traceability, including through legislative initiatives such as mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence.

You can read the full report here.

This report was co-authored by Noor Hamadeh, Advocacy Counsel at the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable; Jacqueline Lewis, Advocacy Counsel at the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable; and Whitley Saumweber, Director of the Stephenson Ocean Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Clinical Professor of Marine Affairs at the University of Rhode Island.