Modern slavery is rife in almost 60% of countries across the globe, according to a new report by risk analytics company Verisk Maplecroft.
It found trafficking, forced labour and servitude existed in 115 out of 197 (58%) countries where it found risk levels were either ‘high’ or ‘extreme’.
Asian and African commodity producers and manufacturers posed the greatest challenges with “heavyweight exporters” China and India among the 25 labelled as ‘extreme’ risks. The natural resource hubs of DR Congo, Iran and Ivory Coast were also categorised as ‘extreme’ risks.
However, the report’s authors emphasised that only four Western economies - the UK, Germany, Denmark and Finland - rated at ‘low risk’, so nowhere was fully immune to what PM Theresa May has labelled “the great human rights issue of our time”.
“When countries with the most advanced legislation struggle to completely eradicate slavery, it reveals the challenges governments in less developed regions face,” Verisk Maplecroft’s principal human rights analyst, Alex Channer, said.
“Many of the highest risk countries do have legal frameworks in place, but a lack of resources and widespread corruption means the enforcement of such laws can be haphazard.”
At commodity and subcontractor level, more than 80% of sub-Saharan countries in Africa were ‘high or extreme risk’ including Kenya and Nigeria, two of the region’s three largest economies, according to the analysis.
The world’s leading 28 cocoa bean producers were also categorised ‘high’ and ‘extreme’ risk, as were the top nine rice producers.
Over two-thirds of the 26 biggest producers of tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold, essential for ICT and vehicle parts, were listed in the 100 highest-risk nations, while DR Congo, the largest producer of cobalt - crucial for mobile phones and tipped to be the next conflict mineral - was ranked fourth worst globally.
In summary, the report said many UK companies were heavily reliant on goods and raw materials from India and China particularly and could face a substantial risk of association with forced labour.
“The risk is endemic in India’s agricultural sector and is prevalent in parts of its garment sector. The exploitation of children in the mining of minerals is also common. Forced labour, including the exploitation of young apprentices, occurs across multiple sectors in China, including electronics production, mining and agriculture. These risks are echoed across many Asian markets.”
As far as the EU was concerned, Verisk Maplecroft said the area ranked as ‘medium risk’ largely due to its refugee crisis and exploitation of those and other migrants.
Incidents of slavery frequently occur in the UK in sectors such as agriculture and the service industry, but the recent creation of a government taskforce to train the police to identify and investigate slavery-related crimes, (as reported by The Grocer last week) was a key factor in its ‘low risk’ grading, maintenance of which now depended on the success of the PM’s latest initiatives.
Verisk Maplecroft said its global slavery ranking, which evaluated each country’s legislation, law enforcement, and reported evidence of trafficking, forced labour, servitude and slavery, was designed to help companies do risk assessments in order to comply with the Modern Slavery Act.
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