Dylan Hays
88 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 454
Recent decades of globalization have brought enormous prosperity but also boundless potential for human rights abuses. With the fragmentation of supply chains into different stages, dispersed around the globe, consumers and businesses often have little idea of the social costs embedded in the products they purchase and produce. As of 2018, tens of millions of forced laborers, including children, toil day after day to harvest many of the raw materials used in seemingly innocuous products like chocolate and cell phones. Although the United Nations and other intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations have acknowledged the extent of the problem, member nations have implemented few practical solutions. The contemporary approach against modern slavery tends toward mandatory disclosures aimed at weaponizing consumer choice. Only recently have a limited number of nations toyed with the idea of imposing affirmative obligations on businesses to maintain responsible sourcing practices.
This Note compares current approaches to imposing accountability on businesses maintaining complex global supply chains. It then argues that mandated disclosures fall far short of being an effective approach for addressing a problem as serious as modern slavery. Instead, this Note advocates affirmative duties of due diligence and corrective action, modeled after some of the most novel solutions in France and the United States.
