It is all connected: a large-scale study on the reach of modern slavery in complex global supply networks
研究了汽车、巧克力和时尚纺织三个行业中企业通过供应网络与强迫劳动的联系，发现虽然直接涉事企业仅0.42%，但网络结构导致超70%面向消费者的企业间接传播了强迫劳动产品。
Forced labour remains a pervasive problem throughout global supply chains. Overcoming it is predicated upon understanding how firms are connected to modern slavery via their supply chains. In this work, we present the first large-scale, global data study on how firms are connected to forced labour via their supply networks. We analyse forced labour across the Automotive, Chocolate and Fashion and Textiles industries. We find that although the number of firms that directly engage in forced labour is relatively low at 0.42%, the topology of supply networks implicates over 70% of all consumer-facing firms in these sectors in propagating goods handled by forced labour firms. This is mainly due to the ultra-small-world and scale-free structures found in these networks. As forced labour overwhelmingly occurs in the third or fourth tiers in the network, current regulations that ask Western firms to perform due diligence in their first tier are not effective. At the same time, we highlight that the small-world property in these networks could be used to communicate information on non-compliance rather effectively. Finally, to address the limited visibility found in the supply chains of multi-national corporations, we show that simple machine learning methods are effective tools at predicting the existence of, and reliance upon, forced labour within the three industries studied.