Blockchain and Human Rights: Ensuring Accountability in Supply Chains
Keywords:
Blockchain, Human Rights, Supply ChainsAbstract
The integration of blockchain technology into global supply chains offers transformative potential for promoting human rights and ensuring accountability. By leveraging its core features—transparency, immutability, and automation—blockchain can create verifiable and tamper-proof records of transactions, enabling real-time traceability and enhanced oversight of ethical practices. This paper explores how blockchain facilitates compliance with labor standards, mitigates fraud, and enforces human rights obligations through mechanisms such as smart contracts and decentralized governance structures. Case studies, including applications in the diamond and agricultural sectors, highlight blockchain's role in addressing critical issues like forced labor, wage theft, and unsafe working conditions. However, challenges such as regulatory ambiguity, data privacy concerns, and the digital divide underscore the need for robust governance frameworks and global cooperation. By examining these challenges and proposing actionable solutions, this article underscores blockchain's potential to redefine accountability in supply chains while advocating for inclusive and sustainable adoption strategies.
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