With the upcoming UN Human Rights Day on December 10th, we’re looking at how implementing technology, tracing supply chains and fostering digital growth can help secure human rights for everyone, especially the youth.
The bigger pictures
Technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain technology and automation can assist workers – including child workers – in protecting themselves against violations of their safety and forced labour. However, the sword is double-edged: to some extent, the movements we make to secure workers’ human rights can also hinder them.
Automation, for example, will remove many workers from dangerous conditions, such as in artisanal mining situations. This may also mean that workers that depend on this income are suddenly without a job. This means that, in utilising technology to protect people, we must always rise to meet the demand for employment elsewhere.
Artificial intelligence can also promote the security of workers by securely tracking supply chains and providing the data to both companies and organisations for governance practices. However, it must “internalize accumulated knowledge about ‘business and human rights’ and allows workers and local businesses to track its decision-making process” to “promote labour rights.”
How to deal with rising issues
However, these problems that arrive from new technology are very real – and they must be dealt with as such. As per the World Economic Forum, there is a “need for collaboration to help bridge the gaps that are emerging from data usage, surveillance, cybersecurity and automation, among other areas.”
Companies must collaborate with organizations to ensure that workers are protected from the pitfalls and negatives of widespread digital transformation. This ensures that both workers and corporations benefit from the new Industry 4.0, and that there are widespread cost savings, improved safety and better working conditions.
Technology can help us to improve the lives of many people and expand how digital transformation affects us all, for the better. Interested in finding out more about how blockchain can help us change supply chains? Check out STAMP Supply here.