(ELEVATE: Hong Kong) -- ELEVATE’s biannual risk report, compiling data from 20,000 global supplier audits, finds that nearly half of all sourcing countries are now considered a “high risk” of supply-chain ESG violations.

The U.K., Germany, Portugal, and Italy are now ranked as high risk from the most critical forms of supply chain ESG violations, showing high risk for critical supply-chain labor indices.

The states of Texas, Florida, and New York now have a higher degree of exposure to forced labor risk than Pakistan, India, Thailand, and Indonesia.

The “Supply Chain Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Risk Ratings” report has found that Western sourcing markets have shifted away from their lower-risk classification, with forced labor identified as a key contributor to an increasing risk. The U.K. and U.S. are seeing higher risk for critical violations—in part due to a rise in the exploitation of foreign migrant workers.

The report, published by sustainability specialists ELEVATE, an LRQA company, is grounded in 20,000 global supplier audits conducted annually, with more than 45 million data points derived from on-the-ground site visits collated in ELEVATE’s data analytics solution, EiQ.

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