Trade network transparency entails two dimensions of global commerce: business relationships and chain of custody. Historically, most security programs, including those focused on nonproliferation, have focused on ensuring a proper chain of custody – that is, the physical protection and integrity of a good at various stages of its life cycle, such as during transport on a container vessel. In many areas of global trade and investment activity, however, regulators, experts, and advocates are also scrutinizing business relationships – and the diligence that companies perform to support those relationships. Increasingly, firms are being encouraged, or even forced, to assume some measure of accountability for the actions of their business partners. This report highlights near-term opportunities to advance a shared public-private agenda by leveraging trade network transparency in the domestic and international contexts. Such an approach would go far in ensuring that multistakeholder approaches stand up to the daunting challenges of 21st-century proliferation threats.
Read the full report here.
