Slavery as a Wicked Problem

In this episode, Fuzz Kitto discusses the complexities of modern slavery. He emphasises that modern slavery is a wicked problem, characterised by its intricate and interconnected nature. Various factors, including poverty, economics, culture, and supply chains, contribute to its persistence. Tackling modern slavery requires a holistic, human rights-based approach, understanding its root causes, and managing it while seeking solutions.

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Welcome to the Slavery Unravelled Podcast. My name is Fuzz Kitto and since 2011 I have been the Co-Director of Be Slavery Free. With Carolyn Kitto we have been trying to find ways to tackle the sad reality of modern slavery around the world. 

When we started we used to say we are in this till we stop slavery! As we got into understanding more and more about modern slavery and when we were continually reminding ourselves that there are more slaves in the world now than any other point of human history, it seemed more and more overwhelming! 

We then started to calculate the rate of change in what was happening. A co-traveller in the antislavery journey Matt Friedman of the Mekong Club - started to calculate what we could do against what was happening in slavery and came up with the estimation that around 30,000 people each day were getting trapped in slavery, and that each day were able to help around 180 people out of slavery. The odds were not looking good! We then worked out how old we would be at this rate to when we could say slavery had stopped. We had to rethink how we had to approach modern slavery. 

Here’s what we have come to realise: 

Modern Slavery is a wicked problem!  

It is a term thought to have been coined by C. West Churchman in 1967 in the Journal Management Science, though some think he may have been answering back to a term by Horst Rittel. Rittel and Melvin M Webber released a paper in 1973 where they compared and contrasted “tame” problems with “wicked” problems.

Later in 2006 Jeffrey Conklin distilled the characteristics of a wicked problem to six: 

  1. The problem is not understood until after the formulation of a solution. 

  2. Wicked problems have no stopping rule. 

  3. Solutions to wicked problems are not right or wrong. 

  4. Every wicked problem is essentially novel and unique. 

  5. Every solution to a wicked problem is a "one shot operation". 

  6. Wicked problems have no given alternative solutions.

Each of these we realised, apply to modern slavery. Each incidence of modern slavery is characterised by the individuals’ circumstances, the relationships they have, the geography and social context of their origins, the personality, local culture, economics - often but not always poverty, values and social structure.  

Each of these contribute to the vulnerability of the person caught in modern slavery. The place, come context, where they are forced into modern slavery also have a complex set of factors that feed into the occurrence.  

Factors may include history, greed, economics, colonialism, power imbalances, values, geography, labour supply systems, government culture, laws – rule of law, corruption, and blindness of supply chains. Integrated and often not talked about, is the affect and effect of cosmologies that is in the perceived realities of the enslaved and the enslavers. 

Russell L Ackoff referred to complex problems as “messes”:

“Every problem interacts with other problems and is therefore part of a set of interrelated problems, a system of problems. I choose to call such a system a mess”.

Modern slavery is a systemic problem. Systemic problems need systemic solutions. Robert Horn took this understanding of Ackoff further stating: a Social Mess is a set of interrelated problems and other messes. Complexity—systems of systems—is among the factors that makes Social Messes so resistant to analysis and, more importantly, to resolution.

Horn describes the characteristics of Social Messes as: 

  1. No unique "correct" view of the problem. 

  2. Different views of the problem and contradictory solutions. 

  3. Most problems are connected to other problems. 

  4. Data are often uncertain or missing. 

  5. Multiple value conflicts. 

  6. Ideological and cultural constraints. 

  7. Political constraints. 

  8. Economic constraints. 

  9. Often a-logical or illogical or multi-valued thinking. 

  10. Numerous possible intervention points. 

  11. Consequences difficult to imagine. 

  12. Considerable uncertainty, ambiguity. 

  13. Great resistance to change; and, 

  14. Problem solver(s) out of contact with the problems and potential solutions. 

Each of these apply to the Social Mess of the Wicked Problem as it relates to modern slavery. 

We sometimes call this mess a tangle. When I was young on our farm, we got two young kittens. One was a ginger colour and would you believe we called her – ginger! The other kitten was fluffy and surprisingly we called her - Fluff! My mother used to knit. And one of the balls of wool she bought was multicolored. One colour would run into another colour. One after the other. 

The kittens loved the wool and often when no one was around they would get into the ball of wool and toss it around and it would unravel! Not only would it unravel but as they continued to play with it and roll around in it, it would tangle. And tangled badly. Ever tried to untangle a tangled ball of wool? It is a mess.  

Modern slavery is like this! It is like a multi coloured ball of wool. What some people would try to do – and we were amongst these – is to say the way out of this is to just focus and deal with the red coloured pieces. So, it is likely they say, it’s all about poverty, or we just have to recue people out of the sex trade, or it’s just about women or if we just deal with child labour we can deal with it. 

Others say we just have to have traceability with transparency, while other say, we just have to have better legislation. Still others say we just need rule of law (applying the law) or better policing or more intelligence. 

But the reality is that if we just focus on individual bits, it’s like tackling the tangles multicoloured ball of wool and only concentrating on the red strands then trying to pull them out – only to realised they are connected to the whole ball. And as you try and pull them out you only tangle the mess even more! 

Another way of articulating it is put well by an ICIG article  

As a result of the clandestine, lucrative, and seemingly intractable nature of the crime, this global “wicked problem” requires an international human rights-based approach to be impactful and stamp out the conditions in which Modern Slavery is permitted to thrive. 

In other words, modern slavery needs to have an overarching human rights approach which then associates the multiple and global interconnectedness of the whole web of modern slavery. 

We have been working on understandings and solutions to modern slavery with the Supply Chain School at Sydney University with Joy Murray and her colleague Associate Professor Arumina Malik who have been applying what is called Multi Regional Input Output (MRIO)data to analyse the footprint of modern slavery.   

MRIO modelling is used to modelling an economic approach which track financial flows between countries' major economic sectors to understand the interconnected nature of modern slavery. In other words the interconnectedness of the factors that make people vulnerable to modern slavery, but also the conditions that coverup and allow slavery to occur. 

They write: 

However, slavery hides within complex supply chains, making it difficult to identify instances of human exploitation. Our study takes a consumption perspective by investigating the potential of footprinting in exposing modern slavery impacts embodied in upstream supply chains.  

A multi‐regional input–output analysis extended with a slavery satellite account enables footprints of direct and indirect incidents of modern slavery to be quantified. The footprints reveal a displacement of slavery from developed to developing nations through the global supply chains of production.  

Accountability for enslavement significantly increases for countries and regions like North America, Western Europe, Australia, and Japan due to a high dependence on imports with embodied human exploitation. The results expose hotspot sectors, including construction, trade, and agriculture. These footprints go beyond current estimates of slavery in supply chains, revealing hidden impacts and the true risk, which may enable more effective action into improving global social sustainability and support companies to responsibly manage their supply chains. 

What all of these are doing, is to look not only at what sort of modern slavery is happening but why.  

And as the German philosopher Niche said humans can do any how if they know why! 

It is far too easy to look at tackling modern slavery without seeing it as a symptom and therefore getting to know the cause. 

My friend John Smith of God's squad fame, I remember Tom’s story of his mother. She used to get incredible headaches and I think he caused most of them when he was young. But she would take the old Vincent's powders and and analgesics and aspirins etc. To ease the pain, she had to go in for a simple operation for varicose veins, but because of the stress going into the surgery, the major sedative and the and the preparation for the the operation, the pressure built up and she had (and they did not know) an aneurysm, a weakness in the artery going to the brain. So when pressure built up, what would happen is it would bubble out, put pressure on the brain and cause these incredible headaches. Eventually, it burst in the operation under the anaesthetic and she was in a coma for a month and then died leaving behind her husband with seven children. And my friend John used to say, you know if they had known why (the headaches) was happening, they could have actually got to the cause and a simple operation, put in another piece of artery there. But instead they just kept treating the symptom, the headache, and they never got to the cause. That's why in modern slavery, we think that is so important to understand all the causes and the things which surround slavery.

So, we have come to see modern slavery as a wicked problem! 

Is it solvable? Yes, but we don’t know how!  

Some things are problems to be solved while other problems are to be managed. And modern slavery might well be a problem to be managed whilst in the process of finding out how to solve it! 

What can you to do help manage modern slavery?

Get informed and get involved. 

Hope that has been helpful and look forward to catching you at the next podcast. 

This has been Fuzz Kitto for Be Slavery Free. 

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Is prevention better than cure in modern slavery?

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Child labour and the Chocolate Scorecard