Nearly 36 million people across the world are involved in some form of slavery, from forced labor to forced marriage, a survey by a global human rights organization has revealed, describing modern slavery as a "hidden crime" and "big business."
Modern slavery contributes to the production of at least 122
goods from 58 countries worldwide, according to the report by the Australian anti-slavery
campaign group Walk Free. The International Labour
Organization (ILO) estimates the illicit profits of forced labor
to be $150 billion a year.
"From the Thai fisherman trawling fishmeal, to the Congolese boy
mining diamonds, from the Uzbek child picking cotton, to the
Indian girl stitching footballs, from the women who sew dresses,
to the cocoa pod pickers, their forced labor is what we consume.
Modern slavery is big business," Walk Free states in its
report, claiming it has found evidence of slavery in all 167
countries it surveyed.
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The 10 countries with the highest estimated prevalence of modern
slavery as a proportion of population are Mauritania, Uzbekistan,
Haiti, Qatar, India, Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of the
Congo, Sudan, Syria and the Central African Republic.
For the second year running, India has turned out to be home to
the greatest number of slaves, with over 14 million people in its
population of 1.25 billion labeled as victims of slavery,
spanning from prostitution to forced labor and making up nearly
40 percent of people in slavery worldwide.
The other nine countries with largest estimated numbers of people in modern slavery are China (3.2 million), Pakistan (2.1 million), Uzbekistan (1.2 million), Russia (1.05 million), Nigeria (834,200), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (762,900), Indonesia (714,100), Bangladesh (680,900) and Thailand (475,300). Taken together, these 10 countries account for 71 percent of the total estimated 35.8 million people living in modern slavery these days.
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Nigeria and Ethiopia appear to be major source countries for
migration overseas. Women and children from Nigeria are
trafficked for sexual exploitation through organized crime rings
to Europe.
"In Italy in particular, some Nigerian women are trapped in a
cycle of debt bondage in the sex industry, with little hope of
clearing €50-60,000 [$65-75,000] debts owed to their
exploiters," the authors of the report say.
For Ethiopians, lucrative employment opportunities in the Middle
East draw thousands to migrate for jobs in the construction and
domestic work sectors. However, once in the destination
countries, they are subjected to harsh working conditions
instead.
The authors of the report assert that the strength of organized
crime has aggravated the problem. People are lured into accepting
tempting job offers overseas, which instead turn out to be sexual
exploitation and forced labor.
Uzbekistan, a Central Asian nation whose economy mostly relies on
production and export of cotton, has the highest prevalence of
people enslaved in the region. Almost 4 percent of the Uzbek
population (approximately 1,201,400 people) is subjected to
slavery during the annual cotton harvest, the survey has showed.
Qatar, the small Gulf state known to engage significant numbers
of foreign workers, has an estimated 1.4 percent of the
population involved in modern slavery.
All countries, with the exception of North Korea, have domestic
legislation which criminalizes some form of modern slavery. Among
the countries with the weakest responses to modern slavery are
Iran, Syria, Iraq, Eritrea (a country in the Horn of Africa), the
Central African Republic, Libya, Equatorial Guinea, the Republic
of the Congo and Uzbekistan.
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The survey has showed that conflict had a huge impact on the
spread of slavery.
"Statistical testing confirms the relevance of modern slavery to
conflict situations as we have seen this year in Syria and the
horrors perpetrated by the terrorist group Islamic State,"
it reported.
For the first time, governments were also rated on the adequacy
of their response to slavery.
According to Walk Free, the Netherlands, Sweden, the US,
Australia, Switzerland, Ireland, Norway, Britain, Georgia and
Austria had the strongest responses to the problem.
Ireland and Iceland sit at 166 and 167 in the 2014 Index with the
lowest prevalence of modern slavery.