GLOBAL SLAVERY

Modern-Day Slavery

• Slavery is the total control of another person, often through economics, threats, intimidation, and violence, for the purpose of economic exploitation. The slave is denied the personal freedom to better his life.
• Slaves today are disposable, averaging 2 to 3 years in servitude.
• There are approximately 27 million people enslaved today – more slaves than were taken from Africa to the US in the 19th century.
• Of the total, it is estimated that 15 to 20 million are held in some form of bonded labor. “A person becomes a bonded labourer when his or her labour is demanded as a means of repayment for a loan. The person is then tricked or trapped into working for very little or no pay, often for seven days a week. The value of their work is invariably greater than the original sum of money borrowed.” (See Anti-Slavery - Bonded Labor¹ )
• An estimated 18 million slaves work in agriculture, while the rest work in an enormous variety of other areas, including mining, quarrying, brick-making, smelting, charcoal production, forest clearing, fishing, jewelry making, carpet weaving, cloth making, domestic services, prostitution, and manufacturing sweatshops.
• Slaves exist in almost every country in the world, including the European nations, the United States, Canada, Japan, China, and the countries of Southeast Asia and northern and western Africa, and parts of South America. The majority of slaves are found in Pakistan, India, Nepal, and Bangladesh.
• The face of slavery, the labor performed, the “pay” arrangements, and the traditions and cultures around it, vary enormously from country to country.
• The economic and social vulnerability of large numbers of people across the world means that there is a surplus of slaves. The result is that they have become cheap - far cheaper than at any other time in history. The estimated price a trafficker in humans charges today is $40 to $60. A 20-year-old agricultural worker cost $1850 in the 1800’s (about $38,000 in today’s dollars). Slavery in the 19th century generated an annual profit of 5%. Today, profits are as high as 800% annually.
• Human beings have become disposable tools for doing business, the same as a box of ballpoint pens or tissue paper
• Contemporary slavery has been defined and banned in international treaties and within nations around the world. But outlawing slavery has not prevented its expansion into a multi-billion dollar global industry on a par with drug trafficking and illicit arms sales
• The United Nations has concentrated energy on trying to reduce tensions around the world, yet has largely ignored slavery for decades, even though it created a Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.

Factors that have combined to cause slavery today to flourish

• The population explosion and high levels of poverty around the globe
• Lack of widely accessible education
• Migration of the rural poor to urban shantytowns and shortage of legitimate employment opportunities
• The whipsawing and exploitive effects of economic globalization and relatively mobile and predatory sweatshops, especially in Third World countries
• Widespread destruction of the natural environment, depletion of natural resources, and the resultant inability of the many poor people to live off the land
• Land ownership concentrated in the hands of relatively few landlords
• Widespread corruption of police, government, and other authorities, especially in the Third World countries. These authorities may be taking bribes or kickbacks to ignore or even enable slavery in their jurisdictions.
• These factors combine to prevent an enslaved person from walking away from the slaveholder.