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In China, recent
cases have exposed the widespread exploitation and enslavement of
workers with mental illnesses kept in illegal factories. Here, workers
without protective clothing incise and polish gypsum ore at a plaster
factory in Jingmen in central Hubei province
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Talibé children
begging in the streets of Korogho, Ivory Coast. Talibé children, almost
exclusively boys, live and study in Koranic schools across west Africa.
In return for their studies, many are forced to beg on the streets.
Anti-Slavery International estimates there are more than 50,000 Talibé
children forced into begging gangs. Many of the boys have been sent or
trafficked from nearby countries such as Mali and Burkina Faso, and live
in squalid conditions, poorly nourished and subject to physical and
emotional abuse if they fail to meet their ‘quota’ from begging
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Every year an
estimated 10 million girls, some as young as seven or eight, become
child brides. Child marriage is one of the least-acknowledged forms of
modern slavery, yet many girls married in childhood face a life of
sexual and domestic servitude, and are highly vulnerable to domestic
violence, lack of access to education and health services, and have no
economic opportunities or freedom of movement
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| Hundreds of thousands of very young children have been handed over to host families in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, by poor parents lured by the promise of a better life. Instead, many of the children are denied an education, forced to undertake hard, menial jobs and live in conditions of virtual slavery. When they reach 15, the legal age of work, they are often thrown out on to the streets and replaced with younger children |
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| The global sex trade has been an increasing focus for anti-slavery campaigners, but other forms of modern slavery affecting much larger numbers of people, such as bonded labour, still go largely unrecognised. Millions become bonded labourers after falling into debt. Forced to work for free, many will never pay off their loans, with debts passed down to successive generations. In the Chuguisaca district in Bolivia, bonded labourers from the indigenous Guarani community work on plantations, living in conditions of slavery with no payment for their work |
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| In the past decade, the extent of trafficking for sexual exploitation has started to become apparent, highlighting one of the most visible and reported manifestations of modern slavery. Some estimates put the value of trafficking in women and girls for sexual exploitation at more than $7bn a year, although data on this complex criminal industry is hard to quantify. Europe, particularly eastern Europe, is a huge transit and destination region for those trafficked. According to the Czech Institute of Criminology, 5% to 10% of females who are trafficked in the Czech Republic are underage |
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Modern slavery is
intricately linked with globalised labour markets and migration flows
across countries and continents. Poverty, lack of opportunity, violence
and conflict uproot millions of people every year, forcing them to look
for work outside their own community or country. The line between
exploitation and slavery is often hard to distinguish, with people
finding themselves trapped in forced labour conditions, having their
documents taken by 'employers' and working off debts incurred on their
journey. Here, illegal immigrants from Guinea Bissau work in a
greenhouse in Andalucia, Spain
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| The International Labour
Organisation (ILO) conservatively estimates that around 21 million
people are trapped in in some form of slavery. Slave labour props up
both legal and illegal industry and commerce throughout the world. In
Brazil, illegal charcoal camps in the Amazon use slave labour to harvest
rainforest wood to power smelters used to make steel for industries
such as car manufacturing |
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