What Is Modern Slavery?

Slavery

What is modern slavery?

For many people, the image that comes to mind when they hear the word slavery is the slavery of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. We think of the buying and selling of people, their shipment from one continent to another and the abolition of the trade in the early 1800s. Even if we know nothing about the slave trade, it is something we think of as part of our history rather than our present. But the reality is slavery continues TODAY.

Millions of men, women and children around the world are forced to lead lives as slaves. Although this exploitation is often not called slavery, the conditions are the same. People are sold like objects, forced to work for little or no pay and are at the mercy of their 'employers'.

Slavery exists today despite the fact that it is banned in most of the countries where it is practiced. It is also prohibited by the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1956 UN Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery. Women from Eastern Europe are bonded into prostitution, children are trafficked between West African countries and men are forced to work as slaves on Brazilian agricultural estates. Contemporary slavery takes various forms and affects people of all ages, sex and race.

What is slavery?

Common characteristics distinguish slavery from other human rights violations. A slave is:

Forced to work -- through mental or physical threat;

Owned or controlled by an 'employer', usually through mental or physical abuse or threatened abuse;

Dehumanized, treated as a commodity or bought and sold as 'property';

Physically constrained or has restrictions placed on his/her freedom of movement.

What types of slavery exist today?

Bonded labor affects millions of people around the world. People become bonded laborers by taking or being tricked into taking a loan for as little as the cost of medicine for a sick child. To repay the debt, many are forced to work long hours, seven days a week, up to 365 days a year. They receive basic food and shelter as 'payment' for their work, but may never pay off the loan, which can be passed down for generations.

Early and forced marriage affects women and girls who are married without choice and are forced into lives of servitude often accompanied by physical violence.

Forced labour affects people who are illegally recruited by individuals, governments or political parties and forced to work -- usually under threat of violence or other penalties.

Slavery by descent is where people are either born into a slave class or are from a 'group' that society views as suited to being used as slave labor.

Trafficking involves the transport and/or trade of people -- women, children and men -- from one area to another for the purpose of forcing them into slavery conditions.

Worst forms of child labor affects an estimated 126 million** children around the world in work that is harmful to their health and welfare.

Bonded labour

Introduction

Bonded labour вЂ" or debt bondage вЂ" is probably the least known form of slavery today, and yet it is the most widely used method of enslaving people. 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. Millions of people are held in bonded labour around the world.

Bonded labour has existed for thousands of years. In South Asia it took root in the caste system and continues to flourish in feudal agricultural relationships. Bonded labour was also used as a method of colonial labour recruitment for plantations in Africa, the Caribbean and South East Asia.

Bonded labourers are routinely threatened with and subjected to physical and sexual violence. They are kept under various forms of surveillance, in some cases by armed guards. There are very few cases where chains are actually used (although it does occur) but these constraints on the bonded labourers are every bit as real and as restricting.

Why does bonded labour continue to exist?

Poverty, and people prepared to exploit the desperation of others lies at the heart of bonded labour. Often without land or education, the need for cash just for daily survival forces people to sell their labour in exchange for a lump sum of money or a loan.

Despite the fact that bonded labour is illegal in most countries where it is found, governments are rarely willing to enforce the law, or to ensure that those who profit from it are punished.

Today millions of people in the world are in bonded labour.

"[Bonded labourers] are non-beings, exiles of civilization, living a life worse than that of animals, for the animals are at least free to roam about as they like… This system, under which one person can be bonded to provide labour for another for years and years until an alleged debt is supposed to be wiped out, which never seems to happen during the lifetime of the bonded labourer, is totally incompatible with the new egalitarian socio-economic order which we have promised to buildвЂ¦Ð²Ð‚Ñœ

--Justice PN Bhagwati, Indian Supreme Court, 1982

Who are bonded labourers?

Entire families kept like cattle on agricultural estates in South Asia; children trafficked for profit in West Africa; and women exported for domestic and sexual slavery in Europe.

"I became bonded after I got married to my husband 20 years ago вЂ" his family had been bonded for three generations to the same landlord вЂ" they took loans for marriage, for illness, for education and so it went on… I used to work from 6.00 am in the landlord’s house вЂ" cleaning, fetching