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The number of people in modern slavery is increasing
A new report shows that Arab states are fuelling the growth
Sep 20th 2022
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Slavery officially ended in 1981, when Mauritania became the last country to ban forced labour. But in practice it remains surprisingly common. On any given day, at least 49m people are in modern slavery, according to a new report by the un and Walk Free, a charity. The report defines modern slavery as people either forced to work or forced to marry. Such issues are often seen as a problem confined to the world’s poorest countries. But the authors of the report reckon that more than half of the global incidents of forced labour last year happened in what the World Bank defines as upper-middle and high-income countries (though poorer countries had a higher rate per 1,000 people).
To estimate the prevalence of forced labour, the authors interviewed around 78,000 people from 68 countries. In some places, such as North Korea, it is impossible to conduct such surveys, so estimates are less reliable than in more developed countries. According to the report, countries in Asia and the Pacific are host to more than half of all incidents of forced labour. Though as a proportion of the population Arab states were the worst offenders, with the equivalent of 1% of their populations enslaved.
The already grim situation is getting worse. Between 2016 and 2021 an additional 2.7m people worked in forced labour, taking the total to nearly 28m—more than 3m were children, though the data show that number is falling. Forced marriages increased by 6.6m over the same period, to a total of 22m. That may be an undercount: respondents were asked if they consented to their marriage, meaning that people who were forced into a relationship but later accepted it would not be counted in the data. Women and girls made up the biggest share of forced marriages, though one-third of those coerced into wedlock were male.
The most common type of coercion faced by workers is non-payment of wages. The fact that covid-19 lockdowns decimated many people’s incomes made it easier to exploit that vulnerability. In wealthier countries, sectors including agriculture, construction, domestic work and fishing were found to have the highest rates of forced work, with the private sector responsible for the majority of cases.
Some countries, including Qatar, are introducing labour reforms to clamp down on the problem. But their success will depend on whether they are actually enforced. Workers in the shadow economy, or those compelled into the sex trade, do not benefit from legislative changes. Governments will have to do more to ensure that the plague of modern slavery does not continue to spread.
