´óÏó´«Ã½

Compared to historical slavery

Modern slavery

There are different forms of modern slavery, including 'bonded labour' ©

Although slavery is illegal in every country in the modern world, it still exists, and even on the narrowest definition of slavery it's likely that there are far more slaves now than there were victims of the Atlantic slave trade.

The last country to abolish slavery was the African state of Mauritania, where a 1981 presidential decree abolished the practice; however, no criminal laws were passed to enforce the ban. In August 2007 Mauritania's parliament passed legislation making the practice of slavery punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Richard Re, writing in 2002, stated:

Changes

Modern slavery differs from historical slavery in several ways:

• There are more slaves than ever before, but they are a smaller proportion of the human race
• No-one seriously defends slavery any more
• Slavery is illegal everywhere and so requires corruption and crime to continue. The power of the slave owner is always subject to the power of the state; slavery can only continue to exist if governments permit it to, and some writers claim that government corruption is a leading cause of the persistence of slavery
• Slaves are cheaper than ever and can generate high economic returns. Modern slavery is very cheap, and Kevin Bales has argued that this has made modern slavery even worse than that of Atlantic Slave Trade:

• No industry depends on slavery in the way that the plantations did in the times of the Atlantic slave trade

Modern forms of slavery

Modern forms of slavery

Nowadays slavery doesn't only come in the obvious form in which one person owns another person (which is traditionally called 'chattel slavery'). Other practices that amount to slavery are:

Bonded labour or debt bondage

• This is when a person's work is the security for a debt - effectively the person has not been sold, but they are on 'a long lease' which they cannot bring to an end, and so cannot leave their 'employer'
• The conditions of employment can be such that the labourer can't pay off their debt and is stuck for life, because of low wages, deductions for food and lodging, and high interest rates
• The debt may be inherited by other family members who are then themselves forced into bonded labour
• Many children become bonded labour because of family poverty - one estimate put the number of children in bonded labour in India alone at 15 million at the end of the 20th century
• Migrant workers often become bonded labour to pay off those who smuggled them to the new country - they dare not break free for fear of being deported
• The UN Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery put the total number of people in debt bondage around the world at about 20 million in 1998

Serfdom

• This is when a person has to live and work for another on the other's land

Other forms of forced labour

For example:

• Where passports are confiscated from migrant workers to keep them in bondage
• Where a worker is 'kept in captivity' as a domestic servant

Child slavery

• The transfer of a young person (under 18) to another person so that the young person can be exploited
• This includes adopting children in order to use them as 'slaves'
• This includes forcing children to become soldiers, for example by the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda

Marital and sexual slavery

• Forced marriage, including selling wives
• Buying women for marriage where the dowry is really a disguised purchase price
• The sale, transfer or inheritance of women
• Forced prostitution
• Any other sexual exploitation of individuals through the use or threat of force or other penalty

Find out more

• Why slavery persists