Modern Slavery: The Most-Afflicted Countries

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Slavery used to look like this,

then it evolved into this,

and today it looks like this.

In fact, there are an estimated
45.8 million people

living in modern slavery

across 167 different countries.

They fall into three general categories:

children held in the commercial sex trade;

adults held in the commercial sex trade;

and any other laborer made to work
through force, fraud, or coercion.

The trafficking victim often looks
like anybody else at work

in a mine, on a farm, in a factory.

Many are lured by promises
of a steady job in another country,

only to have their passports
confiscated when they arrive.

However, many slaves work
in their native countries

or even the cities where they were born.

According to the The Global Slavery Index,

these ten countries are home
to the most modern slaves.

They each suffer from income inequality,
discrimination, and classism,

and entrenched corruption.

Number ten, Indonesia, produces
about 35% of the world’s palm oil.

The many small palm plantations
present an immense challenge to inspectors

trying to crack down on child labor.

The country’s many islands are also home

to tens of thousands of enslaved fishermen

trafficked from Myanmar, Laos,
Thailand, and Cambodia.

Number nine is the
Democratic Republic of Congo.

20,000 of the DRC’s
more than 870,000 slaves

live in one of the most
hellish landscapes on the planet,

a vast ore mine
in the east of the country.

The terrorist group Boko Haram
gets overshadowed by ISIS,

although it kills more people.

When it comes to enslavement,
one of its tactics

is to give Nigerian entrepreneurs loans

and then force them to join their group
if they fail to repay fast enough.

Seventh is Russia.

55% of the slaves there
work in construction.

Foreigners are lured
mainly from nearby Azerbaijan,

the “stans,” Ukraine, and North Korea--

thanks to this border
on the far eastern edge of Russia.

The North Korean government
is the world’s largest single slaveholder.

Not only does it force
more than 1 million of its people

to toil in labor camps
and other similarly hopeless situations,

but it actually loans out some people
to work in neighboring China and Russia,

then pockets most of their wages.

This exploitation generates
about $2.3B each year

for the Kim Jong-Un regime.

The fifth most enslaved country,
Uzbekistan,

is the world’s sixth
largest producer of cotton.

It has benefited from forced labor,

as the government puts
more than 1 million people to work

using threats of debt bondage,
heavy fines, asset confiscation,

and police intimidation.

Slave recruiters in Bangladesh
promise poor families

that their boys will be given a job,

only to be enslaved
on a faraway island and beaten

to clean fish for up to 24 hours straight.

Often, these fish are exported as cat food
for our pets here in the West.

Sometimes, the boys meet a gruesome death
when they are eaten by tigers

while searching for firewood.

Third is Pakistan,

which has suffered through decades
of conflict, terrorism, and displacement--

especially along its northwestern border
with Afghanistan.

Its provinces have not raised
the minimum age of marriage,

which has allowed the widespread problem
of forced and child weddings to continue.

Over 250 million Chinese
have migrated within the country

to find better opportunities,

creating the ideal conditions
for human trafficking.

Each year, 58 million children
are "left behind"

as their parents search of work
in the China’s many booming cities.

Every year, up to 70,000 children
fall into forced begging,

illegal adoption, and sex slavery.

And number one is India, which has by far
the most victims of modern slavery.

While economic growth has greatly reduced

the percentage of its citizens
living in poverty,

the country’s sheer size still results
in more than 270 million Indians

living on less than $2/day.

It’s unsurprising then
that intergenerational bonded labor,

forced child labor,

commercial sexual exploitation,
forced begging,

forced recruitment
into nonstate armed groups,

and forced marriage

all exist in India.

The good news is that the government
has already created

many of the laws necessary
to fight the epidemic,

but the challenge is effectively
enforcing those laws

and tracking improvements
and areas of continued need.

On the flip side, these are the countries

rated as the ten best
at fighting modern slavery.

As you can see, no country
has complete eradicated the problem,

and leaders on this issue--
like the United States--

can even contribute to it
by consuming products

that were, at some point
in their supply chain,

touched by slave labor.

While it can be hopeless to be a slave,

the
rest of us can help by raising awareness,

helping an anti-slavery group,

or pressuring
government officials around the world to take action.

Kevin Bales, a professor of contemporary slavery

and the lead author of the study on which this video is based,

described to NPR’s
Fresh Air one of the many instances

where he’s seen slaves being freed.

[Fresh Air’s Dave Davies] “Can you share
an example of where that’s worked,

where locals with the support of the organization
have liberated slaves?”

[Dr. Kevin Bales] “Oh sure, I’ve got lots
of those in fact.

But I think the one that I most find rather
thrilling, myself,

is how in Northern India,
more than ten years ago,

we began to work
with a local organization.

Those young men who had come to freedom

began to operate with our support to go into other villages

where the entire village was enslaved
in hereditary slavery, working in quarries.

Because they were the same ethnicity, they
would slip in in the evenings

and they would meet with people while they were having their
supper

and they would say, ‘oh, so who do you work for around here?

Oh, you all work for the same person?

Oh, you’re all working in the mines?

But where’s the school?

Oh, there is no school.’

And they’d start this Socratic dialogue
that would lead in time

to an awakening of an understanding of an alternative.

It’s important to remember that when you’re
in hereditary slavery,

you have no notion of freedom.

But when the image and truth of freedom is
awakened in your mind,

people really do become unstoppable.

There would come a time when those young men
would say,

‘you know, I used to be in the same situation.

I used to live in a village
just like this one,

but now we have a school
and we even have a clinic.

We have jobs and so forth.’

And then people would say, ‘how do you get
there?’

And then, what we found there is that in those
villages,

the women would step forward even though it’s a very male dominated society.

The women would step forward and say

we will lead this even if it leads to our deaths.

Because, they would say - not to me, but to
my women colleagues -

‘we don’t want our daughters to be raped the way we were raped

by the slaveholders, by the slavemasters.

And they would push that along.”

You can learn more about this study through
the link below

and you can help spread this video

by hitting the like button and sharing
it with your friends.

Thanks for watching.

Until next time, for TDC, I’m Bryce Plank.