Report finds slavery affects more than 35m people worldwide

A new report estimates that 35.8m people are oppressed by slavery around the world.

The Global Slavery Index 2014, published by the Australia-based NGO the Walk Free Foundation, has increased its estimate by 23% over the past year due to better data and improved methodology.

The three countries with the highest percentage of their population caught in modern-day slavery are Mauritania at 4%, Uzbekistan at 3.97% and Haiti at 2.3%. Their combined slave population totals around 1.6m, roughly the population of Philadelphia.

These are, however, completely dwarfed by the three countries with the most people in slavery by volume: India, China and Pakistan. Between them, they have 19.3m people in slavery, equivalent to the total population of Florida.

The Slavery Convention defines slavery as "situations where one person has such complete and absolute control over another person, that they can treat that person as if they are a piece of property."

Associated activities include human trafficking, forced labor, debt bondage, forced or servile marriage, and the sale or exploitation of children.

The Index has acknowledged that India is taking combative measures such as strengthening its criminal justice system and investing in more anti-human trafficking police units.

Slavery is the inhumane precursor to paid labor, and thrives in conditions where the state lacks the appropriate legal and policing infrastructure to combat it. The survey also shows that slavery occurs on a small scale in developed countries such as the UK.

Siwan Anderson has written about the detrimental effects of marriage payments in developing countries. Such payments disincentivize families from investing in their female members’ human capital, which means they are less capable of being financially independent of male family members. This is often associated with increased domestic abuse and servile marriage situations.

Meanwhile, Eric V. Edmonds has argued that minimum age of employment laws in developing countries would be rendered more effective as a means of preventing child labor by a greater focus on enforcement rather than further legislation.

Read more here.

Related articles:
Human capital effects of marriage payments, by Siwan Anderson
Does minimum age of employment regulation reduce child labor? by Eric V. Edmonds