More than 40 million people were trapped as slaves last year in forced labor and forced marriages, according to the first joint effort by key anti-slavery groups to estimate the number of victims worldwide of the international crime.
The International Labour Organization (ILO), human rights group Walk Free Foundation and the International Organization for Migration said 40.3 million people were victims of modern slavery last year — but added that this was a conservative estimate.
They estimated that 24.9 million people were trapped working in factories, on construction sites, farms and fishing boats, and as domestic or sex workers, while 15.4 million people were in marriages to which they had not consented.
Almost three out of every four slaves were women and girls, and one in four was a child, with modern slavery most prevalent in Africa, followed by Asia and the Pacific, the report said.
“Forced labourers produced some of the food we eat and the clothes we wear, and they have cleaned the buildings in which many of us live or work,” the groups said in a report released yesterday, adding that the crime was prevalent in all nations.
The findings mark the first time the groups collaborated on an international estimate and prompted calls for stronger labor rights, improved governance of migrants, action to address root causes of debt bondage and better victim identification.
“Given that a large share of modern slavery can be traced to migration, improved migration governance is vitally important to preventing forced labour and protecting victims,” they said.
Previously the groups had used different data, definitions and methodologies, said Houtan Homayounpour, a specialist on forced labor at the ILO.
“There’s been many different numbers out there for many years. Now finally everyone has come together and has worked on developing one global estimate that becomes a reference point,” Homayounpour said.
The estimate compared with a Walk Free finding last year that 45.8 million people were slaves and an ILO figure of 21 million in forced labor, but Homayounpour said the numbers cannot be used to show progress or failure in anti-slavery efforts.
The report found more than a third of the 15 million victims of forced marriage were aged under 18 when wed, and nearly half of those were younger than 15. Nearly all were female.
The ILO also released a separate report showing 152 million children were victims of child labor, which amounted to nearly one in every 10 children worldwide, with almost half of those engaged in hazardous work.
More than two-thirds of these children were working on a family farm or in a family business, with 71 percent overall working in agriculture.
The calculation of forced labor included the private economy, forced sexual exploitation and state-imposed labor.
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