Slavery is a scourge in human history, where people were held by someone else or treated as their property without the privileges of a “free person”. Surely this menace doesn’t exist in the modern world, does it? According to the United Nations, it does and it is called “modern slavery”.
The UN’s International Labour Organization (ILO) announced Monday that 50 million people worldwide are subject to forced labour or forced marriage, and warned that the number of these people has substantially increased in recent years.
AFP reports that as per the new report, despite the United Nations’ 2030 deadline to end all forms of modern slavery, the number of individuals subjected to forced labour or forced marriage increased by 10 million between 2016 and 2021.
The most recent statistics show that in 2021, there were 27.6 million people who were forced into forced labour, more than 3.3 million of whom are children, and 22 million who were forced into forced marriage. That means that almost one in every 150 individuals worldwide is a victim of modern-day slavery.
One in five people who are compelled to work are children, and the survey stated that more than half of them are engaged in commercial sexual exploitation.
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The most vulnerable groups are by far women and children as per the report. It also issued a warning that this is a persistent issue because estimates show that forced labour can last for years and forced marriage is frequently “a life sentence.”
According to the ILO, migrant workers were more than three times more likely to experience forced labour than domestic workers, with more than half of all cases occurring in upper-middle-income or high-income nations.
In the lead-up to the FIFA soccer World Cup, which begins in November, Qatar was mentioned in the report. The nation is under fire for allegedly violating labour laws in relation to migrants working there.
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The ILO study also made mentioned concerns regarding forced labour in several regions of China.
“Nothing can justify the persistence of this fundamental abuse of human rights,” said Guy Ryder, head of the International Labour Organization (ILO).
(With inputs from agencies)
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