Modern Slavery - 36 million people worldwide, study says

[Jubal]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-30080578

Nearly 36 million people worldwide, or 0.5% of the world's population, live as slaves, a survey by anti-slavery campaign group Walk Free says.

The group's Global Slavery Index says India has the most slaves overall and Mauritania has the highest percentage.

The total is 20% higher than for 2013 because of better methodology.

The report defines slaves as people subject to forced labour, debt bondage, trafficking, sexual exploitation for money and forced or servile marriage.

Highest Numbers of Slaves:
India
China
Uzbekistan
Pakistan
Russia

Highest Proportions of Slaves:
Mauritania
Uzbekistan
Haiti
Qatar
India

These are pretty horrific numbers - 36 million is a vast, vast figure. Surprised at how high Russia was as well, 5th most slaves in the world.

[Clockwork]

Given that forced marriage is counted as slavery there, I'm surprised it isn't higher. I'd take this with a hefty pinch of salt tbh.

[TTG4]

Does anyone know how they came up with these numbers? After all, you can't just ask someone if they're keeping slaves!

[Pentagathus]

I'd say it makes good sense to include forced marriages in this. I also wouldn't be surprised if the actual figures are higher (or lower) than 36 million.
I'm sure a lot of western countries will be keen to tighten regulation trafficking and slavery within their borders, highly doubt they'll do much to prevent exploitation outside of them. The truth is we all know that we benefit from exploitation of poorer countries, we just like to pretend otherwise.

[Clockwork]

Good point TTG4.

I don't know penty, forced marriages are just a thing in middle east/india. It's part of their culture and because I don't feel I know enough about it, I'm hesitant to say it's 100% wrong and is equal to slavery. Also, how do we benefit from slave labour in another country? You think that the owners are likely to pass the savings made by not using paid labour onto us? I doubt it highly. More likely some slave worker owner just gets a bit richer at the expense of some lives. People trafficking and sexual exploitation though. That armadillo even happens over here and is despicable. Part of why we need tighter border controls.

[Jubal]

How do we benefit from slave labour in another country? Cheaper goods, my friend. Sweatshop labour. Most of the people who own these sweatshops aren't terribly big players, they compete with other factory/sweatshop owners to offer the lowest prices to the multinationals, who buy extraordinarily cheap and then sell on to us. I imagine for some industries like clothing, factory owners in somewhere like India feel pushed into using forced labour because it's the only way to give themselves a reasonable profit margin given how low the export companies can push the prices.

Also, forced marriages are really not just a "middle eastern thing" - they occur in most parts of the world, including occasionally in western Europe. And I don't think one needs to morally equivocate about the idea that a system where one person is another person's property is by any reasonable definition slavery. That includes systems where a woman is considered to be a man's property; the fact that he's "married" to the woman he owns is neither here nor there.

[Pentagathus]

Indeed. Also if marriage gives the man a legal (or even a socialably accepted) right to abuse and rape his wife then there is no real difference between this and sex trafficking.

[Othko97]

There also lies an issue in how people are actually trafficked. The events are less like kidnapping and more like moving to work abroad with a friend or family member - these schemes are usually set up years in advance and the victims genuinely believe they are moving to a better life. This, as one can imagine, makes it rather more difficult to tell if people are being trafficked or are just going to work abroad - the victims themselves don't. Obviously this is not always the case, but I believe it is a pretty major factor in the problem.

[Clockwork]

You guys always paint people in the worst possible light it seems. Just because it would give them a legal leg to stand on, why the portugal would they? Not everyone is sick like that. And if they would then to me there stands no reason why they wouldn't sink to rape or other sex crimes with the only difference is one is termed as slavery as well.

Also, no. Forced marriages in the west are extremely rare. Arranged marriages, sure they're more common, forced is something else. In China, Russia, India they have historically (and I'm guessing the practice continues somewhere) split up communities and force marriages among the different ethnic groups into the native populace to integrate and such.

Sweatshops aren't slavery, yes they're crappy and have bad working conditions but they do get paid and are free to leave at any time (theoretically). And not classed as under this survey as far as I can see. If they were I would imagine the figure would be nearer 100m.

Actual slave labour, which is a real thing still, westerners don't buy from as 99.99% of the time you can trace goods back to the source and someone would get reported etc, you know.

@Othko... What? Moving to work with a family member, how is that trafficking? Watch the movie 'Taken' starring Liam Neeson. That's people trafficking. Picking up white girls to sell in middle east is a thing that happens. As is kidnapping children and that sort of bullarmadillo.

[Pentagathus]

Actual slave labour, which is a real thing still, westerners don't buy from as 99.99% of the time you can trace goods back to the source and someone would get reported etc, you know.

Oh really?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25814718
You obviously seem to have forgotten the horse meat scandal as well. Modern procurement looks like a complex mess even without people fudging up figures and suchlike.
The majority of sweatshop workers etc won't be slaves but some certainly are and this helps to drive labour costs down.

So you'd be fine if I had the legal right to abuse you as I like as long as I probably wasn't going to do it? Also if someone wanted to treat their spouse properly why would they force them into marriage in the first place?
Seriously you could give the same argument here in place of actual slavery, just because you own someone else doesn't mean you're going to harm them.

I think either or both of us have misunderstood Othko to some extent, I'll read it and edit this later.
Yeah, I think his point is that the majority of trafficking doesn't involve kidnapping victims, but rather misleading them into voluntarily moving to work somewhere and then preventing them from leaving (possibly with force/threat of violence or potentially just by keeping them ignorant of the fact they could leave) hence making it more difficult to determine the numbers of people trafficked. As far as trafficking within europe goes this is by far the most common way of doing it, much less risky than kidnapping and a hell of a lot easier.
Edit:
Damn you Jubal!

[Jubal]

What Othko means is that many people are tricked into being trafficked. This makes it much harder to solve the problem: so say someone gives a bloke in Africa travel documents to get to Russia with a promise of a good job and the ability to send money home, when he gets there they just keep him in a shed, shred his passport and don't pay him. This makes it way harder to intercept slave traffic as many of the people don't know they'll be slaves until they arrive.

[Othko97]

What Othko means is that many people are tricked into being trafficked. This makes it much harder to solve the problem: so say someone gives a bloke in Africa travel documents to get to Russia with a promise of a good job and the ability to send money home, when he gets there they just keep him in a shed, shred his passport and don't pay him. This makes it way harder to intercept slave traffic as many of the people don't know they'll be slaves until they arrive.

^This is correct. I'm not saying that it is always like this by any stretch, just that a lot of, if not the majority nowadays, of cases are like this rather than the traditional kidnap, lock in a crate move.

Human trafficking is highly profitable for all involved except the victims, Human trafficking is the second largest source of illegal income worldwide exceeded only by drugs trafficking, and as such it is the fastest growing means by which people are enslaved, the fastest growing international crime, and one of the largest sources of income for organised crime. Source: http://www.stopthetraffik.org/the-scale-of-human-traffiking