Measures to stop modern slavery
“No one shall be held in slavery or servitude: slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in alltheir
forms.”
From: Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights (1948)
Background
Although slavery is illegal in every country in our modern world, it forms still does exist, and even on
the narrowest definition of slavery it's likely that there are far more slaves now than in 1850. The last
country to abolish slavery was Mauritania, where in 1981 a presidential decree abolished the old
practice; however, no criminal laws were then passed in order to enforce the ban on slavery. Just in
August 2007 Mauritania's parliament passed the needed legislation making the practice of slavery
punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
Slavery exists in one form or another in every country in the world. In terms of percentage of global
population, central and south-east Europe has the highest prevalence of forced labour, followed by
Africa, the Middle East, Pacific Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.
Types of slavery
The word "slavery" today covers a variety of human rights violations. In addition to traditionalslavery
and the slave trade in general, these abuses includenow the sale of children, child prostitution,
childpornography, the exploitation of labour, the sexual mutilation of female children, the use
ofchildren in armed conflicts, debt bondage, the traffic in persons and in the sale of human
organs,the exploitation of prostitution.
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Child trafficking- People under 18 are moved either domestically or internationally so they
can be exploited.
Forced labour/ debt bondage- Victims are forced to work in order to pay off debts that
realistically they never will be able to. Very low wages with increased debts mean not only
that they cannot ever hope to pay off the loan, but the debt may also be passed down
through generations.
Marital and sexual slavery- Forced marriage including selling wives. Forced prostitution.
Definition of slavery
We can sum upHow it looks like being a slave up to three parts:
 Control through violence- Slaves are controlled by an overseer who uses either force, power
or threats to make the slaves work.
 Economic exploitation- It is the overseer who benefits directly from the slaves work. The
overseer may pay them something, but it won’t be enough to allow freedom of movement.
 Loss of free will- The slave cannot leave or change work by their choice.
Changes from the past
In the United States before the Civil War, the average slave cost the equivalent of about fifty
thousand dollars. The average price of a slave today is around ninety dollars.
Such low prices influence how the slaves are treated. Slave owners used to maintain long
relationships with their slaves, but slaveholders no longer have any reason to do so. If you pay just a
hundred dollars for someone, that person is disposable, as far as you are concerned...
And while the price of slaves has gone down, the return on the slaveholder's investment has
skyrocketed. In the antebellum South, slaves brought an average return of about 5 percent. Now
bonded agricultural laborers in India generate more than a 50 percent profit per year for their
slaveholders, and a return of 800 percent is not at all uncommon for holders of sex slaves (via
https://www.freetheslaves.net/page.aspx?pid=301) .
Another change is that there are more slaves than ever before. However, they are a smaller
proportion of the human race. Nobody seriously defends slavery in public. Also no industry depends
on slavery in the way that the plantations did in the times of the Atlantic slave trade.
UN involvement
Special Rapporteur on Contemporary forms of slavery has the general responsibility in the United
Nations for the study of slavery in all its aspects. For further information about his rights seek the
official website1.
Conclusion
To take in mind: Slavery is now illegal everywhere and so it requires corruption and crime in order to
continue. The power of the slave owner is always subject to the power of the state; slavery can only
continue to exist if governments permit it to, and some news articles claim that government
corruption is a leading cause of the persistence of slavery.
Relevant and interesting articles that are worth reading
http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/dialogue/the-slave-route/modern-forms-ofslavery/
http://nomoreslavery.com/what-is-modern-day-slavery/
http://www.ilo.org/global/topics/forced-labour/lang--en/index.htm
http://www.state.gov/j/tip/what/
1
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Slavery/SRSlavery/Pages/OverviewMandate.aspx