What’s in the update?
Walk Free sent questionnaires to 167 countries contained in this year’s Global Slavery Index. These questionnaires asked governments to provide information on their responses to modern slavery.
Of the 167 governments who received the questionnaire, 33 responded. These governments either completed the questionnaire, or sent through recent reports outlining what their government is doing to combat modern slavery.
Walk Free has for the first time ever investigated how much 12 OECD countries are spending in their foreign development programs to eradicate modern slavery around the world.
About the Global Slavery Index
The inaugural edition of the Global Slavery Index 2013 provides a ranking of 162 countries around the world, based on a combined measure of three factors: estimated prevalence of modern slavery by population, a measure of child marriage, and a measure of human trafficking in and out of a country. The Index provides a quantitative ranking of 162 countries around the world according to the estimated prevalence of slavery, that is, the estimated percentage of enslaved people in the national population at a point in time. The Index also provides an estimate of the size of the modern slavery problem, country by country.
What is modern slavery?
Modern slavery takes many forms, and is known by many names: slavery, forced labour or human trafficking.
- ‘Slavery’ refers to the condition of treating another person as if they were property – something to be bought, sold, traded or even destroyed.
- ‘Forced labour’ is a related but not identical concept, referring to work taken without consent, by threats or coercion.
- ‘Human trafficking’ is another related concept, referring to the process through which people are brought, through deception, threats or coercion, into slavery, forced labour or other forms of severe exploitation.
Whatever term is used, the significant characteristic of all forms of modern slavery is that it involves one person depriving another people of their freedom: their freedom to leave one job for another, their freedom to leave one workplace for another, their freedom to control their own body, for their own personal or commercial benefit.
According to the 2013 Index, there are an estimated
people in modern slavery globally *
live in these 10 countries:
- Democratic Republic of the Congo