More Than 40 Million People Enslaved Worldwide, Shows New CFR InfoGuide

More Than 40 Million People Enslaved Worldwide, Shows New CFR InfoGuide

January 17, 2018 12:04 pm (EST)

News Releases

January 17, 2018—Slavery is universally prohibited by national and international laws, but more than 40 million people continue to be enslaved worldwide. Fueled by a population boom and extreme poverty, modern slavery has become stunningly profitable, generating $150 billion for traffickers annually. It persists in industries such as fisheries, mines, and sex work. From the gulags of North Korea to the battlefields of Iraq and Syria, to children forced into military action in the Democratic Republic of Congo, this slavery can take the form of sexual exploitation, bonded labor, domestic servitude, or forced marriage.

President Donald J. Trump declared January 2018 to be “National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month.” A new InfoGuide from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) sheds light on the causes of modern slavery and how to fight it. The feature offers video interviews with victims, maps highlighting the scope of the problem, regional examples of the phenomenon, and policy options for modern abolition.

More From Our Experts

“We sought to convey the scale of the abuses, which is shocking in this modern age, as well as the economic drivers that make it so difficult to combat,” says CFR.org Managing Editor Robert McMahon. “The guide also aims to capture the human dimension of modern slavery, especially the disproportionate number of victims who are women and children.”

More on:

Human Rights

Human Trafficking

News Release

CFR’s “Modern Slavery” InfoGuide includes

  • an introductory video, maps, and graphics illustrating the global scope of modern slavery;
  • a visual overview of the different forms modern slavery takes and factors that enable its continued existence;
  • video testimonials with victims, highlighting slavery in India, North Korea, Democratic Republic of Congo, Thailand, Haiti, Iraq and Syria, and the United States and Europe;
  • a review of policy options that can aid modern abolition; and
  • teaching guides and further reading sections for educators.

View the InfoGuide at cfr.org/modern-slavery.

More From Our Experts

The “Modern Slavery” InfoGuide is the ninth in an Emmy Award-winning series that also includes “Deforestation in the Amazon,” “The Time of the Kurds,” “The Eastern Congo,” “The Taliban,” “The Sunni-Shia Divide,”  “The Emerging Arctic,” “Child Marriage,” and “China’s Maritime Disputes.”

InfoGuides are made possible by generous funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

More on:

Human Rights

Human Trafficking

News Release

Creative Commons
Creative Commons: Some rights reserved.
Close
This work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) License.
View License Detail
Close

Top Stories on CFR

United States

Each Friday, I look at what the presidential contenders are saying about foreign policy. This Week: Joe Biden doesn’t want one of America’s closest allies to buy a once iconic American company.

Immigration and Migration

Dara Lind, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, sits down with James M. Lindsay to discuss the record surge in migrants and asylum seekers crossing the U.S. southern border.

Center for Preventive Action

Every January, CFR’s annual Preventive Priorities Survey analyzes the conflicts most likely to occur in the year ahead and measures their potential impact. For the first time, the survey anticipates that this year, 2024, the United States will contend not only with a slew of global threats, but also a high risk of upheaval within its own borders. Is the country prepared for the eruption of election-related instability at home while wars continue to rage abroad?