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The Scourge of Slavery: The Contemporary Reality of an

International Human Rights Challenge

DAVID K. ANDROFF

David K. Androff is assistant professor in the School of Social Work at Arizona State University.

lavery is not history. Yet for many in the West, slavery is inexorably embedded in the past.

Conventional wisdom holds that the abhorrent practice of slavery is no more. In the United

States, school children are taught that it expired when Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves

and the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified in 1865. The British Empire

abolished slavery throughout its colonies in 1833. Indeed, popular histories celebrate such

emancipations and abolitions, and the triumph of Enlightenment values of human rights over the

oppression, exploitation, and domination of slavery. 1 However, accounts of slavery typically end

at this point, implying that slavery did not persist into the present day. Additionally, most

academic attention and scholarship on slavery focuses on the transatlantic slave trade and the

African experience in America. Even scholars of inequality and oppression often fail to address

the contemporary reality of slavery today.

Slavery has been present around the world throughout history. Aristotle famously justified

slavery as a natural, necessary and beneficial social status. Across the globe and through

antiquity, empires were built upon the enslavement of people. Until the relatively recent

abolition movements, slavery was an accepted form of human relations. Now, it is universally

accepted that slavery is wrong, immoral, illegal, and a violation of human rights. The Universal

Declaration of Human Rights (1948) forbids slavery, forced labour, servitude, and the slave

trade. The International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (1966) provides for

the right to work in a safe environment for fair and just pay. Yet despite this reversal in attitudes

about slavery and the myriad laws and international agreements confirming its illegality, slavery

persists. It is a troubling aspect of the problem that slavery is illegal everywhere, but also

practised everywhere.

The historical legacy of the abolition movement and its successes of pervasive laws against

slavery contributed to the widespread perception that the problem had been solved. However,

over the past decade, a growing awareness of the reality of contemporary slavery has slowly

dawned. Sensational media accounts and investigative journalism spurred interest, and concern

from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and faith-based communities led to eventual

action by states and resulted in gradual public awareness of the issue. Popular television shows

and Hollywood movies have featured plotlines involving international sex trafficking.

Nevertheless, confusion still exists about why modern slavery—usually framed as human

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trafficking—continues to plague so many people, the precise numbers affected, what situations

constitute modern slavery, and what possible solutions there are to the problem.

Slavery is not just poor working conditions. Enthusiastic advocates for various social-justice

campaigns sometimes exaggerate their causes and have applied the term “slavery” loosely.

Although the international community has developed definitions and agreements on modern

slavery, the panoply of government agencies, NGOs, the media, and the public is still building

consensus towards a common understanding of slavery. Questions remain about what constitutes

modern slavery, and often interrelated and overlapping phenomena such as human trafficking,

human smuggling, prostitution, sex work, and sex tourism contribute to the confusion. Much of

the media coverage is focused upon international sex trafficking, and many assume that this is

the full extent or main form of modern slavery; however, there is evidence that other forms of

forced labour may rival sex trafficking in scope. Meaningful estimates of the scale of modern

slavery are elusive.

Many aspects of modern slavery are tied to the economic, technological, and social forces of

globalisation. The accelerated flow of capital, information, and people across political and

geographic borders as well as the global diffusion of production, supply, and distribution

networks have facilitated the growth of modern slavery and enabled the problem to elude public

consciousness and detection. Rapid social forces such as overpopulation and urbanisation,

coupled with corruption, particularly in the global South, fuel modern slavery. The result is a

globalised system of oppression, interlaced inequalities, violence, and exploitation.

What Is Modern Slavery?

Defining slavery precisely and accurately is an important task, not only to promote

understanding of the phenomenon but also to ensure that intervention efforts are well co-

ordinated and have the potential for maximum benefit. Definitions of modern slavery vary; this

is problematic in and of itself. As mentioned above, popular misconceptions abound about the

nature and extent of modern slavery. If modern slavery is defined too narrowly, some who suffer

may be excluded from interventions designed to assist and protect them. Conversely, if modern

slavery is defined too broadly then intervention policies and programmes may be watered down

and weakened by the inclusion of other forms of exploitation and injustice.

Orlando Patterson, a pre-eminent scholar of slavery, applies a tripartite definition. 2 He writes

that throughout history slavery has been a relationship of human domination. This extreme form

of human domination is characterised first by its violent nature: most scholars and policymakers

agree that violent coercion—controlling another person through force or the threat of violence—

lies at the centre of the slave experience. Second, slavery constitutes a form of social death:

slaves are cut off from their social relationships, especially their relationships to their own

families, in both ascending and descending generations. Slaves do not belong to any social

group: they are no longer children to their parents, brother or sister to their siblings, or even

parents to their own children. They are exclusively, and usually permanently, slaves to their

master, and this tie becomes their main and overarching social relationship. Third, they are

stigmatised or dishonoured—powerless people whose social shame contributes to the outward

appearance of their acceptance of their position and damages their internal sense of self-identity.

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Kevin Bales, a scholar and activist whose writings have done much to raise public awareness

of modern slavery, applies a definition that echoes Patterson’s: slaves are forced, through

violence, to work without pay. Bales also discerns several differences between historical slavery

and modern slavery, notably in the areas of legality, supply, and cost. Besides the fact that

slavery is now illegal after being legally permissible for most of history, today there is a greater

availability of slaves than ever before. Overpopulation has increased the supply of potential

slaves, and economically vulnerable people and communities are at the greatest risk. This

increased supply has led to what Bales calls “disposable people”. The cost of obtaining a slave

has been reduced, as has the incentive of slaveholders to protect and care for the slave. Today,

slaveholders can cheaply obtain new victims if their slaves fall ill or die; their slaves become

disposable—to be used, discarded, and replaced. 3

During the twentieth century, the international community, first in the League of Nations

Slavery Convention (1926) and later in the United Nations Supplementary Convention on the

Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery (1956),

defined slavery as involuntary work conducted under threat of penalty. The Supplementary

Convention defined slavery as including serfdom, debt bondage, and adoption or marriage for

the purpose of slavery.

The term “human trafficking” was originally a policy term that linked cases of involuntary

human smuggling to other international law-enforcement problems such as drug and arms

trafficking. “Trafficking” implicitly referred to the transportation of people across borders. In

contrast, some campaigners began using the term “slavery” to encompass human trafficking and

cases of forced labour in which no one was transported across political boundaries but was

exploited in his or her country or community of origin. Besides being more accurate, the term

“slavery” better communicated the brutality of victims’ experiences than the rather sanitised term

“trafficking”. Advances in international policy agreements have rendered these two terms

synonymous. The United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in

Persons, Especially Women and Children (2000), also known as the Palermo Protocol, and the

United States Trafficking Victims Protection Act of the same year, define “trafficking” broadly

to include the recruitment, harbouring, provision, obtaining, and receipt of people in addition to

transporting them. The Palermo Protocol and US policy also define the use and threat of violence

for exploitation broadly, incorporating deception to achieve consent as a form of coercion.

“Coercion” was given this expanded meaning to cover sex-trafficking cases in which women

appeared to consent to their servitude but in reality believed their families were in danger back

home. Several prosecutions of sex traffickers have been derailed by the question of the victim’s

apparent consent.

Slavery Today

The myriad forms modern slavery takes also complicate attempts to understand and

ameliorate the problem. Modern slavery exists across many “industries” with differing

arrangements; however, its forms all share in common the central aspect of the definition

mentioned earlier—control of another person through force or the threat of violence. These types

of modern slavery include sexual slavery, chattel slavery, debt bondage, contract slavery,

domestic servitude, state slavery, religious slavery, and child slavery.

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Sexual slavery occurs when someone—most often a female—is sexually exploited or forced

to have sex against her will. Usually this entails being trafficked into prostitution and coerced

into sex work. This form of slavery has been widely represented in the media; therefore, lesser-

known types of modern slavery will be discussed here.

Chattel slavery occurs when one person becomes the property of another; it resembles the

historical slavery of the transatlantic slave trade. The slave is the master’s “chattel” and may be

captured, sold, or born into permanent servitude. Today, chattel slavery mostly exists around the

Saharan desert, in West and North Africa, as vestiges of the trans-Saharan slave trade. In

particular, chattel slavery has been identified in Mauritania, where it is a normalised part of the

social order and ingrained in the social, economic, and political fabric of the country. Sharp

social divisions based on race, ethnicity, language, religion, and class preserve social stability;

therefore, slavery in Mauritania is marked by a lack of overt violence. Chattel slavery being

more like historical slavery than modern slavery, upper-class families have long-term

relationships with their slaves, who are cared for, maintained, and rarely sold but passed on from

generation to generation. Strong emotional bonds develop on the part of the slaveholders’

families, who are said to refer to their slaves as their dependent children, requiring their care and

supervision.

Debt bondage occurs when someone is forced into work because of debt. This is found

primarily in agricultural work in South Asia. Ordinary life-expenses, such as the cost of a

wedding, education, or the medical bills from a family member’s illness, can lead borrowers to

pledge their labour to moneylenders to repay the loan plus interest. Unscrupulous moneylenders

exploit illiterate borrowers by manipulating the account to prevent continually completion of the

repayment. Borrowers toil, but low earnings preclude repaying more than the interest, and the

original debt can be passed on to their children. The costs of the borrower’s meals and housing

can be added to the debt, and it is not unusual for borrowers to be subjected to interest rates as

high as 60 per cent. Some bonded labourers have incurred interest rates as high as 100 per cent

on debts that they will never be able to repay and that will keep their families enslaved for

generations to come.

Contract slavery occurs when someone is offered a false contract guaranteeing employment,

but is later coerced through violence to work without pay. The promise of work is used to attract

desperate job-seekers, who are vulnerable to such recruitment in the context of material

deprivation and grinding poverty. The inducement of good pay for hard work encourages them to

agree to leave their homes and be transported to faraway locations, such as another country, a

distant urban centre, a remote mine, factory, or plantation. They are housed and fed during their

journeys, and are sometimes held at collection points before beginning work, when they are incur

additional lodging and meal expenses. The reality of what they find upon arrival clashes

tragically with their expectations of economic opportunity; some find themselves in brothels,

others in cages, and most are completely isolated, kept under guard, with no hope of escape, of

calling for help, or of sending word back home. They are brutally treated until they comply by

working for no pay, and are told they have to repay the money their “employer” advanced to

cover the cost of their transportation. Their subjection is reinforced by expenses incurred at the

“company store”, often their only available source for food and essentials, offered at inflated

rates to a captive market. To evade detection, the slaveholders may produce the bogus contract as

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evidence of a legitimate employee agreement, thus hiding the slavery that is sometimes in plain

view. In addition to the contracts, slaveholders take control of the workers’ government-issued

identity and labour cards. Labourers are loath to leave without their papers, especially proof of

citizenship, which they depend upon for legal protection and would be required if they were to

search for real work.

Domestic servitude occurs when someone is forced to work within a household. Typically,

women and children are made to perform domestic work in private residences, but are trapped

inside the home and isolated from the outside world. Completely dependent on the slaveholder

and under strict control, the domestic slave is vulnerable to extreme physical and sexual abuse.

State slavery occurs when a government captures and forces its own citizens to perform

work. This might be in labour camps or on state-sponsored construction projects. In some cases,

a political authority will force people to join the military and conscript them into border wars or

campaigns against ethnic minorities. Currently, Myanmar and North Korea are the countries

most associated with state slavery.

Religious slavery occurs when people are under the control of religious institutions or

authorities, and forced to work for the religious community. In certain communities, cultural

beliefs and religious practices sanction the “sacrifice” of a female family member into religious

servitude. Thus, in West Africa, families may atone for their sins by giving virgin girls to local

shamans or fetish priests. The women, known as trokosi, are kept at the shrine and forced into

ritual servitude, including sexual slavery as well as labour and upkeep of the property. In Hindu

parts of South Asia, daughters of poor families sometimes become devadasi when they are given

to a temple. Forced to work for the men at the temple, they are also coerced into sexual slavery

and sometimes made to work as prostitutes as well. Women trapped in religious slavery are

considered to be “wives of the gods”, which is used to justify their exploitation.

Child slavery can take any of the above forms of slavery, with children as the victims instead

of adults. Significant attention has been paid to child sexual slavery, when children are trafficked

into sex work or prostituted. Another form of child slavery is child domestic work, when

children are kept inside a home and forced to do domestic labour. This occurs around the globe;

in Haiti, a child domestic worker is known euphemistically as a restavec (stay with), where the

practice is tied to informal adoption. Child soldiers, similar to state slaves in the military, but

also exploited by rebel militias and armed gangs, have been used in conflicts in Central America

and Colombia, and across Asia and Africa. Child slavery also exists in many different industries

and settings besides those mentioned above.

How Much Slavery?

It is impossible to say how many people are ensnared around the world in these multiple

forms of modern slavery. As observed above, many forms of slavery succeed in part because of

the extreme isolation of the victims. Besides strengthening the slaveholder’s control over the

slave, this isolation in brothels, households, factories, farms and mines also conceals the slave

from detection by the police. The illegality and isolation of modern slavery make it nearly

invisible, so that only approximate estimates of its scope are possible. Estimating the number of

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slaves in the world is also hampered by a lack of methodological rigour; most research that

presents estimates is descriptive and reflects a specific setting.

Nonetheless, attempts have been made to aggregate such estimates. Most that are reported in

the media and academic literature rely on two main sources. The first is the work of Kevin Bales,

who based his global total of twenty-seven million slaves on government data and semi-

structured interviews with slaves and slaveholders around the world. 4 Contrary to his

expectations, many groups, especially NGOs and advocacy bodies, have simply accepted his

estimate without debate. Bales’s figure of twenty-seven million slaves is widely used by groups

campaigning for a global movement to abolish modern slavery. His estimate is similar to that of

the UN Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery, which in 1999 estimated that

twenty million labourers were held in debt-bondage, primarily in South Asia. Bales himself

estimated that of his twenty-seven million figure, fifteen million to twenty million slaves lived in

South Asia. A 1996 Human Rights Watch report, The Small Hands of Slavery, estimated that

fifteen million children worldwide were enslaved in debt-bondage. In 2005, the International

Labour Organisation estimated that there were 8.4 million child slaves. The UN Working Group

on Slavery, in 1984, estimated that more than a quarter of a million people were held in chattel

slavery across the Saharan region.

The second chief source for estimates of the extent of modern slavery and human trafficking

is the US State Department. The US government estimates that 800,000 people are trafficked

across international borders each year. Of these, 14,500 to 18,500 are trafficked into the United

States. The 800,000 figure is also employed by other governments, international agencies, and

the United Nations. Most of these victims are women—some 70 per cent according to US

estimates—trafficked mainly for prostitution. The US government additionally estimates that

two million to four million people are trafficked within countries—without crossing political

borders. This estimate is corroborated by the International Organisation for Migration, which

estimates that four million people are trafficked between and within international borders.

The distinction between the many millions of slaves estimated by advocacy groups and the

hundreds of thousands estimated by government agencies may be the result of political

motivations. Those committed to promoting social action on the issue may be motivated to opt

for the highest numbers available in order to draw more attention to their cause. Governments

may be motivated to use lesser counts that minimise the problem so as to reduce their

responsibility to find a solution. Both those using the higher figures and those who gravitate to

the lower are unclear about the methodologies behind the estimates or even their sources. The

disparate estimates, the difficulty of defining slavery, and ignorance about its many forms all

hamper attempts to intervene against modern slavery.

What Can Be Done?

Modern slavery is a complex problem, exacerbated by multiple economic, political, social,

cultural and psychological factors; therefore, solutions to slavery need similarly to be complex.

Anti-slavery programmes and policies can range in scope from the local to the international, and

in focus from social services for current and rescued former slaves to comprehensive social-

change strategies that seek to fix the systemic problems of corruption and poverty forming the

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context that enables slavery to flourish. While these responses are segmented for the discussion

that follows, a combination of solutions is required to combat slavery. Similarly, these

interventions are not prescribed for any one type of slavery; rather, a multifaceted approach is

warranted.

Social-service interventions are programmes that seek to protect current slaves and

rehabilitate former slaves who have escaped, been discarded by, or rescued from their

slaveholders. Such programmes tend to be local, and are often operated by NGOs, sometimes

with international or governmental funding and support. A common format is the drop-in centre,

usually a room at an NGO’s office, which provides medical, social, educational, and vocational

services to slaves in their local communities. Drop-in centres may offer legal aid, basic-skills

training for cooking or typing, literacy and numeracy tuition, socialisation and peer support, and

therapeutic counselling. Other educational programmes are sometimes provided in school

settings or public venues such as marketplaces. One example of an NGO that runs a drop-in

centre in Bangladesh is Ain O Salish Kendra. In Peru, Casa de Panchitas does the same.

Community-based interventions focus on prevention, outreach, public education and raising

awareness about modern slavery. These can also be run by NGOs. Prevention programmes

attempt to raise awareness about the risks and dangers of being trafficked, recruited for dubious

work opportunities, and enslaved. There is a growing emphasis on developing interventions that

focus on prevention in the communities where many trafficking victims originate. In Togo,

WAO Afrique educates parents about slavery and trafficking so that their children may become

less vulnerable. Community-based interventions can also take the form of sensitisation and

public-awareness campaigns to draw attention to the plight of enslaved people through various

media such as radio and billboard advertisements, documentary films, and television shows.

Outreach programmes, such as India’s National Child Domestic Workers movement, seek to

identify victims of slavery through peer networks and even through the children of slaveholders,

who often are in contact with child slaves. A peer outreach organisation in the Philippines,

Sumapi, provides referrals to social-service programmes.

Harm-reduction interventions attempt to work with slaveholders to improve the working

and living conditions of slaves. This approach has generated some controversy as detracting from

a purely abolitionist stance that aims first and foremost to free every slave. Like harm-reduction

efforts in other fields, such as substance abuse and sex work, these programmes do not focus on

eradicating the injustice (here enslavement), as the abolitionist would, but rather try to reduce its

worst aspects in order to minimise the harm suffered by its victims. This approach is based on

the pessimistic view that ending slavery may be impossible, and so aims instead at the gradual

amelioration of the conditions of servitude that cause the slave harm.

A primary harm-reduction strategy is to engage with slaveholders, recognising them as a key

aspect of the problem that should be targeted by interventions. Harm-reduction programmes

eschew sensational media accounts and popular narratives about slavery, as these fail to engage

the slaveholders, who just dismiss such information. Working with slaveholders also brings the

benefit of access to hard-to-reach populations of slaves. Harm-reduction activists negotiate

directly with slaveholders to persuade them to allow their slaves to attend school or drop-in

centres where they can gain access to a wide range of needed services. Such interventions may

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be most effective in places where slavery has a high degree of social and cultural acceptance;

NGOs that promote engagement with slaveholders are active in South Asia and Mauritania, such

as Shoishab in Bangladesh. Harm-reduction advocates argue that anti-slavery programmes

should work to win acceptance by slaveholders of a reinterpretation of the slave’s role—as that

of an employee, for example. Such a reconceptualisation might lead to the introduction of

modest payments, improved working conditions, and perhaps even better working hours.

Activists may win these small improvements, however, at the cost of seeming to endorse certain

forms of servitude.

Rule-of-law interventions range from rescue and law-enforcement efforts to anti-corruption

measures that promote an impartial and independent judiciary. Law-enforcement agencies focus

on identifying and rescuing slaves, discovering and disrupting trafficking networks, and

apprehending and punishing perpetrators. The enforcement approach might appear to be a

straightforward means of dealing with such a crime as slavery, yet it is precisely the failure to

enforce the laws forbidding it that has perpetuated the problem. Slaveholders are rarely

prosecuted and punished, even in the global North. Difficulties in establishing the victims’ lack

of consent have derailed many prosecution attempts. However, prosecuting the slaveholders is a

crucial and necessary component of the fight against slavery: without holding the perpetrators

accountable, slavery will continue with impunity. Prosecutions also fail when judges do not

understand slavery and trafficking, or where the rule of law is weak, or even worse, where

corruption thrives. Therefore, rule-of-law interventions must also include judicial education

programmes to inform lawyers and judges about the dynamics of slavery. As many countries

across the global South lack functioning legal systems, interventions to combat corruption and

promote the rule of law help indirectly to end slavery by creating a legal and moral environment

where justice can be served and the rights of individuals promoted. To this end, interventions

that strengthen the institutions of the state and civil society will encourage good governance and

also contribute to the struggle against slavery.

Economic interventions seek to promote economic growth and development. Anti-poverty

programmes and policies indirectly address slavery by reducing the context of material

deprivation that makes many vulnerable to it. Indeed, economic development that contributes to

people’s economic and social security and the emergence and strengthening of a middle class can

strike a weighty blow against slavery. Rising incomes and increases in material welfare liberate

people from the traditional social structure and arrangements that enable forms of slavery such as

debt bondage. In addition, technological advances in many industries transform the nature of

work and can make slave labour redundant and unnecessary. Policies that foster economic

development, balanced with investments in human capital such as education, can contribute to

sustainable social development. Income-generating strategies for former slaves that guarantee a

minimum level of material welfare and quality of life will promote their recovery and

rehabilitation, reducing their vulnerability to re-enslavement. Although the contemporary

globalised world economy distances consumers from the production of a range of commodities

that may be tainted by slave labour, consumer-led movements against goods so produced or

against companies profiting from such labour are another economic strategy that may be able to

have an impact on slavery. Consumers should demand that their products are certified slave-free,

as with fair-trade products. An example of a successful consumer movement is the Rugmark

campaign that sought to end child labour in the carpet factories of South Asia.

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An Eradicable Scourge

Slavery should be history. The world has the ability, through careful co-ordination and the

considered application of resources, to end this barbaric practice that has plagued humanity

throughout the ages. Ending the scourge of slavery requires a multifaceted approach and

comprehensive interventions. The international agreements, treaties, and laws that protect

universal human rights must be implemented and enforced. The political will to enforce laws

must be marshalled and deployed. Governments, campaigners, social scientists, social-service

providers, legal professionals, and people everywhere should collaborate to end slavery. The

continuation of slavery diminishes the humanity and justice of everyone. Slavery is a major

human rights challenge of our era. Freeing victims from slavery and preventing the enslavement

of another human being will contribute to a more socially just and humane world.

ENDNOTES

1. See, for example, Adam Hochschild, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to

Free an Empire’s Slaves (Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 2005).

2. See his seminal Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge: Harvard

University Press, 1982).

3. See Kevin Bales, Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy (Berkeley and

Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999).

4. Kevin Bales, Ending Slavery: How We Free Today’s Slaves (Berkeley and Los Angeles:

University of California Press, 2007).

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