As an antislavery advocate, I genuinely hope that identifying the plethora of injustices which fall under the umbrella of modern-day slavery soon becomes commonplace, as this is essential if any progress to the modern abolitionist movement is to be made. This article thus intends to highlight the numerous forms of injustices which make up the human rights issue that is modern-day slavery.
First of all, modern-day slavery encompasses all that is human trafficking: the act of transferring, harboring, receiving or transporting person(s) through force, fraud, or coercion for a purpose of exploitation, including sexual or labor exploitation and the removal of organs. According to a 2014 report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 53% of trafficking victims in 2011 were sexually exploited while 40% were under the constraints of labor exploitation and 7% suffered from organ removal among other forms of exploitative practices. This report further found that while the sweeping majority of sexual exploitation victims between 2010 and 2012 were female, 65% of forced labor victims were male, demonstrating the truly all-encompassing nature of modern-day slavery which knows of no bounds.
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Modern-day slavery also includes child trafficking, a malpractice whose name implies precisely that which it entails: the trafficking of youth and minors under the age of 18 under force, fraud or coercion for the purpose of exploitation.
Both child labor and child soldiering lie in the realm of modern-day slavery as well. According to the International Labour Organization, child labor is the enslavement of individuals under the age of 18. Supply needs and industrial demands for cheap labor have unfortunately been great contributors to the rise of child labor in industry, making more than 25% of today’s slaves young children. Child soldiering similarly exploits and enslaves; an estimate by the Council on Foreign Relations believes that this injustice usurps 300,000 child combatants, violating their human rights, particularly those to education and dignity.
Forced labor is another constituent of the social injustice that is modern-day slavery. Victims of forced labor work against their will, often times for extraneously long hours for little to no pay under unbearable working conditions and treatment which hold irreparable ramifications on their psychological, emotional and physical health.
Modern-day slavery also includes bonded labor, alternatively known as debt bondage. This form of enslavement forces victims to pay off debts, sometimes even falsified ones, in exchange for laboring services. The incredibly low-to-none wages offered to victims of debt bondage tie those individuals down to overlords through a debt that can truly never be repaid. It is for this reason precisely that bonded labor can evolve into what is known as descent-based slavery in which debt is passed down to one’s children, thus enslaving along the family lineage.
Descent-based slavery also encompasses those enslaved under strict hierarchical class structures often based on race in countries where culture enslaves those lower in caste. Often denied the right to education, property-ownership, inheritance and marriage, victims of descent-based slavery can arise from countries such as Mali, Niger and Mauritania.
Modern-day slavery is a broad term which also includes forms of domestic servitude. Individuals holding seemingly ordinary jobs, working as nannies or housekeepers in private households, can often be secretly suffering under no pay, a lack of privacy or physical abuse and harm. The restriction of one’s freedom of movement is the chief characteristic which defines this human rights violation.
Some of the 45.8 million individuals estimated to be victimized by modern-day slavery are impacted by early or forced marriages. Often turned to for the illusion of upward mobility or the familial stability it may provide, early marriage is defined by the lack of consent given by one of the 2 unionizing parties. According to Girls Not Brides, 28 young girls under the age of 18 are married off every minute sometimes as a natural result of poverty or out of grave financial instability. Children who have not willingly provided free and informed consent to marry, are subject to control in marriage (through abuse, threat or exploitation) or are unable to end the marriage have fallen subject to a forced marriage, an undoubtable form of enslavement.
According to Anti-Slavery International, modern-day slavery is chiefly defined by the force, ownership, control, dehumanization and restrictions put forth against a victim. Regardless the form, modern-day slavery remains all the same: a corrupt, malicious and inhumane practice pitting humans against one another to prize profit over people, an injustice that truly must be halted.
