Many of us consider slavery a relic of the past, a long-forgotten crime that ceased to exist in after its abolishment in Britain in 1833. Anti-slavery day on October 18th is here to remind us that the phenomena of slavery is still alive and well. International human rights association Anti-Slavery reports there are 40.3 million people worldwide living as slaves.
The face of slavery today is an unfamiliar one. It has moved on from the highly-visible image of slaves being a fundamental, socially acceptable part of the working world. Now, slavery is an invisible force, hard to spot and even harder to combat successfully, lurking beneath the surface of everyday society.
Modern slavery is any case in which individuals are exploited, controlled completely, and unable to leave. In practical terms, this translates into many different forms of slavery:
- Forced labour: workers are coerced into working by threat of punishment
- Debt labour: when people borrow money they cannot repay, and are forced into labour to repay the debt, with the work or debt quickly becoming out of their control
- Human trafficking: people are coerced, harboured, or transported into a situation of exploitation from which there is no escape
- Descent-based slavery: people are born into slavery because their ancestors were captured and enslaved
- Child slavery: a child is exploited for someone else’s personal gain
- Forced marriage: when someone is married against their will and cannot leave (almost all child marriages are slavery)
Slavery is most common in countries where corruption is commonplace: 4.1 million people in slavery are exploited by governments, estimates the International Labour Organisation. Slavery is not confined, however, to developing countries. 1.5 million people are in slavery in developed economies, such as Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia, and Germany, among many others.
The British Government estimates that tens of thousands of people in the UK are slaves. Despite new legislation, the Modern Slavery Act of 2015, that aims to hold accountable more traffickers, deal out heavier punishments, and allow more protection for victims of slavery, the statistics show that, still, not enough is being done to eradicate slavery in the UK. There were 2,118 suspected child trafficking victims reported to the UK authorities in 2017, a 66% increase from the year before. Anti-Slavery had this to say on their website:
“The UK government does not have a coherent plan for preventing child trafficking, so many children only receive help once the harm is done and a criminal offence takes place, instead of preventing the offence in the first place.”
Only 1% of victims of slavery in the UK see their exploiter brought to justice. Why is it that such life-destroying crimes aren’t being met with repercussions of equal severity?
While slavery is often assumed to be a horror of the past, those who believe this myth are falling prey to exactly what modern slavery relies on: the invisibility of its victims. Slavery is as pandemic today as it was two hundred years ago and is all the more chilling for its survival through the creation of democratic, well-exercised law.
Georgie Wardall