Worldwide, 29 Million Women And Girls Live In Modern Slavery
“The reality is that more people live in slavery today than ever before in human history,” said Grace Forrest, co-founder of the human rights organization Walk Free, which fights slavery.
The report shows that women make up 99 percent of all victims of sexual abuse, 84 percent of victims of forced marriage and 58 percent of victims of forced labor.
Forrest pointed out that the face of modern slavery had changed. “We are seeing normalized exploitation (of people) in the economy, in international supply chains and also on migration routes. The most vulnerable people in the world have been pushed even further towards the practices of modern slavery because of covid-19,” Forrest said. “We know that women and girls face unprecedented levels of exploitation and forced labor in supply chains for the goods we buy and use every day, such as clothing, coffee, technology,” she added.
According to her, the published number of victims of modern-day slavery is only a conservative estimate, which does not include the development of the situation after the coronavirus pandemic. However, Walk Free at the time saw “a sharp rise in forced and child marriages and exploitative working conditions around the world.”
The organization therefore calls, for example, for a ban on child marriages, which have still not outlawed 136 countries around the world.
The study is based on Walk Free findings and data from the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
