Slavery was never abolished — it was transformed. Today it operates in plain sight, hidden inside supply chains, domestic households, agricultural fields, and fishing vessels. Modern slavery strips people of the most fundamental human right of all — the ownership of their own lives. Freedom is meaningless as a global value while tens of millions of people remain the property of others.

Did You Know?

• An estimated 49.6 million people were living in modern slavery on any given day in 2021 — more than at any previously recorded point in human history. This includes forced labor, forced marriage, debt bondage, and sexual exploitation, occurring in every country on earth without exception, across every income level, industry, and social context. (ILO / Walk Free, Global Slavery Index, 2022)
• Forced labor alone generates an estimated $236 billion in illegal profits annually, making it one of the most lucrative criminal enterprises on earth. The industries most implicated include domestic work, agriculture, construction, manufacturing, and fishing — sectors that collectively produce goods consumed daily by people in every corner of the world, embedding modern slavery invisibly into the fabric of the global economy. (ILO, 2021)
• Women and girls are disproportionately enslaved. Approximately 54% of all forced labor victims and 99% of those exploited in the commercial sex industry are women and girls — with poverty, gender discrimination, displacement, and lack of legal protection functioning as the primary structural conditions that traffickers and exploiters systematically target and weaponize. (ILO / Walk Free, Global Slavery Index, 2022)
• Modern slavery is overwhelmingly concentrated where poverty, conflict, and weak governance intersect. The countries with the highest prevalence of modern slavery are almost entirely low- and middle-income nations experiencing fragility, conflict, or extreme inequality — with North Korea, Eritrea, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey among those with the highest estimated rates — demonstrating that slavery does not persist despite development failures but because of them. (Walk Free, Global Slavery Index, 2023)