Modern slavery refers to forced labor, sexual exploration, human trafficking, and other severe forms of exploitation in which a person is controlled and coerced, deprived of their freedom, and treated as a commodity or tool for profit. It prevents millions of people from exercising their inherent rights as global citizens. The scourge finances organized crime, erodes labor standards globally, and drags us all into complicity with humanity’s worst human rights abuse.
4.10.1 – Shutting People Out of Global Citizenship
In order for individuals to care for and participate in the Global Commons, they first must be free from slavery. This is not the case for an estimated 49.6 million people who are held in slavery today, and are prevented from representing themselves politically, economically, or otherwise.
There are more people enslaved today than at any other time in human history–and the problem is growing. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the leading entity within the UN to address the issue, there has been a 25% increase in the number of trafficking victims since before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Slavery is highly concentrated in areas of the world where criminals can operate with impunity, and where a large number of people are vulnerable because of factors such as poverty, discrimination, and conflict. An estimated 58% of all people trafficked never cross an international border and are exploited within their own countries. However, every country has some slavery happening within its borders, whether as a recruiting, transit, or destination country for traffickers.
4.10.2 – Fueling the Growth of Organized Crime
Human trafficking is one of the most lucrative profit centers for transnational organized crime rings, in part because unlike drugs, the exploitation of humans can be sold over and over again. Traffickers and slaveholders generate an estimated $236 billion annually. That is more than 15 times the annual profits of Walmart.
These profits make criminal rings even more powerful, generating more money for them to plow into technological advances and other innovations that help them evade law enforcement. Human trafficking also helps to underwrite other criminal industries that harm the commons, such as drugs, guns, illegal timber, and identity and intellectual property theft.
4.10.3 – Eroding Labor Standards Globally
Slave labor distorts labor markets and creates unfair economic advantages for employers that tolerate slavery. The practice exerts downward pressure on all labor standards. Law-abiding employers who trace their supply chains and uphold labor standards can’t match the prices of less scrupulous competitors. Employers who directly enslave their workers, or choose to remain ignorant of the slavery happening through their suppliers, are rarely caught or punished. This impunity encourages a race to the bottom, with law-abiding employers being forced to cut costs, decrease wages, and offshore work to avoid going out of business. Meanwhile slavery-corrupted competitors profit.
4.10.4 – Complicity in Slavery
The cupboards and closets of consumers around the world are tainted by slavery. The culpability extends from the supply chains of the products we buy, all the way down to raw materials from farms and mines. Without a trusted, consistent way to evaluate the differences between how businesses treat their employees and the extent to which they trace their supply chains, consumers often choose a product based on price. This means that we may inadvertently buy into slavery every time we go shopping. Likewise, anyone who invests in companies with slavery-implicated supply chains—whether through direct stock ownership, mutual funds, or pension plans—is indirectly profiting from slavery.
Socially responsible investment screens against slavery date back to 1758, and consumer boycotts against slavery-tainted goods date back to 1791. Since 2000 there has been renewed interest in such efforts, with numerous nonprofit and for-profit organizations developing screening mechanisms for consumers and investors who don’t want to support slavery.
In addition to these initiatives, a more robust global governance system, together with advancements in blockchain technologies, could make purchasing and investment decisions more transparent in order to avoid slavery-tainted options. Also, investment opportunities are being developed that proactively place capital in companies and in micro-regions that help prevent and eradicate slavery.
The need for a global response to slavery and other labor abuses was recognized as early as 1919. That year, as part of the Treaty of Versailles, the International Labor Organization (ILO) was created to set global labor standards. In 1930, the ILO adopted the Convention on Forced Labor, building upon the 1926 Slavery Convention of the League of Nations. ILO efforts on forced labor later contributed to the intellectual and legal frameworks that shaped the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Article 4 the Declaration expresslly prohibits “slavery and the slave trade.”
In the 1990s, as human trafficking grew more rampant, it became clear that gaps had developed in existing law due to globalization, travel industry changes, enhanced communications technologies, and increased migration flows. In 1999, the ILO adopted the Convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labor and in 2000, the UN adopted the “Palermo Protocol,” the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children. The goal of eradicating slavery and human trafficking was also included as goal 8.7 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
The ILO and UN have comprehensive anti-slavery frameworks, but they are undermined by a critical gap in the policies of the World Trade Organization. The very body that enables global trade has no ban on goods made with slave labor, allowing slavery-tainted products to circulate freely in international markets.
| The Freedom Fund was founded in 2013 by three leading anti-slavery donors: Humanity United, the Legatum Foundation, and the Walk Free Foundation. Since then many other donors have joined them in their work to support grassroots, community-led efforts in regions with the highest incidence of slavery. In 2019, The Liechtenstein Initiative – a public-private partnership between the Governments of Liechtenstein, Australia and the Netherlands, along with private sector actors and foundations – created Finance Against Slavery and Trafficking (FAST) which is now based at the UN Development Program (UNDP). FAST and organizations like Working Capital are creating investment opportunities so that philanthropies and others can proactively put capital where it will help prevent and eradicate slavery. |