There are an estimated 465,000 people living in modern slavery in Sudan (GSI 2018). Traffickers exploit foreign and domestic victims in the country. Migrant children from West and Central Africa are exploited in forced labour for begging, public transportation, large markets and sex trafficking. Business owners, informal mining operators, community members and farmers exploit children working in brick making factories, goldmining, collective medical waste, street vending and agriculture. Children are exposed to threats, physical and sexual abuse, as well as hazardous working conditions and limited access to education or health services. At the age of four Francis Bok was kidnapped from a local market in South Sudan and forced into domestic slavery in northern Sudan. For 10 years he was forced to work long hours with no rest, treated like an animal by the family he worked for. Bok tried to escape twice before was finally being successful, reaching a refugee camp in Egypt. After a while in the camp he was able to get refugee status in the United States. In 2011 Francis Bok returned to South Sudan and works as a public relations manager at a construction company.

There are an estimated 136,000 people living on conditions of modern slavery un the United Kingdom (Global Slavery Index 2018). According to the 2017 annual figures provided by the National Crime Agency, 5, 145 potential victims of modern slavery were referred through the National Referral Mechanism in 2017, of whom 2,454 were female, 2688 were male and 3 were transgender, with 41% of all referrals being children at the time of exploitation. People are subjected to slavery in the UK in the form of domestic servitude, labour exploitation, organ harvesting and sexual exploitation, with the largest number of potential victims originating from Albania, China, Vietnam and Nigeria. This data however does not consider the unknown numbers of victims that are not reported.  Fumi grew up in West Africa. She went to university and studied to be a teacher. She fell in love and got married at a young age, but the man turned out to be violent and abusive. He eventually beat her so badly that she spent three days in hospital. After this experience, Fumi decided to go to the UK to start a new life as a teacher. Unable to get a visa, her mother paid a lot of money for Fumi to travel on a fake passport. However, the men who arranged her travel were traffickers, and upon arrival in the UK she was forced to work in a brothel. She was trapped there for four months.

There are an estimated 133,000 people living in modern slavery in Ghana (GSI 2018). Ghana remains a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking. Ghanaian boys and girls are subjected to forced labor within the country in fishing, domestic service, street hawking, begging, portering, artisanal gold mining, quarrying, herding, and agriculture, including cocoa. Research focused on the fishing industry on Lake Volta indicated that more than half of the children working on and around the lake were born in other communities and many of these children are subjected to forced labor; not allowed to attend school; given inadequate housing and clothing; and are controlled by fishermen through intimidation, violence, and limiting access to food. Boys as young as five years old are forced to work in hazardous conditions, including deep diving, and many suffer waterborne infections. Gideon’s grandparents sent him to a man who promised to take care of him and help him go to school. Instead, the man enslaved Gideon in a fishing boat on Lake Volta in Ghana.

Brazil is a source country for men and boys trafficked internally for forced labor which accounts for most instances of modern slavery in Brazil. It is particularly prevalent in manual labour sectors such as construction, manufacturing, factory and domestic work and occurs in rural and urban areas, mainly through debt bondage schemes. In rural areas workers are immobilised in estates until they can pay off debts often fraudulently incurred; their identity documents and work permits are frequently retained; they are often physically threatened and punished by armed guards and some have been killed while attempting to flee. Debt bondage involves abusive labour contracting schemes operated by contractors known locally as empreiteiros or gatos, often engaged in other types of seasonal labour contracts.   Gilberto went looking for work when he was recruited to work in a forest cutting trees. Forced to work long hours with little food and pay, Gilberto tried to leave his situation but was told by the gato that recruited him that he owed him money for the tools, food and transport and had to pay off his debt before he could leave. After five months of malnutrition and witnessing the sexual abuse of young boys, Gilberto ran away.  

There are an estimated almost 8 million people living in modern slavery in India (GSI 2018). India has a population of more than 1.3 billion people, with at least 270 million people still living on less than US$1.90 per day. Existing research suggests that all forms of modern slavery continue to exist in India, with forced labour, including debt bondage, constituting India’s largest trafficking problem. Situations of debt bondage are often aggravated by the need to raise emergency funds or take on loans for health crises. Sometimes entire families are forced to work in brick kilns, rice mills, embroidery factories and agriculture. Gowri and her husband wanted to support their children and pay for their medical bills, so they took out a loan from a factory owner, agreeing to work in his brick kiln and wood-cutting facility to pay off the debt. This turned out to be a trick, and the owner continually increased the loan, violently forcing the family to continue working long hours for him. Even when Gowri paid of her debt and tried to leave to find a safer workplace, her employer attacked her. This abuse continued for nearly 10 years, until IJM was able to send rescue. Today, the slave owner is standing trial, and the family is safe.

There are an estimated 1,386,000 people living in modern slavery in Nigeria (GSI 2018). Nigeria is a source, transit, and destination country for women and children subjected to forced labour and sex trafficking, and a source country for men subjected to forced labour. Nigerian women and girls are subjected to sex trafficking within Nigeria and throughout Europe, including in Italy, Spain, Austria, and Russia. In 2015, a foreign government reported that with the exception of internal trafficking within the EU, Nigerian nationals are the most common trafficking victims in the EU. Before departure for work abroad, many Nigerian women participate in a traditional ceremony with a juju priest; some traffickers exploit this tradition and tell the women they must obey their traffickers or a curse will harm them, which prevents victims from seeking assistance or cooperating with law enforcement. While some sex trafficking victims arrive in Europe believing they will be working in prostitution, traffickers coerce them to stay in prostitution by changing the working conditions and increasing victims’ travel debts.  Grace* was promised work as a cleaner in the UK by a local businesswoman who trafficked her and forced her into prostitution.

The UK National Crime Agency estimates 3,309 potential victims of human trafficking came into contact with the State or an NGO in 2014. The latest government statistics derived from the UK National Referral Mechanism in 2014 reveal 2,340 potential victims of trafficking from 96 countries of origin, of whom 61 percent were female and 29 percent were children. Of those identified through the NRM, the majority were adults classified as victims of sexual exploitation followed by adults exploited in the domestic service sector and other types of labour exploitation. The largest proportion of victims was from Albania, followed by Nigeria, Vietnam, Romania and Slovakia. Grace was just 10 years old when her parents died and she was forced to live on the streets of Lagos. A few years later she met a woman who said she was looking for someone to help her around the house. Grace stayed there for 2 years. At the age of 15 she was taken to England where she was forced to work as a prostitute. Grace was able to escape after 3 months; however, she was taken to a detention centre by authorities after her asylum claim was rejected, despite being told by the police she had been trafficked.

There are an estimated 465,000 people living in modern slavery in Sudan (GSI 2018). Between 1983 and 2005, the central government of Sudan enslaved tens of thousands of black South Sudanese Christian and traditionalist people. It was part of a genocidal war against South Sudan, with a simple aim: to force South Sudan to become Arab and Muslim. Grace Akello was abducted from her high school dorm in October 1996 by the Lord’s Resistance Army. She, along with 29 other girls, was forced to march to Sudan under the threat of death if they could not keep up. Upon arrival, she was given an AK47 and told hunger would teach her to shoot. Grace was subjected to sexual violence for seven months before she was able to escape in April 1997.

It is estimated that over 3 million people are living in conditions of modern slavery in Pakistan (GSI 2018). Children are subjected to modern slavery in the form of forced marriage. It is estimated that 21% of girls in Pakistan are married before the age of 18. Child marriage in the country is connected with tradition, culture and custom. It occasionally involves the transfer of money, settlement of debts or exchange of daughters sanctioned by a Jirga or Panchayat.    This woman tells of how despite asking to continue with her education, at the age if 19 was forced to travel to Pakistan to marry. Despite being subjected to physical violence, this woman’s family maintained that she must stay with her husband. After five years, she finally left the abuse and is now happily married to a man of her choice. 

There are an estimated 403,000 people living in conditions of modern slavery in the United States (GSI 2018). The US attracts migrants and refugees who are particularly at risk of vulnerability to human trafficking. Trafficking victims often responding to fraudulent offers of employment in the US migrate willingly and are subsequently subjected to conditions of involuntary servitude in industries such as forced labour and commercial sexual exploitation. Hannah experienced the world of sexual exploitation and forced labour when her foster parents adopted her at the age of 12, in Texas, USA.

The 2016 Global Slavery Index ranks Haiti eighth in the world for prevalence of modern slavery by population. Today, about 407,000 children in Haiti are engaged in domestic child labor, according to a study conducted by UNICEF in partnership with more than 30 organisations. The investigation also found that 207,000 children under the age of 15 work in unacceptable forms of domestic child labour. Haitian children born in to poor families suffer from the restavèk system in which they are sent to work in domestic servitude because their families do not have the resources to care for them.  Helia was five years old when, after the death of her mother and grandmother, she was sent to live and work at someone's house as a restavèk. Forced to work long hours with no breaks, denied food and subjected to physical violence, Helia attempted to escape to different homes multiple times, but found each home as bad as the last. Helia was finally freed after people in the community pressured her owner to free her. Though Helia married, had children and thought her life had finally gotten better, in 2004 men broke in to her house, raped her and her daughter and took her husband away. Due to poverty Helia had to send one of her own daughters to work as a restavèk and lived in constant fear of the men who killed her husband. Helia now works with KOFAVIV (Commision of Women Victims for Victims), working to challenge the  restavèk and end slavery in Haiti. 

There is an estimated 1,220,000 people living in modern slavery in Indonesia. In Indonesia, women, men, and children are exploited in forced labour in fishing, fish processing, and construction; on plantations, including palm oil; and in mining and manufacturing. Indonesian fishermen working on foreign-flagged vessels reported pervasive abuse, forced labour, unpaid salaries, and, in some cases, allegations of murder. They worked on Taiwan, Thai, Malaysian, and Philippines-flagged fishing vessels operating in Indonesia and in the waters of Thailand, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, and India. Dozens of recruitment agencies in Burma, Indonesia, and Thailand hire fishermen, assign them fake identity and labour permit documents, and force them to fish long hours in waters for low or unpaid salaries while incurring severe physical abuse. The fishermen were prohibited from leaving their vessels and reporting these abuses by threats of exposing their fake identities to the authorities or by detaining them on land in makeshift prisons.  Since 2011, about 1,500 men have been repatriated back to Myanmar. According to figures from the Bangkok-based, anti-trafficking group Project Issara, which has examined 478 of those cases, on average, the fishermen have been given only $66 in compensation for each month they were enslaved. Some 88 percent of the migrant workers received less than half of the salary they were promised - or even worse, no pay at all. Originally from Myanmar, Hlaing* now lives in a camp set up for trafficked fishermen in Ambon, Indonesia. At that time, about 81 men at the camp were still waiting to collect their wages and return to their homeland.

Across Senegal, an estimated 50,000 boys living in traditional Quranic boarding schools, or daaras, are forced to beg for daily quotas of money, rice or sugar by their Quranic teachers, known as marabouts. Known as talibés, these children are sent by their parents to daaras to learn the holy Coran. Children in these daaras are often beaten, chained, bound, and subjected to other forms of physical or psychological abuse amounting to inhuman and degrading treatment. While in 2016 the government introduced a new programme to 'remove children from the streets', it has done little to reduce the alarming numbers of children subjected to exploitation, abuse and daily neglect.     Ibrahima attended Quaranic school in Kaolack region where the marabout demanded a quota of 150-250 CFA, and subjected to beatings if the quota was not met.

Unknown. This image formed part of the Harris Lantern Slide Collection. Under King Leopold II the Congo Free State used mass forced labour to extract rubber from the jungle for the European market. As consumer demand grew King Leopold II's private army - the Force Publique - used violent means to coerce the population into meeting quotas, including murder, mutilation, rape, village burning, starvation and hostage taking. Alice Seeley Harris and her husband Reverend John H. Harris were missionaries in the Congo Free State from the late 1890s. Alice produced a collection of images documenting the horrific abuses of the African rubber labourers. Her photographs are considered to be an important development in the history of humanitarian campaigning. The images were used in a number of publications. The Harrises also used the photographs to develop the Congo Atrocity Lantern Lecture which toured Britain and the the USA raising awareness of the issue of colonial abuses under King Leopold II's regime. Source: Antislavery International.

There are an estimated 794,000 people living in conditions of modern slavery in Russia (GSI 2018). Women and children are subjected to commercial sexual exploitation and sex trafficking in prostitution and pornography. Women are lured by the promise of lucrative employment and a new location, travelling to the country under the pretence of legitimate employment and a better life. However, when they arrive, they are forced into prostitution in brothels, hotels and saunas. There is also evidence of traffickers advertising sexual services of children online. However, despite the evidence of sex trafficking in Russia, it remains an under-recognised area of enslavement in the country.  Ira is from a small town in the Vitebsk region of Belarus. Never having a close relationship with her mother, she ran away numerous times. Ira married young and gave birth to a daughter, however the family had little money and no stable accommodation. Ira returned to her mother but found their relationship had not improved. As Ira had little education, it was difficult for her to find a job in her small town. Her neighbour introduced her to a friend from St. Petersburg who earned money by providing escort services. Ira travelled to Russia to work, however upon arrival the work was not what Ira was promised. She found herself forced to provide sexual services to men who could often be violent. Ira escaped one day, jumping from a third story window, sustaining injuries that led to her being unable to walk and confined to a wheelchair. Ira has now found stable employment and has received psychological and reintegration assistance within the counter-trafficking programme implemented by the IOM office in Belarus.

It is estimated that almost 8 million people are living in conditions of modern slavery in India (GSI 2018). The skewed sex ratio in some regions of India has fuelled the trafficking and selling of women and young girls as brides within India. Women are reportedly sold off into marriage by their families, sometimes at a young age, and end up enduring severe abuse, rape and exploitation by their husbands. It is also reported that women and girls from impoverished backgrounds have been lured by promises of marriage by younger men from urban areas, then forced into sex work once married.  Jambula Prasanna, was studying in KGBV when on her return home for vacation learned that her parents were fixing her marriage. Wanting to continue her studies, Prasanna told her teachers who informed Childline to prevent the marriage. 

There are an estimated 5,000 people living in modern slavery in Slovenia (GSI 2018). Slovenia is a destination, transit, and, to a lesser extent, a source country for women and children subjected to sex trafficking and for men, women, and children subjected to forced labour and forced begging. Women and children from Slovenia, Eastern European and Western Balkan countries, and the Dominican Republic are subjected to sex trafficking within the country, and many also transit to Western Europe where they may face sexual and labour exploitation. Ethnic Roma are particularly vulnerable to trafficking in Slovenia. Jane Kohut was 25 when she was forced into prostitution.

Despite having the lowest regional prevalence of modern slavery in the world, Europe remains a destination, and to a lesser extent, a source region for the exploitation of men, women and children in forced labour and commercial sexual exploitation. Trafficking for sexual exploitation is the most widespread for of modern slavery with an 84% of victims trafficked for this purpose. The majority of those trafficked for this purpose are women and young girls who often originate from Eastern Europe within the EU as well as Sub-Saharan Africa, with the majority of people being trafficked from Nigeria to various parts of Europe including Italy, France, Spain and the UK through an array of complex trafficking networks.  Jasmine was sold to a man when she was 5 years old. At the age of 9 she was taken to Italy and forced to be a prostitute. At 15 years old she was brought to the UK where her sexual exploitation continued. Jasmine was finally able to escape when she came back after being with a client to an empty house. It was at this time that she decided to run away. 

There are an estimated 403,000 people living in modern slavery in the United States (GSI 2018). Sex trafficking exists throughout the country. Traffickers use violence, threats, lies, debt bondage and other forms of coercion to compel adults and children to engage in commercial sex acts against their will. The situations that sex trafficking victims face vary, many victims become romantically involved with someone who then forces them into prostitution. Others are lured with false promises of a job, and some are forced to sell sex by members of their own families. Victims of sex trafficking include both foreign nationals and US citizens, with women making up the majority of those trafficked for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation. In 2015, the most reported venues/industries for sex trafficking included commercial-front brothels, hotel/motel-based trafficking, online advertisements with unknown locations, residential brothels, and street-based sex trafficking. Jasmine was trafficked at the age of 18 in Connecticut, USA. She grew up in Saugus and Revere, where she started dating a man who coerced her into sex trafficking.

There are an estimated 403,000 people living in modern slavery in the United States (GSI 2018). Sex trafficking exists throughout the country. Traffickers use violence, threats, lies, debt bondage and other forms of coercion to compel adults and children to engage in commercial sex acts against their will. The situations that sex trafficking victims face vary, many victims become romantically involved with someone who then forces them into prostitution. Others are lured with false promises of a job, and some are forced to sell sex by members of their own families. Victims of sex trafficking include both foreign nationals and US citizens, with women making up the majority of those trafficked for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation. In 2015, the most reported venues/industries for sex trafficking included commercial-front brothels, hotel/motel-based trafficking, online advertisements with unknown locations, residential brothels, and street-based sex trafficking.  Jasmine Grace was 18 years old when she first met Brian. They began to see each other often and Brian bought Jasmine Grace nice things. One night, Brian took Jasmine Grace to see her friend who had become engaged in prostitution after also meeting a man. Her friend told her about the amazing life she had, how much money she was making and how her ‘boyfriend’ took care of her. After being taught how to service johns, Jasmine Grace recalls how Brian kept her under his control through beatings, violence and threats for 5 years. Though Jasmine Grace managed to escape her trafficker, she notes how her life spiralled as she became homeless and addicted to heroin, taking another 3 years before she was able to get clean.