The latest ILO report suggests that one out of every 150 million people alive is either forced into labour or marriage.
The International Labour Organisation in its latest publication ‘Global Estimates of Modern Slavery Forced Labour and Forced Marriage’, on 12th September, put light on several issues concerning the modern system of labour turning into slavery.
Modern enslavement is persistent because of the situations created for the victim, most commonly the threats of violence, deception, abuse of power, and/or other forms of coercion.
A drastic number of 27.6 million people are entrapped in modern slavery including 3.3 million children among which half are present because of commercial sexual exploitation and the rest are followed by domestic work, agriculture, and manufacturing. At any given point around 6.3 million people are in a commercial sexual exploitation setting.
There is an important gender dimension to forced labour in the private economy. Where women are mostly found in domestic help and men are seen in the construction sector.
The 2021 Global Estimates show that approximately 3.9 million people are in state-imposed forced labour at any given time. Where males are making up three out of four of that number.
Forced marriage estimates by ILO
The ILO estimates that on any given day in 2021 around 22 million people were in a forced marriage setting, two-thirds being women, and many under the age of 15. This figure is a 6.6 million hike between the years 2016 to 2021.
It is stated that around 14.2 million people who belong to these settings are from Asia and the Pacific followed by 3.2 million from Africa and 2.3 million from Europe and Central Asia. The highest prevalence of forced marriage is in the Arab States; 4.8 per thousand population.
There is an important gender dimension to forced labour in the private economy. Where women are mostly found in domestic help, men are seen in the construction sector. At any given point around 6.3 million people are in a commercial sexual exploitation setting.
Read More: 50 million people trapped in modern slavery – UN
