While institutional slavery has been banned worldwide, there are numerous reports of female sex slaves in areas without an effective government control, such as Sudan and Liberia, Sierra Leone, northern Uganda, Congo, Niger and Mauritania.
North Korea, Eritrea and Burundi are estimated to have the world's highest rates of modern-day slavery, with India, China and Pakistan home to the largest number of victims.
Prevalence within Africa
The region has the highest rate of prevalence, with 7.6 people living in modern slavery for every 1,000 people in the region.
There are an estimated 21 million to 45 million people trapped in some form of slavery today. It's sometimes called “Modern-Day Slavery” and sometimes “Human Trafficking." At all times it is slavery at its core. What is the definition of human trafficking?
The Global Slavery Index 2018 estimates that on any given day in 2016, there were 15,000 living in conditions of modern slavery in Australia, a prevalence of 0.6 victims of modern slavery for every thousand people in the country.
Modern slavery involves extreme exploitation where individuals are threatened, coerced or deceived. Under Australian law, it is an umbrella term used to describe criminal offences including: forced labour where the person is not free to leave the workplace or to stop working.
As of 2018, the countries with the most slaves were: India (8 million), China (3.86 million), Pakistan (3.19 million), North Korea (2.64 million), Nigeria (1.39 million), Indonesia (1.22 million), Democratic Republic of the Congo (1 million), Russia (794,000) and the Philippines (784,000).
Slavery in the Sahel states of Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad and Sudan in particular, continues a centuries-old pattern of hereditary servitude. Other forms of traditional slavery exist in parts of Ghana, Benin, Togo and Nigeria.
Today, 167 countries still have some form of modern slavery, which affects an estimated 46 million people worldwide.
Slavery was abolished as a legally recognized institution, including in a 1909 law fully enacted in 1910, although the practice continued until at least 1949. Illegal acts of forced labor and sexual slavery in China continue to occur in the 21st century, but those found guilty of such crimes are punished harshly.
Modern slavery is most prevalent in Africa, followed by the Asia and the Pacific region.
Australia was held to the Slave Trade Act 1807 as well as the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, which abolished slavery in the British Empire.
Slavery in ancient Egypt existed at least since the Old Kingdom period.
The majority of all people enslaved in the New World came from West Central Africa. Before 1519, all Africans carried into the Atlantic disembarked at Old World ports, mainly Europe and the offshore Atlantic islands.
Poverty and globalisation are typically cited as the root causes of modern slavery that have enabled it to grow and thrive.
Together, these 10 countries – China, Democratic Republic of the Congo, India, Indonesia, Iran, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, the Philippines and Russia – comprise 60% of all the people living in modern slavery, as well as more than half the world's population, according to the Global Slavery Index.
According to the map, provisions criminalising slavery or the slave trade don't exist in, among other countries: Canada, Peru, Chile, South Africa, Madagascar, China and Spain.
Just 125 years ago, slavery existed legally and socially in the Korean Peninsula, and approximately 250 years ago, as much as 40 percent of the total population were slaves. By looking at these figures only, one could reach the conclusion that one in three Koreans today are descendants of a slave.
Between 1842 and 1904 more than 60,000 men and boys from the South Pacific islands, and an unknown number of women and girls, were kidnapped and brought to Australia to work as slaves on the sugar plantations that still dot the country's north-east coast. Many were also forced to work as pearl divers in the north.
Blackbirding is the coercion of people through deception or kidnapping to work as slaves or poorly paid labourers in countries distant from their native land. The practice took place on a large scale with the taking of people indigenous to the numerous islands in the Pacific Ocean during the 19th and 20th centuries.
In 2021, the government referred 150 cases of suspected trafficking crimes for possible investigation, compared with 233 cases the previous year, which had included cases of exit trafficking, organ trafficking, harboring, and forced marriage.