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Global: Modern slavery is disturbingly common - Forced labour persists around the world, particularly for domestic workers

Global: Modern slavery is disturbingly common - Forced labour persists around the world, particularly for domestic workers

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by IDWFED published Sep 20, 2017 12:00 AM
Forced labour persists around the world, particularly for domestic workers

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Read the original article in full: Modern slavery is disturbingly common | The Economist

Excerpt:

The definition of forced labour was laid down in an ILO convention in 1930: work or service exacted from people against their will and “under the menace of any penalty”.

Around a sixth of the people experiencing such mistreatment today are forced to work by the state, primarily in prisons or the army (including conscripts made to do non-military tasks).

Another 4.8m, roughly a fifth of the total, were victims of sexual exploitation.

Even after excluding prostitution, almost three-fifths of those in forced labour in private enterprises are women, mainly because domestic work makes up a plurality of such exploitation.

Coercion can take multiple forms, from sexual violence to threats against family members, confinement and having passports taken away. The most common means is withholding the worker’s wages.

Michaelle De Cock, one of the report’s co-authors, says she was shocked by the level of debt bondage that the study revealed.

More than half of the respondents in the survey who were subjected to forced labour had to work to repay a debt with punitive interest rates. In agriculture, domestic work and manufacturing this share rose to over 70%.


Photo:
The Economist

Source: THE DATA TEAM/The Economist

Story Type: News

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