Poland has the highest number of slaves in the EU; Romania is the biggest source of slaves in the EU.
Europe has 1,243,400 estimated modern slaves says a recent NGO report.
Slaves are defined as people who are exploited but cannot leave due to threats, violence, coercion or abuse of power. Slaves vary from exploited maids to sex workers enslaved by pimps and forced child-brides sold to men for life.
The first five EU member states with the highest per capita population of slaves are Poland (estimated 181,100 slaves), Romania (80,200 slaves), Greece (44,200 slaves), and the Czech Republic (44,600 slaves). Outside the EU, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (13,300) and Turkey (480,000) have the highest number of slaves per capita.
Europe is both a destination and a source region for the exploitation of men, women and children in forced labour and commercial sexual exploitation. Forced child marriage has also been identified recently, especially in Turkey, but also in Slovakia, Bulgaria, Germany, and the U.K.
And IOM survey suggests people moving from war zones are especially vulnerable. It is estimated that as many as 10,000 children registered as refugees in Europe are unaccounted for, with Europol warning that gangs are targeting them for sexual exploitation, slavery, and forced labour in farming and factories.
In 2015, EU citizens accounted for 65% of identified trafficked victims within Europe. According to the NGO, 80% of sexual trafficking victims are Romanian, followed by Bulgarians, Lithuanians and Slovaks. The top non-EU victims of trafficking are Nigerians, Chinese, Brazilians, and increasingly Syrians.
Nigeria is a source for women trafficked for sexual exploitation in Italy, Belgium, France, Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands.
Approximately half of the 3,266 adult and child victims identified in 2015 in Britain experienced labour exploitation, with Lithuanian gangmasters playing a prominent role in supplying meat processing factories. The UK prosecuted their first forced marriage case in June 2015.
In Poland there are many reported of sweat shops using Vietnamese workers doing 12-13 hour shifts for six days a week. Bulgarian Roma children are sold in many countries as brides or for begging.
According to the Global Slavery Index created by the Australian Walk Free Foundation, 45.8 million people ‘are subject to some form of modern slavery in the world today’.
(Some europeans think that wis report is wrong, becausse there are over 450 million slaves in the EU, working for the top 10% who can be classiefied as modern-day slaves through debt and how that controls them. The top 10% and predominantly the top 1% know how debt is the greatest way to make people slaves to their will).
In 2016, 45.8 million people are in some form of modern slavery in 167 countries
The 2016 Global Slavery Index estimates that 45.8 million people are subject to some form of modern slavery in the world today. The Index presents a ranking of 167 countries based on the proportion of the population that is estimated to be in modern slavery.
The countries with the highest estimated prevalence of modern slavery by the proportion of their population are North Korea, Uzbekistan, Cambodia, India, and Qatar. In North Korea, there is pervasive evidence that government-sanctioned forced labour occurs in an extensive system of prison labour camps while North Korean women are subjected to forced marriage and commercial sexual exploitation in China and other neighbouring states. In Uzbekistan, the government continues to subject its citizens to forced labour in the annual cotton harvest.
Those countries with the highest absolute numbers of people in modern slavery are India, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Uzbekistan. Several of these countries provide the low-cost labour that produces consumer goods for markets in Western Europe, Japan, North America and Australia.
The countries with the lowest estimated prevalence of modern slavery by the proportion of their population are Luxembourg, Ireland, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden and Belgium, the United States and Canada, and Australia and New Zealand. These countries generally have more economic wealth, score higher on government response, have low levels of conflict, and are politically stable with a willingness to combat modern slavery.
Uzbekistan is the world’s sixth largest producer of cotton. During the annual cotton harvest, citizens are subjected to statesanctioned forced labour. Monitoring by international organisations has meant the government has begun to take steps to improve the situation, however, reports from the 2015 harvest estimate that over one million people were forced to work.
What factors explain or predict the prevalence of modern slavery?
Vulnerability to modern slavery is affected by a complex interaction of factors related to the presence or absence of protection and respect for rights, physical safety and security, access to the necessities of life such as food, water and health care, and patterns of migration, displacement and conflict. Statistical testing grouped 24 measures of vulnerability into four dimensions covering: 1) civil and political protections, 2) social health and economic rights, 3) personal security, and 4) refugee populations and conflict.
