Does slavery still exist?

Slavery is illegal in Brazil. Slavery and labor situations like depression era company towns still exist in remote areas in Brazil like the Amazon (a fictional portrayal of such a town occurs in "The Rundown"). "Debt slavery" (where workers are forced to work to pay an ever-increasing debt) still exists in some rural areas, though it is illegal and the government actively fights against it. The "debt slavery" is particularly worrying in large sugar cane farms, since sugar cane is a raw material for ethanol, a product that the Brazilian government is currently actively encouraging the production and research of.

Human rights in Brazil

Human rights in Brazil include the right to life and freedom of speech; and condemnation of slavery and torture. The nation ratified the American Convention on Human Rights. The 2017 Freedom in the World report by Freedom House gives Brazil a score of "2" for both political rights and civil liberties; "1" represents the most free, and "7", the least.

However, the following human rights problems have been reported: torture of detainees and inmates by police and prison security forces; inability to protect witnesses involved in criminal cases; harsh prison conditions; prolonged pretrial detention and inordinate delays of trials; reluctance to prosecute as well as inefficiency in prosecuting government officials for corruption; violence and discrimination against women; violence against children, including sexual abuse; human trafficking; police brutality; discrimination against black and indigenous people; failure to enforce labour laws; and child labour in the informal sector. Human rights violators often enjoy impunity. According to UNESCO, "Brazil promotes a vast array of actions for the advancement and defense of human rights, even though it faces enormous social and economic inequalities".

Up to 40,000 Brazilians find themselves toiling for no real wages and can't leave the distant work camps where they live. Brazilian government officials and human rights activists call it slave labor, a condition they are trying to eradicate.

A special government task force established in 1995 says it freed 4,634 workers last year in 133 raids on large farms and businesses that rely on workers driven to take these jobs by hunger and the empty promises of labor recruiters. "Slavery is the tail end of a lot of abuse of poor people and workers in Brazil," said Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based policy center. "Bad treatment reaches over to abusive treatment to treatment that becomes virtual slavery."

In Brazil, it often works this way: A recruiter known as a "gato", or "cat", plumbs the slums and other poor areas of the vast country and gets people to agree to jobs in distant places. Once separated from home and family, workers are vulnerable to all sorts of abuses, such as being told they owe money for transportation, food, housing and other services.

"This is known as debt bondage, which also fits official definitions of slavery," says Anti-slavery International, a lobbying group based in Great Britain. "A person is in debt bondage when their labor is demanded as the means of repayment for a loan or an advance. Once in debt they lose all control over their conditions of work and what, if anything they are paid, often making it impossible to repay and trapping them in a cycle of debt."

The United Nations International Labour Organization estimated there were between 25,000 and 40,000 Brazilians working under such conditions in 2003, the latest year for which it offered figures. Leonardo Sakamoto, the director of the human rights group Reporter Brasil, says he's certain there are still more than 25,000 slave laborers in Brazil. According to Anti-slavery International, the greatest number of slave laborers is employed in ranching (43%). This is followed by deforestation (28%), agriculture (24%), logging (4%), and charcoal (1%).

Though those figures are from 2003, Sakamoto says they still apply, with cattle ranches and sugar cane plantations among the top employers. But what may set Brazil apart are the government's attempts to wipe out the practice. One of Brazil's chief tools is a "Special Mobile Inspection Group" that consists of labor inspectors, federal police and attorneys from the federal labor prosecution branch. The group often raids workplaces, looking for abuses and laborers held against their will.

In 2007, the task force freed 5,999 workers, a record number. In 2003, the agency freed 5,223 laborers. Since the group's inception in 1995, it has freed 33,000 people. The former Labor Minister Carlos Lupi vowed in a recent interview with the state-run Brazilian news agency that efforts will be stepped up this year.

In 2014, Brazil is still classified in a U.S. Department of Labor report as one of the 74 countries that still employ children and slave laborers within the informal working sector. A "List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor" issued within the report shows 16 products including cotton, cashews, pineapples, rice and sugarcane corresponding to the country of Brazil.

Human rights abuse isn't limited to just the local population but to foreign domestic workers as well. In 2017, a Philippines national was found in conditions of Modern slavery working for a Brazilian family.

On August 7, 2006, former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed a law on domestic and family violence against women in Brasília. The law is the result of an extensive process of consultation and discussion, in which key women's organizations played a crucial role. The process was promoted by the State Secretariat of Policies for Women and supported by UNIFEM. The law changes the Penal Code, allowing an aggressor to be arrested not only in the act of committing an offence, but also preventively, if the aggressor's freedom is determined to be a threat to a victim's life. The law also provides for gender-based crimes against women to be judged in special courts. The law's enactment fulfills a commitment made by Brazil when it signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). The new legislation provides for unprecedented measures to protect women in situations of violence or under risk of death. Depending on the case, a perpetrator can be prevented from approaching the woman and her children. A victim may also recover property and cancel a power of attorney held by the aggressor. In detention cases, penalties have tripled: jail time, which used to be six months to one year, has increased to up to three years. Pecuniary penalties, that is, small fines used to punish perpetrators, have been eliminated.

The law is not limited to making penalties more severe, however. It also establishes social measures to assist women. For example, those at risk may be included in government welfare programmes, and the law provides for the inclusion of basic information on violence against women in school materials. A particularly innovative aspect of the law is that it provides protection for domestic workers from physical, psychological and sexual abuse. Domestic workers are the labour force category employing the largest number of women in Brazil, consisting of approximately 6.5 million women in the country, 500,000 of them less than 18 years old.

Brazilians are bound by law to ensure certain basic rights for their children. Article 277 of Brazil's Constitution states: "It is the duty of the family, of society, and the state to ensure to children and adolescents, with absolute priority, the right to life, health, food, education, leisure, professional training, culture, dignity, respect, family and community life, as well as to protect them from all forms of neglect, discrimination, exploitation, violence, cruelty and oppression". There are several other legal (and constitutional) provisions in Brazil related to protection of children against all forms of abuse, violence, and sexual exploitation. Some lawyers hail the country's constitutional and statutory protections to be a model to the world in all it says about children's rights. UNICEF, for instance, describes Brazil's Child and Adolescent Statute (ECA), a legislation created to implement constitutional provisions regarding the protection of children's rights, as one of the most advanced in the world. However, the United Nations estimates that no less than 500,000 children in Brazil are victims of sexual exploitation. The U.N. also reveals that in some parts of the country, particularly in the northern and northeastern regions, "most sexual crimes against children and adolescents are not investigated, and in some cases representatives of the judiciary are involved in those cases."

Although the law prohibits racial discrimination, darker-skinned citizens, particularly Afro-Brazilians, frequently encountered discrimination. The law specifically prohibits denial of public or private facilities, employment, or housing to anyone based on race. The law also prohibits, and provides jail terms for, the incitement of racial discrimination or prejudice and the dissemination of racially offensive symbols and epithets. Afro-Brazilians, representing almost 7% of the population, were significantly underrepresented in the government, professional positions, and the middle and upper classes. They experienced a higher rate of unemployment and earned average wages approximately half those of a white person. There was also a sizeable racial education gap. In February in a government report to the UN, SEDH acknowledged the existence of racism in the country but stated that the government took and was taking affirmative actions to reduce it, including university admission quotas for Afro-descendants.

Major public universities in the Federal District and the states of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Paraná, Mato Grosso, Minas Gerais, Espírito Santo, Bahia, and others maintained affirmative action programs. For instance, the University of Brasília set aside 25 percent of its first-year 2007 vacancies for self-declared students of color. According to a study from Rio de Janeiro Federal University released in January, approximately half of the public federal and state universities had a quota system or an exam bonus. Some argue that quotas even partly based on race introduce a tension that never existed in Brazilian society in the way it has in the United States, while others say it simply recognises the obvious link between being poor and black. A long-debated law on racial equality only recently passed an important stage in congressional approval by avoiding controversial issues such as quotas. It appears the final word may be left to the country's Supreme Court which is due to give its views on the matter in the year ahead.
The law grants the indigenous population broad rights, including the protection of their cultural patrimony and the exclusive use of their traditional lands. Although many problems existed, the government made limited progress in securing these rights. The National Indigenous Foundation (FUNAI) estimated that there were 460,000 indigenous persons in 225 societies on indigenous lands and an additional 100,000 to 190,000 indigenous persons living outside these areas, including in urban environments. According to the Ministry of Education, 20 state and federal universities continued to reserve entrance slots for indigenous persons. The number of indigenous university students, almost 5,000 or approximately 1 percent of total university students, remained unchanged.

Women have the same legal rights as men. A cabinet-level office, the Secretariat for Women's Policy, oversees a special entity charged with ensuring the legal rights of women. Although the law prohibits discrimination based on gender in employment and wages, there were significant wage disparities between men and women. According to the Ministry of Labor and Employment (MTE), women were often paid less than men in the same functions.

The law provides 120 days of paid maternity leave to women and seven days of paternity leave to men. The law also prohibits employers from requiring applicants or employees to take pregnancy tests or present sterilization certificates, but some employers sought sterilization certificates from female job applicants or tried to avoid hiring women of childbearing age. Violations of the law are punishable by jail terms of up to two years for employers, while the company may be fined 10 times the salary of its highest-paid employee.

Prostitution is legal, but exploiting it through associated activities, such as operating a brothel, is illegal. While no specific laws address sex tourism, it is punishable under other criminal offenses, and there was a government-released "code of conduct to combat sex tourism and sexual exploitation" and government-conducted campaigns in the most affected areas.

The Federal District and the states of Pernambuco, Espírito Santo, Amazonas, and Paraná enacted laws requiring certain businesses to display signs listing the penalties for having sexual intercourse with a minor. Rio de Janeiro and Bahia states had similar legislation. Women's groups reported that prostitutes encountered discrimination when seeking free medical care. Trafficking of women for the purpose of prostitution was a serious problem.

Each state secretariat for public security operated "delegacias da mulher" (DEAMs), police stations dedicated exclusively to addressing crimes against women, for a total of 415 countrywide. The quality of services varied widely, and availability was particularly limited in isolated areas. For example, the North and Northeast regions, which contained approximately 35 percent of the country's population, possessed only 24 percent of the country's DEAMs.

The stations provided psychological counseling, temporary shelter, and hospital treatment for victims of domestic violence and rape (including treatment for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases) as well as criminal prosecution assistance by investigating and forwarding evidence to courts. There were also 123 reference centers and 66 women's shelters.

In Rio de Janeiro, the city's Rio Women Program provided assistance to female victims of domestic violence who received death threats. When necessary, victims were sent to specific shelters, which also provided psychological and legal aid. In addition to the Women Program, victims of domestic violence could obtain assistance at the Center for Women's Support, an initiative of the Rio de Janeiro state government that offered a complaint hot line, shelters, and psychological and legal aid.

The law requires health facilities to contact the police regarding cases in which a woman was harmed physically, sexually, or psychologically in order to collect evidence and statements should the victim decide to prosecute. Sexual harassment is a criminal offense, punishable by up to two years in prison. The law encompasses sexual advances in the workplace or in educational institutions and between service providers or clients.

In the workplace it applies only in hierarchical situations, where the harasser is of higher rank or position than the victim. Although the law was enforced, accusations were rare, and the extent of the problem was not documented.

The Brazilian prison system is considered insolvent for a long time. Prisons are overcrowded and unhealthy, and prison rape is not uncommon. There are over 400,000 inmates in the system. Beatings, torture and killings by prison guards occur throughout the system. Children are abused in the juvenile justice system. According to the Ministry of Justice, 13,489 teenagers are in detention. Prison overcrowding results in a prominent occurrence of prison violence and murder as well as frequent revolts and escapes. To deal with these problems, prison administrations often divide prison populations according to gang affiliation. According to Global Justice, there have been claims of gang affiliation being assigned. Living space, food, and cleanliness conditions are inhumane and bribery for privileges and transfers is rampant. In December 2007, a case of prison gang rape in Pará brought media attention to the condition of human rights in the Brazil prison system. Other cases, like of the beating of two young suspects by two military police officers from the 4th Battalion in the city of Picos, Piauí, have also made the headlines.

Prison conditions throughout the country often range from poor to extremely harsh and life-threatening. Abuse by prison guards, poor medical care, and severe overcrowding occurred at many facilities. Prison officials often resorted to brutal treatment of prisoners, including torture. Harsh or dangerous working conditions, official negligence, poor sanitary conditions, abuse and mistreatment by guards, and a lack of medical care led to a number of deaths in prisons. Poor working conditions and low pay for prison guards encouraged widespread corruption. Prisoners who committed petty crimes were held with murderers. According to the National Penitentiary Department, in June there were 392,279 prisoners incarcerated, 40 percent more than the system's design capacity, and the number increased approximately 3,000 per month. During the year 135 prisoners were involved in riots from January to June in federal prisons. There were several official complaints of overcrowding in Goiás, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Minas Gerais states.

Police violence is one of the most internationally recognized human rights abuses in Brazil. The problem of urban violence focuses on the perpetual struggle between police and residents of high crime favelas such as the areas portrayed in the film "City of God".

Police response in many parts of Brazil is extremely violent, including summary execution and torture of suspects. According to Global Justice, in 2003, the police killed 1,195 people in the State of Rio de Janeiro alone. In the same year 45 police officers were killed. It is often reacted to by local communities and trafficking groups with demonstrations and violent resistance, causing escalation and multiplying victims. Unofficial estimates show there are over 3,000 deaths annually from police violence in Brazil, according to Human Rights Watch. There are constant complaints of racism, abuses, torture, executions and disappearances. Not all states record police killings or keep accurate statistics.

Reports of killings by Rio de Janeiro police decreased during the year under a new state security strategy. Statistics released by the Rio de Janeiro State Secretariat for Public Security showed 911 persons killed as a result of police confrontations from January through September, a 12 percent decrease over the same period in 2007. The Rio de Janeiro Institute for Public Security reported that police killed an average of four persons per day during 2007. According to a UN report released in September, police clashes resulted in 1,260 civilian deaths in Rio de Janeiro State in 2007. Most of these killings occurred during "acts of resistance," the UN report commented. The São Paulo State Secretariat for Public Security reported that São Paulo state police (civil and military) killed 340 civilians in the state from January to September, compared with 315 during the same period in 2007. Cases involving extrajudicial executions were either under police investigation or before the state courts; observers believed that it could take years to resolve such cases.

There were no reports of politically motivated disappearances. However, the Center of Studies of Security and Citizenship estimated that in 2006 approximately 1,940 persons "disappeared"; the center believed many were killed by police. There were no developments in the disappearance cases that occurred during the 1964-85 military dictatorship, and 400 cases remained for the Amnesty Commission to analyze. There were also no developments regarding the 2007 Chamber of Deputies' Human Rights Committee request that the government seize documents to determine the circumstances of military regime political prisoner deaths and the locations of their remains.

Brazil's 21-year military dictatorship, ushered in with a U.S.-backed coup in 1964, tortured thousands of Brazilian citizens--anyone even suspected of opposing the authoritarian regime. As of 1988, torture is illegal in Brazil. However, the nation still suffers from state-sanctioned brutality today, including the torture of those incarcerated. Perhaps then it is not surprising that torture in Brazil is widespread and systematic, according to the ex-UN Special Rapporteur. Occurrence of police torture accompanies murder or effecting intimidation and extortion. Torture has also been widely reported in detention centers and mental institutions. Although the constitution prohibits torture and provides severe legal penalties for its use, torture by police and prison guards remained a serious and widespread problem. In February the government's National Human Rights Secretariat (SEDH) acknowledged that torture existed in the country and related the problem to societal tolerance and the fear of retaliation.

Federal, state, and military police often enjoyed impunity in cases of torture, as in other cases of abuse. During the year an additional state (for a total of 13 of 26) adopted the National Plan for the Prevention and Control of Torture, which includes the installation of cameras in prisons and penitentiaries, taping of interrogations, and reversal of the presumption of innocence for those accused of torture.

During the first half of the year, the São Paulo State Ombudsman's Office received five complaints of torture by police, compared with seven during the same period of 2007. Police continued to abuse transvestite prostitutes in Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, and Salvador, according to the Grupo Gay da Bahia. Police routinely investigated such allegations, which rarely resulted in punishment (see section 5 Other Societal Abuses and Discrimination). In Rio de Janeiro, militia members reportedly continued to use physical abuse, degrading treatment, and torture to spread fear and establish control over favela residents. While militia members, many of them off-duty and former law enforcement officers, often began by taking community policing into their own hands, many intimidated residents and conducted other illegal activity. In May militia members reportedly kidnapped, tortured, and released two "O Dia" newspaper investigative journalists in Rio de Janeiro's Batan favela, when they were discovered living there undercover to investigate militias.

The Rio de Janeiro military police officer, who publicly defended the use of torture in 2007 and was subsequently transferred, was assigned command of the 38th Military Police Battalion in Três Rios. The nine police officers, including the police chief of Osasco, São Paulo, charged in 2007 with theft, torture, extortion, beating, and threatening to rape to extort money, remained free and continued to await a trial that at year's end was not scheduled. In October 2007 the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) adopted several findings in a case originated in 1998, that authorities had violated the rights of Antonio Ferreira Braga by illegally arresting and torturing him in 1993 in Ceará State, and that the government had failed to prevent and punish said acts, and also made four recommendations. After various exchanges the IACHR announced on July 18 that the government had fulfilled one recommendation (training police on humane treatment), but not two others (investigation and punishment of those responsible, compensation of the victim), and that one remained pending (investigation of possible negligence of authorities).

The agrarian struggle in Brazil is manifold, touching on the topics of deforestation, dam building, eviction, squatting, and wildlife smuggling. The enormous Landless Workers' Movement in Brazil involves large and migrating landless populations. Landowners resort policemen to drive and intimidate landless populations from their properties.

Other cases of agrarian human rights violations involve invasion of properties and taking landowners as hostages, in order to force the government to provide land for the Landless Worker's Movement. Further agrarian violence arises from smugglers of exotic animals, wood, and other minerals from extracting contraband from forest or agrarian areas. Brazil's Landless Workers Movement, or in Portuguese Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST), is the largest social movement in Latin America with an estimated 1.5 million members organized in 23 out 27 states. The MST carries out long-overdue land reform.

Since 1985, the MST has invaded lands where they have established collective farms, schools for their children and adults and clinics, and natural agriculture. The MST got land titles for more than 350,000 families in 2,000 settlements as a result of MST actions, and 180,000 encamped families currently await government entitlement. Land occupations are not rooted in the Brazilian Constitution, because they violate the property rights - unless the government determines there is another social function that fits better to the property. The MST's success lies in its financial support from the Worker's Party (Brazil) and other left-leaning organizations from Brazil and abroad, despite of the fact most of population doesn't agree with its modus operandi. Members have not only managed to get land for their families, but also continue to develop a family agriculture model as an alternative to today's agrobusiness that makes up one third of Brazil's GDP.

As deforestation companies move in to take advantage of the large area of space the Amazon offers, indigenous tribes that live in the forest are subject to violence. To protect their land, many indigenous people attack the new arrivals, who fight back, leading to violence and deaths.

The law provides indigenous persons with exclusive beneficial use of the soil, waters, and minerals on indigenous lands, but Congress must approve each case. The government administers the lands but must consider the views of affected communities regarding their development or use, and communities have the right to profit from such use. However, indigenous leaders and activists complained that indigenous peoples had only limited participation in decisions taken by the government affecting their land, cultures, traditions, and allocation of national resources.

It is also criticized the government for devoting insufficient resources to health care, other basic services, and protection of indigenous reserves from outsiders. Non-indigenous people who illegally exploited indigenous lands for mining, logging, and agriculture often destroyed the environment and wildlife and caused violent confrontations. Fundação Nacional do Índio, which acknowledged insufficient resources to protect indigenous lands from encroachment, depended on the understaffed and poorly equipped Federal Police for law enforcement on indigenous lands. November 13, 2012, the national indigenous peoples association from Brazil APIB submitted to the United Nation a human rights document that complaints about new proposed laws in Brazil that would further undermine their rights if approved.

The law provides for the granting of asylum or refugee status in accordance with the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 protocol, and the government has established a system for providing protection to refugees. In practice the government provided protection against the expulsion or return of refugees to countries where their lives or freedom would be threatened.

The government provided temporary protection to individuals who may not qualify as refugees under the 1951 convention and the 1967 protocol. The government cooperated with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and other humanitarian organizations in assisting refugees and asylum seekers.

The UNHCR estimated that approximately 600 persons fled to the country from the September conflict in Pando, Bolivia, and 70 requested asylum. According to the National Committee for Refugees, at the end of the year there were 3,918 recognized refugees in the country. During the year authorities granted refugee status to 226 individuals. Those who maintain their status, which is reviewed every two years, may receive identity and travel documents and work and study in the country.

From 1998 to 2008, 4,515 persons sought asylum, according to news reports. There were, in addition to officially recognized refugees, approximately 17,500 de facto Colombian refugees in the country's Amazon region, according to the 2008 World Refugee Survey. Many asylum seekers did not have government support because of the poor infrastructure in the region. Relations with local communities were increasingly difficult because of pressures on the educational and health systems.

Many human rights defenders who have arisen to oppose human rights violations and their families and friends suffer violence and persecution across Brazil. Telephone death threats are prominent and often followed through by ambush or assassination.

Government officials, attorneys, union leaders and even religious leaders have often been targeted, as with Antonio Fernandez Saenz affair. The danger of human rights defense entered the world press with the murder of Dorothy Stang in 2005, and Chico Mendes in 1988.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in Brazil enjoy many of the same legal protections available to non-LGBT people, with LGBT people having marriage rights available nationwide since May 2013. It is allowed for same-sex couples to marry, and have the same legal rights as married heterosexuals.

The São Paulo Gay Pride Parade is the world's largest LGBT pride celebration, with 4 million people in 2009. Brazil had more than 60,000 same-sex couples in 2010 (IBGE). The country also has 300 active LGBT organizations.

Prejudice against LGBT groups has also decreased according to data from a survey of Ibope, Brazil's institute for statistics and public opinion. 60% of Brazilians consider homosexuality natural. However, violence and prejudice remains, and Brazil is one of the countries where the most gay people are killed. According to the report "Epidemic of Hate", published in 1996 by the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, at least 1,200 gays, lesbians and transsexuals were killed in Brazil in a decade.

Slavery is currently illegal in every country around the world. However, up until the 19th century slavery and ownership of people had existed in one form or another in nearly every society on earth. Notwithstanding the illegality according to codes of law, slavery still exists in various forms today.

Ownership

Ownership is the state or fact of exclusive rights and control over property, which may be an object, land/real estate or intellectual property. Ownership involves multiple rights, collectively referred to as title, which may be separated and held by different parties.

The process and mechanics of ownership are fairly complex: one can gain, transfer, and lose ownership of property in a number of ways. To acquire property one can purchase it with money, trade it for other property, win it in a bet, receive it as a gift, inherit it, find it, receive it as damages, earn it by doing work or performing services, make it, or homestead it. One can transfer or lose ownership of property by selling it for money, exchanging it for other property, giving it as a gift, misplacing it, or having it stripped from one's ownership through legal means such as eviction, foreclosure, seizure, or taking. Ownership is self-propagating in that the owner of any property will also own the economic benefits of that property.

Over the millennia and across cultures, notions regarding what constitutes "property" and how it is treated culturally have varied widely. Ownership is the basis for many other concepts that form the foundations of ancient and modern societies such as money, trade, debt, bankruptcy, the criminality of theft, and private vs. public property. Ownership is the key building block in the development of the capitalist socio-economic system. Adam Smith stated that one of the sacred laws of justice was to guard a person's property and possessions.

Individuals may own property directly. In some societies only adult men may own property; in other societies (such as the Haudenosaunee), property is matrilinear and passed on from mother to the offspring. In most societies both men and women can own property with no restrictions and limitations at all.

Throughout history, nations (or governments) and religious organizations have owned property. These entities exist primarily for other purposes than to own or operate property; hence, they may have no clear rules regarding the disposition of their property.

To own and operate property, structures (often known today as legal entities) have been created in many societies throughout history. The differences in how they deal with members' rights is a key factor in determining their type. Each type has advantages and disadvantages derived from their means of recognizing or disregarding (rewarding or not) contributions of financial capital or personal effort.

Cooperatives, corporations, trusts, partnerships, and condominium associations are only some of the many varied types of structured ownership; each type has many subtypes. Legal advantages or restrictions on various types of structured ownership have existed in many societies past and present. To govern how assets are to be used, shared, or treated, rules and regulations may be legally imposed or internally adopted or decreed.

Ownership by definition does not necessarily imply a responsibility to others for actions regarding the property. A "legal shield" is said to exist if the entity's legal liabilities do not get redistributed among the entity's owners or members. An application of this, to limit ownership risks, is to form a new entity to purchase, own and operate each property. Since the entity is separate and distinct from others, if a problem occurs which leads to a massive liability, the individual is protected from losing more than the value of that one property. Many other properties are protected, when owned by other distinct entities.

In the loosest sense of group ownership, a lack of legal framework, rules and regulations may mean that group ownership of property places every member in a position of responsibility (liability) for the actions of each other member. A structured group duly constituted as an entity under law may still not protect members from being personally liable for each other's actions. Court decisions against the entity itself may give rise to unlimited personal liability for each and every member. An example of this situation is a professional partnership (e.g. law practice) in some jurisdictions. Thus, being a partner or owner in a group may give little advantage in terms of share ownership while producing a lot of risk to the partner, owner or participant.

At the end of each financial year, accounting rules determine a surplus or profit, which may be retained inside the entity or distributed among owners according to the initial setup intent when the entity was created. For public corporations, common shareholders have no right to receive any of the profit.

Entities "with a member focus" will give financial surplus back to members according to the volume of financial activity that the participating member generated for the entity. Examples of this are producer cooperatives, buyer cooperatives and participating whole life policyholders in both mutual and share-capital insurance companies.

Entities" with share voting rights that depend on financial capital" distribute surplus among shareholders without regard to any other contribution to the entity. Depending on internal rules and regulations, certain classes of shares have the right to receive increases in financial "dividends" while other classes do not. After many years the increase over time is substantial if the business is profitable. Examples of this are common shares and preferred shares in private or publicly listed share capital corporations.

Entities "with a focus on providing service in perpetuam" do not distribute financial surplus; they must retain it. It will then serve as a cushion against losses or as a means to finance growth activities. Examples of this are not-for-profit entities: they are allowed to make profits, but are not permitted to give any of it back to members except by way of discounts in the future on new transactions.

Depending on the charter at the foundation of the entity, and depending on the legal framework under which the entity was created, the form of ownership is determined once and for all time. To change it requires significant work in terms of communicating with stakeholders (member-owners, governments, etc.) and acquiring their approval. Whatever structural constraints or disadvantages exist at the creation thus remain an integral part of the entity. Common in for instance New York City, Hamburg and Berlin in Germany is a form of real estate ownership known as a cooperative (also co-operative or co-op, in German Wohnungsgenossenschaft - apartment co-operative, also "Wohnbaugenossenschaft" or simply "Baugenossenschaft") which relies heavily on internal rules of operation instead of the legal framework governing condominium associations. These "co-ops", owning the building for the mutual benefit of its members, can ultimately perform most of the functions of a legally constituted condominium, i.e. restricting use appropriately and containing financial liabilities to within tolerable levels. To change their structure now that they are up and operating would require significant effort to achieve acceptance among members and various levels of government.

The owning entity makes rules governing use of property; each property may comprise areas that are made available to any and every member of the group to use. When the group is the entire nation, the same principle is in effect whether the property is small (e.g. picnic rest stops along highways) or large such as national parks, highways, ports, and publicly owned buildings. Smaller examples of shared use include common areas such as lobbies, entrance hallways and passages to adjacent buildings.

One disadvantage of communal ownership, known as the Tragedy of the Commons, occurs where unlimited unrestricted and unregulated access to a resource (e.g. pasture land) destroys the resource because of over-exploitation. The benefits of exploitation accrue to individuals immediately, while the costs of policing or enforcing appropriate use, and the losses dues to over exploitation, are distributed among many, and are only visible to these gradually.

In a communist nation the means of production of goods would be owned communally by all people of that nation; the original thinkers did not specify rules and regulations.Personal property is a type of property. In the common law systems personal property may also be called chattels. It is distinguished from real property, or real estate. In the civil law systems personal property is often called movable property or movables - any property that can be moved from one location or another. This term is used to distinguish property that different from immovable property or immovables, such as land and buildings. This also means the direct owner of the item(s) is in full control of them/it until either stolen, confiscated by law enforcement, or destroyed.

Personal property may be classified in a variety of ways, such as goods, money, negotiable instruments, securities, and intangible assets including choses in action.

Real estate or immovable property is a legal term (in some jurisdictions) that encompasses land along with anything permanently affixed to the land, such as buildings. Real estate (immovable property) is often considered synonymous with real property, in contrast from personal property (also sometimes called "chattel" or "personalty"). However, for technical purposes, some people prefer to distinguish real estate, referring to the land and fixtures themselves, from real property, referring to ownership rights over real estate. The terms "real estate" and "real property" are used primarily in common law, while civil law jurisdictions refer instead to immovable property.

In law, the word "real" means relating to a thing (from Latin "reālis," ultimately from "rēs",'matter' or 'thing'), as distinguished from a person. Thus the law broadly distinguishes between "real property" (land and anything affixed to it) and "personal property" (everything else, e.g., clothing, furniture, money). The conceptual difference is between immovable property, which would transfer title along with the land, and movable property, which a person would retain title to. Incidentally, the word "real" in "real estate" is not derived from the notion of land having historically been "royal" property. The word "royal"—and its Spanish cognate, "real"—come from the unrelated Latin word "rēgālis" 'kingly,' which is a derivative of "rēx", meaning 'king'.

With the development of private property ownership, real estate has become a major area of business.

An individual or group of individuals can own shares in corporations and other legal entities, but do not necessarily own the entities themselves. A legal entity is a legal construct through which the law allows a group of natural persons to act as if it were an individual for certain purposes.

Some duly incorporated entities may not be owned by individuals nor by other entities; they exist without being owned once they are created. Not being owned, they cannot be bought and sold. Mutual life insurance companies, credit unions, foundations and cooperatives, not for profit organizations, and public corporations are examples of this. No person can purchase the company, as their ownership is not legally available for sale, neither as shares nor as a single whole.

Intellectual property (IP) refers to a legal entitlement which sometimes attaches to the expressed form of an idea, or to some other intangible subject matter. This legal entitlement generally enables its holder to exercise exclusive rights of use in relation to the subject matter of the IP. The term "intellectual property" reflects the idea that this subject matter is the product of the mind or the intellect, and that IP rights may be protected at law in the same way as any other form of property.

Intellectual property laws confer a bundle of exclusive rights in relation to the particular form or manner in which ideas or information are expressed or manifested, and not in relation to the ideas or concepts themselves (see idea-expression divide). It is therefore important to note that the term "intellectual property" denotes the specific legal rights which authors, inventors and other IP holders may hold and exercise, and not the intellectual work itself.

Intellectual property laws are designed to protect different forms of intangible subject matter, although in some cases there is a degree of overlap.Patents, trademarks and designs fall into a particular subset of intellectual property known as industrial property.

Like other forms of property, intellectual property (or rather the exclusive rights which subsist in the IP) can be transferred (with or without consideration) or licensed to third parties. In some jurisdictions it may also be possible to use intellectual property as security for a loan.

The basic public policy rationale for the protection of intellectual property is that IP laws facilitate and encourage disclosure of innovation into the public domain for the common good, by granting authors and inventors exclusive rights to exploit their works and invention for a limited period.

However, various schools of thought are critical of the very concept of intellectual property, and some characterise IP as "intellectual protectionism". There is ongoing debate as to whether IP laws truly operate to confer the stated public benefits, and whether the protection they are said to provide is appropriate in the context of innovation derived from such things as traditional knowledge and folklore, and patents for software and business methods. Manifestations of this controversy can be seen in the way different jurisdictions decide whether to grant intellectual property protection in relation to subject matter of this kind, and the North-South divide on issues of the role and scope of intellectual property laws.

The living human body is, in most modern societies, considered something which cannot be the property of anyone but the person whose body it is. This is in contrast to chattel slavery. Chattel slavery is a type of slavery defined as the absolute legal ownership of a person or persons, including the legal right to buy and sell them. Persons who are enslaved do not have the freedom to direct their own actions, and their legal rights may be either severely limited or nonexistent. In most countries, chattel slaves were considered as movable property.

Slavery is currently illegal in every country around the world. However, up until the 19th century slavery and ownership of people had existed in one form or another in nearly every society on earth. Notwithstanding the illegality according to codes of law, slavery still exists in various forms today.

The question of ownership reaches back to the ancient philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, who held different opinions on the subject. Plato (428/427 BC – 348/347 BC) thought private property created divisive inequalities, while Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) thought private property enabled people to receive the full benefit of their labor. Private property can circumvent what is now referred to as the “tragedy of the commons” problem, where people tend to degrade common property more than they do private property. Given a short-sighted owner, however, a private property system can make these tragedies worse—for example, a private owner of a piece of oil-rich property, depending on his worldview, might be more interested in short-term financial gain than incremental use with an eye toward other's concerns (e.g., those of future generations, the disenfranchised, etc.). While Aristotle justified the existence of private ownership, he left open questions of (1) how to allocate property between what is private and common and (2) how to allocate the private property within society.

In modern Western popular culture some people believe that exclusive ownership of property underlies much social injustice, and facilitates tyranny and oppression on an individual and societal scale. Others consider the striving to achieve greater ownership of wealth as the driving factor behind human technological advancement and increasing standards of living. Right-libertarians not only believe that ownership is the driving factor behind human technological advancement and increasing standards of living, but is also necessary for liberty itself.

Ownership society was a political slogan used by United States President George W. Bush to promote a series of policies aimed to increase the control of individual citizens over health care and social security payments and policies. Critics have claimed that slogan hid an agenda that sought to implement tax cuts and curtail the government's role in health care and retirement saving.

Since coming into force, the Human Rights Committee has commented on conditions of slavery in numerous countries and has provided these countries with recommendations as to how they should proceed to abolish slavery. In Mali, the committee noted that the State party has not taken clear action in response the reports of slavery like practices and hereditary servitude in the country. In acknowledging this, the committee recommended that the state should conduct research to determine if these conditions of slavery still exist, and if they do to take action. The committee also noted concerns of child trafficking into Côte d'Ivoire, where children were then being subjected to forced labour and slavery. In response to this phenomenon, the committee recommended that the Malian government take measures to prosecute the perpetrators of this traffic, and research more precise details regarding this situation for the committee analysis.

Slavery in international law

Slavery in international law is governed by a number of treaties, conventions and declarations. Foremost among these is the "Universal Declaration on Human Rights" (1948) that states in Article 4: “no one should be held in slavery or servitude, slavery in all of its forms should be eliminated.”

Protection from slavery is reiterated in the Slavery Convention. This is affected by the Optional Protocol to the Abolition of Slavery and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The ICCPR, governed by the Human Rights Committee, is responsible for internationally monitoring present conditions of slavery.

Abolitionism has its roots in the 1807 Abolition of Slavery Act of Great Britain. Many academics in the field perceive this as the beginning of the end of the traditional form of slavery: chattel slavery. In the 19th century, Britain controlled the majority of the world through its colonies. Consequently, in passing this law to abolish slavery, the British Parliament abolished slavery in the vast majority of its colonies.

Customarily, freedoms from slavery can also be found prior to the 19th century under the phrase "freedom from oppression and tyranny." Because slavery is a condition of complete and total submission of one person to another, often with the exertion of force or power of the owner over the submissive, the phrase "freedom from oppression and tyranny" accurately encompasses the right to freedom from slavery.

The United States Declaration of Independence, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, the African Charter of Human Rights, and the Constitution of South Africa all present the idea that human beings should be free from tyranny and oppression. Although slavery continued to persist in some countries after these documents were written – namely, the United States, in which slavery continued until the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865 – the underlying norm of this right is present. Through customary practice and the abolition of slavery, the international community has adopted the right of each person to be free from slavery.

The first large-scale move to abolish slavery by the international community came in 1926 with the Slavery Convention and again in 1957 when the Supplementary Convention came into power. The 1926 Slavery Convention provides the first international definition of slavery as:

Although this document provides the concrete definition of slavery, its definition is limited in the types of slavery it includes. Instead, it is descriptive of chattel slavery, most commonly understood as the plantation slavery in the United States in the 18th and 19th centuries, even though chattel slavery was significantly more widespread and was not limited to one country alone. It is for this reason that the 1956 Supplementary Convention on Slavery was signed. It gives a more comprehensive definition of slavery to include debt bondage, serfdom, or any practice where a woman is promised or given into marriage on payment of money and is without the right to refuse the marriage, the husband of a woman has the right to transfer her to another person, a woman is liable to be inherited by another upon the death of her husband, or any practice where a child under 18 years of ages is exploited for his or her labour. The 1956 Supplementary Convention on Slavery came into force on April 30, 1957 and of 2002 there were 97 states partied to the convention.

The Slavery Convention and its supplementary document are beneficial in providing an international definition of slavery; however, there is no significant enforcement behind these documents. Both are declarations made by the collaboration of the international community, and agreements that signatories would modify their national laws in accordance with the convention, with the assistance of the United Nations if necessary; however, there are no consequences outlined in either document that provide incentive for signatories to abide by the convention

The Human Rights Committee is governed by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which entered into force on March 23, 1976. Article 8 of this Covenant states: “No one shall be held in slavery; slavery and the slave trade in all their forms shall be prohibited. No one shall be held in servitude. No one shall be required to perform force or compulsory labour." The ICCPR outlines, in part IV, the obligations of states to uphold the freedom from slavery. All states are required to submit regular reports to the Committee on how the rights of the Covenant are being implemented. A state’s initial report must be within one year of acceding the Covenant and after this, whenever the committee requests a report (usually every four years). In addition to the submission of reports, article 41 of the Covenant makes it possible for the Committee to consider inter-state complaints, and furthermore, the First Optional Protocol to the Covenant give the Committee the capacity investigate individual complaints with regards to violations of the Covenant by state parties.

The committee observed situations of trafficking of human beings, namely women and children, in Serbia, and corresponding reports that the perpetrators of these acts were going unpunished. The committee recommended that the Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) in collaboration with the Provisional Institutions of Self-Government (PISG) should ensure that there is adequate investigation of these crimes and victims have access to lawyers, health care, and other forms of assistance.

The Human Rights Committee monitored trafficking in Norway. Here the committee recognizes that Norway has adopted the previous positive measures previously suggested; however, it notes that there are still reports of human trafficking, particularly women, and of female genital mutilation. The committee recommends further measures be taken to eradicate practices, as well as those to protect victims and witnesses.

Debt bondage is the most common form of slavery today. It is a condition in which a person “pledges him or herself against a loan of money, but the length and nature of the service is undefined, and the labor does not diminish the original debt.” Debt bondage was included and defined as a form of slavery under the 1956 Supplementary Convention on Slavery. However, its many modern forms continue to include pawning, peonage, and worker debt. In India, debt bondage has been illegal since 1976; however, due to widespread poverty in the country, it continues to exist, as a man may need a loan to finance a wedding, funeral, medicine, fertilizer, or a fine. Because the interest rates on these debts as so high, debts are often inherited and children may replace their fathers or siblings. Debt bondage can also be incurred by specific industries – quarrying, carpet-making, agriculture, and fisheries – where the cost of equipment and supplies falls on the worker who needs a loan to pay for them.

Forced prostitution and sexual slavery are considered contemporary manifestations of this historical crime, and can be found anywhere in the world. Women are often entrapped by deceit or coercion with the promise of better life and remain entrapped by force or debt bondage. Forced marriage can also be considered a form of slavery, notably when the bride has no right or opportunity to refuse marriage. This form of marriage can also result out of a kidnapping of girls in order to sell them as brides, a widespread phenomena in China. Once married and raped, there girls are often kept under lock and key until they have a child, at which time they will be less likely to leave because they do not want to abandon their child.

Child slavery is also considered a contemporary form of slavery, although its does come with debate as to what constitutes child slavery. However, child prostitution is widely considered a form of slavery in which children, mostly from South East Asia, South Asia, and Latin America, “are sold by their parents either because they are destitute, have too many mouths to feed, or are simply greedy”. On the other hand, in some cases of child prostitution, when parents give their children up to traffickers, they are deceived into believing that their child will earn good money, get an education, or learn a trade.

Forced labour can also be imposed by governments who “conscript their own subjects and put them to work for minimal, or no pay, and for varying lengths of time”. When imposed by governments, forced labour does not include military conscription or penal labour. Forced labour can, likewise, be used simply to cut production costs by private and public industries (e.g. cocoa plantations), or can be a form of involuntary servitude in the private sector – sweatshops. Bales refers to this type of slavery as contract slavery, where “contracts are offered which guarantee employment, perhaps in a workshop or factory, but when the workers are taken to their place of employment they discover that they have instead been taken into slavery...it is a way of making slavery seem legitimate and necessary”.

Although slavery is recognized as being illegal around the world by international treaties and conventions, evidence has shown that there is still existing slavery in Yemen, and the number of slaves is in fact growing. Slavery affects and inhibits many basic human rights, and was specifically abolished by Yemen in 1962. The fact that slavery is alleged to still exist is a major human rights issue.

Slavery in Yemen

Yemen is in Southwest Asia, and is a mostly Arab country. Yemen is considered a developing country, and has been in a state of political crisis since 2011. An investigation conducted as a joint effort by local press in Yemen, human rights activists and the wider media uncovered an array of evidence strongly suggesting slavery is still alive in Yemen, with a former slave who had recently been freed admitting other members of his family were still being used as slaves. In this in depth investigation, that was done over a period of several months, slave owners admitted to selling slaves to countries such as Brazil and Saudi Arabia for significant amounts of money, suggesting that the problem of modern slavery goes far deeper than just Yemen. It was also discovered that not unlike previous times, slaves were inherited by their owners through family, as well as being bought and sold. The slaves are under complete control of their owners, an example of this being that although sometimes the slaves are allowed to marry one another, they are not allowed a ceremony, and are only allowed to see each other during an emergency or at night when their owner does not require them. In a sense, slavery has even been formally recognised in Yemen, through a judge in the Courts confirming the transfer of a slave from one owner to another. This caused an outcry by the community and the media, which was allegedly quickly hushed by the government.

For someone to be considered a slave, they must fit into one of the following four categories:
1) Be threatened, either physically or mentally, to work.
2) Controlled or owned by another person, through either threats, or abuse that is physical or mental.
3) Treated as a chattel, bought or sold as property, dehumanised.
4) Restrained physically, or has limitations on freedom of movement.
It has been reported that two main types of slavery currently exist in Yemen. The first is general human trafficking, which can be defined as adults or children lured into a situation that results in their exploitation, by way of threats, violence or deliberate misrepresentation, and then forced to perform certain jobs. The second type is those who are not subject to trafficking, but instead still endure slavery and abuse. Such abuse has been reported to be depriving slaves of a basic right of access to water, unless their owner permits it. Children are extremely vulnerable to slavery in Yemen, as any children of existing slaves are also destined for a life of slavery, and also children are often forced to work for minimal, or even no pay, in the agricultural sector. The legal age for children to begin work in Yemen is 14, and the minimum age they can begin work that is considered to be hazardous is 18. However, in 2012, it was found that 13.6% of children aged 5 to 14 were working across several sectors, though the most predominant sector involving children was found to be the agricultural sector, which incidentally is also one of the most hazardous sectors. As well as child slavery, it has been discovered that there are also adult slaves who are controlled by their owners, who work in private homes, made to perform certain tasks.

The worldwide abolition of slavery began in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the Declaration of the Rights of Man was adopted in 1789, and stated “men are born and remain free and equal in rights.” By the nineteenth century, an increasing number of countries such as The Netherlands were banning participation with the African Slave Trade, and soon after abolished slavery in all of its colonies, along with France. By the 1900s, abolition of slavery was spreading globally, with countries such as Burma and Sierra Leone following the movement. In 1962, Yemen was one of the last countries worldwide to abolish slavery. Besides this, Yemen is also a member state of the United Nations. All United Nations member states are subject to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which specifically says in Article 4, that “No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.” This declaration outlines basic rights that all human beings are entitled to. The rights outlined in the declaration become legally enforceable, in the fact that they define the terms ‘fundamental freedoms’ and ‘human rights’, which themselves feature in the United Nations Charter. All member states of the United Nations are legally obliged to comply with the United Nations Charter. Besides this, the Slavery Convention 1926 also exists, which at its creation aimed to prevent slavery, and the slave trade. It specifically defined what slavery and the slave trade were, and all participants agreed to prevent, and gradually eliminate all slavery that existed within their country, and also to create penalties for anyone found to be slave trading, or involved in the control of a slave. As of 1987, Yemen became a party to this convention, meaning they agreed with the aim of it, and agreed to the obligations it imposed upon parties.

A likely cause of the existing slavery in Yemen with regards to the illegality of it, is the extent of the poverty within certain communities. Abdulhadi Al-Azazi, a member of the team investigating slavery in Yemen, suggested that because of the levels of poverty, affected people may enable themselves to be controlled by wealthy people in order to have a better quality of life than what they can provide for themselves. Another possible factor in the existence of slavery in Yemen is government corruption, as slavery is easy to get away with, and no real steps are taken to put a stop to it, which is what was seen in the investigation mentioned earlier in this article. Besides this, the slavery cycle is difficult to get out of when there is no government intervention, or real awareness by the public and other countries as to what is going on, which is part of the cause of slavery in Yemen. If people aren’t aware of what is happening, they cannot do anything about it. The slavery cycle has been described as poverty, followed by slavery, then as a result lack of education, and therefore no kind of freedom at all. This means any children of existing slaves are led to believe the same as their parents – that they are not entitled to freedom and they must do as they are told by their owners.

Slavery in Yemen today is a huge human rights issue, and until the government steps in to prevent it, or the wider global community is made more aware of it, it will be very difficult to bring it to a complete stop. Every human being, as per article four of the Universal Declaration Human Rights, has a right to not be held in slavery or servitude, which is a stark contrast as to what many people held in slavery, and possibly slave owners are not aware of. As well as wider global publicity on the issue, greater education on human rights within Yemen may also assist with the complete abolition of slavery.

Slavery in Yemen

See "iAbolish":"
AASG says that the first step in eradicating slavery is educating the public that it still exists. AASG builds awareness through publications, school curricula, conferences, and a Speakers’ Bureau — consisting mainly of survivors of slavery.
ASG advocates for the freedom of those degraded by slavery through government lobbying and online campaigns, which locate pressure points in corporations that benefit from slavery, governments that tolerate human bondage, and leaders who remain silent.
On their website, AASG state that they have a network of activists around the world who are passionate about freedom. Grassroots activism takes the form of rallies, candlelight vigils, freedom marches, petitions and letter-writing campaigns.
AASG partners with organizations working on the ground to provide rehabilitation and support to victims of slavery. By providing food, shelter, education, and rehabilitation, AASG equips survivors with the tools they need to rebuild their lives.

American Anti-Slavery Group

The American Anti-Slavery Group (AASG) is a non-profit coalition of abolitionist organizations that engages in political activism to abolish slavery in the world. It raises awareness of contemporary slavery, particularly among the chattel slaves of Mauritania and Sudan, raises funds to support relief and aid to enslaved populations and escaped former slaves, and lobbies government officials to increase their efforts. AASG'

AASG was co-founded in 1993 by Charles Jacobs (who served as its first research director) with African human rights activists Mohamed Athie of Mauritania and David Chand of Sudan.

Incorporated in Newton, Massachusetts, the AASG reports having "many associates and 30,000 members around the world." Recent officers include: Mohamed Athie (past president) and Charles Jacobs (past clerk and treasurer; current president and member of board of directors).

AASG maintains close ties to The Sudan Campaign, for which Charles Jacobs serves as a co-chairman.

On June 4, 2008 the U.S. released a trafficking in persons report. In this report Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stated, "Trafficking and exploitation plague all nations, and no country, even ours, is immune."

The AASG claims of contemporary slavery have been met with criticism from BBC journalist David Hecht.

Hecht has challenged the AASG claims of rampant slavery in Sudan. "Yes, there is a slave (and master) mentality in Africa, but nothing like the dehumanized institutions that Frederick Douglass had to fight in America." He also reported that Western media are often naïve misunderstandings of the facts. Claiming that outside those areas controlled by the Sudanese Government, the old practice of intertribal feuding continues. In these raids prisoners are taken, who must then be ransomed. What looks like the purchase of slaves is actually the redemption of prisoners of war.

Anti-Slavery International has also stated that, 'The charge that government troops engage in raids for the purpose of seizing slaves is not backed by the evidence.'

The AASG supported program of arrangement of payment to human traffickers for the "freedom" of slaves has come under fire. Aid workers, missionaries, and even the rebel movement that facilitates the redemption of slaves in the Sudan claim it is often an elaborate scam or a "corrupt racket." Groups, including the Sudan Embassy, Canada, state that the practice of paying the rebels prolongs the war, while others claim it brought the "perverse incentives" of slavery in many areas. Manase Lomole Waya, who runs Humanitarian Assistance for South Sudan, a group based in Nairobi, praises AASG for its effort, but brings a warning: "We welcome them for exposing the agony of our people to the world," he said. "That part is good. But giving the money to the slave traders only encourages the trade. It is wrong and must stop. Where does the money go? It goes to the raiders to buy more guns, raid more villages, put more shillings in their pockets. It is a vicious circle."

Charles Jacobs, president of the American Anti-Slavery Group, concedes there is an increase in slave-taking since 1995 in terms of the growing intensity of the Sudanese war, but rebukes characterizations that it creates a market for the slave trade. He asserts that although war is the context for the slave trade, it cannot be the main cause. Thus, the transactions to free slaves do not contribute to the cycle of violence in the Sudan.

Although the abolition of slavery in much of the world has greatly reduced child slavery, the problem lives on, especially in developing countries. According to the Anti-Slavery Society, "Although there is no longer any state which legally recognizes, or which will enforce, a claim by a person to a right of property over another, the abolition of slavery does not mean that it ceased to exist. There are millions of people throughout the world—mainly children—in conditions of virtual to slavery." It further notes that slavery, particularly child slavery, was on the rise in 2003. It points out that there are countless others in other forms of servitude (such as peonage, bonded labor and servile concubinage) which are not slavery in the narrow legal sense. Critics claim they are stretching the definition and practice of slavery beyond its original meaning, and are actually referring to forms of unfree labour other than slavery. In 1990, reports of slavery came out of Bahr al Ghazal, a Dinka region in southern Sudan. In 1995, Dinka mothers spoke about their abducted children. Roughly 20,000 slaves were reported in Sudan in 1999. "The handmade woolen carpet industry is extremely labor intensive and one of the largest export earners for India, Pakistan, Nepal and Morocco." During the past 20 years, about 200,000 and 300,000 children are involved, most of them in the carpet belt of Uttar Pradesh in central India. Many children in Asia are kidnapped or trapped in servitude, where they work in factories and workshops for no pay and receive constant beatings. Slaves have reappeared following the old slave trade routes in West Africa. "The children are kidnapped or purchased for $20–$70 each in poorer states, such as Benin and Togo, and sold into slavery in sex dens or as unpaid domestic servants for $350.00 each in wealthier oil-rich states, such as Nigeria and Gabon."

Child slavery

Child slavery is the slavery of children. The enslavement of children can be traced back through history. Even after the abolition of slavery, children continue to be enslaved and trafficked in modern times, which is a particular problem in developing countries.

Child slavery refers to the slavery of children below the age of majority. In the past, many children have been sold into slavery in order for their family to repay debts or crimes or earn some money if the family were short of cash. A scholar retold a story about a mother where, "her predicament shattered the privilege of thinking of her children in purely personal and sentimental terms and caused her to consider whether outsiders might find value in them". Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote about a woman who was bought by a slave owner to breed children for him to sell. The expectations of children who were either bought or born into slavery varied. Scholars noted, "age and physical capacity, as well as the degree of dependence, set the terms of children's integration into households".

The duties that child slaves were responsible for performing are disputed amongst scholars. A few representations of the lives that slave children led portrayed them as, "virtually divorced from the plantation economy until they were old enough to be employed as field hands, thereby emphasizing the carefree nature of childhood for a part of the slave population that was temporarily spared forced labor". This view also stated that if children were asked to perform any duties at all, it was to perform light household chores, such as being "organized into 'trash gangs' and made to collect refuse about the estate". Opposing scholars argued that slave children had their youth stolen from them, and were forced to start performing adult duties at a very young age. Some say that children were forced to perform field labor duties as young as the age of six. It is argued that in some areas children were put to "regular work in the antebellum South" and it "was a time when slaves began to learn work routines, but also work discipline and related punishment".

A degree of self-possession was present in some degree to adults, but "children retained the legal incapacities of dependence even after they had become productive members of households". It was reported by scholars that, "this distinctive status shaped children's standing within familial households and left them subject to forced apprenticeship, even after emancipation". There were slave owners who did not want child slaves or women who were pregnant for fear that the child would have "took up too much of her time".

The conditions of slavery for pregnant women varied regionally. In most cases, women worked in the fields up until childbirth performing small tasks. "four weeks appears to have been the average confinement period, or 'lying-in period', for antebellum slave women following delivery in the South as a whole". Slaveholders in northern Virginia, however, usually only permitted an average lying-in period of about "two weeks before ordering new mothers back to work". The responsibility of raising and tending to the children then became the task of other children and older elderly slaves. In most institutions of slavery throughout the world, the children of slaves became the property of the owner. This created a constant supply of people to perform labor. This was the case with, for example, thralls and American slaves. In other cases, children were enslaved as if they were adults. Usually, the status of the mother determined if the child was a slave, but some local laws varied the decision to the father. In many cultures, slaves could earn their freedom through hard work and buying their own freedom.

Trafficking of children includes recruiting, harbouring, obtaining, and transporting children by use of force or fraud for the purpose of subjecting them to involuntary acts, such as commercial sexual exploitation (including prostitution) or involuntary labour, i.e., enslavement. Some see human trafficking as the modern form of slavery. Human trafficking is the trade of human beings and their use by criminals to make money. The majority of trafficking victims are adults, predominantly made up of women forced into prostitution (although men are trafficked also), but children make up a significant number of the victims forced into prostitution.

In Ukraine, a survey conducted by the non-governmental organization (NGO) La Strada-Ukraine in 2001–2003, based on a sample of 106 women being trafficked out of Ukraine found that 3% were under 18, and the US State Department reported in 2004 that incidents of minors being trafficked was increasing. In Thailand, NGOs have estimated that up to a third of prostitutes are children under 18, many trafficked from outside Thailand.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography estimates that about one million children in Asia alone are victims of the sex trade.

Following the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Save the Children, World Vision and the British Red Cross have called for an immediate halt to adoptions of Haitian children not approved before the earthquake, warning that child traffickers could exploit the lack of regulation. An Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights spokesman said that child enslavement and trafficking was "an existing problem and could easily emerge as a serious issue over the coming weeks and months".

In 2007, Human Rights Watch estimated that 200,000 to 300,000 children served as soldiers in current conflicts.

More girls under 16 work as domestic workers than any other category of child labor, often sent to cities by parents living in rural poverty such as in restaveks in Haiti.

Though slavery still exists, and democracy never appeared, the dominant Catholic Church is less intolerant and harsh than it was at the time of the Armada. Protestantism, surviving only in Scandinavia, is regarded more with curiosity than hostility, and though the Inquisition still exists it has long since abandoned the use of torture in favour of hypnotism. Moreover, there is mention of a movement for women's equality, at least among upper-class women. (Swedish women are mentioned as more assertive than those of other countries – as they were famous for being, in our own world at the time of writing.)

Times Without Number

Times Without Number is a time travel/alternate history novel by John Brunner.

Originally Brunner wrote three stories published in 1962 in consecutive issues of the British magazine "Science Fiction Adventures": "Spoil of Yesterday" in No. 25, "The Word Not Written" in No. 26, and "The Fullness of Time" in No. 27.

In the same year, a considerably different version appeared as a fix-up novel under the title "Times Without Number", which was published as an Ace Double together with "Destiny's Orbit" by David Grinnell (Donald A. Wollheim).

In 1969, Ace Books published the book again, in a version considerably revised and expanded by Brunner, different from both the magazine stories and the 1962 novel.

The book's plot takes place in the years 1988–1989 in a timeline where the Spanish Armada under the command of the Duke of Parma successfully invaded England in 1588. This success was especially due to Parma's second-in-command, the Earl of Barton – the illegitimate son of a Catholic Scottish nobleman, who entered the service of Spain and turned out to be one of the great military talents of history (at the end of the book it is explained why our history knows no such person).

After subduing England, Barton went on the Netherlands, where in a lightning campaign he put down their rebellion and perpetuated Spanish rule and the Catholic religion. At some unspecified later time Spain also managed to conquer and absorb its long-time rival France (having conquered England and subdued the Dutch Revolt, Spain could have been in a position to ensure the victory of the Catholic League in the French Wars of Religion and prevent Henry IV from getting the French throne). But while having their hands full in the north, the Spaniards neglected the defence of their own Iberian homeland, which was reconquered by Islamic forces of "The New Khalifate" (presumably linked to the Ottoman Empire), reversing the reconquista (Brunner provides no details on exactly how this happened).

Spanish refugees moved to Britain, which became the new base of their empire and whose inhabitants were gradually assimilated. Spanish displaced English, which barely survived as "a debased peasant tongue". The Spanish-speaking people of the capital Londres called themselves "Imperials" rather than "Spaniards", and except for a few diehard English nationalists regarded the Armada's victory as a blessing.

Having already conquered South and Central America, the Empire did not have a great need of North America. Rather than conquer and colonize it themselves, the Imperials armed the Mohawks and encouraged them to embark on a great campaign of conquest until the Pacific. The Mohawk leaders, ruling from New Madrid (on the site of our New York City) were taken into the Empire's highest nobility. However, other Native American tribes felt resentful of Mohawk dominance and the European backing for it – a resentment which would turn out to have a crucial importance in the book's later part.

Meanwhile, in Europe the Habsburg Monarchy transformed itself into the powerful "Confederacy of the East", ruling the whole of central and eastern Europe and becoming the long-lasting rival of the Londres-based Western Empire. In 1892, an Italian named Boromeo discovered the secret of time-travel, though otherwise the overall level of technology remained not much higher than it was in the 16th Century, with people travelling primarily on horseback and cities lit by open fires. In principle, time travel could have been used as a means of instantaneous travel, but that would have involved the traveller being in two places at the same time, at least for a split second; fearing a time paradox, such use of the device was strictly forbidden.

Moreover, it was quickly realised that time-travel can become in effect a weapon of mass destruction, of which careless or ruthless use might undo the whole of present reality – and in particular, that it might provide the two great powers, locked in a long-lasting cold war, with a means of utterly destroying each other (similar to nuclear weapons in our world). To avert this danger, use of time travel was strictly regulated by the carefully worded "Treaty of Prague" and limited to two elite bodies – the Western Empire's "Society of Time" and its eastern counterpart – both of which are overseen by the Catholic Church in accordance to a special Papal Bull (of which Brunner provides part of the Latin text). Both great powers want to preserve their monopoly of time-travel and are concerned about the attempts of Cathaian savants to achieve it (much as, at the time of writing, Americans and Soviets tried to avert Chinese achievement of nuclear arms).

In all, the alternate 20th Century depicted by Brunner is significantly more humane than that in Keith Roberts' "Pavane", written a few years later and also based on a victory of the Spanish Armada.

In 1988, Don Miguel Navarro is a "Licentiate in Ordinary" of the Society of Time. As a Licentiate, Don Miguel's primary duty is to ensure the preservation of history, lest an alteration undo the empire. While at a party held by the Marquesa di Jorque, his hostess shows off a gold Aztec mask she had recently received as a gift. Recognizing it instantly as contraband, Don Miguel launches an investigation that eventually leads to the unmasking and arrest of Don Arcimboldo Ruiz, a prominent nobleman (and a cunning and skilful villain) engaged in the illegal acquisition of goods from the past. Don Miguel is then entrusted with returning it to the exact spot in the past from which it was taken, in time for it to be used in the Aztec bloody rites of mass human sacrifice – with which he is duty bound not to interfere but which leave him shaken. Because of his success, Don Miguel is honoured and marked as a coming man.

Some time later, while attending a New Year's Eve ball at the palace of the Prince of New Castile, a prince of the blood and the Commander of the Society of Time, Don Miguel meets Lady Kristina, the daughter of the Swedish ambassador. At her prompting, the two leave the party to explore the city of Londres for themselves. While walking down one of the city's streets, however, they encounter an unusually dressed woman who is assaulted by men who intend to rape her, but turns out be more than able to take care of herself, proceeding to immobilise a number of her assailants before Don Miguel is able to knock her unconscious (the reader can easily recognise that she is adept at some kind of martial art, but in Don Miguel's world these are unknown in the West).

Taking the woman to the Society's headquarters, he attempts to return to the prince's palace in search of Father Ramón, the society's master theoretician, but is stopped by a panicked mob clogging the streets. There he learns of the burning of the palace and the deaths of all of the assembled dignitaries – including the entire Royal Family – at the hands of dozens of female warriors (transported, it turns out, from an alternate timeline in which a Mongol King rules all of Asia and Europe and which senior members of the Society of Time secretly contacted). After encountering Father Ramón, the two return to Society Headquarters, where they use a special cross-temporal Mass to contact an earlier version of Father Ramón and prevent the massacre from taking place. However, though seeming to end well, the episode leaves Don Miguel with a mounting feeling of anxiety, having found out that his superiors engage in dangerous experiments and thus realizing that his entire reality hangs by an extremely thin thread.

Needing a vacation, Don Miguel travels to California, a backwater rarely visited by Europeans. While relaxing at a hacienda near a local mine, his host, a Native American engineer named Two Dogs, shows him a steel bit from a rock drill discovered in a recently started mine. (In this timeline, there had been no California Gold Rush and gold mining is a governmental monopoly.)

Fearing a violation of the treaty between the Empire and the Confederacy of the East regulating time travel, Don Miguel alerts the Society, which launches a full-scale investigation. When Father Ramón arrives on the scene, however, he insists that no violation has taken place, even though a scouting expedition confirms that there is indeed a group from the 20th Century mining the land in the past. Traveling to the site, Don Miguel and Father Ramón converse with the leader of the group and convince him to end the operation; Father Ramón is clearly determined to defuse the tension and avoid at virtually any price an escalation in the two great powers' relations.

The reason for that becomes clear upon their return: Don Miguel finds out that the "discovery" had in fact been planted by Two Dogs, who is spearheading a conspiracy of anti-Mohawk Native Americans seeking to bring down the Empire, and who manipulate the Eastern Confederacy and make use of it but have their own far-reaching agenda. In the ensuing melee, Two Dogs escapes and Father Ramón is killed. It is assumed that, having failed in his carefully crafted plot, Two Dogs would seek to travel into the past and deal the Empire's past a grievous blow.

Determined to preserve their history, the Society sends Don Miguel and dozens of other Licentiates into the past to prevent Two Dogs from disrupting the pivotal event of the Armada, but while undercover in 1588 Cadiz Don Miguel discovers to his horror that Two Dogs has already succeeded; Parma's second-in-command, the military genius Earl of Barton, no longer exists – having evidently been assassinated by Two Dogs while still an obscure young adventurer – and Parma himself is no longer the commander of the fleet. Urgently rushing back to the present, Don Miguel hopes to sound a last minute warning, but is overtaken by the forwardly proceeding wave of changing reality (a highly painful experience) and arrives not in New Madrid but its analogue, New York City, emerging in Central Park to the amazement of passers-by.

From this, Don Miguel realises that people of the changed timeline have no knowledge of time-travel, which would have given them a clear explanation for a man appearing out of thin air, and that he is the only person in this timeline who knows the secret of time travel. Reflecting upon this he concludes that timelines where time travels exists eventually collapse on themselves, when somebody changes the reality leading to the invention of time-travel itself. He decides to accept developments as God's will and to begin a new life as "the most lonely of all exiles" in the world where he now finds himself, keeping time travel a secret and never disclosing his knowledge of how to build a working time machine. And meanwhile, Two Dogs' ruthless act against the Empire turns out to have boomeranged against Two Dogs' own people, creating a timeline where Native Americans fared much worse than in the one he destroyed.

As seen at the shattering conclusion, in the concept of time travel and its consequences taken up in this book, there can be one and only one timeline. Unlike other time travel books where a change in the past creates a new branching timeline which exists side by side with the old one, here changing the past annihilates all of the succeeding later times, and a new timeline has taken the place of the former one. As in Poul Anderson's "Delenda Est", there is a zero sum game relation – for one timeline to exist, the other one must be destroyed.

Nevertheless, in the earlier part where the King's Palace is burned by female warriors from another timeline, it seems that alternate timelines do exist side by side, and that humans can cross from one to the other. The discrepancy is never completely explained. Father Ramon refers to the world where the Amazons came from as "a potential world", which implies that only one timeline is "truly real" while others have only a "potential reality". All of this, however, is the closely guarded secret of the Society's senior members, who ponder its theological implications as well as the scientific ones. Don Navarro, as a lowly Licentiate, was not supposed to know any of this, and got a bare glimpse only due to the dire emergency. And before he could rise in the Society's hierarchy sufficiently to get a real explanation, his entire timeline is irrevocably destroyed.

"Times Without Number" was originally published in the same year as Keith Laumer's "Worlds of the Imperium". While otherwise very different, the alternate timelines depicted in both books have an Italian inventor in end of the 19th Century make a crucial discovery (time-travel in the one case, travel to alternate timelines in the other) which is taken up by the world's Great Powers and fundamentally shapes later history.

Though having a completely different historical origin, the 20th Century of "Times Without Number" has many similarities with that of Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy series. In both there is a Catholic Empire based in London and ruling the British Islands, France and the entire Western Hemisphere (with Christianized Native Americans accepted into its aristocracy). And in both works the Empire depicted is monarchial and conservative, without any trace of democracy, but still relatively benevolent; locked in a decades-long cold war with an Eastern European rival; technologically backward compared to our world, but still possessing a key field of knowledge (time travel, magic) unknown to our 20th Century.

Brunner, John (1969) "Times Without Number". Ace Books. (US edition)

Contemporary slavery, also known as modern slavery or neo-slavery, refers to institutional slavery that continues to exist in present day society. Estimates of the number of slaves today range from around 21 million. to 70 million, depending on method used to estimate and the definition of slavery being used.

Slavery in the 21st century

The Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons agency of the United States Department of State says that modern slavery', 'trafficking in persons', and 'human trafficking' have been used as umbrella terms for the act of recruiting, harboring, transporting, providing or obtaining a person for compelled labor or commercial sex acts through the use of force, fraud, or coercion". Besides these, a number of different terms are used in the US federal Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 and the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, including "involuntary servitude", "slavery" or "practices similar to slavery", "debt bondage", and "forced labor".

According to American professor Kevin Bales, co-founder and former president of Free the Slaves, modern slavery occurs "when a person is under control of another person, who applies violence and force to maintain that control, and the goal of that control is exploitation". According to this definition, research from the Walk Free Foundation based on its Global Slavery Index 2016 estimated that there were about 70 million slaves around the world in 2016, with 58% of them living in the top five countries—India, Pakistan, China, Bangladesh, and Uzbekistan. Of these 45.8 million, it is estimated that around 10 million of these contemporary slaves are children. Bales warned that, because slavery is officially abolished everywhere, the practice is illegal, and thus more hidden from the public and authorities. This makes it impossible to obtain exact figures from primary sources. The best that can be done is estimate based on secondary sources, such as UN investigations, newspaper articles, government reports, and figures from NGOs.

In slave labor, the slave-owner only needs to pay for sustenance and enforcement. This is sometimes lower than the wage-cost of free laborers, as free workers earn more than sustenance; in these cases, slaves have a positive price. When the cost of sustenance and enforcement exceeds the wage rate, slave-owning would no longer be profitable, and owners would simply release their slaves. Slaves are thus a more attractive investment in high-wage environments, and environments where enforcement is cheap, and less attractive in environments where the wage-rate is low and enforcement is expensive.

Free workers also earn compensating differentials, whereby they are paid more for doing unpleasant work. Neither sustenance nor enforcement costs rise with the unpleasantness of the work, however, so slaves' costs do not rise by the same amount. As such, slaves are more attractive for unpleasant work, and less for pleasant work. Because the unpleasantness of the work is not internalised, being borne by the slave rather than the owner, it is a negative externality and leads to over-use of slaves in these situations. Slaves can also be forced to do illegal work such as picking pockets or cannabis production.

Modern slavery can be quite profitable and corrupt governments tacitly allow it, despite it being outlawed by international treaties such as Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery and local laws. Total annual revenues of traffickers were estimated in 2004 to range from US $5 billion to US $9 billion, though profits are substantially lower. American slaves in 1809 were sold for around the equivalent of US$40,000 in today's money. Today, a slave can be bought for $90. The conscription of child soldiers by some governments is often viewed as a form of government-endorsed slavery.

Modern slavery is often seen as a by-product of poverty. Countries that lack education, economic freedom, the rule of law, and have poor societal structure can create an environment that fosters the acceptance and propagation of slavery.

Professor Remington Crawford III of the University of Toronto said:

Slavery by descent, also called chattel slavery, is the form most often associated with the word "slavery". In chattel slavery, the enslaved person is considered the personal property (chattel) of someone else, and can usually be bought and sold. It stems historically from either conquest, where a conquered person is enslaved, as in the Roman Empire or Ottoman Empire, or from slave raiding, as in the Atlantic slave trade or Arab slave trade. In the 21st Century, almost every country has legally abolished chattel slavery.

Since the 2014 Civil War in Libya, and the subsequent breakdown of law and order, there have been reports of enslaved migrants being sold in public, open slave markets in the country.

Mauritania has a long history with slavery. Chattel slavery was formally made illegal in the country but the laws against it have gone largely unenforced. It is estimated that around 90,000 people (over 2% of Mauritania's population) are slaves. In addition, forced marriage and child prostitution are not criminalised.

Debt bondage can also be passed down to descendants, like chattel slavery. See the section on debt bondage below for more information on that. Sex slaves in the modern world are often effectively chattel, especially when they are forced into prostitution. Once again, see the section on sexual slavery below for more information.

In North Korea, the government forces many people to work for the state, both inside and outside North Korea itself, sometimes for many years. The 2018 Global Slavery Index estimated that 2.8 million people were slaves in the country. The value of all the labour done by North Koreans for the government is estimated at $975 million USD, with "dulgyeokdae" (youth workers) forced to do dangerous construction work, and "inminban" (women and girl workers) forced to making clothing in sweatshops. The workers are often unpaid. Additionally, North Korea's army of 1.2 million soldiers is often made to work on construction projects unrelated to defense.

In Eritrea, an estimated 300,000 to 400,000 people are in an indefinite military service program which amounts to mass slavery, according to UN investigators. Their report also found sexual slavery and other forced labour.

About 35-40 countries are currently enforcing military conscription of some sort, even if it's only temporary service.

In China's system of labour prisons (formerly called laogai), millions of prisoners have been subject to forced, unpaid labour. The laogai system is estimated to currently house between 500,000 and 2 million prisoners, And to have caused tens of millions of deaths. In parallel with laogai, China operated the smaller Re-education through labor system of prisons up until 2013. In addition to both of these, It has been alleged that China is also operating forced labour camps in Xinjiang, imprisoning hundreds of thousands (possibly as many as a million) of muslims, uyghurs and other ethnic minorities and political dissidents.

At first China denied this, claiming there was no suppression of ethnic minorities, no arbitrary detention or re-education centers in Xinjiang. About a month later, China went back on this, with the Xinjiang government formally legalising the prisons.

In 1865, the United States passed the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which banned slavery and involuntary servitude ""except as punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted"", providing a legal basis for slavery to continue in the country. As of 2018, many prisoners in the US perform work. In Texas, Georgia, Alabama and Arkansas, prisoners are not paid at all for their work. In other states, as of 2011, prisoners were paid between $0.23 and $1.15 per hour. Federal Prison Industries paid innmates an average of $0.90 per hour in 2017. In many cases the penal work is forced, with prisoners being punished by solitary confinement if they refuse to work. From 2010 to 2015 and again in 2016 and 2018, some prisoners in the US refused to work, protesting for better pay, better conditions, and for the end of forced labour. Strike leaders are currently punished with indefinite solitary confinement. Forced prison labour occurs in both public/government-run prisons and private prisons. The prison labour industry makes over $1 billion USD per year selling products that inmates make, while inmates are paid very little or nothing in return. In California, 2,500 incarcerated workers are fighting wildfires for only $1 per hour, which saves the state as much as $100 million a year.

In North Korea, tens of thousands of prisoners may be held in forced labour camps. Prisoners suffer harsh conditions and have been forced to dig their own graves and to throw rocks at the dead body of another prisoner. At Yodok Concentration Camp, children and political prisoners were subject to forced labour. Yodok closed in 2014 and its prisoners were transferred to other prisons.

Millions of people today work as bonded laborers. The cycle begins when people take extreme loans under the condition that they work off the debt. The "loan" is designed so that it can never be paid off, and is often passed down for generations. This form of slavery is prevalent in South Asia. People become trapped in this system working ostensibly towards repayment though they are often forced to work far past the original amount they owe. They work under the force of threats and abuse, their helplessness is reinforced due to the large power differential between the "creditor" and the "debtor".

People may be enticed to migrate with the promise of work, only to have their documents seized and be forced to work under the threat of violence to them or their families. Undocumented immigrants may also be taken advantage of; without legal residency, they often have no recourse to the law. Along with sex slavery, this is the form of slavery most often encountered in wealthy countries such as the United States, in Western Europe, and in the Middle East.

In the United Arab Emirates, some foreign workers are exploited and more or less enslaved. The majority of the UAE resident population are foreign migrant workers rather than local Emirati citizens. The country has a kafala system which ties migrant workers to local Emirati sponsors with very little government oversight. This has often led to forced labour and human trafficking. In 2017, the UAE passed a law to protect the rights of domestic workers.

Vietnamese teenagers are trafficked to the United Kingdom and forced to work in illegal cannabis farms. When police raid the cannabis farms, trafficked victims are typically sent to prison.

Along with migrant slavery, forced prostitution is the form of slavery most often encountered in wealthy regions such as the United States, in Western Europe, and in the Middle East. It is the primary form of slavery in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia, particularly in Moldova and Laos. Many child sex slaves are trafficked from these areas to the West and the Middle East. An estimated 22% of slaves to date are active in the sex industry.

In 2005, the Gulf Times reported that boys from Nepal had been lured to India and enslaved for sex. Many of these boys had also been subject to male genital mutilation (castration).

Mainly driven by the culture in certain regions, early or forced marriage is a form of slavery that affects millions of women and girls all over the world. When families cannot support their children, the daughters are often married off to the males of wealthier, more powerful families. These men are often significantly older than the girls. The females are forced into lives whose main purpose is to serve their husbands. This often fosters an environment for physical, verbal and sexual abuse.

Forced marriages also happen in developed nations. In the United Kingdom there were 3,546 reports to the police of forced marriage over three years from 2014 to 2016. Reported cases are the tip of an iceberg.

In the United States over 200,000 minors were legally married from 2002-2017, with the youngest being only 10 years old. Most were married to adults. Currently 48 US states, as well as D.C. and Puerto Rico, allow marriage of minors as long as there is judicial consent, parental consent or if the minor is pregnant. In 2017-2018, several states began passing laws to either restrict child marriage or ban it altogether.

Bride-buying is the act of purchasing a bride as property, in a similar manner to chattel slavery. It can also be related to human trafficking.

Children comprise about 26% of the slaves today. Most are domestic workers or work in cocoa, cotton or fishing industries. Many are trafficked and sexually exploited. In war-torn countries, children have been kidnapped and sold to political parties to use as child soldiers. Forced child labor is the dominant form of slavery in Haiti.

One of world's largest seafood exporters, Thailand's fishing industry is rife with trafficking and abuse. Many reports since 2000 have documented the forced labour of trafficked workers in the Thai fishing industry. Thousands of migrants from neighboring Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Myanmar etc. and locals mainly from rural areas have been forced to work on fishing boats with no contract or stable wages. Trafficking victims are often tricked by brokers’ false promises of “good” factory jobs, then forced onto fishing boats where they are trapped, bought and sold like livestock, and held against their will for months or years at a time, forced to work grueling 22-hour days in dangerous conditions. Those who resist or try to run away are beaten, tortured, and often killed.

In addition to sex slavery, modern slaves are often forced to work in certain occupations. Common occupations include:Signs that someone may have been forced into slavery include a lack of identity documents, lack of personal possessions, clothing that is unsuitable or has seen much wear, poor living conditions, a reluctance to make eye contact, unwillingness to talk, and unwillingness to seek help. In the UK people are encouraged to report suspicions to a modern slavery telephone helpline.

The United Nations have defined human trafficking as follows:The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.
According to United States Department of State data, an "estimated 600,000 to 820,000 men, women, and children [are] trafficked across international borders each year, approximately 70 percent are women and girls and up to 50 percent are minors. The data also illustrates that the majority of transnational victims are trafficked into commercial sexual exploitation." However, "the alarming enslavement of people for purposes of labor exploitation, often in their own countries, is a form of human trafficking that can be hard to track from afar". It is estimated that 50,000 people are trafficked every year in the United States.

The government credited with the strongest response to modern slavery are the Netherlands, the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Australia, Portugal, Croatia, Spain, Belgium, Germany and Norway.
In the United Kingdom, the government has instituted major reforms in the legal system through the Criminal Finance Act effective from September 30, 2017. Under the act, there will be transparency in regards to interbank information sharing with law enforcement agencies to help to crack down on money laundering agencies related to contemporary slavery. The Act also aims at reducing the incidence of tax evasion attributed to the lucrative slave trade conducted under the domain of the law. Despite this the UK government has been refusing asylum and deporting children trafficked to the UK as slaves. This puts the children at risk of being subject to control by slavery gangs a second time. It also deters child victims from coming forward with information.

English and Welsh police have been accused of doing too little, and of not handling victims in ways that encourage them to explain what has happened. There are also legal difficulties in defining crimes and prosecuting perpetrators.

In contrast, the governments accused of taking the least action against it are North Korea, Iran, Eritrea, Equatorial Guinea, Hong Kong, Central African Republic, Papua New Guinea, Guinea, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan.

Modern slavery is a multibillion-dollar industry with estimates of up to $35 billion generated annually. In 2013 the United Nations estimated that roughly 27 to 30 million individuals are currently caught in the slave trade industry. According to Walk Free Foundation, there were 46 million people worldwide enslaved in 2016 in the form of "human trafficking, forced labor, bondage from indebtedness, forced or servile marriage or commercial sexual exploitation", with an estimated 18 million of those in India. China is second with 3.4 million, followed by Pakistan (2.1 million), Bangladesh (1.5 million), and Uzbekistan (1.2 million). By percentages of the population living in slavery Uzbekistan tops with 4% of its population living under slavery followed by Cambodia (1.6%), India (1.4%) and Qatar (1.4%). Although these figures have also faced criticism for its inconsistency and questionable methodology.

4.3% of the population of Mauritania still remains enslaved. Despite being illegal in every nation, slavery is still present in several forms today.

Slavery also exists in advanced democratic nations, for example the UK where Home Office estimates suggested 10,000 to 13,000 victims in December 2015. This includes, forced work of various kinds, such as forced prostitution. The UK has recently made an attempt to combat modern slavery via the Modern Slavery Act 2015. Large commercial organisations are now required to publish a slavery and human trafficking statement in regard to their supply chains for each financial year. The Walk Free Foundation reported in 2018 that slavery in advanced democratic nations is much more common than previously known, in particular the United States and Great Britain, which have 403,000 and 136,000 slaves respectively. Andrew Forrest, founder of the organization, said that "The United States is one of the most advanced countries in the world yet has more than 400,000 modern slaves working under forced labor conditions."

The labor market, as institutionalised under the capitalist economic system, has been criticized as a modern extension of slavery, especially by both left-wing socialists and anarcho-syndicalists, who utilize the term wage slavery as a pejorative for wage labour. Socialists draw parallels between the trade of labour as a commodity and slavery. Cicero is also known to have suggested such parallels.

For Marxists, labour-as-commodity, which is how they regard wage labour, provides an absolutely fundamental point of attack against capitalism. "It can be persuasively argued," noted one concerned philosopher, "that the conception of the worker's labour as a commodity confirms Marx's stigmatization of the wage system of private capitalism as 'wage-slavery;' that is, as an instrument of the capitalist's for reducing the worker's condition to that of a slave, if not below it."

As per anthropologist David Graeber, the earliest wage labour contracts we know about were in fact contracts for the rental of chattel slaves (usually the owner would receive a share of the money, and the slave, another, with which to maintain his or her living expenses.) Such arrangements, according to Graeber, were quite common in New World slavery as well, whether in the United States or Brazil. C. L. R. James argued that most of the techniques of human organisation employed on factory workers during the industrial revolution were first developed on slave plantations.

Some criticize wage slavery on strictly contractual grounds, e.g. David Ellerman and Carole Pateman, arguing that the employment contract is a legal fiction in that it treats human beings juridically as mere tools or inputs by abdicating responsibility and self-determination, which the critics argue are inalienable. As Ellerman points out, "[t]he employee is legally transformed from being a co-responsible partner to being only an input supplier sharing no legal responsibility for either the input liabilities [costs] or the produced outputs [revenue, profits] of the employer's business." Such contracts are inherently invalid "since the person remain[s] a de facto fully capacitated adult person with only the contractual role of a non-person" as it is impossible to physically transfer self-determination. As Pateman argues:
It should, however, be noted that the trade of labor for wages is fundamentally different from slavery in that the trade occurs by consent of both parties, the employee being able to refuse to take employment or, having taken employment, to quit. It is also different in that it grants the employer no authority to starve, torture, physically punish, or sell the employee or members of the employee's family, but only to refuse to continue the trade by firing the employee.

Slavery in the 21st century

Contemporary slavery, also known as modern slavery or neo-slavery, refers to institutional slavery that continues to exist in present day society. Estimates of the number of slaves today range from around 21 million. to 70 million, depending on method used to estimate and the definition of slavery being used.

The Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons agency of the United States Department of State says that modern slavery', 'trafficking in persons', and 'human trafficking' have been used as umbrella terms for the act of recruiting, harboring, transporting, providing or obtaining a person for compelled labor or commercial sex acts through the use of force, fraud, or coercion". Besides these, a number of different terms are used in the US federal Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 and the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, including "involuntary servitude", "slavery" or "practices similar to slavery", "debt bondage", and "forced labor".

In slave labor, the slave-owner only needs to pay for sustenance and enforcement. This is sometimes lower than the wage-cost of free laborers, as free workers earn more than sustenance; in these cases, slaves have a positive price. When the cost of sustenance and enforcement exceeds the wage rate, slave-owning would no longer be profitable, and owners would simply release their slaves. Slaves are thus a more attractive investment in high-wage environments, and environments where enforcement is cheap, and less attractive in environments where the wage-rate is low and enforcement is expensive.

Free workers also earn compensating differentials, whereby they are paid more for doing unpleasant work. Neither sustenance nor enforcement costs rise with the unpleasantness of the work, however, so slaves' costs do not rise by the same amount. As such, slaves are more attractive for unpleasant work, and less for pleasant work. Because the unpleasantness of the work is not internalised, being borne by the slave rather than the owner, it is a negative externality and leads to over-use of slaves in these situations. Slaves can also be forced to do illegal work such as picking pockets or cannabis production.

Modern slavery can be quite profitable and corrupt governments tacitly allow it, despite it being outlawed by international treaties such as Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery and local laws. Total annual revenues of traffickers were estimated in 2004 to range from US $5 billion to US $9 billion, though profits are substantially lower. American slaves in 1809 were sold for around the equivalent of US$40,000 in today's money. Today, a slave can be bought for $90. The conscription of child soldiers by some governments is often viewed as a form of government-endorsed slavery.

Modern slavery is often seen as a by-product of poverty. Countries that lack education, economic freedom, the rule of law, and have poor societal structure can create an environment that fosters the acceptance and propagation of slavery.

Professor Remington Crawford III of the University of Toronto said:

Slavery by descent, also called chattel slavery, is the form most often associated with the word "slavery". In chattel slavery, the enslaved person is considered the personal property (chattel) of someone else, and can usually be bought and sold. It stems historically from either conquest, where a conquered person is enslaved, as in the Roman Empire or Ottoman Empire, or from slave raiding, as in the Atlantic slave trade or Arab slave trade. In the 21st Century, almost every country has legally abolished chattel slavery.

Since the 2014 Civil War in Libya, and the subsequent breakdown of law and order, there have been reports of enslaved migrants being sold in public, open slave markets in the country.

Mauritania has a long history with slavery. Chattel slavery was formally made illegal in the country but the laws against it have gone largely unenforced. It is estimated that around 90,000 people (over 2% of Mauritania's population) are slaves. In addition, forced marriage and child prostitution are not criminalised.

Debt bondage can also be passed down to descendants, like chattel slavery. See the section on debt bondage below for more information on that. Sex slaves in the modern world are often effectively chattel, especially when they are forced into prostitution. Once again, see the section on sexual slavery below for more information.

In North Korea, the government forces many people to work for the state, both inside and outside North Korea itself, sometimes for many years. The 2018 Global Slavery Index estimated that 2.8 million people were slaves in the country. The value of all the labour done by North Koreans for the government is estimated at $975 million USD, with "dulgyeokdae" (youth workers) forced to do dangerous construction work, and "inminban" (women and girl workers) forced to making clothing in sweatshops. The workers are often unpaid. Additionally, North Korea's army of 1.2 million soldiers is often made to work on construction projects unrelated to defense.

In Eritrea, an estimated 300,000 to 400,000 people are in an indefinite military service program which amounts to mass slavery, according to UN investigators. Their report also found sexual slavery and other forced labour.

About 35-40 countries are currently enforcing military conscription of some sort, even if it's only temporary service.

In China's system of labour prisons (formerly called laogai), millions of prisoners have been subject to forced, unpaid labour. The laogai system is estimated to currently house between 500,000 and 2 million prisoners, And to have caused tens of millions of deaths. In parallel with laogai, China operated the smaller Re-education through labor system of prisons up until 2013. In addition to both of these, It has been alleged that China is also operating forced labour camps in Xinjiang, imprisoning hundreds of thousands (possibly as many as a million) of muslims, uyghurs and other ethnic minorities and political dissidents.

At first China denied this, claiming there was no suppression of ethnic minorities, no arbitrary detention or re-education centers in Xinjiang. About a month later, China went back on this, with the Xinjiang government formally legalising the prisons.

In North Korea, tens of thousands of prisoners may be held in forced labour camps. Prisoners suffer harsh conditions and have been forced to dig their own graves and to throw rocks at the dead body of another prisoner. At Yodok Concentration Camp, children and political prisoners were subject to forced labour. Yodok closed in 2014 and its prisoners were transferred to other prisons.

Millions of people today work as bonded laborers. The cycle begins when people take extreme loans under the condition that they work off the debt. The "loan" is designed so that it can never be paid off, and is often passed down for generations. This form of slavery is prevalent in South Asia. People become trapped in this system working ostensibly towards repayment though they are often forced to work far past the original amount they owe. They work under the force of threats and abuse, their helplessness is reinforced due to the large power differential between the "creditor" and the "debtor".

People may be enticed to migrate with the promise of work, only to have their documents seized and be forced to work under the threat of violence to them or their families. Undocumented immigrants may also be taken advantage of; without legal residency, they often have no recourse to the law. Along with sex slavery, this is the form of slavery most often encountered in wealthy countries such as the United States, in Western Europe, and in the Middle East.

In the United Arab Emirates, some foreign workers are exploited and more or less enslaved. The majority of the UAE resident population are foreign migrant workers rather than local Emirati citizens. The country has a kafala system which ties migrant workers to local Emirati sponsors with very little government oversight. This has often led to forced labour and human trafficking. In 2017, the UAE passed a law to protect the rights of domestic workers.

Vietnamese teenagers are trafficked to the United Kingdom and forced to work in illegal cannabis farms. When police raid the cannabis farms, trafficked victims are typically sent to prison.

Along with migrant slavery, forced prostitution is the form of slavery most often encountered in wealthy regions such as the United States, in Western Europe, and in the Middle East. It is the primary form of slavery in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia, particularly in Moldova and Laos. Many child sex slaves are trafficked from these areas to the West and the Middle East. An estimated 22% of slaves to date are active in the sex industry.

In 2005, the Gulf Times reported that boys from Nepal had been lured to India and enslaved for sex. Many of these boys had also been subject to male genital mutilation (castration).

Mainly driven by the culture in certain regions, early or forced marriage is a form of slavery that affects millions of women and girls all over the world. When families cannot support their children, the daughters are often married off to the males of wealthier, more powerful families. These men are often significantly older than the girls. The females are forced into lives whose main purpose is to serve their husbands. This often fosters an environment for physical, verbal and sexual abuse.

Forced marriages also happen in developed nations. In the United Kingdom there were 3,546 reports to the police of forced marriage over three years from 2014 to 2016. Reported cases are the tip of an iceberg.

In the United States over 200,000 minors were legally married from 2002-2017, with the youngest being only 10 years old. Most were married to adults. Currently 48 US states, as well as D.C. and Puerto Rico, allow marriage of minors as long as there is judicial consent, parental consent or if the minor is pregnant. In 2017-2018, several states began passing laws to either restrict child marriage or ban it altogether.

Bride-buying is the act of purchasing a bride as property, in a similar manner to chattel slavery. It can also be related to human trafficking.

Children comprise about 26% of the slaves today. Most are domestic workers or work in cocoa, cotton or fishing industries. Many are trafficked and sexually exploited. In war-torn countries, children have been kidnapped and sold to political parties to use as child soldiers. Forced child labor is the dominant form of slavery in Haiti.

In addition to sex slavery, modern slaves are often forced to work in certain occupations. Common occupations include:Signs that someone may have been forced into slavery include a lack of identity documents, lack of personal possessions, clothing that is unsuitable or has seen much wear, poor living conditions, a reluctance to make eye contact, unwillingness to talk, and unwillingness to seek help. In the UK people are encouraged to report suspicions to a modern slavery telephone helpline.

English and Welsh police have been accused of doing too little, and of not handling victims in ways that encourage them to explain what has happened. There are also legal difficulties in defining crimes and prosecuting perpetrators.

In contrast, the governments accused of taking the least action against it are North Korea, Iran, Eritrea, Equatorial Guinea, Hong Kong, Central African Republic, Papua New Guinea, Guinea, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan.

4.3% of the population of Mauritania still remains enslaved. Despite being illegal in every nation, slavery is still present in several forms today.

The labor market, as institutionalised under the capitalist economic system, has been criticized as a modern extension of slavery, especially by both left-wing socialists and anarcho-syndicalists, who utilize the term wage slavery as a pejorative for wage labour. Socialists draw parallels between the trade of labour as a commodity and slavery. Cicero is also known to have suggested such parallels.

For Marxists, labour-as-commodity, which is how they regard wage labour, provides an absolutely fundamental point of attack against capitalism. "It can be persuasively argued," noted one concerned philosopher, "that the conception of the worker's labour as a commodity confirms Marx's stigmatization of the wage system of private capitalism as 'wage-slavery;' that is, as an instrument of the capitalist's for reducing the worker's condition to that of a slave, if not below it."

As per anthropologist David Graeber, the earliest wage labour contracts we know about were in fact contracts for the rental of chattel slaves (usually the owner would receive a share of the money, and the slave, another, with which to maintain his or her living expenses.) Such arrangements, according to Graeber, were quite common in New World slavery as well, whether in the United States or Brazil. C. L. R. James argued that most of the techniques of human organisation employed on factory workers during the industrial revolution were first developed on slave plantations.

Modern slavery can be quite profitable and corrupt governments tacitly allow it, despite it being outlawed by international treaties such as Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery and local laws. Total annual revenues of traffickers were estimated in 2004 to range from US $5 billion to US $9 billion, though profits are substantially lower. American slaves in 1809 were sold for around the equivalent of US$40,000 in today's money. Today, a slave can be bought for $90. The conscription of child soldiers by some governments is often viewed as a form of government-endorsed slavery.

Slavery in the 21st century

Contemporary slavery, also known as modern slavery or neo-slavery, refers to institutional slavery that continues to exist in present day society. Estimates of the number of slaves today range from around 21 million. to 70 million, depending on method used to estimate and the definition of slavery being used.

The Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons agency of the United States Department of State says that modern slavery', 'trafficking in persons', and 'human trafficking' have been used as umbrella terms for the act of recruiting, harboring, transporting, providing or obtaining a person for compelled labor or commercial sex acts through the use of force, fraud, or coercion". Besides these, a number of different terms are used in the US federal Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 and the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, including "involuntary servitude", "slavery" or "practices similar to slavery", "debt bondage", and "forced labor".

In slave labor, the slave-owner only needs to pay for sustenance and enforcement. This is sometimes lower than the wage-cost of free laborers, as free workers earn more than sustenance; in these cases, slaves have a positive price. When the cost of sustenance and enforcement exceeds the wage rate, slave-owning would no longer be profitable, and owners would simply release their slaves. Slaves are thus a more attractive investment in high-wage environments, and environments where enforcement is cheap, and less attractive in environments where the wage-rate is low and enforcement is expensive.

Free workers also earn compensating differentials, whereby they are paid more for doing unpleasant work. Neither sustenance nor enforcement costs rise with the unpleasantness of the work, however, so slaves' costs do not rise by the same amount. As such, slaves are more attractive for unpleasant work, and less for pleasant work. Because the unpleasantness of the work is not internalised, being borne by the slave rather than the owner, it is a negative externality and leads to over-use of slaves in these situations. Slaves can also be forced to do illegal work such as picking pockets or cannabis production.

Modern slavery is often seen as a by-product of poverty. Countries that lack education, economic freedom, the rule of law, and have poor societal structure can create an environment that fosters the acceptance and propagation of slavery.

Professor Remington Crawford III of the University of Toronto said:

Slavery by descent, also called chattel slavery, is the form most often associated with the word "slavery". In chattel slavery, the enslaved person is considered the personal property (chattel) of someone else, and can usually be bought and sold. It stems historically from either conquest, where a conquered person is enslaved, as in the Roman Empire or Ottoman Empire, or from slave raiding, as in the Atlantic slave trade or Arab slave trade. In the 21st Century, almost every country has legally abolished chattel slavery.

Since the 2014 Civil War in Libya, and the subsequent breakdown of law and order, there have been reports of enslaved migrants being sold in public, open slave markets in the country.

Mauritania has a long history with slavery. Chattel slavery was formally made illegal in the country but the laws against it have gone largely unenforced. It is estimated that around 90,000 people (over 2% of Mauritania's population) are slaves. In addition, forced marriage and child prostitution are not criminalised.

Debt bondage can also be passed down to descendants, like chattel slavery. See the section on debt bondage below for more information on that. Sex slaves in the modern world are often effectively chattel, especially when they are forced into prostitution. Once again, see the section on sexual slavery below for more information.

In North Korea, the government forces many people to work for the state, both inside and outside North Korea itself, sometimes for many years. The 2018 Global Slavery Index estimated that 2.8 million people were slaves in the country. The value of all the labour done by North Koreans for the government is estimated at $975 million USD, with "dulgyeokdae" (youth workers) forced to do dangerous construction work, and "inminban" (women and girl workers) forced to making clothing in sweatshops. The workers are often unpaid. Additionally, North Korea's army of 1.2 million soldiers is often made to work on construction projects unrelated to defense.

In Eritrea, an estimated 300,000 to 400,000 people are in an indefinite military service program which amounts to mass slavery, according to UN investigators. Their report also found sexual slavery and other forced labour.

About 35-40 countries are currently enforcing military conscription of some sort, even if it's only temporary service.

In China's system of labour prisons (formerly called laogai), millions of prisoners have been subject to forced, unpaid labour. The laogai system is estimated to currently house between 500,000 and 2 million prisoners, And to have caused tens of millions of deaths. In parallel with laogai, China operated the smaller Re-education through labor system of prisons up until 2013. In addition to both of these, It has been alleged that China is also operating forced labour camps in Xinjiang, imprisoning hundreds of thousands (possibly as many as a million) of muslims, uyghurs and other ethnic minorities and political dissidents.

At first China denied this, claiming there was no suppression of ethnic minorities, no arbitrary detention or re-education centers in Xinjiang. About a month later, China went back on this, with the Xinjiang government formally legalising the prisons.

In North Korea, tens of thousands of prisoners may be held in forced labour camps. Prisoners suffer harsh conditions and have been forced to dig their own graves and to throw rocks at the dead body of another prisoner. At Yodok Concentration Camp, children and political prisoners were subject to forced labour. Yodok closed in 2014 and its prisoners were transferred to other prisons.

Millions of people today work as bonded laborers. The cycle begins when people take extreme loans under the condition that they work off the debt. The "loan" is designed so that it can never be paid off, and is often passed down for generations. This form of slavery is prevalent in South Asia. People become trapped in this system working ostensibly towards repayment though they are often forced to work far past the original amount they owe. They work under the force of threats and abuse, their helplessness is reinforced due to the large power differential between the "creditor" and the "debtor".

People may be enticed to migrate with the promise of work, only to have their documents seized and be forced to work under the threat of violence to them or their families. Undocumented immigrants may also be taken advantage of; without legal residency, they often have no recourse to the law. Along with sex slavery, this is the form of slavery most often encountered in wealthy countries such as the United States, in Western Europe, and in the Middle East.

In the United Arab Emirates, some foreign workers are exploited and more or less enslaved. The majority of the UAE resident population are foreign migrant workers rather than local Emirati citizens. The country has a kafala system which ties migrant workers to local Emirati sponsors with very little government oversight. This has often led to forced labour and human trafficking. In 2017, the UAE passed a law to protect the rights of domestic workers.

Vietnamese teenagers are trafficked to the United Kingdom and forced to work in illegal cannabis farms. When police raid the cannabis farms, trafficked victims are typically sent to prison.

Along with migrant slavery, forced prostitution is the form of slavery most often encountered in wealthy regions such as the United States, in Western Europe, and in the Middle East. It is the primary form of slavery in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia, particularly in Moldova and Laos. Many child sex slaves are trafficked from these areas to the West and the Middle East. An estimated 22% of slaves to date are active in the sex industry.

In 2005, the Gulf Times reported that boys from Nepal had been lured to India and enslaved for sex. Many of these boys had also been subject to male genital mutilation (castration).

Mainly driven by the culture in certain regions, early or forced marriage is a form of slavery that affects millions of women and girls all over the world. When families cannot support their children, the daughters are often married off to the males of wealthier, more powerful families. These men are often significantly older than the girls. The females are forced into lives whose main purpose is to serve their husbands. This often fosters an environment for physical, verbal and sexual abuse.

Forced marriages also happen in developed nations. In the United Kingdom there were 3,546 reports to the police of forced marriage over three years from 2014 to 2016. Reported cases are the tip of an iceberg.

In the United States over 200,000 minors were legally married from 2002-2017, with the youngest being only 10 years old. Most were married to adults. Currently 48 US states, as well as D.C. and Puerto Rico, allow marriage of minors as long as there is judicial consent, parental consent or if the minor is pregnant. In 2017-2018, several states began passing laws to either restrict child marriage or ban it altogether.

Bride-buying is the act of purchasing a bride as property, in a similar manner to chattel slavery. It can also be related to human trafficking.

Children comprise about 26% of the slaves today. Most are domestic workers or work in cocoa, cotton or fishing industries. Many are trafficked and sexually exploited. In war-torn countries, children have been kidnapped and sold to political parties to use as child soldiers. Forced child labor is the dominant form of slavery in Haiti.

In addition to sex slavery, modern slaves are often forced to work in certain occupations. Common occupations include:Signs that someone may have been forced into slavery include a lack of identity documents, lack of personal possessions, clothing that is unsuitable or has seen much wear, poor living conditions, a reluctance to make eye contact, unwillingness to talk, and unwillingness to seek help. In the UK people are encouraged to report suspicions to a modern slavery telephone helpline.

English and Welsh police have been accused of doing too little, and of not handling victims in ways that encourage them to explain what has happened. There are also legal difficulties in defining crimes and prosecuting perpetrators.

In contrast, the governments accused of taking the least action against it are North Korea, Iran, Eritrea, Equatorial Guinea, Hong Kong, Central African Republic, Papua New Guinea, Guinea, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan.

4.3% of the population of Mauritania still remains enslaved. Despite being illegal in every nation, slavery is still present in several forms today.

The labor market, as institutionalised under the capitalist economic system, has been criticized as a modern extension of slavery, especially by both left-wing socialists and anarcho-syndicalists, who utilize the term wage slavery as a pejorative for wage labour. Socialists draw parallels between the trade of labour as a commodity and slavery. Cicero is also known to have suggested such parallels.

For Marxists, labour-as-commodity, which is how they regard wage labour, provides an absolutely fundamental point of attack against capitalism. "It can be persuasively argued," noted one concerned philosopher, "that the conception of the worker's labour as a commodity confirms Marx's stigmatization of the wage system of private capitalism as 'wage-slavery;' that is, as an instrument of the capitalist's for reducing the worker's condition to that of a slave, if not below it."

As per anthropologist David Graeber, the earliest wage labour contracts we know about were in fact contracts for the rental of chattel slaves (usually the owner would receive a share of the money, and the slave, another, with which to maintain his or her living expenses.) Such arrangements, according to Graeber, were quite common in New World slavery as well, whether in the United States or Brazil. C. L. R. James argued that most of the techniques of human organisation employed on factory workers during the industrial revolution were first developed on slave plantations.