The Scourge of Slavery: The Contemporary Reality of an International Human Rights Challenge

David K. Androff is assistant professor in the School of Social Work at Arizona State University.

Slavery is not history. Yet for many in the West, slavery is inexorably embedded in the past. Conventional wisdom holds that the abhorrent practice of slavery is no more. In the United States, school children are taught that it expired when Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves and the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified in 1865. The British Empire abolished slavery throughout its colonies in 1833. Indeed, popular histories celebrate such emancipations and abolitions, and the triumph of Enlightenment values of human rights over the oppression, exploitation, and domination of slavery.¹ However, accounts of slavery typically end at this point, implying that slavery did not persist into the present day. Additionally, most academic attention and scholarship on slavery focuses on the transatlantic slave trade and the African experience in America. Even scholars of inequality and oppression often fail to address the contemporary reality of slavery today.

Slavery has been present around the world throughout history. Aristotle famously justified slavery as a natural, necessary and beneficial social status. Across the globe and through antiquity, empires were built upon the enslavement of people. Until the relatively recent abolition movements, slavery was an accepted form of human relations. Now, it is universally accepted that slavery is wrong, immoral, illegal, and a violation of human rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) forbids slavery, forced labour, servitude, and the slave trade. The International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (1966) provides for the right to work in a safe environment for fair and just pay. Yet despite this reversal in attitudes about slavery and the myriad laws and international agreements confirming its illegality, slavery persists. It is a troubling aspect of the problem that slavery is illegal everywhere, but also practised everywhere.

The historical legacy of the abolition movement and its successes of pervasive laws against slavery contributed to the widespread perception that the problem had been solved. However, over the past decade, a growing awareness of the reality of contemporary slavery has slowly dawned. Sensational media accounts and investigative journalism spurred interest, and concern from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and faith-based communities led to eventual action by states and resulted in gradual public awareness of the issue. Popular television shows and Hollywood movies have featured plotlines involving international sex trafficking. Nevertheless, confusion still exists about why modern slavery—usually framed as human trafficking—continues to plague so many people, the precise numbers affected, what situations constitute modern slavery, and what possible solutions there are to the problem.

Slavery is not just poor working conditions. Enthusiastic advocates for various social-justice campaigns sometimes exaggerate their causes and have applied the term “slavery” loosely. Although the international community has developed definitions and agreements on modern slavery, the panoply of government agencies, NGOs, the media, and the public is still building consensus towards a common understanding of slavery. Questions remain about what constitutes modern slavery, and often interrelated and overlapping phenomena such as human trafficking, human smuggling, prostitution, sex work, and sex tourism contribute to the confusion. Much of the media coverage is focused upon international sex trafficking, and many assume that this is the full extent or main form of modern slavery; however, there is evidence that other forms of forced labour may rival sex trafficking in scope. Meaningful estimates of the scale of modern slavery are elusive.

Many aspects of modern slavery are tied to the economic, technological, and social forces of globalisation. The accelerated flow of capital, information, and people across political and geographic borders as well as the global diffusion of production, supply, and distribution networks have facilitated the growth of modern slavery and enabled the problem to elude public consciousness and detection. Rapid social forces such as overpopulation and urbanisation, coupled with corruption, particularly in the global South, fuel modern slavery. The result is a globalised system of oppression, interlaced inequalities, violence, and exploitation.

What Is Modern Slavery?

Defining slavery precisely and accurately is an important task, not only to promote understanding of the phenomenon but also to ensure that intervention efforts are well co-ordinated and have the potential for maximum benefit. Definitions of modern slavery vary; this is problematic in and of itself. As mentioned above, popular misconceptions abound about the nature and extent of modern slavery. If modern slavery is defined too narrowly, some who suffer may be excluded from interventions designed to assist and protect them. Conversely, if modern slavery is defined too broadly then intervention policies and programmes may be watered down and weakened by the inclusion of other forms of exploitation and injustice.

Orlando Patterson, a pre-eminent scholar of slavery, applies a tripartite definition.² He writes that throughout history slavery has been a relationship of human domination. This extreme form of human domination is characterised first by its violent nature: most scholars and policymakers agree that violent coercion—controlling another person through force or the threat of violence—lies at the centre of the slave experience. Second, slavery constitutes a form of social death: slaves are cut off from their social relationships, especially their relationships to their own families, in both ascending and descending generations. Slaves do not belong to any social group: they are no longer children to their parents, brother or sister to their siblings, or even parents to their own children. They are exclusively, and usually permanently, slaves to their master, and this tie becomes their main and overarching social relationship. Third, they are stigmatised or dishonoured—powerless people whose social shame contributes to the outward appearance of their acceptance of their position and damages their internal sense of self-identity.

Kevin Bales, a scholar and activist whose writings have done much to raise public awareness of modern slavery, applies a definition that echoes Patterson’s: slaves are forced, through violence, to work without pay. Bales also discerns several differences between historical slavery and modern slavery, notably in the areas of legality, supply, and cost. Besides the fact that slavery is now illegal after being legally permissible for