ABSTRACT
Over the past decade, the problem of modern slavery has moved from being a marginal concern to a mainstream issue, with overall levels of public awareness, official engagement and specialised research all experiencing significant advances in recent times. The primary focal point of this renewed interest in human bondage has been trafficking in persons for the purposes of forced prostitution. Other key problem areas include bonded labour, the worst forms of child labour, “classical” slavery and descent-based discrimination, forced labour for the state, wartime enslavement, and the severe exploitation of migrants and domestic workers. This evolving agenda reflects contributions from human rights groups and international organizations such as Anti-Slavery International and the United Nations; a series of national, regional and global initiatives such as the annual Trafficking in Persons Reports published by the US government since 2001; and a number of high-profile court cases and popular exposés. Efforts to understand and eradicate modern slavery face a number of distinctive
challenges. The first and most obvious challenge involves determining where slavery begins and ends. With slavery now legally abolished throughout the globe, modern forms of slavery tend to be concentrated in social and economic settings that are not conducive to external scrutiny. While criminal prosecutions and other sources of information can offer some guidance, relatively few cases of human bondage find their way into the public domain, making it difficult to determine the scale and distribution of many contemporary problems. Attempts to classify modern slavery are also complicated by variations in individual experience, which can sometimes make it difficult to draw a clear-cut distinction between modern slavery and other types of exploitative activities. These variations in experience have proved especially challenging when it comes to contentious issues such as child labour and prostitution, where some human rights activists have sought to expand the boundaries of modern slavery to include nearly all forms of exploitation and abuse. In such cases, political rhetoric regularly takes the place of measured analysis. While human rights activists regularly invoke the imagery of slavery in order to
prioritise a variety of causes, many government officials continue to publicly insist that slavery is not a significant problem within their jurisdiction. These frequent denials represent the first of many obstacles that need to be overcome in order to eradicate modern slavery. On this front, there have recently been a number of promising developments, especially when it comes to legislative reforms, rehabilitation programmes, and
the formation of specialised anti-slavery agencies. It is also clear, however, that a great deal remains to be accomplished. This is partially a reflection of ongoing failures by official agents, and partially a reflection of the entrenched nature of many of the problems involved. Much like political campaigns focusing upon global poverty and environmental degradation, recent efforts to combat modern slavery have tended to be geared towards cumulative reductions in the overall scale and severity of particular problem areas, rather than towards a single, decisive solution designed to bring modern slavery to an effective end. The issues identified above can be approached in a variety of ways. In this chapter,
I have organised my remarks into three main sections: modern slavery and international law; modern slavery by the numbers; and forms of modern slavery. The first section documents a gradual expansion of anti-slavery obligations under international law over the course of the twentieth century. This expansion has played a decisive role in shaping the terms of modern activism and analysis. The second section is concerned with a number of prominent estimates of the scale and distribution of modern slavery. These estimates are far from perfect, but they nonetheless offer a rough snapshot of the global dimensions of contemporary problems. The third and final section considers six themes, or problem areas, which represent the core of modern slavery. These are “classical” slavery and descent-based discrimination, bonded labour, forced prostitution, the exploitation of domestic workers, forced labour for the state, and wartime enslavement.
For thousands of years, the law was firmly on the side of slaveholders and slave-traders. In order to ensure that slave systems functioned effectively, legislators from various parts of the globe drafted elaborate legal codes which were designed to regulate both the conditions on which enslavement initially occurred, and the subsequent terms on which slaves were traded and treated. This longstanding relationship between law and slavery began to break down in the second half of the eighteenth century, with the emergence of an organised anti-slavery movement. These anti-slavery pioneers initially focused on the legal foundations of slave systems in the Americas, as political coalitions sought to first restrict and then abolish slavery and/or slave trading as legal institutions. With the passage of time, anti-slavery activism also extended to Africa, Asia and the Middle East, culminating in a state of affairs where every country in the world has now legally abolished slavery (Quirk, 2006; Miers, 2003). The passage of laws prohibiting slavery can be best understood as an important first
step, rather than a decisive endpoint. For most slave populations, the withdrawal of legal support for slavery translated into qualified yet still consequential improvements in overall levels of consumption, family integrity, economic remuneration and personal autonomy. It is also clear, however, that the legal abolition of slavery also left a great deal to be desired. Although most former slaves experienced some gains from legal reforms which prohibited slavery, they also continued to face widespread discrimination and exploitation. While laws against slavery were introduced, comparable forms of exploitation and abuse continued (Quirk, 2009: 93-98). This divide between legal injunctions and practical outcomes can partially be traced to ineffective enforcement of laws against slavery and servitude. In some cases, however, public officials have also continued actively to support related forms of servitude and exploitation, such as forced
labour for the state. In response to these widespread problems, more recent anti-slavery activists have found it necessary to push for further reforms, making a concerted effort not only to close legal loopholes, but also to phase out government support for various forms of human bondage. This impulse has been especially prominent in the field of international law, where the parameters of slavery have steadily expanded over the past century. Having once been used to regulate slavery, the law now provides a key foundation for ongoing efforts to eradicate slavery in all its forms. The modern relationship between slavery and international law dates back to 1926,
and the drafting of the Slavery, Servitude, Forced Labour and Similar Institutions and Practices Convention. Negotiated under the auspices of the League of Nations, this Convention took the important step of defining slavery as “the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised”. Parties to the Convention (there were 95 in 2002) also undertook “to prevent and suppress the slave trade” and “[t]o bring about, progressively and as soon as possible, the complete abolition of slavery in all its forms”. The Convention text does not define the nature of these “forms”, but it does include a qualified call for “measures to prevent compulsory or forced labour from developing into conditions analogous to slavery”, pointing to a cautious recognition of similarities between various forms of human bondage.1 This lack of analytical precision regarding “slavery in all its forms” eventually contributed to a further round of deliberation following the Second World War, culminating in the 1956 United Nations Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery.2
