Walk Free Foundation: "Nearly 46 million people estimated to be enslaved worldwide is an increase of 28 percent"

Nearly 46 million people across the globe are living in modern slavery, a system of exploitation that governments and businesses must do more to end, according to the Walk Free Foundation.

 

The Walk Free Foundation was founded by Andrew and Nicola Forrest and encompasses their vision to end of modern slavery globally. Seed funded by the Forrests’ philanthropic vehicle the Minderoo Foundation, the initiative provides the information and capabilities required for countries to defeat slavery in their jurisdictions. We hope that you will join us in whatever way you can to help end modern slavery once and for all.

http://www.walkfreefoundation.org/

The Australia-based rights group on Tuesday released its global slavery index, which tracks the number of people stuck in "situations of exploitation that a person cannot refuse or leave because of threats, violence, coercion, abuse of power or deception." The instances include forced labor in farming, fishing and manufacturing, commercial sex work and forced marriage.

"Governments need to look more closely at illicit labor recruitment, crack down on the illegal companies that provide conduit in which people end up in slavery, and penalize the companies and individuals that are using bonded labor, either directly or in their supply chains," the group said in a statement. "At the same time, it is important that we tackle the conditions that drive labor migration by creating opportunities within home countries."

The survey, which was based on 42,000 interviews conducted in 25 countries, found that Asian countries were home to nearly 60 percent of the world’s modern slaves. India was the country with the highest number, 18.3 million, while North Korea had the highest proportion, with 4.3 percent of the population thought to be enslaved, the survey found.

The nearly 46 million people estimated to be enslaved worldwide is an increase of 28 percent from the group’s last survey, though it says that is likely due to better data collection and research methods. The group said progress had been made since its last report, with all countries in Asia except North Korea now having laws criminalizing some forms of modern slavery.

“I believe in the critical role of leaders in government, business and civil society,” Andrew Forrest, the billionaire chairman of the Walk Free Foundation, said in a statement. Forrest is the largest shareholder of iron ore producer Fortescue Metals Group. "Businesses that don’t actively look for forced labor within their supply chains are standing on a burning platform," Forrest said.

Food Chain Slaves in USA

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/slaverya21stcenturyevil/2011/10/201110108583163675.html
Today, 27 million men, women and children are held, sold and trafficked as slaves throughout the world. In Slavery: A 21st Century Evil, Rageh Omaar embarks on a worldwide journey to uncover the truth about the flourishing 21st century slave trade. Episode by episode, his investigation will expose the brutal reality of modern slavery and unpick the reasons why this age-old evil persists.

In the opening episode of Slavery: A 21st Century Evil, Al Jazeera's Rageh Omaar investigates food chain slavery, considered the easiest form of slavery to stamp out, in the US.

The US has been leading the global fight against modern slavery. But, according to conservative estimates, there are between 40,000 and 50,000 slaves in the US today.

So in this episode, Rageh questions why a nation built on the abolition of slavery - a country that had to go through a painful civil war to formally bring an end to slavery - is failing to address the problem inside its own borders.

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/slaverya21stcenturyevil/

The investigation begins in the poor villages of Thailand, where agents for the US slave masters trick desperate peasants with promises of well-paid jobs abroad.

But far from fulfilling their American dream, many end up in slave labour farms in Hawaii, California and Florida - unable to return home and working to pay off the debts they incurred in the pursuit of a better life for themselves and their families.

Wake up! Human Slavery and Human Trafficking is here in the USA, today.

http://www.thedeadbolt.com/news/108524/gloria_reuben_neal_baer_law_order_svu_interview.php

After tackling the severity of rape and the many backlogged rape kits in the American justice system, Law & Order: SVU takes on the hotbed issue of human trafficking in the October 6 episode, "Merchandise", guest starring Gloria Reuben in the role of Assistant U.S. Attorney and friend Christine Danielson. In "Merchandise", Detectives Benson (Hargitay) and Stabler (Meloni) investigate the death of a teenage girl, which exposes a human trafficking ring that forces the police to reach out to the U.S. Attorney's Office for help.

Ahead of Law & Order: SVU and "Merchandise", TheDeadbolt caught up with SVU guest star Gloria Reuben and executive producer Neal Baer to learn more about how Reuben feels about Christine Danielson and how both Gloria and Neal feel about the real issue of human trafficking in America.

THE DEADBOLT: Gloria, what do you enjoy about playing Christine Danielson?

GLORIA REUBEN: Well, this is just my second time playing her, but I love it. I often do in these kinds of roles. I love having the opportunity to represent a woman in a leadership role. I love the whole law thing. I love the whole law and cop thing and I always have since I was a little girl. So it's always fun to be able to play that certain aspect of life that I have clearly no experience with in my real world. It's kind of fun to dive into that.

Most importantly it's always great to be on Law & Order: SVU and to be able to work together creatively with Neal since we have such a long history together. It's a little bit shocking and unnerving to think about how many years we've known each other, on one aspect, and yet I feel great [that] we have known each other for so long. So it's always great to work with Neal and Mariska [Hargitay] and Chris [Meloni]. It's always great fun on the set and the stories are always very intense and I kind of like that intensity.

THE DEADBOLT: Do U.S. Attorney's Office staff have badges?

REUBEN: Yes, and we like to hand them out [laughs].

THE DEADBOLT: Interesting. I didn't know that.

REUBEN: Well, it's not like a cop. As you'll see in the episode, we hand out these special badges ...

NEAL BAER: It's a U.S. Marshal type of thing.

REUBEN: Right. So, it's not like she walks around with the badge around her neck. But it wasn't a very funny joke. [laughs]

BAER: She's not kidding. She gives Chris and Mariska U.S. Marshal badges on the show. She takes their badges from them and makes them into U.S. Marshals so that they can continue pursuing a case. They have to convince her and have a big fight with B.D. Wong over it, but Gloria has more power.

REUBEN: That's what I like most.

THE DEADBOLT: So Neal, what disturbing facts did you find out about human trafficking for this episode?

BAER: Actually, I'll let Gloria talk about that because that's what Gloria's character, Christina, is really about. I was actually in Boston last spring teaching at the charity school at Harvard for a day and a student came up to me and talked to me about some new research that's coming out on human trafficking, particularly looking at domestic slavery around the world and also in the United States. We don't hear much about that.

Of course we hear about sex trafficking, which is horrendous, and a lot of work is being done in that arena. But we don't hear as much about trafficking where kids are forced to work on farms and work for people in their homes and things like that. So Gloria has some of the figures in the U.S. that she actually relates on the show.

REUBEN: It's kind of one of those things where when you find out the details and the numbers and specifics about certain things that a lot of us in this country think are happening elsewhere, whether it be the HIV pandemic or whether it be human and child trafficking, or whether it be climate change, all of the above, and a whole bunch of other issues.

But when I read the script for the first time and grabbed these statistics about the 14,000 young people here in the United States that are either in slavery or in child trafficking - 14,000, that number is outrageous, or knowing that worldwide it's minimally 75,000 and that's clearly what we know about.

Now there are three specific instances that Danielson talks about to Mariska and Chris, one of them being a woman who sells her young daughter for $5,000 to a middle aged man. This man ends up sharing this young girl with his friends. Or a 9 year-old girl who is dropped on the street by her grandmother in Portland and just kind of left to fend for herself, this young girl's pimp ends up charging more for prepubescent because she's 9 years-old. Or a 12 year-old that's kept as a slave in a suburban family in Minneapolis.

I mean, these are just three of these 14,000 stories that are going on. And again, it's kind of a Catch-22 because clearly at this time in particular so many of us in this country are struggling in many ways and yet at the same time these kind of atrocities are going on and the awareness of that is very minimal.

So, when this kind of an episode comes along that is as shocking as this is, and yet in a way as necessary as it is, it feels to me, personally, it carries a much greater weight in a good way. It's a much greater responsibility because it's such an extraordinarily important issue that we need to think more about and do more about