A brief note on Modern Slavery

Modern slavery encompasses a range of legal issues, including forced labour, debt servitude, forced marriage, slavery and acts resembling slavery, and human trafficking. Although contemporary slavery is not defined by law, it is used as a catch-all term to highlight the similarities between these legal notions. Modern slavery refers to the harsh exploitation of others for personal or economic gain. Slavery in the twenty-first century is all around us but is frequently hidden from view. Making our clothing, serving our meals, harvesting our crops, working in factories, or serving as chefs, cleaners, or nannies may trap individuals.

Forms of modern slavery

Modern kinds of slavery are diverse. The most prevalent are:

• Human trafficking: The use of violence, threats, or compulsion to transport, recruit, or harbour individuals to exploit them for purposes such as forced prostitution, forced labour, crime, or organ harvesting.
• Forced labour: Any labour or services that individuals are compelled to perform against their will or under threat of punishment.
• Debt bondage/bonded labour: The most prevalent type of slavery worldwide. People trapped in poverty borrow money and are compelled to labour to repay it, losing control over both their job circumstances and their debt.
• Descent–based slavery: People are viewed as property, and their “slave” status is transmitted via their mother’s lineage.
• Slavery against children: When a youngster is exploited for the benefit of another. This can involve child trafficking, child soldiers, child marriage, and domestic slavery against children.
• Forced and early marriage: When a person is married against his or her choice and is unable to escape. The majority of child marriages qualify as slavery.

People become victims of contemporary slavery because they are susceptible to being duped, trapped, and exploited, frequently as a result of poverty and social isolation. These external circumstances force individuals to make dangerous decisions in pursuit of possibilities to provide for their families, or to accept positions with exploitative working conditions.

Forced Labour

Forced labour, sometimes also referred to as labour trafficking, encompasses the spectrum of activities—recruiting, harbouring, transporting, providing, or obtaining—involved when a person uses force or physical threats, psychological coercion, abuse of the legal process, deception, or other coercive means to compel another person to work. Once a person’s labour is abused in this way, prior permission to work for an employer is legally immaterial; the employer is a trafficker and the employee is a trafficking victim. Migrants are especially susceptible to this sort of human trafficking, although forced labour can also occur within a country’s borders. The sexual abuse or exploitation of female victims of forced or bonded labour, particularly women and girls in domestic service, is common.

Bonded Labor or Debt Bondage

The placement of a bond or debt is one kind of coercion employed by traffickers in both sex trafficking and forced labour. Some employees inherit debt; for example, in South Asia, millions of victims of human trafficking are thought to be labouring to pay off their relatives’ debts. Others fall victim to traffickers or recruiters who unlawfully abuse an initial debt taken as a condition of employment, whether knowingly or unknowingly. Traffickers, labour agencies, recruiters, and employers in both the country of origin and the country of destination can contribute to debt bondage by charging employees recruiting fees and high-interest rates, making it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to repay the debt. In the context of employment-based temporary labour programmes in which a worker’s legal status in the destination country is related to the employer, such situations may arise, causing workers to dread seeking a remedy.

Domestic Servitude

Involuntary domestic slavery is a kind of human trafficking that occurs under specific conditions – labour in a private house — that expose victims to special vulnerabilities. Domestic servitude is a crime when a domestic worker is unable to quit his or her job and is mistreated and underpaid if paid at all. Numerous domestic workers do not get the standard perks and protections accorded to other categories of employees, such as a day off. In addition, their mobility is frequently restricted, and working in private houses exacerbates their isolation and vulnerability. In general, labour regulators lack the jurisdiction to investigate employment conditions in private residences. Domestic workers, particularly women, face several types of abuse, harassment, and exploitation, such as sexual and gender-based violence. Considered collectively, these factors may be indicative of domestic slavery. When the employer of a domestic worker has diplomatic status and civil and/or criminal immunity, the domestic worker is more susceptible to slavery.

Forced Child Labor

Although certain kinds of child labour are permitted, children can sometimes be found in slavery or settings resembling slavery. Situations in which a kid seems to be in the care of a non-family member compels the child to undertake work that monetarily benefits someone outside the child’s family and does not allow the child to leave, such as forced begging, are symptoms of child forced labour. Traditional anti-child labour measures, such as rehabilitation and education, should not be replaced by anti-trafficking measures. When children are enslaved, their exploiters should not be exempt from criminal punishment, as is the case when governments respond to incidents of forced child labour with administrative measures.

Unlawful Recruitment and Use of Child Soldiers

Child soldiering is a symptom of human trafficking when it involves the illicit recruitment or employment of minors as fighters or other types of labour by armed forces by force, deception, or coercion. Government armed forces, paramilitary organisations, or rebel groups may be the perpetrators. Numerous youngsters are abducted and exploited as warriors. Others are forced to serve as porters, chefs, guards, servants, couriers, or spies. Commanders and adult warriors may compel young girls to “marry” or rape them. Male and female child soldiers are frequently sexually abused or used by armed organisations, and these youngsters are vulnerable to the same severe physical and psychological effects as children who are trafficked for sexual exploitation.

Impacts of forced labour

• Workers subjected to forced labour and debt servitude are frequently subjected to a variety of exploitations, including contract substitution, withholding of papers, non-payment or delayed payment of wages, gruelling working hours, fraud, and pressure.
• In extreme circumstances, this exploitation transforms into human trafficking for labour exploitation or enslavement.
• Due to the practice of forced labour, poverty and illiteracy continue to be more prevalent in these groups than in the general population.

Conclusion

The definition of forced labour is work that is undertaken against one’s will and under the threat of punishment. It refers to circumstances in which individuals are pressured to labour by the use of violence or intimidation, or through more subtle techniques such as manipulating debt, retaining identification documents, or threatening to denounce them to immigration officials.