Slavery shackles 27 million people around world: expert

By IAN BURRELL Herald correspondent

LONDON - There are now more slaves in the world than at any time in human history, according to research by an adviser to the United Nations.

Kevin Bales, a professor of sociology at the University of Surrey, has calculated that 27 million people are living as slaves, more than in the days of the Roman Empire or at the height of the transatlantic slave trade.

He said that although legal ownership of people was no longer claimed, modern slaves were living in worse conditions than when the practice was lawful.

Bales said that slavery was becoming common in First World countries such as Britain as human trafficking led to people being tricked into domestic service and prostitution. He said the problem was often not being taken seriously because modern forms of exploitation did not mirror traditional ideas of slavery.

"They must understand that slavery is a relationship between two people marked by dominance," he argued.

Bales, who is a member of the UN's working group on contemporary forms of slavery, said his 27 million figure had been accepted by the UN and did not include the millions of people working in sweat-shops or doing prison labour.

The most common form of modern slavery is debt bondage, where people pledge themselves against a loan. This is most prevalent in the Indian subcontinent.

Another growth area for modern human bondage is contract slavery, where workers are tricked into signing away their rights. This happens in Southeast Asia, Brazil, Africa, some Arab states and parts of India.

War slavery - where civilians are forced into unpaid work on military construction projects - is experienced in Burma and Sudan.

The form of modern slavery which most compares to the common idea of the problem is the increasingly rare chattel slavery, where people are born or sold into the possession of another. Chattel slavery is still found in North and West Africa and some Arab states.

At its height the Roman Empire was said to absorb 500,000 slaves a year, with around 250,000 living in Rome itself - around a quarter of the city's population.

Best estimates of the transatlantic slave trade suggest that 13 million people were taken from Africa over a 350-year period.

But the present growth of slavery is much greater, with the global population now over six billion, at least six times greater than 150 years ago.

It was recently suggested that 500,000 people might enter Europe illegally this year, up from 40,000 in 1993. Of these, around 100,000 are reckoned to be working in contract slavery, paying off debts to criminal gangs who organised their passage.