Slavery: from terrorist groups to leading economies
Slavery is one of the oldest systems of economic organization and social stratification. In various forms, it existed in all major civilizations: the Akkadian and Assyrian empires, ancient Egypt, China, Greece, India, the Roman Empire, the Arab Caliphates, the pre-colonial empires of Africa, and the pre-Columbian civilizations of the Americas. Despite the fact that today slavery is condemned and outlawed, people are still frequently kidnapped, sold, and forced into labor. What is more, the most egregious cases of government negligence in prosecuting perpetrators occur in developed countries, through which most slaves transit.
Vikings, Europeans, and Americans
Slavery has existed throughout the world since ancient times; members of Slavic, Iranian, and African tribes were turned into slaves until the 19th century. In the 9th and 10th centuries, Vikings sold East Slavic slaves to Arab and Jewish traders, who took them to Verdun and Leon, from where they were distributed throughout Moorish Spain and North Africa.
The best-known slave trade is the transatlantic slave trade, which spread to Europe and the Americas in the 1500s. For the first 130 years, the Portuguese dominated the trade. They accounted for 7 out of 10 transatlantic voyages, transporting nearly three-quarters of all enslaved people from Africa.
In 1624, France joined the slave trade, followed by Denmark and Holland. Within six years, the latter took control from Portugal but subsequently began to compete with British traders. This confrontation indirectly caused two Anglo-Dutch wars that lasted from 1652 to 1667. However, the British managed to fully obtain control over the slave trade by 1651, becoming the main suppliers of free labor to the New World.
During the period of the Atlantic Slave Trade, approximately from 1526 to 1867, about 12.5 million men, women, and children were forcibly transported to the Americas. At the same time, about 2 million people did not survive the Atlantic crossing, and only about 10.5 million reached the shores of the New World. Africans taken to Brazil mostly came from Angola. Slaves from West Africa were brought to North America and the Caribbean. Nearly half of the Africans brought to the United States came from what are now Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and Mali, as well as Angola, Congo, and Gabon.
Slavery in the U.S. was characterized by absolute gender balance and the ability of the enslaved population to increase its numbers through natural reproduction. Unlike other enslaved societies, the one in the U.S. had the highest and most consistent natural increase in slaves for more than a century and a half. By 1825, about a quarter of the U.S. population was of African descent, with half of all enslaved children dying in their first year of life, largely due to chronic malnutrition.
An array of laws banning the slave trade appeared in Europe at the end of the 18th century. However, it was not until 30 years later that laws directly abolishing slavery appeared. Great Britain was the first to adopt them, followed by France, Portugal, the Netherlands, and, at a very late stage, the United States. It was only in 1948, with the adoption of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that slavery and any other forms of servitude were condemned and prohibited.
ISIS* and South America
Modern slavery is a special term that appeared about two decades ago in the media in order to distinguish the current cases of human enslavement from their older examples. Today, as hundreds of years ago, a person is held captive under the influence of physical or psychological violence to provide a certain service – labor, sexual, or criminal. But in contrast to the transatlantic slave trade, the geography has become much wider: whereas in the past, people from West Africa were forced to work on plantations in North and South America, modern slaves can be found all over the world, including European countries.
The practice of forced labor of 17th and 18th century plantations is still found today in the production of tea, coffee, sugar, cocoa, and cotton. However, traffickers and enslavers are adapting to modern times and using slave labor in manufacturing, online prostitution, drug transportation, or even transplantation. However, according to a joint report by the International Organization for Migration, the international human rights group Walk Free, and the International Labour Organization, more than half of all modern slaves are engaged in forced labor in the private sector, i.e. in domestic work, construction, or agriculture. 12% of all people engaged in forced labor are children. More than half of them are subjected to commercial sexual exploitation. In total, it is estimated that approximately 6.3 million girls and women worldwide are involved in sexual slavery.
Money coming from the slave trade fuels conflict, allowing armed and extremist groups to expand their power and military capabilities. ISIS is one of the first organizations to create a public market for human trafficking. According to Zainab Bangura, UN Special Representative, terrorists have developed a methodical approach: after attacking a village, women are separated from men, the latter are executed, and the former are searched and grouped based on age, attractiveness, and virginity. The youngest and most beautiful are sent straight to Raqqa, the "capital" of the Islamic State.
According to Shannon Welch, PhD from Duke University, there is a real possibility that ISIS or other terrorist organizations will use existing human trafficking networks in South America to infiltrate the United States. Corrupt governments may also benefit from such criminal activity, as it is a significant source of income. In addition, the movement of slaves can destabilize indigenous populations, thereby exacerbating conflicts and increasing national security threats from human trafficking.
Europe, the United States and Asia
Today, slavery thrives in regions with high levels of poverty, violence, and corruption. Victims tend to be young people from low-income families or orphans with poor education, physical or mental health problems, and a history of sexual abuse. The Asia-Pacific region has the highest number of people engaged in forced labor (15.1 million), and the Arab States have the highest prevalence of slaves (5.3 per thousand people).
However, victims of trafficking are often citizens of developed countries who are deceived and exploited through seduction, fraudulent recruitment or admission to educational institutions, toxic sectarian influences, and other similar methods. According to the latest available data, more than 14,000 victims were reported in Europe between 2017 and 2018. Almost half of them were EU citizens and, in most cases, were enslaved within their own state.
According to the European Commission, human trafficking is often linked to other forms of organized crime, such as migrant smuggling, drug trafficking, extortion, money laundering, document fraud, payment card fraud, property crime, and cybercrime. In 2021, the EU adopted a 4-year anti-trafficking strategy that focuses primarily on reducing demand for human trafficking and disrupting the business model of traffickers through operational means.
In the United States, 1,548 cases of sex trafficking and 294 cases of labor trafficking were reported in 2021.Typically, most incidents occurred around international tourist centers with large immigrant populations, particularly in California, Texas, and Georgia. Efforts to combat human trafficking intensified after the U.S. Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act in 2000. It was modified in 2019 with more stringent criteria for determining whether countries meet minimum standards on eradicating human trafficking and are therefore eligible for foreign aid.
Numerous agencies of the U.S. government have established programs, offices, and initiatives to combat human trafficking internationally. These initiatives include the U.S. Department of State's annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) reports, USAID's anti-trafficking policy, and the U.S. investment in the Global Fund to End Modern Slavery.
Meanwhile, Japan, which, according to Washington, fails to meet minimum standards on eradicating human trafficking, is a major destination, source, and transit country for men and women in forced labor. For years, the government has demonstrated a lack of political will to criminally investigate and prosecute traffickers. Nevertheless, law enforcement officials continue to identify hundreds of children exploited in the commercial sex industry, but the organizers escape scrutiny and punishment. At the same time, the sanctions themselves are hardly effective. For six years in a row, courts have given most convicted traffickers either fully suspended prison sentences or fines.
All of this makes combating modern slavery more difficult, as it is dispersed across multiple international criminal networks. Cases of human trafficking should be promptly and thoroughly investigated, which would allow the network, or at least part of it, to be dismantled over time. However, Japan's experience shows that not all governments, including those with developed economies, are ready for such a fight, let alone developing countries with political and economic crises and military conflicts. All this inevitably leads to the enslavement of people and their further movement around the world for forced labor or sexual exploitation.
* - terrorist group, banned in the Russian Federation
