WS MoreOrLess: Modern Slavery
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This is the short edition of More or Less, first broadcast on the BBC World Service.
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Hello and welcome to More or Less on the BBC World Service. I'm Charlotte MacDonald. Beautiful stars, sumptuous dresses, lots of red carpet. Those are the glitzy hallmarks of the film awards season that's now drawing to an end. But amidst the glamour, one director has taken the opportunity to draw attention to the darker side of humanity.
Right now, there are 21 million people in slavery as we sit here. 21 million people.
That is the director of the film 12 Years a Slave, Steve McQueen, in his acceptance speech at the British Academy Film Awards. He repeated the same statistic while accepting the Oscar for Best Picture.
Well, boy, how you feel now? My name is Solomon North. I'm a free man.
This film is about historic slavery set in the USA in the 19th century. But are there really 21 million slaves today? There's not a single country on the planet where it's legal anymore. A number of listeners emailed in to ask if we can explore. Here's one from Michael Byrne.
I don't understand how these numbers can be correct in this modern-day context.
Steve McQueen's figure of 21 million comes from a report by the UN's International Labour Organization, or ILO. Kevin Bales, professor of contemporary slavery at the University of Hull, isn't sure how they've reached this number.
The ILO, while they have very good methodologists, we're not able to see what their data happen to be, and they don't share all of the details of their methodology. So we're not quite sure how that all goes together to make 21 million.
And in fact, the ILO is not keen on using the phrase slavery. Instead, it prefers to use the term forced labour. Others, such as the US State Department, prefer the term human trafficking. Kevin Bales has co-authored a report called the Global Slavery Index, which estimates that there are 29 million slaves, higher than the ILO, which has a more conservative figure and is generally more cautious about the information it puts out. Dr Alex Bolch from the Centre for the Study of International Slavery at the University of Liverpool in the UK explains why Kevin Bale's approach is different.
His Global Slavery Index has really been pushing this idea that we should be recasting both trafficking and forced labour and call them both modern slavery. So he's talking about a master definition which covers all types of exploitation. The best way to understand it is that calling these people slaves and calling it slavery is in order to garner political action.
The movement to use the term slavery has certainly been adopted by some pretty prominent figures.
I'm talking about the injustice, the outrage of human trafficking, which must be called by its true name modern slavery.
That was Barack Obama speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative a couple of years ago. So if we accept the idea of modern day slaves... Where are they? The Global Slavery Index provides figures for each country and ranks them. In absolute numbers, India tops the list. Almost half of the world's slaves are estimated to be in this one country. Here's Kevin Bales again.
Predominantly there you have what's called collateral debt bondage slavery. Let's say I'm the slaveholder and you come to me and say, my child is sick, I need to buy medicine. I say, look, I will loan you the money. But for collateral, you have to give me, yourself, your children, your family, and all of the work that you can do and its product until the loan is repaid.
There are a number of different types of work they could be forced into.
Trafficking of young women and boys into commercial sexual exploitation in the cities. Slavery in mining and glassmaking, especially in agriculture, in brick kilns.
Journalists, including those from the BBC, have been reporting on slave-like conditions there.
I have come here with my family to work.
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