Slavery in the 21st century

Contemporary slavery, also sometimes known as modern slavery or neo-slavery, refers to institutional slavery that continues to exist in the 21st century. Modern slavery involves one person controlling another for profit by exploiting a vulnerability. Estimates of the number of enslaved people range from around 38 million to 49.6 million, depending on the method used to form the estimate and the definition of slavery being used. The estimated number of enslaved people is debated, as there is no universally agreed definition of modern slavery; those in slavery are often difficult to identify, and adequate statistics are often not available. Evidently slavery has not merely endured – it has thrived.

The International Labour Organization estimates that, by their definitions, over 40 million people are in some form of slavery today. Some 24.9 million people are in forced labor, of whom 16 million people are exploited in the private sector such as domestic work, construction or agriculture, 4.8 million people in forced sexual exploitation, and 4 million people in forced labour imposed by state authorities. An additional 15.4 million people are in forced marriages.

The Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, an agency of the United States Department of State, says that "'modern slavery', 'trafficking in persons', and 'human trafficking' have been used as umbrella terms for the act of recruiting, harbouring, transporting, providing or obtaining a person for compelled labour or commercial sex acts through the use of force, fraud, or coercion". Besides these, a number of different terms are used in the US federal Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 and the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, including "involuntary servitude", "slavery" or "practices similar to slavery", "debt bondage", and "forced labor".

According to American professor Kevin Bales, co-founder and former president of the non-governmental organization and advocacy group Free the Slaves, modern slavery occurs "when a person is under the control of another person who applies violence and force to maintain that control, and the goal of that control is exploitation". The impact of slavery is expanded when targeted at vulnerable groups such as children.^{[citation needed]}

According to the Walk Free Foundation, "Modern slavery includes forced labour, forced or servile marriage, debt bondage, forced commercial sexual exploitation, human trafficking, slavery-like practices, and the sale and exploitation of children." With this definition as the basis of its research, Walk Free's Global Slavery Index in 2021 estimated that there were about 49.6 million slaves around the world.

Bales warned that, because slavery is officially abolished everywhere, the practice is illegal, and more hidden from the public and authorities. This makes it impossible to obtain exact figures from primary sources. The best that can be done is to estimate based on secondary sources, such as UN investigations, newspaper articles, government reports, and figures from NGOs.

Modern slavery persists for many of the same reasons older variations did: it is an economically beneficial practice for enslavers, despite the ethical concerns. The problem has been able to escalate in recent years due to the disposability of slaves and the fact that the cost of slaves has dropped significantly.

Since traditional slavery such as chattel slavery has been officially abolished in every country on earth and is illegal, enslavement no longer revolves around legal ownership, but around illegal control. Two fundamental changes are the move away from the forward purchase of slave labor, and the existence of slaves as an employment category. While the statistics suggest that the 'market' for exploitative labor is booming, the notion that humans are purposefully sold and bought from an existing pool is outdated. While such transactions do still occur, in contemporary situations people become trapped in slavery-like conditions in various ways.