Nigeria Wallows on Slavery’s List of Shame

Packed human cargo...for forced labour

A new report on global slavery estimates that 30 million people are living as slaves around the world and Nigeria is ingloriously number four on the list of countries with the largest number of enslaved people. Godwin Haruna writes with agency reports

It is said that beyond some highbrow neighbourhoods on Lagos Island, some young girls from a South-south state in Nigeria would never accept to be “househelps”. Class is recognised even in the enslaved world and this explains the attitude of these young girls, who would rather serve in the homes of Nigeria’s upper class around Ikoyi, Victoria Island and Lekki peninsular.

However, the growing number of the likes of these girls and indeed, boys has dragged Nigeria’s image to the mud.  In the just released Global Slavery Index, published by the Australia-based Walk Free Foundation, Nigeria infamously emerged fourth on the list of enslaved people out of a total of 162 countries researched. In the ranking, India, China and Pakistan followed each other as countries with the most slaves. The top 10 countries on this list of shame accounted for more than three quarters of the 29.8 million people living in slavery, with Ethiopia, Russia, Thailand, Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar and Bangladesh completing the list.
The Global Slavery Index provides a ranking of 162 countries, reflecting a combined measure of three factors: estimated prevalence of modern slavery by population, a measure of child marriage, and a measure of human trafficking in and out of a country. The measure is heavily weighted to reflect the first factor, prevalence. A number one ranking is the worst, 160 is the best.

In terms of countries with the highest of proportion of slaves, Mauritania in West Africa topped the table, with about 4% of its 3.4 million people enslaved, followed by Haiti, Pakistan, India and Nepal.

Mauritania is ranked worst on the Index, with the highest estimated proportion of its population enslaved of any country in the world. The West African country, with its deeply entrenched system of hereditary slavery, is thought to have an estimated 150,000 slaves in a population of only 3.8 million. Benin, Cote d’Ivoire, Gambia and Gabon follow Mauritania in the top ten of the Index.

What is modern slavery?
According to the report, in 2013, modern slavery takes many forms, and is known by many names: slavery, forced labour or human trafficking. ‘Slavery’ refers to the condition of treating another person as if they were property – something to be bought, sold, traded or even destroyed. ‘Forced labour’ is a related but not identical concept, referring to work taken without consent, by threats or coercion.
The report noted that ‘human trafficking’ is another related concept, referring to the process through which people are brought, through deception, threats or coercion, into slavery, forced labour or other forms of severe exploitation.

It stated further that whatever term is used, the significant characteristic of all forms of modern slavery is that it involves one person depriving another people of their freedom: their freedom to leave one job for another, their freedom to leave one workplace for another, their freedom to control their own body.

The index, whose authors claim it contains the most authoritative data on slavery conditions worldwide, is the product of Australian mining magnate and philanthropist Andrew Forrest’s commitment to stamp out global slavery. Forrest, ranked by Forbes as Australia’s fifth richest man, with an estimated net worth of $5.7 billion, adopted the cause after his daughter volunteered in an orphanage in Nepal in 2008, where she encountered victims of child sex trafficking. Forrest is a signatory to the Giving Pledge started by billionaire investor Warren Buffett, whose members commit to donating at least half their wealth to philanthropic causes.

The index, which draws on 10 years of research into slavery and was produced by a team of 4 authors supported by 22 other experts, is the inaugural edition of what will be an annual report. It ranks 162 countries according to the number of people living in slavery, the risk of enslavement and the robustness of government responses to the problem.

Walk Free policy and research manager Gina Dafalia told CNN the report was intended to shine a spotlight on the issue, and quantify the extent of the problem in different countries before anti-slavery initiatives were launched. So far, she said, Walk Free, along with partners Humanity United and the Legatum Foundation, had pledged a total of $100 million to stamp out the practice.

“When we started working in this area we realised that we didn’t have a good understanding of what exactly the situation of slavery is in the world,” she said, adding; “We needed that information before we started doing any interventions.”

The index gives a higher estimate of the global number of slaves than other reports – a report by the International Labour Organiation last year pegged the number at 20.9 million.

Dafalia said this was a result of the Global Slavery Index using a broader definition of slavery, which included human trafficking, forced labour, as well as practices such as forced marriage, debt bondage and the exploitation of children.

“Our definition of modern slavery includes, for example, forced and servile marriage, a concept not included in the ILO estimate, given the focus on ‘forced labor,’” she said.

The explicit definition used in the report was “the possession and control of a person in such a way as to significantly deprive that person of his or her individual liberty, with the intent of exploiting that person through their use, management, profit, transfer or disposal. Usually this exercise will be achieved through means such as violence or threats of violence, deception and/or coercion.”
Kevin Bales, one of the report’s authors and co-founder of Free the Slaves, said that the global number of slaves was difficult to quantify. But through methods including random sample surveys, researchers were able to arrive at an estimate. “We were able to go to households and say ‘Has anything like this happened to anyone in your family?’” he said.

He believed the index, which he hoped would provide “a bit of a wake-up call” to the world’s governments, had a margin of error of between 5-10%. “We always erred on the conservative side.”

Asked why 30 million continued to live in conditions of slavery in 2013, Dafalia said the reasons varied from country to country, but one constant was that it remained a “hidden problem.”

“We’re not talking about bad choices, we’re not talking about crummy jobs in a sweatshop. We’re talking about real life slavery — you can’t walk away, you’re controlled through violence, you’re treated like property,” she added.

In some of the worst-hit countries, the report said the affected parties were citizens ensnared in endemic, culturally-sanctioned forms of slavery — “the chattel slavery of the Haratins in Mauritania, the exploitation of children through the restavek practice in Haiti, the cultural and economic practices of both caste and debt bondage in India and Pakistan, and the exploitation of children through vidomegon in Benin.”

In other examples, including Nepal, Gabon and Moldova, it was migrants who were most vulnerable to exploitation. In many examples, noted the report, child and forced marriage was prevalent and child protection practices weak.

It noted that in India, the country with the most slaves, the risk of enslavement varied markedly from state to state.

The Middle East and North Africa, it said, showed the highest measured level of discrimination against women, with one result being a high level of forced and child marriages within the region, and widespread exploitation of trafficked women as domestic workers and prostitutes. Vulnerable male migrants also frequently found themselves in exploitative working conditions.

In contrast, said Bales, countries like Brazil led the world in anti-slavery efforts. “It has a national plan to eradicate slavery. It has a dirty list where it has every company that’s ever had slavery pollute their products, they have special anti-slavery police squads.”

He rejected the suggestion that the term “slavery” was an overly emotive or misleading way of defining people who were trapped by crushing poverty.

“I spend a lot of time talking to people who have been or are in slavery, and when you talk to them about it, they know what the situation is,” he said.
“We’re not talking about bad choices, we’re not talking about crummy jobs in a sweatshop. We’re talking about real life slavery — you can’t walk away, you’re controlled through violence, you’re treated like property.”

The research, which makes recommendations to policy makers in Africa and around the world, reveals: Extreme poverty, conflict and traditional practices such as child marriage and hereditary slavery are all factors in the high rates of enslavement in many African countries.

It said Kenya is host to thousands of displaced people from neighbouring countries including Somalia, Sudan and Ethiopia.  These migrants, often irregular, can be subjected to slavery like conditions. Also, Kenyans are known to have been exploited in countries overseas.

In terms of top performers, Mauritius ranks 143 out of 162 on the Index and leads the region in terms of stability and the protection of human and worker rights. South Africa is ranked 115 and is also singled out for praise by the report for its anti-slavery policies.

“It would be comforting to think that slavery is a relic of history, but it remains a scar on humanity on every continent. This is the first slavery index but it can already shape national and global efforts to root out modern slavery across the world. We now know that just ten countries are home to over three quarters of those trapped in modern slavery. These nations must be the focus of global efforts,” said Nick Grono, CEO of Walk Free Foundation.

“Most governments don’t dig deeply into slavery for a lot of bad reasons. There are exceptions, but many governments don’t want to know about people who can’t vote, who are hidden away, and are likely to be illegal anyway. The laws are in place, but the tools and resources and the political will are lacking. And since hidden slaves can’t be counted it is easy to pretend they don’t exist. The Index aims to change that,” said Professor Kevin Bales, the lead researcher on the Index.