3071-The political economy of new slavery

12
Modern Slavery and Fair Trade
Products: Buy One and Set
Someone Free
Ivan Manokha
Introduction
In its recent report on forced labour, the International Labour
Organization (ILO) stated that:
although universally condemned, forced labour is revealing ugly
new faces alongside the old. Traditional types of forced labour such
as chattel slavery and bonded labour are still with us in some areas,
and past practices of this type haunt us to this day. In new economic
contexts, disturbing forms such as forced labour in connection
with the trafficking of human beings are now emerging almost
everywhere.
ILO, 2001, p. 1
Forced labour is not a relic of a bygone era, but a widespread practice
which exists in the world today. According to the US Department of
State’s estimates, in 2001,
at least 700,000, and possibly as many as four million men, women and
children worldwide were bought, sold, transported and held against
their will in slave-like conditions...Women, children and men are
trafficked into the international sex trade for the purposes of prostitution,
sex tourism and other commercial sexual services and into
forced labor situations in sweatshops, construction sites and agricultural
settings.
US Department of State, 2002, p. 1
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