DEPRIVING SOMEONE OF their freedom is a terrible violation. Modem slavery is a destructive, personal came and an abuse of human rights. It is a widespread and profitable criminal industry but despite this it is largely invisible, in part because it disproportionately affects the most marginalised. This is why measuring this problem is so crucial in exposing and ultimately resolving it. The information contained within the Global Slavery Index is critical in these efforts.

The 2018 Global Slavery Index measures the extent of modem slavery country by country, and the steps governments are taking to respond to this issue to objectively measure progress toward ending modem slavery. The Index draws together findings from across estimates of prevalence, measurement of vulnerability, and assessment of government responses, alongside an analysis of trade flows and data on specific products. When considered as a set, the data provide a complex and insightful picture of the ways modem slavery is impacting countries around the world. This enables us to refine our thinking on how to better respond to modem slavery, and also how to predict and prevent modem slavery in future.

As reported in the recent Global Estimates of Modem Slavery, published by the International Labour Organization and the Walk Free Foundation, in partnership with the International Organization for Migration, an estimated 40.3 million people were living in modem slavery in 2016. In other words, on any given day in 2016, there were more than 40 million people — about 70 percent of whom are women and girls — who were being forced to work against their will under threat or who were living in a forced marriage. In the past five years, 89 million people experienced some form of modem slavery for penods of time ranging from a few days to the whole five years. These estimates are conservative, given the gaps in existing data in key regions such as the Arab States and also exclusions of critical forms of modem slavery such as recruitment of children by armed groups and organ trafficking due to lack of data. From this starting point, the 2018 Global Slavery Index uses predictive modelling, based on data from nationally representative surveys and the Walk Free Foundation Vulnerability Model, to estimate the prevalence of modern slavery country by country.