BRIDGETOWN, Barbados – The Australian-based Walk Free Foundation has listed Haiti as the second country, globally, engaged in modern day slavery.
The Global Slavery Index 2013 is defined by the Walk Free Foundation as the “possession or control of a person negating their freedom and exploiting them for sex or as a commodity”.
It ranked 162 countries by estimating the number of people in each nation affected by a range of practices including forced and bonded labour, human trafficking, forced marriages, and the use of children in the military.
According to the report, India has the highest number overall, with at 13.96 million people estimated to be living in slavery, almost half the global total.
Apart from Haiti, the other Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries listed on the global index on modern slavery are Suriname at 68 and Guyana 77th.
The Index includes servitude, forced marriage and the kidnap of children to participate in conflict.
The lead researcher on the project, Kevin Bale, said he hoped the annual report would “elevate awareness of the situation of slavery to a world level, as the statistics presented in the document represent an all-time high”.
According to the report, Haiti has an estimated 200-220 000 people living in such conditions, the average of which represents just over two per cent of its 10.2 million population.
In Haiti, the report noted that the system of forced child labour known as “restavec” encourages families to send their children to wealthier families with more resources, which often results in children being exploited or at risk of abuse.
The report states that some are “captured or kidnapped before being sold and exploited whether through a ‘marriage’, or unpaid work, on fishing boats or as domestic workers, many of who enticed into the work by deception and false promises of a good job or education.”
The report noted that an estimated 30 million people are enslaved worldwide, trafficked into brothels, forced into manual labour, victims of debt bondage or even born into servitude.