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India has the dubious distinction of having the highest number of people in the world trapped in modern slavery with 18.35 million victims of forced labour, ranging from prostitution and begging, according to a new report, which estimated that nearly 46 million people are enslaved globally.

Modern slavery refers to situations of exploitation that a person cannot leave because of threats, violence, coercion and abuse of power or deception. Photo: P.V. Sivakumar

According to the 2016 Global Slavery Index, released by Australia-based human rights group Walk Free Foundation on Tuesday, an estimated 45.8 million people, including women and children, are subject to some form of modern slavery in the world, compared to 35.8 million in 2014.

The report said India has the highest absolute numbers of people trapped in slavery with 18.35 million slaves among its 1.3 billion population, while North Korea has the highest incidence (4.37 per cent of the population) and the weakest government response to deal with it.

Five countries account for 58% of the world’s enslaved

Incidences of slavery were found in all 167 countries in the index, with Asian countries occupying the top five places.

China (3.39 million), Pakistan (2.13 million), Bangladesh (1.53 million) and Uzbekistan (1.23 million) were behind India in the list. The index said that these five countries combined accounted for almost 58 per cent of the world’s enslaved, or 26.6 million people.

Modern slavery refers to situations of exploitation that a person cannot leave because of threats, violence, coercion and abuse of power or deception.

The research included over 42,000 interviews conducted in 53 languages across 25 countries, including 15 State-level surveys in India. These representative surveys covered 44 per cent of the global population.

The countries with the highest estimated prevalence of modern slavery by the proportion of their population are North Korea, Uzbekistan, Cambodia, Cambodia, India, and Qatar.

The countries with the lowest estimated prevalence of modern slavery by the proportion of their population are Luxembourg, Ireland, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden and Belgium, the United States and Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Govt. actions and responses

The study also tracked the government actions and responses to the modern slavery and of the 161 assessed, 124 nations had criminalised human trafficking in line with the U.N. trafficking Protocol and 96 nations had developed national action plans to coordinate government response.

It noted that while India had more people enslaved than any other country, it had made significant progress in introducing measures to tackle the problem.

“It has criminalised trafficking, slavery, forced labour, child prostitution and forced marriage. The Indian government is currently tightening legislation against human trafficking, with tougher punishment for repeat offenders. It will offer victims protection and recovery support,” it said.

Those governments taking the least action to combat modern slavery are North Korea, Iran, Eritrea, Equatorial Guinea, Hong Kong, Central African Republic, Papua New Guinea, Guinea, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan.