UN report: 50 million in modern slavery

A new study shows about 28 million people were in forced labor and 22 million were in forced marriages at the end of 2021. Those numbers jumped by 25 percent since the last Global Estimates of Modern Slavery report five years ago. The United Nations International Labour Organization published the report with the UN’s International Organization for Migration and the international human rights group Walk Free. Grace Forrest, founding director of Walk Free, said the numbers are likely a low estimate.

Where is it happening? About 65 percent of forced marriages are found in Asia and the Pacific. The highest prevalence was in Arab States, where 4.8 out of 1,000 people are in forced marriages. But nearly 1 in 4 forced marriages are in high- or upper-middle-income countries. Those countries have over half of the forced labor.

Dig deeper: From the WORLD archives, read Onize Ohikere’s report in World Tour about how the pandemic fueled global religious freedom concerns.