Over 400,000 Thais 'enslaved'
An estimated 475,300 Thais are trapped in modern slavery, according to a survey.
They are among some 35.8 million men, women and children around the world are today trapped in modern slavery, whether through human trafficking, forced labour, debt bondage, forced or servile marriage, or commercial sexual exploitation.
The 2014 Global Slavery Index (GSI), the flagship research report published today by the Walk Free Foundation, a global human rights organisation with a mission to end modern slavery in a generation, looks at prevalence (the percentage of a country’s population that is enslaved) as well as the total number of people living in modern slavery in each country.
It shows that over 23.5 million people in Asia are living in modern slavery. This is equivalent to almost two-thirds of the global total number of people enslaved. India (1.141 per cent), Pakistan (1.130 per cent) and Cambodia (1.029 per cent) have the highest prevalence in the whole of Asia.
In East Asia specifically, Cambodia is followed by Mongolia (0.907 per cent), Thailand (0.709 per cent) and Brunei (0.709 per cent). The two East Asian economic powerhouses, China and Japan, rank 19th and 20th in the Asia region. The East Asian countries or territories with the lowest prevalence of slavery in the Asia region are Hong Kong SAR (0.187 per cent), Singapore (0.1 per cent), and Taiwan (0.013 per cent), 23rd, 24th and 25th respectively. The only two better performers in the Asia region are Australia and New Zealand (26th and 27th).
The Nation
RELATED