Over 200,000 people trapped in modern slavery

The 2014 Global Slavery Index (GSI) report showed that some 35.8 million men, women and children around the world are today trapped in modern slavery, either through human trafficking, forced labour, debt bondage, forced or servile marriage, or commercial sexual exploitation. 

In Asia Pacific, Myanmar is ranked third in terms of vulnerability, with mean score of 72.3. It shows the greatest vulnerability in terms of human rights, scoring 91.8 for vulnerability. The lowest vulnerability is seen in the state stability area at 61.8. 

A case study on Thailand, a destination for nearly 3 million migrant workers from Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia, also showed that some migrant workers from Myanmar are vulnerable to modern slavery.

Despite negative reports on human rights violations in the country, Myanmar is not listed as among the countries in the world with the weakest responses to modern slavery during the year. Those countries are: North Korea, Iran, Syria, Eritrea, the Central African Republic, Libya, Equatorial Guinea, Uzbekistan, the Republic of the Congo, and Iraq.

The 2014 GSI, the flagship research report by 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. 

In summary, slavery exists in each of the 167 countries. In East Asia specifically, the highest prevalence of slavery is in Cambodia, followed by Mongolia (0.907 per cent), Thailand (0.709 per cent) and Brunei (0.709 per cent). In Myanmar it is 0.435 per cent. In absolute numbers, China has the highest number of people living in modern slavery in East Asia with 3,241,400 people, followed by Indonesia (714,100), Thailand (475, 300) and Vietnam (322,200).

Of the 25 countries measured in Asia, 24 have legislation that criminalises some form of modern slavery. India has implemented substantial legislative reforms to support the criminalisation of modern slavery and Mongolia and Vietnam adopted standalone anti-trafficking laws in 2012. 

Only three of the 167 governments are making some effort to address modern slavery in government procurement and in the supply chains of businesses operating in their countries. They are: the United States, Brazil and Australia.

The report showed that regional collaboration continued to be a focus, with various countries forming partnerships to support victim repatriation, cross-border investigations and prevention initiatives. The Association of South East Asian Nations continued to be a leader in regional anti-trafficking initiatives; the 2014 Senior Officials Meeting on Transnational Crime focused on continuing joint efforts to implement the Regional Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Persons. 

Over the last five years, Thailand and Myanmar have continued to strengthen their border cooperation to combat trafficking in persons. Member countries of the Coordinated Mekong Ministerial Initiative against Trafficking 20 – the sub-regional initiative coordinating responses to human trafficking in the Greater Mekong Sub-region – continue to undertake joint law enforcement training.