Brazil has 1 million people enslaved and ranks 11th in the world – NGO

By Leonardo Sakamoto

Brazil has 1.05 million people in a situation of contemporary slavery.

This is what the estimate of the Global Slavery Index 2023 points out, released this Wednesday (24), in London, by Walk Free, an international human rights organization specializing in producing data on this crime.

In absolute numbers, this puts the country in 11th place among 160 countries, behind India (11 million), China (5.8 million), North Korea (2.6 million), Pakistan (2.3 million), Russia (1.9 million), Indonesia (1.8 million), Nigeria (1.6 million), Turkey (1.3 million), Bangladesh (1.1 million), and the United States (1.1 million).

However, the main ranking of the entity is the one that analyzes the prevalence of slavery regarding the size of the population, which indicates the seriousness of the problem in each country.

In this case, the top ten are North Korea (104.6 enslaved people per thousand inhabitants), Eritrea (90.3), Mauritania (32), Saudi Arabia (21.3), Turkey (15.6), Tajikistan (14), United Arab Emirates (13.4), Russia (13), Afghanistan (13), and Kuwait (13).

There are, among them, according to the study’s authors, characteristics in common, such as limited protections for civil liberties and human rights.

Walk Free estimates that Brazil has five enslaved people for every thousand inhabitants, placing it in the group with a medium-low prevalence.

Still far from countries like Finland (1.4), Japan (1.1), Ireland (1.1), Belgium (1.0), Denmark (0.6), Sweden (0.6), Holland (0.6), Germany (0.6), Norway (0.5), and Switzerland (0.5).

According to the organization, the estimates are calculated based on individual and national risk factors for slavery and include interviews and data collection on vulnerability.

This is the fifth edition of the Global Slavery Index.

Brazil has no official statistics on the number of people annually subjected to contemporary slavery.

Walk Free’s estimate involves the exploitation of workers and forced marriage, seen by the United Nations as a form of slavery.

50 MILLION ENSLAVED PEOPLE IN THE WORLD

It is estimated that some 50 million people lived in conditions of slavery worldwide in 2021.

The figure, released last September, was produced by the International Labor Organization in partnership with the International Organization for Migration and Walk Free.

It was the starting point for the national estimates released on Wednesday. In 2016, the number of enslaved people was 10 million fewer.

“This increase occurred against a backdrop of growing and more complex conflicts, widespread environmental degradation, climate-induced migration, global rollback of women’s rights, and economic and social impacts of the covid-19 pandemic,” it said.

The United Kingdom, Australia, the Netherlands, Portugal, the United States, Ireland, Norway, Spain, and Sweden have been noted as countries with the most active governmental response to the problem.

While North Korea, Eritrea, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Equatorial Guinea, Russia, Gabon, and Chad have been less active.

The research excluded Afghanistan, Palestine, Syria, South Sudan, and Yemen because they are in a conflict situation and, therefore, have governments with difficulty putting actions into practice.

The report points out that the Brazilian government strongly responds to slavery.

Still, the country ends up damaged by allowing citizens to work beyond the circumstances that international conventions consider acceptable.

COFFEE, SUGAR CANE, WOOD, MEAT, AND CLOTHING IN BRAZIL

The Walk Free study also evaluated that the G20 countries, the richest nations in the world, together import goods at risk of being produced with slave labor to the tune of US$468 billion.

In the case of Brazil, there are US$5.6 billion in goods at risk, notably electronics, clothing, textiles, palm oil, and solar panels, from countries like China, Indonesia, and Bangladesh.

But we also appear as the source of goods that may have been produced using slave labor, including coffee, sugarcane, timber, beef, and clothing.

The report demands immediate action from governments.

Among them is the implementation of stronger measures to combat slave labor in supply chains, with legislation to prevent governments and companies from acquiring goods or services linked to slavery.

It also calls for a focus on protecting the most vulnerable populations and raising the minimum age for marriage to 18 to prevent forced marriage.

The report highlights the Brazilian “dirty list” of slave labor, which publishes the names of companies and people held responsible for slave labor.

Created in November 2003 by the federal government, the registry was suspended by the action of real estate developers in December 2014, being published again in March 2017.

In 2020, the Supreme Court reaffirmed the constitutionality of the list.

With information from UOL

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