JPIC - AFRICA

• By BEN LEUBSDORF

Millions of slaves and other forced laborers around the world are generating an estimated $150.2 billion a year in profits for their exploiters, according to a new report from the International Labour Organization.

The ILO’s definition of forced labor encompasses commercial sexual exploitation, work under slavery-like conditions and other involuntary labor resulting from “force, fraud or deception.” Guy Ryder, director-general of the United Nations labor agency, said the report being released Tuesday “adds new urgency to our efforts to eradicate this fundamentally evil, but hugely profitable practice as soon as possible.”

Slavery and the slave trade are banned by international law. The ILO in 2012 estimated 20.9 million people are nonetheless engaged in forced labor. Some 14.2 million are forced to work in fields like agriculture, construction, mining and domestic care, while 4.5 million are sexually exploited. An additional 2.2 million are engaged in “state-imposed forms of forced labour, such as prisons, or in work imposed by military or paramilitary forces,” according to the report.

More than half — 55% — are women and girls. A quarter are under the age of 18. Some 56% are in the Asia-Pacific region and 18% are in Africa. Smaller numbers are in Latin America and the Caribbean (9%), developed economies including the European Union (7%), central and eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union (7%) and the Middle East (3%).

Involuntary workers generate $150.2 billion per year in illegal profits, the agency said. That’s more than triple the agency’s 2005 estimate of at least $44 billion a year in profits from forced labor.

The ILO calculated the new profit estimate using data from its 2012 Global Estimate of Forced Labor, which covered the period from 2002 to 2011. It excluded the 2.2 million people engaged in state-imposed forced labor, due to a lack of reliable information and “theoretical difficulties” in calculating profits generated by, for example, child soldiers, the report said.

Sexual exploitation alone generates $99 billion in annual profits. “Profits per victim are highest in forced sexual exploitation, which can be explained by the demand for such services and the prices that clients are willing to pay, and by the low capital investments and low operating costs associated with this activity,” the report said. “With a global average profit of US$21,800 per year per victim, this sector is six times more profitable than all other forms of forced labour, and five times more profitable than forced labour exploitation outside domestic work.”

The roughly 21 million forced laborers and the illicit profit generated by their work “exceeds the population and GDP of many countries or territories around the world,” the report said. “Yet this vast nation of men, women and children, along with its resources, remains virtually invisible, hidden behind a wall of coercion, threats and economic exploitation.”

It concluded that forced labor represents “a practice that has no place in modern society and should be eradicated as a matter of priority.”