When Aye Ko Ko was seventeen he had been forced to work in the Thai fishing industry, where many are lured in with the false promise of a good job. They oftentimes go years without seeing land while being sold from boat to boat, facing vastly inhumane treatment.

Thailand is a major international seafood exporter and much of the industry relies on the trafficking and exploitation of migrant workers. Corruption, lack of prosecution for perpetrators, poor victim support, and a desire to keep costs as low as possible are all to blame.

Yet forced labor in the Thai fishing industry is only one facet of this international crisis.

According to the International Labour Organization, there are 40.3 million people in forced labor — over three times the amount in the 350-year span of the transatlantic slave trade. It is an epidemic generating $150 billion per year, raking in more money than it has at any other point in history. Human trafficking is the fastest-growing crime worldwide.

Trapped in the vicious world of forced labor and trafficking, these are farmers and fishermen, miners and prostitutes, domestic servants, and construction workers. They sew our garments and make our products all while facing abuse, starvation, and permanent deformities. Ten million are children. Some do not survive.

Modern-day slavery exists in many forms. The most common type, debt bondage, occurs when individuals are forced to work in order to pay off a debt, but often end up never being allowed to leave. This can persist for generations, with people dying and the burden then being passed onto family members. Other traffickers use the promise of good education or employment to lure individuals into forced labor. Some are simply kidnapped.

Inequities such as poverty, gender, and lack of education increase peoples’ susceptibility to forced labor and human trafficking. At the same time, inadequate laws and enforcement, coupled with a lack of international attention, enable the issue to run rampant.

An estimate from the International Office for Migration suggests that 70% of migrants reaching Europe via boat have fallen victim to exploitation, organ trafficking, or human trafficking.

The pandemic has made modern slavery an even greater issue. Widespread economic devastation has increased debt and poverty, both of which make individuals more vulnerable to exploitation, trafficking, and slavery. NGOs have also had their ability to provide critical support services to victims weakened by travel restrictions and lack of funding.

On top of this, the impact of global warming only exacerbates the problem. As families lose their means of making an income or are forced to migrate, they become increasingly vulnerable. In Cambodia, crop failures triggered by climate change have pushed entire families into debt bondage in brick kilns, where barbaric conditions make respiratory illness, severed limbs, and even death a commonality. It’s where ten-year-old Srey Pheak lost her arm after it was crushed in a brick machine. She told her mother she was lucky just to survive.

We are calling on the UN to make more of an effort for:

- Greater investment in support (ex: healthcare, housing, aid, education) for those at risk, such as migrants and those living in impoverished areas.​​

- More rehabilitation for survivors of forced labor and trafficking to reduce the risk of re-trafficking (ex: housing, medical care, counseling, education, check-ins, legal protection)

- Greater efforts to help those currently exploited

- Holding large businesses accountable for slavery in their supply chains (ex: punishments for companies that knowingly use forced labor, investigation into supply chains, incentives for ethical business practices, etc.​)

- More investigation into places where exploitation is suspected