After securing the leading position among the world’s top economies, the United States tops yet another ranking — this one unflattering.
The U.S. is the leading global importer of goods at risk of being produced through forced labor, according to newly released research from the Walk Free Foundation. The group also said 1 in 800 people in America may be a victim of modern-day slavery.
Those findings and others by the Australia-based organization striving to end slavery were published in its annual Global Slavery Index, a report based on surveys conducted in 48 countries with 71,000 people that includes cases that occurred between 2012 and 2016. The findings show there were more than 400,000 people living in the U.S. who are subjected to slavery, which the organization defines as coerced labor, sexual servitude and forced marriage. Globally, that number grows to 40.3 million, with around 25 million people forced into labor.
“Everybody perhaps expects or is not surprised to learn that modern-day slavery happens in a country like North Korea or Afghanistan, in countries where there’s conflict and human rights abuses, but it is pretty shocking to realize that modern-day slavery happens in very highly developed countries like the U.S.,” says Fiona David, executive director of global research for Walk Free.
The group did find good news for the U.S.: America received the second-highest rating for government response, a score derived by assessing a country’s victim-support services, criminal justice response and various initiatives to protect vulnerable people. The U.S. Department of State considers America a tier 1 nation, a country that implements the minimum requirements to eliminate trafficking. In America’s case this means all U.S. states and territories benefit from anti-trafficking criminal statutes.
Walk Free defines forced labor as a person being unable to refuse or leave their work because of threats, violence, coercion, deception or abuse of power. Using 2016 data from the U.S. Department of Labor, the group found that the U.S. annually spends $144 billion importing products that may have been produced through forced labor. The goods range from electronics such as laptops, computers and mobile phones to garments, fish, cocoa and timber.
The U.S. total of at-risk imports is more than three times the total for Japan ($47 billion) — the second-largest importer of such goods among the Group of 20 leading rich and developing nations — and nearly 10 times more than Canada’s ($15 billion), according to the report. Germany ($30 billion), the United Kingdom ($18 billion) and France ($16 billion) completed the top five nations.
The main source of at-risk imports into the U.S. is China, from where the U.S. imports electronics and clothing worth $122 billion annually, according to the report. Second on the list of sources of at-risk imports to the U.S. is Vietnam, with $11.2 billion worth of imports, followed by India with $3.8 billion. Other countries that export to the U.S. goods potentially produced by forced labor are Malaysia, Thailand, Brazil, Argentina, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Russia, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Peru, the group said.
Walk Free’s experts say the U.S. federal government can better tackle slavery by strengthening legislation, enhancing data coordination and transparency, providing more victim support and creating a federal supply chain law that forces U.S. companies to reveal the working conditions abroad that are used to produce materials and products they import.
“It’s not that we need to stop trading with any of these countries or that we need to somehow stop buying from other countries,” David says. “The message is that we need the government to require businesses to do their homework.”
Current strategies to fight against both forced labor and forced marriage need to be reviewed to ensure they function properly, the State Department acknowledged in its 2018 Trafficking in Persons report. “Although the government meets the minimum standards, anti-trafficking advocates continued to report that victim services were not always provided equitably, urging an increase in resources for, and equitable access to, comprehensive services across the country.”
North Korea was home to the highest number of modern-day slavery cases per capita, with 1 in 10 people a victim, according to the Walk Free Foundation research. There are 2.6 million individuals subject to slavery in the East Asian country, and the majority work for the state. The country also ranked last when it comes to responding to modern slavery.
The research also shows that there were 15.4 million individuals worldwide forced into marriage and that the high majority of them were women (over 80 percent). Forced marriage is more prevalent in Africa and the Asia-Pacific region, but cases also have been reported in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia.
“Overall, the cultural practice of forced marriage places women at greater risk of exploitation, and the potential subjection to a life of servitude, financial bondage, and sexual exploitation that comes with modern slavery,” the report concludes.
Walk Free said it produced its estimates by assessing national surveys and reports from agencies such as the International Labour Organization, and by pulling information from databases of trafficking cases. The organization’s research has faced criticism over issues such as its broad definition of slavery.
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1 in 800 People in the United States May Be Living in Modern Slavery, Group Warns originally appeared on usnews.com
