LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Governments worldwide have no hope of combatting modern day slavery unless credible data is collected on the hidden crime so victims can be identified and helped, a leading campaigner said.
Estimates of the number of people forced to work in brothels, farms, fisheries, factories and domestic service range from 21 million, according to the International Labour Organization, to nearly 36 million, according to an index compiled by the Australian Walk Free Foundation.
The discrepancy points to the problem of accurately counting victims, who are often too afraid of their abusers or the police to come forward, and the lack of a universal definition of slavery which has led to questions about whether prostitution and forced marriage constitute slavery.
With the data relatively sparse, Walk Free Foundation’s Global Slavery Index extrapolates from existing numbers to make calculations in what it sees as similar countries. Critics have said is methodology amounts to little more than a guesstimate.
Incomplete data leads to flawed policies and insufficient funding to deal with the problem, said Matthew Friedman, founder and CEO of the Mekong Club, a Hong Kong-based network of private sector organisations fighting slavery.
“We tried to get (slavery) researchers around the world to compare their data. But out of 27 people, only two of them had quantitative figures to speak of,” said Friedman.
