Types of Slavery

Movable slavery is closest to the slavery that prevailed in early American history. Moving slaves regarded as their masters' property - exchanged for things like trucks or money and expected to perform labor and sexual favors. Once of age, their children are expected to do the same. Movable slavery is typically racially-based in the North African country of Mauritania, for example, black Africans serve lighter skinned Arab-Berber communities. Although slavery was legally abolished there in 1980, today 90,000 slaves continue to serve the Muslim Berber ruling class. Similarly, in the African country Sudan, the Arab North men are known raid villages in the south - to kill all men and women and children, to be auctioned and sold into slavery.

Debt bondage, or bonded labor, is the most widespread form of slavery throughout the world. In Southeast Asia, where it is most widespread, debt bondage claims an estimated 15 to 20 million victims. The overwhelming poverty that forces many parents to offer themselves or their own children as collateral against a loan. Although they have promised they will work only until the debt is paid, the reality is much worse. Thanks to inflated interest rates and fresh debts without being fed and housed, the debt becomes impossible to fulfill. As a result, it is often inherited from laborer bound children, maintain a vicious circle that may require several generations.

Sexual slavery, women and children forced into prostitution. Many are lured by false offers of a good job, and then beaten and forced to work in brothels. In Southeast Asia, but it is not uncommon to find women coerced by their husbands, fathers and brothers to earn money for the men in the family to pay back local money lenders. In other cases, the victims pay tens of thousands of dollars to go to another country and then forced into prostitution in paying off their own debts. In yet other, are women or girls clearly kidnapped from their home countries. The sex slavery trade thrives in Central and Eastern Europe and North America. It is estimated that two million women and children being sold into sex slavery around the world each year.

Forced labor often results when people are lured with promises of good jobs, but instead find them exposed to wear conditions - work without payment and enduring physical abuse, often in harsh and dangerous situations. Victims include domestic workers, construction workers, and even human mine detectors. Migrant workers are particularly vulnerable because their constant changes of location makes the organized criminal networks that traffic them difficult to bust.