Nearly eight out of 1,000 Filipinos are classified as “modern slaves,” according to an international human rights group.
The Walk Free Foundation’s 2023 Global Slavery Index which measures the extent of modern slavery in 160 countries, reported that almost eight or 7.8 per 1,000 Filipinos live in modern slavery. This translates to 859,000 people.
The index indicated that modern day slavery refers to situations of “exploitation that a person cannot refuse or leave because of threats, violence, coercion, or deception.”
Modern slavery also includes “forced labor, forced or servile marriage, debt bondage, forced commercial sexual exploitation, human trafficking, slavery-like practices, and the sale and exploitation of children,” it added.
The index also reported that the Philippines rated 66 out of 100 in vulnerability to modern slavery, and 59 percent in government response to modern slavery.
Philippine laws criminalized forced labor, along with the commercial sexual exploitation of children in keeping with international conventions.
The index suggested that the Philippines should enact laws or policies that require private recruitment fees be exacted on employers.
Meanwhile, North Korea topped the modern slavery list with a score of 104.6, the highest prevalence of modern slavery, which the index said “tend to be conflict-affected, have state-imposed forced labor, and have weak governance.”
Eritrea with 90.3 came in second, followed by Mauritania with 32, Saudi Arabia, 21.3, Turkiye, 15.6, Tajikistan 14, United Arab Emirates,13.4, and Russia, Afghanistan, and Kuwait with identical 13.
Among the countries with the lowest prevalence of modern slavery were Switzerland (0.5), Norway (0.5), Germany (0.6), Netherlands (0.6), Sweden (0.6), Denmark (0.6), Belgium (1), Ireland (1.1), Japan (1.1), and Finland (1.4).
The index said these countries have “strong governance and strong government responses to modern slavery.”
The Global Slavery Index explained that these national estimates of the prevalence per thousand people and the number of people were calculated using individual and country-level risk factors of modern slavery.
It said that the analysis draws on thousands of interviews with survivors of modern slavery collected through nationally representative household surveys across 75 countries.
