The recent Global Slavery Index published by the Walk Free Foundation has revealed shocking statistics. The survey states that 45.8 million people are trapped in modern slavery. It is believed that more than 230,000 people in Nepal are living in modern day slavery conditions. Nepal is also ranked 13th out of 167 countries. India tops the list with the highest number of people trapped in some form of modern slavery (18.35 million) followed by China (3.39m), Pakistan (2.13m), Bangladesh (1.53m) and Uzbekistan (1.23m).
The people are forced to work in factories, mines and farms, sold for sex, trapped in debt bondage or born into servitude. The Australia based Walk Free Foundation has a long-relationship with Nepal. The establishment of the foundation came after a volunteer experience at an orphanage in Nepal by Grace Forrest, the daughter of Andrew Forrest, an affluent business figure.
We repeatedly read news about Nepali domestic workers being exploited or trafficked to countries and the report also mentions the trafficking of Nepali women into India, putting the figure at approximately 7000 every year. British newspaper THE SUN also broke devastating news of Nepali earthquake survivors being sold as domestic slaves to British families earlier this year.
Over on Facebook, I had recently shared an article from The Guardian about ‘a slave in Scotland‘. Made for quite a read, very saddening.
I’ve hyperlinked the texts if you want to follow on and read more.
We definitely need to do more and the countries (as listed by the survey) that have the power to do more, needs to be urged to do whatever they can on their level. Our government must also act accordingly to ensure that people from Nepal do not end up trapped and trafficked into foreign countries and even in Nepal, there must be stricter punishment for those involved in such modern day slavery practices.
