Why does modern slavery happen?
In this episode, Fuzz Kitto delves into the multifaceted factors that contribute to the perpetuation of modern slavery. Drawing on his experiences and encounters, he explores six key areas of vulnerability that make individuals susceptible to exploitation. From systemic failures in the rule of law to the dire circumstances of poverty and disenfranchisement, Fuzz discusses the dynamics of modern slavery, shedding light on its complex web.
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Welcome to “Slavery Unravelled” the podcast, I'm Fuzz Kitto for Be Slavery Free, an NGO working to disrupt, abolish, and prevent modern slavery. As I said in the last podcast, we have more slaves in the world now than any other point of human history. So, we have to ask the question, why does it happen? And how the heck can we be in that situation at this point of human history?
Simply put, most people fall into slavery because they're vulnerable to being tricked, to being trapped or to being exploited. Often it's a result of poverty, exclusion, or disenfranchisement, or marginalisation, or because laws just don't properly protect people. So, let's look at these and unpack them a little. People are tricked, trapped, and in poverty. And often it goes together. These things blend into each other as a part of the ecosystem of vulnerability to people being caught in modern slavery.
We were taking a small group and campaigners, and professional people through India to expose them to modern slavery and spend time with our NGO partners and others and businesses that we're trying to deal with the challenges and the complexities of this issue of modern slavery. One of the places in India we visited was in Delhi, sometimes called New Delhi, of course. The group was mainly made up of females, only two of us were males in this group of roundabout eight, nine people. Carolyn, my co-director, asked the NGO that we're partnering with called Oasis, "Is there anybody that we could come in and do something really nice for the females (in the group) and paint henna on their hands and feet?" Henna is a sort of a temporary tattoo that wears off, but these most beautiful patterns that they paint on to the hands and the feet, sometimes up the arms as well. It's called menhadee in Hindi. It is an art form. The NGO that we were working with, Oasis said, "Oh, yes, there is a person we could do this for." It was the end of our trip. And it was just really nice to have something that, but also something they could take home and talk about when they got off the plane or as they visited with their friends or their family. The representative from Oasis said, “There's a lady who can do henna. She is caught in prostitution, and she's paying off her debt to the brothel, her brothels' madame." This is a form of slavery, called called debt bondage. "We do this to help them to have a trade when they released", they said, "so that they don't fall back into slavery again."
This is her story. Her father became very ill, and the medical response and procedures and the medications were beyond the financial resources of their family. So, this woman looked for some other better paying work so that she could pay for these and save her father. He was a terminally ill. A neighbour heard about her desire to make more money and get another job and said, they could find a job for her in a factory, and she would get good pay for this. But she'd have to go to another city to Mumbai. She readily agreed. But when she got to Mumbai, there was no job. And she was bought by a madame in a brothel and told she had to service men until she had paid off the debt. This was just a horrific situation. Sometimes she’d only earn around about $1 US dollar per day. It was going take a long, long time. She got desperate, and she saw a chance and she escaped. She got back to her hometown. She even got married and got pregnant with her husband, but the brothel owner sent “goons”, strong men, bad men who find escapees and they found her. They like to get people back from an escape just so that the information gets around that you cannot get away, you cannot escape. Fear is a key thing in modern slavery that holds people into the situations where they have been trapped. These goons beat her up, and beat her husband and dragged her back to the brothel, where she the cost of the goons collecting her was added to the amount that she had to pay off. The debt was just getting bigger and bigger. Carolyn asked Oasis how much money the woman owed. And it was about the same amount that collectively the women in the group would pay for a henna tattoo back in their home countries. Once told of this reality, the women all agreed that they would put in the money and pay off her debt. It was arranged with the madam at the brothel. The person doing the henna painting who had been caught modern slavery arrived late morning and painted these beautiful patterns on the hands and the feet of the women in the group. She'd been trained well, she had a real gift for this. As the day went on, it was fascinating to watch her. Her smile got bigger and bigger. At around 4pm, she finished the last of the henna tattoo. And we gave her the cash for her services, an NGO caseworker with Oasis took her back to the brothel, paid off the madam, she collected her belongings which were in a small bag, and she was taken to the train for the 24 hour train ride back home. But we'd put in more money than what was needed to pay off the madam so that she could get a first-class ticket on the train all the way back home. She was met at the other end by a social worker who was going to help her with re-entry into her family and into her home and into her community. And she would help her to also not get pulled in the poverty cycle again. Sadly, though, her father had died.
This is not uncommon story about how people get tricked and trapped. And because of the poverty, and because that when they come out of slavery (if they are able to), the experience of re-entry back into a community, particularly into family and into a home community is not an easy task. There is so much work to be done there to help that. And then of course, help to get a job so that they do not get caught in the poverty cycle again. We saved the person from further modern slavery. And that night, we sat around in the group and I said to the group, “you do realise that today, you freed a slave.” It was one of the pivotal experiences of the whole trip to India for those people, they went back home, they told the story. And people started to grasp a sense of not only what had happened, but also why it had happened. That's what we try and do when we take groups away to help them to share the story. And to explain how and why modern slavery happens. We saved one person from modern slavery. But we didn't solve the problem. This is a problem to be managed. As we've said, a number of times we keep on saying this is a wicked problem. It's not something you just solve by freeing a person or getting a person out of slavery. It is about helping a culture and the systems to change so that people do not get caught into slavery in the first place.
One of the other reasons why people get caught in slavery is because the laws don't protect them. In many countries, there are laws about modern slavery, about it being illegal, but there's often not rule of law or in other words, the laws are not applied, or there are not enough resources to apply the laws as happens in some countries. And yes, corruption is often rife, not just because of bad people, but because of the poverty and bribes that that and bribes are a way that they can survive and get enough money for their families to work. It's a systemic problem. systemic problems need systemic solutions. We heard of one major company where they budgeted almost $1 million as a part of the overall cost of doing business in that particular country in that particular place. And they said that they could not do business there if they did not pay bribes. It was in the audit that was done on the company as well. So laws often do not protect people. And the culture takes over the realities take over. And the laws are just not there to be able to be enacted or they're not there and able to be applied to situations that people find themselves in, particularly if they are powerless.
The third area is poverty. The biggest reason why modern slavery occurs is basically because of poverty. So we were in a southeastern Asian country in May, meeting with CEOs and other C suite people, CFOs CEOs and all the other C's that are often in executive accompanies. And we were talking about modern slavery in the country, particularly manufacturing and agricultural products. Because crops there, in palm oil, and in a number of agricultural products, were rife with modern slavery. "If it was really as bad as people say this is," one COO said, "people would stop coming. It's just blown up. It's not as bad as what you all say." This COO had no idea about the desperation that poverty affects some people, and the desperation of abject poverty, particularly, so many people who are caught in slavery, come out of poverty and abject poverty. And by going particularly overseas and being foreign workers, it allows them a chance to get money to send back to the home, to allow their families and their communities and their extended families to survive. Often, one of the biggest challenges that I've seen is how desperately poor people, often starving people, how difficult is for them to leave. I find it difficult to leave them in the situation they are in.
When someone tells you that they need food, when they do the international line of putting their hands to their mouth, saying that they were desperately hungry. And I hear their story most times through a translator about what's happening in their lives, the desperation that's there, I find it so difficult to walk away and to leave them there. Most times, I have no chance to do anything else. Sometimes I'm able to help out. But it's only for short term. But desperate people are living for the moment. It's why I cannot stand wasting food in our house in our home or when I go out. When you see poverty like this and desperate poverty firsthand, it affects your life, your values and the way that you live. And poverty is the biggest reason why modern slavery happens people desperate people get tricked, get trapped in in situations that are dodgy, dangerous, and destructive. And it is often that they are so desperate, they'll take the chances.
I was in East Africa, helping to build a coalition of people with NGOs, who were working in this area of modern slavery. And I said to them, so where are people going from here? And they said, "down to South Africa if it's for the jobs and possibilities in the sex industry. Others is all up in the Gulf country in the Middle East." So, I asked "do they come back?" "Oh, yes. Sometimes they come back " I said, "what happens to them when they come back?" Question I always like to ask, and they said, "well, many of them just try and go back again (to the place of exploitation)." And I said, "but they've been caught in modern slavery and tricked. They were there and were shown that this is just a dangerous thing to do. Why did they go back?" And they said "because they're desperate, because they have no money. They've come back to a situation that they left, which is still the same, they're still in poverty, they're still desperate. And they go, maybe I'll be more lucky next time. Maybe that I'll find a situation where I'm not caught in slavery, where a will make money and concern back home." Poverty makes people desperate. Unless you're in poverty, or you've seen poverty or your work with desperate poverty, you don't get the same sort of insight of just how powerful this is, in people's ways of seeing the world.
The fourth is exclusion or disenfranchisement. The majority of people who get caught in modern slavery are women, or children, those under 18. They are usually the most vulnerable, the most excluded, and the most disenfranchised. This has changed in the global slavery index and other research. And it's shown that now it's estimated 65% are females and children. That's down from 80-85%, over a decade ago. This most likely means that more men are becoming vulnerable, due to economic downturns, conflicts, and balance of power. When people have no power which is often females and children, they are vulnerable to being used, abused and sold and have no or little power to resist or resilience to actually not being forced into modern slavery.
The fifth one is laws don't protect them. The people most vulnerable because laws don't protect them a stateless refugees, and asylum seekers, and those in or fleeing from conflict. We will call him Joseph. war had broken out in his country in eastern central Africa. He saw his father killed in front of him, and his mother and sisters taken away by the soldiers. He took his two younger brothers and fled to Egypt to the north. At first, he followed others from his area who were doing the same thing. Because this was a place of refuge, they thought and hoped, and it was not long before the others got ahead of him. And it was just him and his two younger brothers, one, four years old and the other six years old. And he was only eight. They lagged behind the others, and finally lost them. They were hungry, and were going slow. My friend from Egypt, asked Joseph when he got to meet him and heard his story, how he knew where to go when the others had gone ahead. How did they know which direction to get to Egypt? I'll never forget the response. Joseph told him that it was not hard at all. All you do is to follow the skeletons of those in the side of the road in the track who had gone before but had died along the way. They were detained before they eventually got to Egypt and put in a refugee camp, and were put to work. It was illegal. But the laws in the country only applied to citizens of that country, not to refugees. And they had to do whatever they were told to get the food he and his younger brothers needed to stay alive. Eventually, they did get to Egypt. And he was able to help his two younger brothers, this is an eight year old. It was caused because of the conflict and the powerlessness that they are in their family had gone, their parents had gone. And so this eight year old took his two younger brothers, and headed to where he thought there was hope. You'll hear me say again and again on these podcasts, that the trade is in people, but the currency is hope. People long for something better than what they've got.
The sixth area is complex global supply chains. The reason we push for traceability and transparency of products with Be Slavery Free when we're working with companies and businesses. it's important for us to know that in the products we buy and consume, that often it comes through a whole number of areas or processes or parts to the supply chain. Unless we know the factory, the farm or the fishing boat that it comes from, we can't even start to know what is happening there. Traceability becomes really important because of this complexity of the global supply chains. With our global economy, many products have raw products sourced from many different areas, countries or regions. then the processes or the manufacturing can use a number of places and number of countries even and then there's the transporting, the warehousing and it sold. Each step in the supply chain is called a "tier". The final tier is the warehouse or the supplier that supplies it to the business or the retailer that we buy it from. It can be very complex. Some can have very long supply chains, or tiers in the supply chain going back sometimes 10, 11, 15 tiers and a lot of podcasts. I'll talk about the United Nations Guiding Principles for Business on Human Rights, which were passed in 2011. It put the responsibility for all the tiers in the supply chain, the whole supply chain on to companies and also on to governments to support companies to help wherever they can to make this a possibility. And so with these complex supply chains and with a global economy, most times we import things into consuming countries in the Western world because it's a cheaper way of doing it. Labour is expensive. In Australia or United States, in Japan and in the UK and Canada and EU we're consuming countries and we have very, very good rights for workers. that often means that we've got to pay them more, that means the cost of our product goes up. in the global supply chains, often is much, much cheaper because the labour in products are so much cheaper, the production of the primary goods to for a product can be produced much cheaper, because of the mining because of the cost of wages in a factory on a farm or on a fishing boat. And so what we start to see is this all connects together to make complex supply chains, which are sometimes opaque, you can't see, you can't dig down. the Australian modern slavery act as with the UK modern slavery Act, the Transparency and Supply Chain act in California, and the emerging laws was in the EU, particularly on due diligence on human rights are there that help unpack this and help to put the responsibility on those importing goods and producing goods in country as well, to be able to show where their supply chain is. Gradually it is unfolding, emerging tools and platforms, and ways of doing this are starting to emerge. And we'll talk more about those in some of the podcasts which are coming up.
So, do consumers then have a role in this area? We sure do. There's a drive to get more and more things and consuming countries in most countries. And there are two ways that we get more things. One, we get more money to buy more things, or two, we get more things cheaper and cheaper, so that with the money that we've got, we can get more things. Guess which is affected these complex supply chains, to seek cheaper and cheaper goods? Yep, we want more things, we want them cheaper. And the way that we do that is we rely on companies to actually be as efficient and get goods as cheap as possible. But there is an incredible cost sometimes to getting cheaper goods. And the cost of that is people's lives. People get caught in modern slavery, because goods are wanting to be purchased for a cheaper price. So when we're consumers, what do we do? Well, we can find out where things are coming from, we can ask companies, we can go to their websites and find out if they have a Modern Slavery Statement. Or if they have a policy on the procurement of their, their goods, etc. You can go directly to the company and ask them most of them have on their website, places where you can inquire about these things. And if they don't ask them why they don't. There is a way for us to be able to have what we call not boycotting products. But buycotting. In other words, choose what you buy, and buy from companies and buy products that have taken the effort to actually find out where it's coming from. If there's a clean supply chain, if there are steps that are being taken to try and find out and stop modern slavery, and to work those if they are caught in that to actually be what's called remediated to be brought out of that and put back into a situation of what they were in or better than when they were in before they got caught in slavery. Well, that is just a short introduction to some of the key reasons why modern slavery occurs. And there'll be more to come in future podcasts as well. So sign up for it. And look for those coming out. We'll be bringing them out weekly, and this has been Fuzz Kitto on the Slavery Unravelled podcast for Be Slavery Free.