Global Estimates of Modern Slavery

Forming a global consensus on modern slavery to be used as a baseline to inform policy-making and reach the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

Photo Credit: Grace Forrest.

What are the Global Estimates?

The Global Estimates of Modern Slavery provides a picture of the scale and depth of modern slavery. The Global Estimates is the result of a collaborative effort between the International Labour Organization (ILO) and Walk Free, in partnership with the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

It focuses on two main issues, forced labour and forced marriage, and includes break-downs by region, age group and gender. The findings reveal that on any given day in 2021, 49.6 million people were in modern slavery, with 27.6 million people in forced labour and 22 million people in forced marriage.

The method

The Global Estimates were produced using data from surveys in 68 sample countries for forced labour and 75 sample countries for forced marriage. Findings were drawn from interviews with 77,914 respondents on forced labour, 109,204 respondents on forced marriage, and administrative data from the IOM and data from ILO sources. The resulting estimates have a global and regional focus, while Walk Free’s Global Slavery Index examines the scale of modern slavery at a country-level.

Target 8.7

The Global Estimates is a contribution to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in particular Target 8.7, which calls for effective measures to end all forms of forced labour, modern slavery, human trafficking and child labour in all its forms. It is intended to be used as a baseline to assess global progress toward meeting Target 8.7 and related SDG targets, particularly those on violence against women and girls. Our goal is to provide the world’s most comprehensive measurement of modern slavery on a global and regional level.