Poland has 72,000 'modern slaves'
PR dla Zagranicy
Nick Hodge
19.11.2014 12:44
According to the 2014 Slavery Index released by the Australia-based Walk Free Foundation around 72,000 ‘modern slaves’ live in Poland, equivalent to roughly 0.2% of the country’s population.
Image: flickr
The concept of ‘modern slavery’ includes forced labour, human trafficking, forced marriages and commercial sexual exploitation.
Most ‘modern slaves’ in Poland are immigrants from either ex-USSR countries or from South-East Asia, and are forced to work in construction, agriculture and restaurants.
Globally the number of ‘modern slaves’ has risen by almost a quarter since 2013, and the issue is now thought to affect around 35 million people.
Mauritania is the worst country for ‘modern slavery’ when measured in per capita terms, as 4% of the population is now classified as such. Meanwhile Poland comes 130th in the world in the number of ‘modern slaves’ per capita.
Poland does however fall behind most of Western Europe; France, Germany and the United Kingdom each have fewer than 12,000 ‘modern slaves,’ even though their populations are greater than Poland’s.
Iceland has the least ‘modern slaves’ in both per capita and absolute terms, as according to the report it only has 23 people who can be counted as such. (sl)
Source: Rzeczpospolita