27 Million People Living In Slavery, U.S. Claims

Slavery has become a worldwide epidemic, with up to 27 million people living in slavery, the United States asserted in its annual report on human trafficking.

The report said progress is being made in the fight against slavery as governments around the world crack down on human traffickers, but there is still much more work to do, Yahoo News reported.

“The end of legal slavery in the United States and in other countries around the world has not, unfortunately, meant the end of slavery,” Yahoo News quoted Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The report found that of 185 countries surveyed, only 33 were in full compliance with laws intended to end human trafficking. Some of the lowest-performing countries did show improvement, with Myanmar and Venezuela moving out of the bottom-rung of rankings known as tier 3. Myanmar took steps to address forced labor and conscription of child soldiers, the report said.

There are still 17 countries that don’t comply with minimum international standards, down from 23 last year, CBC News reported. This year Syria was added to that list, with its president Bashar al-Assad failing to investigate or punish offenders, the report said.

Estimates for the true number of people enslaved worldwide varied. The International Labour Organization estimated that there are 20.9 million people in slavery at any time.

Slavery was worst in Southeast Asia, where there were an estimated 11.7 million people enslaved, the report sound. There were 1.5 million people in slavery in North America.

The efforts to end slavery have started to show results, same Ambassador Luis CdeBaca, director of the office to combat trafficking in persons. The number of prosecutions of tracking offenders increased 10 percent in 2012.