WS MoreOrLess: Modern Slavery

Summary

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More or Less: Modern Slavery

BBC World Service, March 8, 2014
Host: Charlotte McDonald

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Overview

This episode investigates the widely repeated figure that “21 million people are in slavery today,” as cited by filmmaker Steve McQueen at major film awards. Host Charlotte McDonald unpacks the origins of this statistic, explores competing definitions and methodologies regarding modern slavery, and critically examines how global estimates are calculated and what they truly represent.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Origins and Meanings Behind Modern Slavery Statistics

• Award Show Spotlight: Steve McQueen, director of 12 Years a Slave, used his acceptance speeches to stress the supposed fact that “right now there are 21 million people in slavery.” (00:32)
• Questioning the Numbers: Listeners and the host express skepticism about how slavery figures are defined and measured in the modern era.
• Source of Statistic: The figure comes from a report by the UN’s International Labour Organization (ILO), but its methods lack transparency.
• Expert Critique:
  • Kevin Bales, Professor of Contemporary Slavery, University of Hull:

    “We’re not quite sure how that all goes together to make 21 [million].” (02:03)

  • The ILO prefers “forced labour”; in contrast, the US State Department uses “human trafficking.” Bales advocates for calling both “modern slavery.”

2. Competing Measures and the Politics of Language

• Dr. Alex Balch, Centre for the Study of International Slavery, University of Liverpool, explains Bales’ expansive approach:

  “His Global Slavery Index has really been pushing this idea that we should be recasting both trafficking and forced labor and call them both modern slavery... it’s in order to garner political action.” (02:54)

• Prominent figures—like Barack Obama—have popularized the term “modern slavery”:

  “I’m talking about the injustice, the outrage of human trafficking, which must be called by its true name, modern slavery.” — Barack Obama, Clinton Global Initiative (03:16)

3. Where Is Modern Slavery Most Prevalent?

• The Global Slavery Index gives country-specific estimates:

  • India is estimated to have nearly half the world's slaves.
  • Top Countries (absolute numbers): India, China, Pakistan, Nigeria (03:47)
  • Types in India: Debt bondage, trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation, forced labour in sectors like mining, agriculture, and especially brick kilns.

    “Let's say I’m the slaveholder... I will loan you the money, but for collateral you have to give me yourself, your children…” (03:55–04:18)

  • Nigeria: A hub both for internal slavery and for trafficking—especially of women for sexual exploitation in Europe (05:01).

• Highest Per Capita: Mauritania (West Africa), followed by Haiti.

• Even developed countries — USA included — are estimated to have “around 60,000 slaves.”

4. The Problems with Measurement

• Dr. Alex Balch highlights the difficulty of producing robust estimates:

  “The problem is trying to measure something which is hidden in the dark recesses of the economy... Illegal activities are not very easy to detect and not very easy to count. So it is a massive challenge.” (05:54)

• Earlier eras (transatlantic slavery) had shipping manifests and records; modern estimates require indirect methods.

5. How Are These Numbers Calculated?

• Sources: NGO reports, official stats, and media reports all factor in, but each has shortcomings.

• Kevin Bales introduces randomized sample surveys—9 or 10 countries so far—which ask indirect questions:

  “You don’t show up at the door and say, ‘Excuse me, are you a slave?’ You say, has anyone in your family been offered a job overseas... only to find the work was not what was promised...?” (06:54)

• Respondents who are trafficked abroad are counted as citizens of their home country (07:10).

• Concerns:

  • Possible double-counting (e.g., both source and destination countries).
  • Extrapolation: Using surveys from a handful of countries to estimate data for 160 nations. (07:34)
  • Bales asserts independent statisticians vetted their methods:

    “They also agreed that it was acceptable.” (07:44)

6. The Value and Limits of These Statistics

• The precision of certain country figures (e.g. Germany: 10,646 slaves) stems from mathematical estimates, not hard counts.
  • Charlotte McDonald: “It makes me wonder how useful are these figures?” (08:13)
• Kevin Bales’s candid admission:

  “We may be completely off the rails... if we waited until we found ways to count this perfectly, we would be many, many decades away from publication. When you’re confronting a crisis and you come to the best numbers you can, of course it’s right to put that number out there.” (08:30)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Kevin Bales:

  "We may be completely off the rails. I can't deny that... When you’re confronting a crisis and you come to the best numbers you can, of course it's right to put that number out there." (08:30)

• Dr. Alex Balch:

  "The problem is trying to measure something which is hidden in the dark recesses of the economy." (05:54)

• Barack Obama:

  "I'm talking about the injustice, the outrage of human trafficking, which must be called by its true name, modern slavery." (03:16)

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Timestamps of Important Segments

• 00:32 – Steve McQueen’s “21 million slaves” claim at award ceremonies
• 02:03 – Kevin Bales questions the data behind ILO’s figure
• 02:54 – Alex Balch on why statistics are cast as “slaves” for political urgency
• 03:16 – Barack Obama calls trafficking “modern slavery”
• 03:55 – Types of modern slavery in India explained
• 05:01 – Nigeria as a destination and origin country for trafficking
• 05:54 – Challenges in measuring a hidden and illegal phenomenon
• 06:34 – How random sample surveys work in practice
• 07:34 – Concerns about extrapolating from limited data
• 08:30 – Value and caveats of publishing imperfect numbers

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Tone and Language

The episode is direct, skeptical, and investigative, focused on clarity and demystifying numerical claims. The host and guests strive to explain difficult statistical concepts in plain language, balancing the gravity of the issue with critical analysis.

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Summary for Listeners

While the soundbite that "21 million people are enslaved today" is striking and useful for advocacy, the program exposes the methodological hurdles, political motivations, and debates underpinning such statistics. The take-away: Mainstream modern slavery numbers are built on layers of assumption, limited data, and the need for urgent action, rather than precise counting. The episode encourages listeners to approach such figures with curiosity and a healthy dose of caution.

Transcript

[A]

This is the short edition of More or Less, first broadcast on the BBC World Service.

[B]

Thank you for downloading from the BBC. For details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use, go to bbcworldservice.com podcasts.

[A]

Hello and welcome to more or less on the BBC world service. Hi, I'm charlotte macdonald. Beautiful stars, sumptuous dresses, lots of red carpet. Those are the glitzy hallmarks of the film awards season that's now drawing to an end. But amidst the glamour, one director has taken the opportunity to draw attention to the darker side of humanity. Right now there are 21 million people in in slavery. As we sit here, 21 million people. That is the director of the film 12 Years a Slave, Steve McQueen. In his acceptance speech at the British Academy Film Awards, he repeated the same statistic while accepting the Oscar for best Picture.

[C]

Well, boy, how you feel now?

[B]

My name is Solomon North.

[A]

I'm a free man. This film is about historic slavery set in the USA in the 19th century. But are there really 21 million slaves today? There's not a single country on the planet where it's legal anymore. A number of listeners emailed in to ask if we can explore. Here's one from Michael what is the definition of slavery in this context? I don't understand how these numbers can be correct in this modern day context. Steve McQueen's figure of 21 million comes from a report by the UN's International Labour Organization, or ILO. Kevin Bales, professor of Contemporary Slavery at the University of Hull, isn't sure how they reach this number.

[C]

The ilo, while they have very good methodologists, we're not able to see what their data happen to be and they don't share all of the details of their methodology. So we're not quite sure how that all goes together to make 21.

[A]

And in fact the ILO is not keen on using the phrase slavery. Instead it prefers to use the term forced labour. Others, such as the U.S. state Department, prefer the term human trafficking. Kevin Bales has co authored a report called the Global Slavery Index which estimates that there are 29 million slaves higher than the ILO, which has a more conservative figure and is generally more cautious about the information it puts out. Dr. Alex Balch from the Centre for the Study of International Slavery at the University of Liverpool in the uk, explains why Kevin Bale's approach is different.

[D]

His Global Slavery Index has really been pushing this idea that we should be recasting both trafficking and forced labor and call them both modern slavery. So he's talking about a master definition which covers all types of exploitation. The best way to understand it is that calling these people slaves and calling it slavery is in order to garner political action.

[A]

The movement to use the term slavery has certainly been adopted by some pretty prominent figures. I'm talking about the injustice, the outrage of human trafficking, which must be called by its true name, modern slavery. That was Barack Obama speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative a couple of years ago. So if we accept the idea of modern day slaves, where are they? The Global Slavery Index provides figures for each country and ranks them in absolute numbers. India tops the list. Almost half of the world's slaves are estimated to be in this one country. Here's Kevin Bales again.

[C]

Predominantly there you have what's called collateral debt, bondage, slavery. Let's say I'm the slaveholder and you come to me and say, my child is sick, I need to buy medicine. I say, look, I will loan you the money, but for collateral you have to give me yourself, your children, your family and all of the work that you can do and its product until the loan is repaid.

[A]

There are a number of different types of work they could be forced into.

[C]

Trafficking of young women and boys into commercial sexual exploitation in the cities, slavery in mining and glass making, especially in agriculture, in brick kilns.

[A]

Journalists, including those from the BBC have been reporting on slave like conditions there. I have come here with my family

[C]

to work every day. We make 1,500 bricks.

[A]

According to the Global Slavery Index, India comes first, followed by China, then Pakistan. But it's also a problem in Africa As Nigeria ranks fourth in the world with an estimated 700,000 slaves.

[C]

Ten years ago, they talked about the very large number of Nigerian women who had been trafficked into enslavement, into sexual exploitation in Italy at the same time, because Nigeria is quite an economic powerhouse in the context of West Africa, people are tricked into searching for opportunities to better their lives, say from Mali, Burkina Faso or other surrounding countries. And those people are lured into situations of enslavement.

[A]

In Nigeria, Kevin Bales of course, India, China, Pakistan and Nigeria have the largest numbers. In absolute terms, the country with the most slaves per head of population is Mauritania in West Africa, followed by Haiti. Even the US is estimated to have around 60,000 slaves. These rankings and numbers make this sound very definitive, but Alex Bolch says it's not so clear cut.

[D]

The problem is trying to measure something which is hidden in the dark recesses of the economy. During the period of transatlantic slavery in the 16th, 17th, 18th centuries, we do have the availability of manifests. People actually counted slaves that were bought and sold and now it's an illegal activity by definition. Illegal activities are not very easy to detect and not very easy to count. So it is a massive challenge.

[A]

So how do you count slaves? There are a number of sources that have been used to create these global NGO reports, official statistics, newspaper articles. Kevin Bale says there are better sources of information.

[C]

There now exists a number of random sample surveys. Not a large number, about nine or 10 at most at the moment, but those actually give us, for the first time, realistic estimations which we believe are much closer to the truth on the ground.

[A]

Interviewer goes round to a household, knocks on the door and says, oh, hello, do you have any slaves? Do you know any slaves? How does it work?

[C]

What happens is that you don't show up at the door and say, excuse me, are you a slave? You say, has anyone in your family been offered a job overseas and took up that offer only to find that the work was not what was promised, that they were not paid and they were not allowed to leave.

[A]

Is that going to go down in the country that they've been taken from? For example, I know that's happened for people in Uganda. So does that go down as someone in Uganda is a slave or someone in Iraq is a slave?

[C]

We would count that as a Ugandan citizen who has been enslaved.

[A]

There's a real danger you could end up with some double counting.

[C]

You could, and we do what we can to look for that and are very cautious about that. But you're absolutely right.

[A]

If you're saying the number that you've used at the moment is partly based using 9 to 10 countries, random sample surveys, is that reasonable, using that data to sort of inform up to 160 countries?

[C]

I believe it is reasonable. I should also leap up and say we called in a very large number of statisticians who independently assessed our methodology before we went public and they also agreed that it was acceptable.

[A]

Now, just to give you a flavour of what they've done, I'm looking at Kevin Bale's report right now and you can see how they've been doing these extrapolations. Just looking here, it says that there are 10,646 slaves in Germany. That's very specific. But of course, this is just a mathematical calculation based on a variety of assumptions. It states here this is not the true number. It makes me wonder how useful are these figures?

[C]

We may be completely off the rails. I can't deny that the difficulty, though, is that if we waited until we found ways to count this perfectly, we would be many, many decades away from publication. When you're confronting a crisis and you come to the best numbers you can, of course it's right to put that number out there.

[A]

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[B]

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