GENEVA (ILO News) - Forced labour, slavery and criminal trafficking in human beings - especially women and children - are on the rise worldwide and taking new and insidious forms, according to a new study ^* by the International Labour Office (ILO) released here today.

The study, entitled Stopping Forced Labour , was prepared as part of the follow-up to the ILO's Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and will be discussed by the ILO's 175 member States at the 89 ^th session of the International Labour Conference.

"The growth of forced labour worldwide is deeply disturbing", said ILO Director-General Juan Somavia. "The emerging picture is one where slavery, oppression and exploitation of society's most vulnerable members - especially women and children - have by no means been consigned to the past."

"In light of these findings," he continued, "the entire world needs to re-examine its conscience and instigate action to abolish forced labour and the often terrible living and working conditions that accompany it. There is no excuse for forced labour in the twenty-first century."

According to the report, although such ancient, barbaric practices as slavery and feudal bondage would appear to be declining under the impact of national and international legislation and government action, they are still present. And the phenomenon of trafficking for forced or compulsory labour is growing so fast that most countries in the world fit into one of three categories - "sending countries, transit countries and receiving countries".

"Main destinations may be the urban centres of the richer countries - Amsterdam, Brussels, London, New York, Rome, Sydney, Tokyo - and the capitals of developing and transition countries," the report says. But the movement of trafficked persons is highly complex and varied. Countries as diverse as Albania, Hungary, Nigeria and Thailand can act as points of origin, destination and transit at the same time.

The report notes that outright slavery, though increasingly rare in the modern world, is still found in a handful of countries and the wholesale abduction of individuals and communities in such conflict-torn societies as Liberia, Mauritania, Sierra Leone and Sudan is not uncommon. The forced recruitment of children for armed conflict, deemed one of the worst forms of child labour, is also on the rise.

Slavery-like conditions and debt bondage await many workers who fall prey to coercive recruitment practices in rural areas, especially for work on agricultural plantations or in domestic work. Indigenous peoples as diverse as Pygmies and Bantus in Africa and the Aymara and Exnet in Latin America are especially vulnerable to such forms of forced labour, the report notes. It cites the case of forced labour in Myanmar, which has spurred an exceptional reaction by the international community. But it also details successful efforts to combat bonded labour in India, Nepal and Pakistan.

Poverty, unemployment, civil disorder, political repression and gender and racial discrimination make for an all-too-propitious environment for traffickers' exploitation of vulnerable persons, the report warns. Europe in particular "has seen an explosion of trafficking since the break-up of the former Soviet Union," and large-scale sweatshop activities involving clandestine migrants have been found in Europe and North America.

Forced labour is increasingly difficult to detect, organized as it often is around international criminal gangs who find the trafficking of humans to be less dangerous than trafficking of drugs. Much forced labour involves underground or illegal activities and is otherwise hidden from public view. The growth of unregulated industrial work, agriculture and the urban informal sector are contributing factors to the economic and social forces fuelling much migration and exploitation.

In border regions of Southeast Asia, "coercion, deception and the selling of minors result from direct recruitment from the village," the report finds, with the sex sector fuelling much of the activity. In the Balkans and Eastern Europe - especially countries such as Moldova, Romania and Ukraine - trafficking in women is on the rise with Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Kosovo region emerging as significant destination points on the way to Europe. In Israel, "there has been an influx of women brought in by many criminal networks". The United States is thought to be the destination for 50,000 trafficked women and children each year, with the sex sector as well as domestic and cleaning work (in offices, hotels etc.) fuelling much of the demand: main entry points are New York state and California.

While there is universal consensus on the definition of forced labour (essentially work performed under compulsion and subject to a penalty), some of the forms it takes are still sources of policy debate. Among the most contentious issues are those involving compulsory participation of citizens in public works in the context of economic development, a practice which prevails in a number of Asian countries (including Vietnam) and African countries (Central African Republic, Sierra Leone and Tanzania).

The use of prison labour is another area of contention in countries where rehabilitation through labour is part of punishment, as in China, or where the hiring out of prison labour to private entities is permitted, as in Malaysia, the United States and Madagascar, for example.

In spite of different aspects and the scale of the forced labour problem, the report highlights a number of successes of the international supervisory machinery and coordinated ILO programmes that are bringing the problems to light and helping to resolve them. For example, some countries are taking a cross-ministerial approach, involving justice, customs, social security and labour in pursuing clandestine operations that rely on trafficked labour.

An essential first step, states the report, in eliminating forced labour is through assistance to governments in identifying the nature and dimensions of the problem within and across their national borders. The complex mixture of social and economic conditions that permit forced labour to breed present a daunting task for any one country to tackle alone.

The complexity of the phenomenon requires a combination of anti-poverty and labour market regulatory measures. Long-standing problems of forced labour might be linked with agrarian institutions requiring reform as regards sustainable agriculture, productivity and human rights concerns. Trafficking in persons, while displaying forced labour dimensions, also needs to be addressed from other perspectives. While the ILO is pioneering projects that involve micro-finance, rehabilitation and re-skilling of workers out of forced labour situations, and expanding its knowledge base on labour trafficking and means of prevention for those at risk, there is a global challenge at hand for the ILO and its partners. In addressing this challenge, following the discussion of this report by the Conference, the ILO is committed to working closely with government, employers and workers in specific countries and with the international development community.

The Report highlights the ILO's International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) which has been working with governments, trade unions, employers' organizations and NGOs to address the problems of child labour and trafficking of children. Programmes that involve women, through education, training, credit and other empowerment tools have been crucial to an effective strategy in combatting the trafficking of children.

The report examines the important role played by law enforcement agencies and United Nations bodies which have joined forces to coordinate efforts and tackle the problem on multiple fronts (such as the Global Programme against Trafficking in Human Beings). Additionally, workers' and employers' organizations, as well as individual corporations, have taken some concrete steps such as ascribing to the Global Compact, the United Nations system business partnership agreement, which includes freedom from forced labour as one of its principles.

The ILO report concludes by calling upon governments and social partners in all countries "to deepen understanding and redouble efforts to eliminate this terrible blight on human freedom in all its forms".

* Stopping Forced Labour, Global Report under the Follow-up to the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, International Labour Conference, 89 ^th Session 2001. International Labour Office, Geneva. ISBN:92-2-111948-3. Price: 20 Swiss Francs.