North Korea, Eritrea have highest rates of modern slavery

NEW YORK: North Korea and Eritrea have the world´s highest rates of enslaved people, said a global survey released on Thursday that focused on the roles of conflict and government repression in modern slavery.

The Central African nation of Burundi also has a high prevalence of slavery, according to the 2018 Global Slavery Index published by the human rights group Walk Free Foundation. “Each of these three countries has state-sponsored forced labor, where their government puts its own people to work for its own benefit,” said Fiona David, research chair of Minderoo Foundation, which led the data collection.

More than 40 million people were enslaved around the world as of 2016, according to an estimate by the Walk Free Foundation and the International Labour Organization. India was home to the largest total number with an estimated 18.4 million slaves among its 1.3 billion population, according to the Walk Free Foundation´s 2016 index. China, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Uzbekistan rounded out the top five nations, accounting for about 58 percent of people living in slavery globally, the Walk Free Foundation said at the time. But North Korea had the highest percentage of its population enslaved, and that remains the case today.