What is modern-day slavery?

Slavery is an umbrella term for activities involved when one person obtains or holds another person in compelled service.
Someone is in slavery if they are:
  • forced to work through mental or physical threat
  • owned or controlled by an 'employer', usually through mental or physical abuse or the threat of abuse
  • dehumanised, treated as a commodity or bought and sold as ‘property’
  • physically constrained or have restrictions placed on his/her freedom
The following definitions are encompassed within the term 'modern slavery' for the purposes of the Modern Slavery Act 2015.
These are:
  • 'slavery' is where ownership is exercised over a person
  • 'servitude' involves the obligation to provide services imposed by coercion
  • 'forced or compulsory labour' involves work or service extracted from any person under the menace of a penalty and for which the person has not offered himself voluntarily
  • 'human trafficking' concerns arranging or facilitating the travel of another with a view to exploiting them.
For further information please refer to the Modern Slavery Act 2015.
The Centre for Social Justice Report (2013) further states that the term 'modern slavery' includes the definitions below:
​
HUMAN TRAFFICKING SLAVERY
The status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised (129 Convention; approved in defining Art 4 ECHR: Siladin v France (ECHR, 2005).

SERVITUDE
An obligation to provide one’s services that is imposed by the use of coercion, and is to be linked with the concept of ‘slavery’ described above (Siladin v France, ECHR (2005).

FORCED LABOUR
All work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily.
  1. Recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons.
  2. By means of threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person; (where a child is involved, the above means are irrelevant).
  3. For the purposes of exploitation, which includes (but is not exhaustive):
    • Prostitution
    • Other sexual exploitation
    • Forced labour
    • Slavery (or similar)
    • Servitude etc.
    • Removal of organs