From debt bondage in Hong Kong to forced marriage: The battle and dire need to define modern slavery
Encompassing some of Hong Kong's domestic workers and migrants on fishing boats, the term modern slavery has helped ignite public outrage
At first glance a foreign domestic worker in Hong Kong, a Rohingya migrant toiling on a fishing boat, a sex worker walking the streets of Mumbai and a child labourer cutting bamboo in a plantation in the Philippines have nothing in common.
But all four could be slaves, trafficked and exploited by criminals and employers profiting from the world's fastest growing illicit industry, estimated by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) to be worth US$150 billion a year.
In the 15 years since a global treaty to combat human trafficking was adopted, modern slavery has gradually taken over as a catch-all term to describe human trafficking, forced labour, debt bondage, forced marriage and other slave-like exploitation.
The term has helped to ignite outrage among the public, but some experts argue the rebranding of human trafficking as modern slavery over-simplifies the complex reasons why millions have been forced to work in brothels, farms, fisheries, factories and homes.
"By applying the modern slavery label to all these abuses, it's easy to pitch it as a problem of good and bad, of innocent victims and evil perpetrators," said Janie Chuang, a professor at the American University Washington College of Law.
