'It Was As if We Weren’t Human.' Inside the Modern Slave Trade Trapping African Migrants
The trade in human beings thrives on the road to Europe
By Aryn Baker | Photographs by Lynsey Addario for TIME
March 14, 2019
http://time.com/longform/african-slave-trade/
“Slavery may seem like a relic of history. But according to the U.N.’s International Labor Organization (ILO), there are more than three times as many people in forced servitude today as were captured and sold during the 350-year span of the transatlantic slave trade. What the ILO calls “the new slavery” takes in 25 million people in debt bondage and 15 million in forced marriage. As an illicit industry, it is one of the world’s most lucrative, earning criminal networks $150 billion a year, just behind drug smuggling and weapons trafficking. “Modern slavery is far and away more profitable now than at any point in human history,” says Siddharth Kara, an economist at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.”