The Global Slavery Index 2023

Regional: The Americas (Part 1)

​The Americas region is home to 13 per cent of the world’s population, with varying levels of wealth, mobility, and security across and within countries in the region. Modern slavery in the region is driven by inequality, increasing poverty, discrimination against migrants and minority groups, political instability, and conflict. The situation has been exacerbated by economic and social impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and responses to it, as well as the impacts of climate-related displacement. 
 
An estimated 3.5 per thousand people in the region are in forced labour and 1.5 per thousand in forced marriage. Mass migration fuels forced labour, particularly in the world’s largest migration corridor from Mexico to the United States (US). Migrants flee countries such as Venezuela and others and congregate on the border between the US and Mexico. Forced marriage is linked to increased poverty and lower educational attainment, and is driven by longstanding patriarchal norms and fundamentalist religious beliefs within the region; for example, in North America forced marriage is reported in conservative religious sects.
 
The US has taken the most action to tackle modern slavery in the Americas, followed by Canada, Argentina, and Uruguay. Cuba, Suriname, and Venezuela have taken the least action. Of the five G20 countries in the region (Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and the US), Brazil, Canada and the US have taken action to tackle modern slavery in supply chains. Much more needs to be done to strengthen legislation to hold businesses to account and to tackle gender inequality that drives modern slavery of women and girls. 
 
What is the extent and nature of modern slavery in the region? 
An estimated 5.1 million men, women, and children were living in modern slavery on any given day in 2021. The Americas had the lowest prevalence of modern slavery among the five regions, with 5 in every thousand people living in modern slavery. The Americas had the third highest prevalence of forced labour (3.5 per thousand) and the lowest prevalence of forced marriage (1.5 per thousand) compared to other regions.
 
Within the region, Venezuela, Haiti, and El Salvador had the highest prevalence of modern slavery. In Haiti and Venezuela modern slavery is intertwined with migration, political instability, and drug trafficking routes from South America to Central and North America, while in El Salvador it is associated with gang violence and gender-based violence.
 
The largest estimated numbers of people in modern slavery include some of the region’s most populous countries — Brazil, the US, and Mexico. Three of every five people in modern slavery in the Americas are exploited in one of these countries. The countries with the lowest prevalence in the region are Canada, Uruguay, and Chile. 
 
Children in the Americas are at particularly high risk of all forms of modern slavery. They have been recruited as soldiers in protracted civil conflicts in Colombia and Venezuela, resulting in long-lasting trauma. Child recruitment by armed groups, gangs, and organised crime has increased in the region, impacting children in Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and El Salvador. Moreover, children are reportedly involved in hazardous labour in industries such as mining in gold and tin, drug trafficking, and agriculture, most notably in cotton, cattle, fishing, and tobacco.Commercial sexual exploitation of children occurs in the region. In the Caribbean, sex tourism, particularly involving children remains an issue, with sex tourists, primarily from the US, seeking to exploit children in countries such as Belize. UN estimates reveal that child marriage is prevalent in the region with 22 per cent of women between ages 20 and 24 having been married before the age of 18 years.In the US, recent research estimated that 300,000 children were married between 2000 and 2018.
 
Seasonal, temporary, and undocumented workers in the agricultural sector are vulnerable to forced labour, including workers in higher- income countries such as the US and Canada. This is particularly true in informal or rural labour contexts where there are limited regulations and few labour inspections. Forced labour in US supply chains remains an issue in the Americas, with agricultural workers in countries that supply products to the US market vulnerable to exploitation. Moreover, there are reports of compulsory prison labour in public and private prisons in Brazil and the US.
 
Although these estimates are the most reliable to date, they are conservative given the gaps and limitations of data collection in the Americas. These figures do not capture all forms of modern slavery, such as recruitment of child soldiers, trafficking for the purposes of organ removal, and all child marriages. 
 
What drives vulnerability to modern slavery in the region? 
Vulnerability to modern slavery in the Americas region is driven largely by inequality, political instability, and discrimination against migrants and minority groups. Conflict disproportionately impacted two countries in the region, Mexico and Colombia, while vulnerability was further compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic and climate-related disasters across the region. At the country level, vulnerability to modern slavery is highest in Haiti and lowest in Canada. 
 
Inequality represents the greatest driver of vulnerability in the Americas. Certain populations, including women, children, migrants, and Indigenous people, face heightened vulnerability as a result of systemic discrimination. In Haiti, children known as restavecs (stay withs), who are given away by their parents to a host household, are vulnerable to exploitation in domestic servitude, with girls particularly at risk. Restavec children are trafficked and are at increased vulnerability to sexual abuse. Across the region, Indigenous populations are particularly vulnerable to modern slavery. For example, although Indigenous women make up only 4 per cent of the population of Canada, they comprise at least 50 per cent of identified survivors of human trafficking. Migrant workers are also at greater risk, with the absence of protections in several countries, such as the right to form a union or laws prohibiting recruitment fees.
 
Governance issues, such as political instability, lack of political rights, and poor regulatory quality, also drive vulnerability to modern slavery by causing displacement and hampering the national response. Violent protests in Chile, Colombia, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, the assassination of the President of Haiti in 2021 and increasing control of the country by street gangs and growing political polarisation in Brazil and the US drive vulnerability across the region. High rates of violent crime in several countries including Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Jamaica, and weak confidence in judicial systems in Mexico, Haiti, and Venezuela, diminish accessibility to legal rights, representation, and prosecution. In Venezuela, political instability and corruption among the prosecution and judiciary undermines law enforcement efforts, while armed groups continue to commit acts of violence against civilians, thereby driving mass migration.
 
Women and girls are disproportionately impacted by governance issues across the region, as patriarchal attitudes that suppress women’s agency persist at both the household and institutional levels. Such attitudes contribute to the absence of laws protecting women and girls — for example, laws that set the minimum age of marriage at 18 without exception — and a lack of enforcement of existing legal frameworks covering violence against women.
 
Violence, poverty, political dysfunction, and environmental degradation across the region have led to a substantial increase in refugees, asylum- seekers, and other vulnerable and displaced populations. The continual movement of migrants and refugees is a pressing issue in the Americas, which hosted 26 per cent of the world’s international migrants in 2020. Venezuela’s political instability and socio-economic breakdown has pushed more than 6 million citizens to flee the country as of November 2021. The Mexico-US border is the world’s most popular migration corridor; over the five years from 2016 to 2021, some 4 million migrants were apprehended along the Mexico-US border, nearly half of whom came from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. The remaining came predominately from Mexico and other nations.

In Mexico, migrants are held in crowded detention centres, while those who had sought assistance in shelters reported experiencing robbery, extortion, bodily harm, kidnapping, and abuse of authority while migrating, all factors which make these individuals vulnerable to modern slavery. As many countries in the Americas have restrictive immigration policies, which force migrants to take increasingly precarious routes, thereby further exacerbating their vulnerability to trafficking and other forms of modern slavery.
 
Walk Free 2023. Global Slavery Index 2023. Minderoo Foundation Ltd. Australia.