Modern-day slavery is an umbrella term covering all practices in which people are controlled, coerced, or deceived into work or servitude they did not freely choose and cannot freely leave. It includes human trafficking, forced labor, debt bondage, domestic servitude, forced marriage, child labor, and forced recruitment into armed groups. It affects an estimated 50 million people worldwide, a number that, by every measure, is undercounted.
Modern-day slavery is not a relic of history. It is happening now, in every country, across industries that supply the products most people use every day. The coffee, cocoa, seafood, garments, electronics, and minerals moving through global supply chains are produced, in part, by people who did not choose to be there and cannot freely leave.
The term covers a wide range of practices. What they share is the removal of a person's freedom through coercion, deception, or force, and the use of that person's labor or body for someone else's profit.
The recruitment, transportation, harboring, or receipt of people through force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of forced labor or sexual servitude. It is not always violent. Traffickers exploit vulnerability, poverty, displacement, immigration status, debt, using deception and manipulation as often as physical force.
Any work compelled through threat of punishment, violence, or coercion. It is the most common form of modern-day slavery globally, occurring in agriculture, fishing, construction, domestic work, manufacturing, and increasingly in illegal industries including mining and deforestation. Not For Sale has documented firsthand that victims of forced labor are frequently the ones carrying out environmental destruction, clearing forests, panning rivers for illegal gold, coerced into ecocide by the same systems that profit from their bondage.
A person's labor is demanded as repayment for a loan or service, but the terms are deliberately manipulated so the debt can never realistically be repaid. The person becomes indefinitely trapped. It is one of the most common mechanisms traffickers use to maintain long-term control, particularly in agriculture, domestic work, and extractive industries.
The recruitment, transportation, or control of people through force, fraud, coercion, or abuse of power for the purpose of commercial sexual services. Traffickers maintain control through violence, threats, psychological manipulation, debt, and the confiscation of identification or freedom of movement. All commercial sexual activity involving anyone under 18 is automatically considered trafficking under international law, regardless of apparent consent.
The use of children in work that deprives them of their childhood, their education, and their healthy development. It exists on a spectrum from hazardous agricultural labor to forced participation in armed conflict. It is both a driver and a consequence of poverty, and it feeds directly into cycles of trafficking and forced labor in adulthood.
A form of forced labor in which individuals, most often women and migrants, are made to work in private homes under coercive or abusive conditions, isolated from outside contact, and unable to leave freely. Its setting inside the home makes it among the most hidden and hardest to detect of all forms of modern-day slavery.
When one or both parties enter into a marriage without full, free, and informed consent, through coercion, threats, or deception. It frequently intersects with other forms of modern-day slavery, functioning as a mechanism for labor control, sexual servitude, or the trafficking of women and girls across borders.
The conscription, recruitment, or use of children under 18 by armed forces or groups, for combat, support roles, or sexual purposes, constitutes a severe form of modern-day slavery. It typically occurs through abduction or coercion and is concentrated in conflict zones where state authority has collapsed. Not For Sale has worked directly with communities affected by forced recruitment in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The illegal removal, sale, or transplantation of human organs, most often targeting people in desperate financial circumstances who are deceived or coerced into giving up organs, frequently for a fraction of the payment promised, or none at all.
Some governments exact forced labor directly, through compulsory prison labor that does not meet international standards, or through the mobilization of civilian populations under threat of penalty for political or military purposes. It is a form of modern-day slavery that operates through official authority rather than criminal networks.
Products and raw materials move through global supply chains spanning dozens of countries and hundreds of hands. At any point in that chain, on a farm, in a factory, in a mine, forced or trafficked labor may be present, hidden within industries and brands that have no direct knowledge of it. Supply chain exploitation underpins some of the world's most profitable industries, including electronics, fashion, seafood, and cocoa.
More than 50 million people are estimated to be living in modern-day slavery today, a figure that, by every measure, is undercounted. These are not abstract statistics. They are people in communities where Not For Sale works every day, across six continents, building the systems that give them a way out and a reason to stay free.
Modern-day slavery is the control of people through force, fraud, or coercion, removing their freedom, their autonomy, and their ability to leave. Not For Sale confronts it through survivor support, social innovation, enterprise creation, environmental stewardship, and community-based prevention across six continents.