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The persistance of slavery in our modern world is indisputable. Today, the victims of this tragedy have many faces. Among these intolerable forms of human exploitation we must denounce, especially, the bonded labour, the migrant forced labour and the sex slavery. And of course, special attention must be paid to the forced child labour which represents almost one-third of the contemporary slavery. The most recent figures available indicate that about 45.8 million people worldwide are trapped in some form of slavery (Ref.WFF 2017 - Global Slavery Index 2016 ). This study highlights that over half of these modern slaves live in 5 countries: India, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Uzbekistan. And 2 other countries are regularly singled out : North-Korea and Qatar. Obviously, these numbers are challenged by the states concerned. But in fact, these figures are largely underestimated, simply because victims rarely complain. Furthermore, these numbers are comparable to those reported by the International Labour Organization (ILO): in 2016 an estimated 40.3 million people are in modern slavery, including 24.9 million in forced labour and 15.4 million in forced marriage. And even more shocking is that 1 in 4 victims are children (Fig.ILO 2017). Of course, responsibility for the situation is widely shared: authorities who are condoning this, corrupt administrations, delinquent employers etc.. We therefore have a joint responsibility in eradicating this scourge.

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