More than 200 years after the international slave trade was formally abolished, the terrible truth is there has never been a better time to sell a human life than today. Business is booming for the criminals who engage in human trafficking, forced labour and modern slavery, not just across Asia, Africa and the Americas, but in mainland Europe and across the Channel into Britain too.
Every day, traffickers are pushing desperate men, women and children into the hell of modern slavery in the knowledge that their crime is almost cost-free. There should be no hiding place for criminals who trade in people, but the likelihood of criminal exploiters being put behind bars is remote. While there are 50 million people living in modern slavery worldwide, only 15,159 traffickers were prosecuted in 2022 and just 5,577 guilty verdicts were returned, equating to one conviction for every 8,965 victims.
