The Hotspots of Modern Slavery

Approximately 10.5 percent of North Korea's population, including migrant workers and human trafficking victims, are categorized as modern slaves, according to data by the Walk Free Foundation. While this only amounts to roughly five percent of the total of estimated modern slaves worldwide, our chart shows that only one other country comes close to this population share size.

With 9.0 percent or an estimated number of 320,000 modern slaves, the African country of Eritrea comes in second on the ranking analyzing data from 2021. While the ranking shown in our infographic prioritizes the share of people subjected to forced labor or forced marriages in the respective country's population, only two of the worst offenders in terms of total number of residents living in slave-like conditions make the cut, North Korea (third in terms of global estimated modern slaves) and Russia (fourth in terms of global estimated modern slaves). When looking at the issue from this angle, India and China are home to the most people living in slave-like circumstances, with 11 million and 5.8 million, respectively. Overall, 49.6 million are estimated to live in conditions defined as modern slavery, with the majority residing in the Asia-Pacific region.

The Walk Free Foundation categorizes modern slaves as victims of workplace abuse, debt bondage, forced marriage and sex trafficking, among other factors. Since it's nearly impossible to get concrete numbers, the non-profit modeled its analysis on data from 68 representative national surveys as well evaluations of individual- and country-level risk factors like armed conflicts, governance issues including labor laws, lack of basic needs, the state of disenfranchised groups like migrants and women as well as general inequality levels in the countries included in its report.