Forced-labour profits booming, as EU mulls laws

Illegal profits from forced labour around the world have increased by 37 percent in the last decade to a total of $236bn (€217bn) a year, according to a new report by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in Geneva.

The increase over the past decade has been fuelled both by an increase in the number of people in forced labour (mainly in the private sector) and by its profitability.

“Today, forced labour is a very high-profit, low-risk undertaking,” said the ILO’s deputy director general Manuela Tomei at the launch of the report in Brussels on Tuesday (19 March).

In 2021, at least 27.6 million people around the world worked involuntarily and under penalty or threat of penalty. This represents an increase of 2.7 million in five years.

Of these, an estimated 6.3 million were in forced commercial sexual exploitation, with nearly four out of five being girls or women.

“Forced labour is everywhere, there is no region that is immune and no economic sector that is spared from forced labour,” said Tomei, noting that the industrial and service sectors saw the most cases.

Some 73 percent of this illegal income — equivalent to $173bn — came from the commercial sexual exploitation of victims, as their perpetrators paid them little or nothing, and victims had limited or no recourse to justice.