Although slavery is formally outlawed in all countries, you can still find- in large numbers- people being subjected to conditions that resemble those that were formally and legally practiced hundreds of years ago: It´s the contemporary forms of slavery.

Overall, the people enslaved nowadays are part of vulnerable groups and they tend to be poor. To “recruit” slaves, some criminals go talk and offer to those vulnerable people an apparently good job, through which would be possible to make more money and live a better and more comfortable life.

However, the jobs that they are actually offering are performed under harsh and perilous conditions, and the payment is way lower(sometimes non-existent) in comparison to what has been pledged or promised.

Sadly, when the police or governmental inspectors finds the victims, they testify horrible conditions, such as lack of food and drinkable or adequate water, to not mention the lack of appropriate equipment to do the work with safety. And you might question yourself: why those people don´t just quit and go search for another job? It´s because, very frequently, the victims have their documents taken from the employer and also, to restrict even more their freedom, the employer imposes a significantly large debt to the victim, who is only able to pay it with more and more degradating and exhausting work.

Talking specifically about Brazil(the country where I live in), most of the cases of modern slavery are found on the rural area, in agriculture, most often. The majority of the victims comes from the northern region, where there´s a significant concentration, both in absolute and relative terms, of poor and vulnerable people.

Some efforts has been made, all around the world, to eliminate once for all this abject and abhorrent practice, but it´s still not enough. It´s necessary to not only combat the practice with force and coercion- through frequent police raids and inspections of various forms- but also to attack it´s root: that is, the scenario of poverty, social exclusion and generalized inequality.