Today, there could be more people enslaved than at any time in human history.
According to the International Labour Organization, as of 2016, around 40.3 million people around the world perform involuntary servitude of some kind.
Slavery exists on every continent, and there are several forms of slavery, including debt bondage, forced labor, sex slavery, and so on. But the sort of human bondage most familiar to Americans is chattel slavery — where a person is the wholly-owned property of another.
Unlike in debt bondage, the slave cannot pay a debt and be freed; unlike in sex slavery, a chattel slave, even after his or her most “useful” years, is typically not set free. One can be beaten, bought, inherited, sold, raped, even rented. Any children resulting from rape by the master are his also his property. It is the worst type of slavery.
And just like the other forms slavery can take, chattel bondage still happens in the world today — particularly in Africa.
While most slavery in Africa fits into the aforementioned categories, the only black chattel slaves in the world are owned by Arabs and Muslims. The mainstream human rights community has consistently and egregiously ignored these slaves for decades, because of the situation’s politically incorrect implications.
Today, an estimate of between 529,000 and 869,000* black men, women, and children are still bought, owned, sold, and traded by Arab and black Muslim masters in five African countries.