MODERN-DAY Slavery.

• Author: Zissou, Rebecca
• Position: INTERNATIONAL - Forced labor

Tens of millions of people around the world, including children, are forced to work as slaves. What can be done to help them?

In many ways, Mabel is a typical teen. She goes to school, hangs out with her friends, and daydreams about her future. But for years, Mabel's life was anything but ordinary.

When Mabel was a young girl, her mother died, and she was sent to live with her grandparents in a poor village in the West African nation of Ghana. Unable to afford to take care of her, they sent her to work in the fishing industry on Lake Volta, one of the world's largest man-made lakes.

There, Mabel was held captive as a slave, forced to work up to 17 hours straight with little food and no pay. Every day, she woke early to gather firewood and cook. Then she spent her days folding fishing nets on the lake, where strong winds constantly threatened to capsize the wooden boats--and drown everyone onboard. At night, she had to make dinner for the other workers.

"I hardly slept at all," Mabel told reporters years later. "Every evening, I hoped that there would be a storm so I wouldn't have to go out on the lake."

Since then, Mabel's life has improved dramatically. When she was 15, aid workers raided the lake and brought her to safety. She was able to attend school for the first time and now dreams of becoming a nurse.

It may sound hard to believe, but Mabel's story is similar to those of millions of people worldwide. According to the Global Slavery Index, more than 40 million people are trapped in modern-day slavery. It doesn't always look like the slavery we read about in history books. It includes about 25 million people who are essentially forced to work without pay in a variety of circumstances and about 15 million people, mostly girls and women, who are trapped in forced marriages, where they are basically treated like slaves by their husbands and their husbands' families.

Like Mabel, many of today's slaves are from poor communities in Africa or Asia, where poverty, corruption, crime, and discrimination make them vulnerable to human traffickers.

"People tend to think of slavery as a historical problem," says Katharine Bryant of the Walk Free Foundation, an antislavery organization. "But millions of people are still being exploited."

Now, new initiatives are calling attention to the crisis. The efforts involve pressuring lawmakers around the world to enforce antislavery laws, encouraging companies to ensure that their supply chains aren't using forced laborers, and raising awareness about the issue.

"Modern slavery is a hidden crime," says Bryant. "So it's very important that we talk about it."

As Old as Civilization

Slavery is as old as civilization itself. It existed in the earliest societies in Mesopotamia in 6800 b.c., where slaves helped build the world's first cities. In the Roman Empire, prisoners of war and people who couldn't pay their debts were sold into slavery. Some of them were forced to fight to the death as gladiators in the Colosseum, starting in 80 a.d.

Beginning in 1525, more than 12 million Africans and their descendants were forced into slavery in the Americas. Many had been kidnapped, shipped across the Atlantic Ocean, and sold at public auctions to the highest bidder. Generations of slaves worked on cotton plantations in the South, where many suffered regular beatings.

In December 1865, ratification of the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the United States. At the time, about 4 million people were enslaved--13 percent of the country's population.

Today, slavery is illegal in almost every country. Yet it continues to exist all over the world. Modern-day slaves aren't captured, stacked like cattle on slave ships, and sold in chains at public auctions. They are men, women, and children lured by the promise of a job and a better life--and then forced to work with little or no pay, or coerced to sell their bodies.

Slavery in the U.S.

According to some estimates, there are currently 58,000 people enslaved in the U.S. Many of them are domestic workers, including housekeepers.

The exact number of slaves in each country is unclear because human traffickers operate in the shadows. But the majority of the world's slaves--nearly 60 percent-are thought to be in just five countries: India, China...