Illegal profits from forced labor worldwide have risen to the “obscene” amount of $236 billion per year, the U.N. labor agency reported Tuesday, with sexual exploitation to blame for three-fourths of the take from a business that deprives migrants of money they can send home, swipes jobs from legal workers, and allows the criminals behind it to dodge taxes.

The International Labor Organization said the tally for 2021, the most recent year covered in the painstaking international study, marked an increase of 37%, or $64 billion, compared with its last estimate published a decade ago. That’s a result of both more people being exploited and more cash generated from each victim, ILO said.

“$236 billion. This is the obscene level of annual profit generated from forced labor in the world today,” the first line of the report’s introduction said. That figure represents earnings “effectively stolen from the pockets of workers” by those who coerce them to work, as well as money taken from remittances of migrants and lost tax revenue for governments.

  • LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net
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    8 months ago

    Yeah they should just decide to not be enslaved. Easy.

    What kind of insane comment is this???

    • fustigation769curtain@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      No, the men who enslave them should not be rewarded with sex or companionship.

      But it makes them money, so they get both in spades.

      • LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net
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        8 months ago

        It’s not a voluntary reward though. We’re talking about literal slaves. That’s what being a slave means. They don’t have a choice.

        • fustigation769curtain@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          We’re talking about 2 different groups of people.

          I’m referring to the wives and girlfriends who date wealthy men even if they got their wealth from selling other women into sex slavery.

          They are the carrot on the stick. We go in the direction they want. If they stop rewarding gangbangers and pimps, then gangbanging and pimping stops being cool.

          But money rules all, regardless of how we get it.