There are an estimated 212,000 people living in modern slavery in Malaysia (GSI 2018). The majority of those exploited are migrant and undocumented workers in the country. Foreign workers constitute more than 20 percent of the Malaysian workforce and typically migrate voluntarily—often illegally—to Malaysia from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Burma, Indonesia, the Philippines, and other Southeast Asian countries, mostly in pursuit of better economic opportunities. Some of these migrants are subjected to forced labour or debt bondage by their employers, employment agents, or informal labour recruiters when they are unable to pay the fees for recruitment and associated travel. Shamshad travelled to Malaysia for work through an agent. Upon arrival he was taken to work at a timber factory where he was to be paid less than half what was promised. After two months the employer told Shamshad and fifty other workers to leave as there was no more work. They were not paid for their labour. The same agent found a new job elsewhere and Shamshad’s passport was withheld, leaving him unable to go back home.

There are an estimated 212,000 people living in modern slavery in Malaysia (GSI 2018). The majority of those exploited are migrant and undocumented workers in the country. Foreign workers constitute more than 20 percent of the Malaysian workforce and typically migrate voluntarily—often illegally—to Malaysia from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Burma, Indonesia, the Philippines, and other Southeast Asian countries, mostly in pursuit of better economic opportunities. Some of these migrants are subjected to forced labour or debt bondage by their employers, employment agents, or informal labour recruiters when they are unable to pay the fees for recruitment and associated travel. Srijan, a 28-year-old man who was working on a flower farm in the Cameron Highlands, compared what his agent had told him with what he found when he began work.

The Global Slavery Index 2018 estimates that there are approximately 129,000 people living in conditions of modern slavery in France. France is a destination, transit and, to a lesser extent, source country for the exploitation of men, women and children in forced labour and sex trafficking. Labour traffickers exploit women and children in domestic servitude. Families often exploit relatives brought from Africa to work in their households. Domestic servitude makes up approximately eight percent of all trafficking in France. Agnes was trafficked into domestic servitude from Ivory Coast to France at the age of 18. She arrived as an orphan to study but was forced to work long hours without pay or a contract.

There are an estimated 136,000 people living on conditions of modern slavery in the United Kingdom (Global Slavery Index 2018). According to the 2017 annual figures provided by the National Crime Agency, 5, 145 potential victims of modern slavery were referred through the National Referral Mechanism in 2017, of whom 2,454 were female, 2688 were male and 3 were transgender, with 41% of all referrals being children at the time of exploitation. People are subjected to slavery in the UK in the form of domestic servitude, labour exploitation, organ harvesting and sexual exploitation, with the largest number of potential victims originating from Albania, China, Vietnam and Nigeria. This data however does not consider the unknown numbers of victims that are not reported. In 2017, Rudolph, age 52, went to Derby in the UK from the Czech Republic on the promise of work. But instead, he became a victim of human trafficking and forced labour. Miroslav Bily, the man who made him work for nothing, has been jailed for 45 months.