* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Without national estimates of the prevalence of slavery, how can we know if efforts to combat it are working?
This week, the UK Government took the unusual step of publicly estimating how many people it thinks may be in some form of modern slavery in the UK.
According to Professor Silverman, the Home Office’s Chief Scientific Adviser, it is likely there are between 10,000 to 13,000 victims of modern slavery in the United Kingdom.
That is an extraordarily brave and important admission in the 21st century, more than 150 years after the formal abolition of slavery.
The UK Government is acknowledging that “slavery happens here”, and is setting a clear target against which its future progress can and will be measured. The UK’s approach also challenges the notion that modern slavery is unmeasurable.
For two decades, activists have argued there are “millions” of people in modern slavery. However, when pressed for more detail, the typical response is “this is a hidden problem that is impossible to measure”.
But an absence of country level information about the prevalence of modern slavery is increasingly difficult to justify, after more than a decade of responses to this issue.
Without a national level estimate of the size of the problem, how can governments know if their efforts are working? How can we know if we are having any impact on this problem, without having even roughly pegged the starting point?
As widespread as modern slavery is, it has sadly remained a marginal issue until recently, largely because of the lack of data. Heightened awareness of this crime is critical if governments are to follow through on their commitment to end this crime and if we are to address the contextual factors that make people vulnerable. Let’s not forget, it was awareness-raising through social mobilisation that also led to the abolition of the 19th century slave trade.
This is why the Walk Free Foundation has invested so heavily in trying to better quantify the size of modern slavery, and encouraging governments to do the same.
In the past 12 months, through Gallup, we have surveyed more than 8000 people in 7 countries in local languages, to uncover previously hidden experiences of exploitation.
This has involved face-to-face interviews conducted by experienced researchers, from Addis Ababa to Lahore, Sao Paulo to Moscow.
The surveys were nationally representative, with a random sample – meaning a wealthy person living in Jakarta had the same chance of being interviewed as a farmer in Sulawesi.
This aspect is critical – research that is not representative cannot be extrapolated from, to draw general conclusions about a population.
In parallel, we reviewed a decade’s worth of research on modern slavery in 54 countries. From 4000 studies, we found only 9 that we could rely on for extrapolation purposes.
From this - imperfect but nonetheless important - foundation, we developed an extrapolation protocol to estimate the prevalence of modern slavery in 167 countries.
Like most statistics, the country-level estimates in the Global Slavery Index are based on assumptions.
In particular, we have assumed that countries that are similar – in terms of factors such as rule of law, corruption, discrimination, inequality and conflict – will have similar levels of prevalence of modern slavery.
This is not a perfect way to estimate modern slavery – but it is a big step forward from the previous position of having zero information.
In time, we expect our approach will be refined and improved. We have 4 more surveys underway, with a total of 19 contracted in the next 12 months.
We are also looking to governments to do their part.
Earlier this year, we showcased the multiple systems methodology to the UK Government in a workshop with the Home Office, Gallup and the UK’s Chief Scientist. We are delighted this methodology has being picked up and applied.
In time, we hope other governments – particularly those that invest heavily in preventing modern slavery – the United States, Norway, Japan, Australia, the Netherlands, Sweden, Canada and France – will join the United Kingdom and develop their own approaches to estimating prevalence of modern slavery.
No doubt, early estimates will be improved in time – this is to be expected. But every journey starts with taking that first step.
Fiona David is Executive Director of Global Research at the Walk Free Foundation
