Most happily, slavery in its traditional sense is virtually non-existent outside of Mauritania, Niger, and Sudan.
In the modern era, slavery is invisible. Today, a slave is a vulnerable person, generally a woman or child, occasionally a man, who has no way of defending himself or herself. They have lost all rights and are taken advantage of by those who would exploit them through forced labour, imposed debt, forced marriage, sexual exploitation, recruitment as child soldiers, etc.
Although we may be far from the image of the days when slaves were sold with their feet in shackles, modern slaves live in equally dramatic situations. These people are sometimes taken by plane, sometimes loaded into the trunks of cars. They are completely stripped of their humanity and are then entirely subject to someone else and forced into work, possibly very dangerous work that they are not permitted to leave. Their identification documents are usually confiscated.
The International Labour Organization (ILO), an agency of the UN, estimates that between 2012 and 2016, 89 million people worldwide were living in slavery conditions that lasted from a few weeks to a few years.
Concrete efforts in the form of cultural and educational projects have been created to reinforce awareness of slavery, and above all its consequences, as well as to safeguard commemorative sites and archives, including Ouidah in Benin.
In keeping with these efforts to put an end to slavery in all its forms, the government of Benin plans to build a major tourist site to memorialize the victims of slavery.
