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By the time his Libyan captors branded his face, Sunday Iabarot had already run away twice and had been sold three times.The gnarled scar that covers most of the left side of his face appears to show a crude number 3. His jailer carved it into his cheek with a fire-heated knife, cutting and cauterizing at the same time.

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By the time his Libyan captors branded his face, Sunday Iabarot had already run away twice and had been sold three times.The gnarled scar that covers most of the left side of his face appears to show a crude number 3. His jailer carved it into his cheek with a fire-heated knife, cutting and cauterizing at the same time.

Iabarot left Nigeria in February 2016 with a plan to head northward and buy passage on a smuggler's boat destined for Europe, where he had heard from friends on Facebook that jobs were plentiful. The journey of more than 2,500 miles would take him across the trackless desert plains of Niger and through the lawless tribal lands of southern Libya before depositing him at the southern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. He never made it. Instead, he was captured the moment he arrived in Libya, then sold to armed men who kept a stable of African migrants they exploited for labor and ransom.

The brand on his face, he says, was both punishment and a mark of identification. Fourteen other men who attempted to escape the fetid warehouse where they had been held as captive labor in Bani Walid, Libya, for several months in 2017 were similarly scarred, though the symbols differed. Iabarot, who is illiterate, wasn't sure if they were numbers or letters or merely the twisted doodles of deranged men who saw their black captives as little more than livestock to be bought and sold. "It was as if we weren't human," the 32-year-old from Benin City, Nigeria, tells TIME.

Iabarot is among an estimated 650,000 men and women who have crossed the Sahara over the past five years dreaming of a better life in Europe. Some are fleeing war and persecution. Others, like Iabarot, are leaving villages where economic dysfunction and erratic rainfall make it impossible to find work or even enough to eat. To make the harrowing journey, they enlist the services of trans-Saharan smugglers who profit by augmenting their truckloads of weapons, drugs and other contraband goods with human cargo.

But along the way, tens of thousands like Iabarot are finding themselves treated not just as cargo but as chattel and trapped in a terrifying cycle of extortion, imprisonment, forced labor and prostitution, according to estimates by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. "They are not only facing inhuman treatment. They are being sold from one trafficker to another," says Carlotta Sami, southern European regional spokesperson for UNHCR, the U.N. refugee agency. Essentially, they are slaves: human beings who have been reduced to being possessions with a fixed value, based on assessments of the kind of income they can accrue to their owners as targets for extortion, as unpaid labor or-as is often the case with women-prostitutes.

Slavery may seem like a relic of history. But according to the U.N.'s International Labor Organization (ILO), there are more than three times as many people in forced servitude today as were captured and sold during the 350-year span of the transatlantic slave trade. What the ILO calls "the new slavery" takes in 25 million people in debt bondage and 15 million in forced marriage. As an illicit industry, it is one of the world's most lucrative, earning criminal networks $150 billion a year, just behind drug smuggling and weapons trafficking. "Modern slavery is far and away more profitable now than at any point in human history," says Siddharth Kara, an economist at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.

The corridor from Africa's most populous country to its northern Mediterranean shores has proved especially lucrative. As conflict, climate change and lack of opportunity push increasing numbers of people across borders, draconian E.U. policies designed to curb migration funnel them into the hands of modern-day slave drivers. The trade might be most visible in Libya, where aid organizations and journalists have documented actual slave auctions. But now it is seeping into southern Europe too-in particular Italy, where vulnerable migrants are being forced to toil unpaid in the fields picking tomatoes, olives and citrus fruits and trafficked into prostitution rings.

"We no longer need slavers going into Africa to capture their quarry," says Aboubakar Soumahoro, a union representative who came to Italy from Ivory Coast 17 years ago with the hope of finding a better life. "The rope of desperation has replaced their iron chains. Now Africans are sending themselves to Europe and becoming slaves in the process."

When Iabarot reached Libya's southern border, he met a seemingly friendly taxi driver who offered to drive him to the capital city, Tripoli, for free. Instead, he was sold to a "white Libyan," or Arab, for $200. He was forced to work off his "debt" on a construction site, a pattern that repeated each time he was sold and resold. "If you work hard, you get bread," he tells TIME from the darkened room of an abandoned hotel in Benin City that the Nigerian government is using to house human trafficking victims rescued from Libya. "If you refuse to work, you are beaten. If you run away and get caught ..." His voice trails off. The scar on his face says the rest.

In 2016, the year Iabarot set out from Nigeria, the number of migrants arriving in Italy from Libya spiked to 163,000, prompting a political backlash and a determination to stanch the flow at all costs. In February 2017, the E.U. launched a plan to train and equip the Libyan coast guard to intercept smuggler boats and keep the migrants in detention camps.

Two years later, the arrivals in Italy are down 89%. But the policy has caused a bottleneck on the other side of the Mediterranean and a lingering humanitarian crisis. The IOM estimates that nearly half a million sub-Saharan African migrants are currently trapped in Libya, ripe for exploitation by armed groups and corrupt officials. Julie Okah-Donli, director general of Nigeria's National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons, went on a fact-finding mission to Libya last year after hearing reports of Nigerians living in "slavelike conditions." She tells TIME she was sickened by what she saw. "In some of the camps we visited, they had already taken truckloads of the guys to go work on the farms and in the factories for no pay at all. As long as they are in those camps, they are treated like slaves."

When CNN aired footage of what appeared to be African migrants being sold at a slave auction at a Libyan detention camp in November 2017, the outrage was immediate and global. The U.N. Security Council condemned the "heinous abuses," the E.U. demanded "swift action," and French President Emmanuel Macron called for a military rescue operation.

Yet just over a year on, little has been done to prevent these abuses. E.U. member states are renewing calls to halt Europe-bound migrants at the Libyan coastline. "The situation for refugees and migrants in Libya remains bleak," says Heba Morayef, Middle East and North Africa director for Amnesty International. "Cruel policies by E.U. states to stop people arriving on European shores, coupled with their woefully insufficient support to help refugees reach safety through regular routes, means that thousands of men, women and children are trapped in Libya facing horrific abuses with no way out."

When Joy, a 23-year-old Cameroonian university student, arrived in the coastal Libyan city of Sabratha in August 2017, she thought she was well on her way to France to pursue her dream of becoming a fashion model. But a government-backed militia, emboldened by the E.U. deal to crack down on migrant smuggling hubs, raided the compound where she was staying. She was picked up by a rival group and locked in a room with scores of other women for several months. The women were expected to work as prostitutes, and some were sold to buyers looking to staff their own brothels. Joy, several months pregnant at that time, was largely left alone, she says, but the conditions were "inhumane."

Joy, who speaks the polished French of an educated woman, says the E.U. directive to curb migrant arrivals not only emboldens corrupt Libyans but also amplifies their deep-seated prejudice against black Africans. "The Libyans understood that if the E.U. doesn't want blacks to come, it means we are not valuable as humans," she tells TIME, cradling her newborn, in a shelter for trafficked women in Lagos, Nigeria. "The E.U. is essentially rewarding these militias for abusing us, for raping us, for killing us and for selling us."

The migrants who do make it across the Mediterranean are not free from the cycle of exploitation. On an autostrada in Puglia, southern Italy, last August, a van packed with Africans slammed headlong into a tomato truck and flipped across the meridian. Twelve of the migrant laborers, who had spent a grueling day working the harvest, died in the crash. It was the second such accident in two days. In total, 16 men-from Ghana, Guinea, Gambia, Nigeria, Mali, Morocco and Senegal-died that weekend.

They had been ensnared by an ancient Italian system of press-gang labor called caporalato that enables farmers to outsource their labor needs to middlemen for a set fee, avoiding payroll taxes, work-safety requirements and minimum-wage payments in the process. It is illegal, widespread and dominated by organized crime. A 2018 report commissioned by Italy's trade unions estimates that some 132,000 workers suffer from the most exploitative aspects of caporalato, including nonpayment of wages and physical abuse. Most are migrants from sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern Europe.

" Caporalato has been around forever, but the system really takes advantage of migrants because of their vulnerable status," says Yvan Sagnet, a 33-year-old antislavery activist from Cameroon who has been living in Italy since 2010. "They don't have papers, they don't know their rights, and they are desperate to earn money."

Sagnet would know-he was sucked into the caporalato system as a foreign student when a failed exam resulted in the loss of his university scholarship. A friend told him he could make money on the summer tomato harvest in Puglia, but when he arrived, he says, he was inducted into a system designed to extract the maximum amount of work for minimal pay.

The capo, or boss, told Sagnet he could make up to $33 a day filling crates with tomatoes. What he didn't mention was that the cost of transportation to the fields would be deducted from his wages, along with his water and his food. "At the end of the day, I was making $4.50. It wasn't work. It was slavery. But most people had no choice," says Sagnet.

A day after the second transport accident in Puglia, Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, who is also head of the far-right, anti-migrant League party, decried the Mafia's role in the region's exploitative labor practices. Then he blamed the migrants: "These episodes tell us that out-of-control immigration helps the Mafia. If there were no migrants desperate to be exploited, it would be more difficult for them to do business." Stopping migration, he said, would put a stop to organized crime. It would also mean the end of inexpensive tomato sauce, wine and olive oil, says Sagnet, pointing out that Italians aren't willing to work 16-hour days, or harvest tomatoes for $4 a crate.

"The problem isn't the Mafia or the migrants. It's the cost of cheap goods," he says. When retailers tell farmers they will only buy tomatoes for 8¢ a kilo, says Sagnet, the farmers can't afford to pay normal wages. But if the stores charge more, customers will go somewhere else. Sagnet, who now runs an antislavery organization called No Cap, for "no to caporalato, " says uber-competitive grocery stores are contributing to the abuse of migrant labor.

Sagnet estimates that the true retail cost of a kilo of tomatoes, including transport and processing, should be around $2.25. "If you go to the market and see them for 30¢, it means they used caporalato. There is no other way to get tomatoes that cheap." Sagnet estimates that 3 out of 5 items in every Italian's weekly food basket, including wine, cheese, fruit, vegetables and olive oil, are produced in part by unfair migrant labor.

It's not just Italians who benefit. The modern consumer's insatiable quest for $10 manicures, shiny new smartphones and cheap luxury foods comes at the cost of unfair labor. Everyday goods linked to the slave trade include cell phones, pet food, jewelry and canned tomatoes. The 2018 Global Slavery Index found that G-20 countries import some $354 billion worth of products at risk of being produced by modern slavery every year.

In Italy, Sagnet's organization is launching a certification process that will enable farmers to market their produce as slavery-free and local distributors to place certified products in grocery stores. Customers are already accustomed to paying slightly more for organic produce, he says. Now they will have the choice to buy bondage-free items as well. "Organic is important, but isn't it also important to know that there was no slavery involved in the making of the food you eat?"

European customers are also responsible for a different kind of exploitative trade. Of the 16,000 women who arrived in Italy from Libya from 2016 to 2017, an incredible 80% fell victim to sex trafficking, according to the IOM-destined for a life of sexual slavery in the streets and the brothels of Europe.

One such woman is Gladys. At age 22, she left Nigeria after an aunt's friend offered her a job in a hair salon in the faraway city of Turin, Italy. Her trafficker kept her locked in a Libyan brothel, she says, denying her food and drink until she agreed to service clients. In the end, she sold her virginity for a plastic jug of water.

Finally arriving in southern Italy on a smuggler's boat, she called the aunt's friend, who said the job was still waiting. She even offered a place to stay. But when Gladys arrived in Turin, the woman's warm phone demeanor disappeared. Gladys owed $22,530 for the trip, she was told, and would have to work it off walking the streets as a prostitute. "I went to her house for help, thinking I would find comfort in a fellow Nigerian," says Gladys bitterly. "Instead, she wanted to use me." Gladys had no money, no papers and no place to stay. She says she had no choice but to do what the woman demanded.

Across Italy, Nigerian women are slowly displacing the Eastern Europeans who once dominated the illicit sex industry. Most, like Gladys, are from Nigeria's impoverished rural southwest, where a generation of young people are seeking their fortunes abroad. Recruiters, often in the guise of concerned family friends, lure young women-and convince their parents-with promises of money to be made in Europe's hair salons, hotels and boutiques.

Once in Europe, the women are told that they owe anywhere from $20,000 to $60,000 to cover the cost of their journey. They are threatened with abuse, deportation or harm to their families back home if they don't pay. Once the debts are paid off, after three to five years of several $25 tricks a day, the trafficked women usually stay on in Europe to earn money on their own and perhaps return home with enough funds to buy a house, start a business or support their family. Often, says Okah-Donli of the Nigerian antitrafficking organization, the returnees become madams themselves, flaunting their wealth to lure new victims to Europe and perpetuating the cycle. That's what Gladys thinks happened to her aunt's friend in Turin.

Despite the threats from her madam, Gladys escaped as soon as she was able to skim a few hundred dollars from her daily earnings. But freedom was no better. Alone and terrified of being deported, Gladys reluctantly returned to what she knew best. Several months ago, she heard about a program in the northern Italian city of Asti that helps trafficking victims with job training, counseling and housing. But resources are few, and the organization, Progetto Integrazione Accoglienza Migranti (PIAM), has space for only 250 women. Gladys spent several months on a waiting list before the program could offer her shelter and counseling.

The need for more services is immense, says founder Princess Inyang Okokon, who was trafficked to Turin from Nigeria in 1999. Okokon estimates that there are 700 to 1,000 sex trafficking victims who need help in the Asti region alone. "Everyone talks about the problems of trafficking, but there is no discussion on what happens after a girl is trafficked," says Okokon.

It's not surprising that many trafficked women return to prostitution, she says. Jobs are limited in Italy, even for the women who have learned Italian or who have the right to stay. And few want to return to Nigeria, laden with debt and the stigma of what they have done. "It isn't a simple issue of them being economic migrants-no, they were trafficked here, so they can't just be sent back," Okokon says.

Some escape this cycle of modern slavery, but it's a fraught and complex process. After his final escape from his Libyan captors, Iabarot managed to scrape together enough money to purchase a place on a smuggler's boat. Within hours of departing, he was rounded up by the Libyan coast guard and sent back to a detention camp. Terrified of facing another round of torture and forced labor, Iabarot volunteered to return to Nigeria through an IOM repatriation program. A week later, on March 22, 2018, he and 148 other Nigerians landed in Lagos on a chartered plane. It was no small irony that Iabarot and his fellow Nigerians, many of them rescued from cases of indentured servitude, forced labor and outright slave auctions, were processed through the cargo terminal.

So far, more than 10,000 Nigerians have returned home through the aid agency's repatriation program. Each returnee is given a phone, a meal and the equivalent of $112 to get home. Once they are settled, they can apply for work training and small-business grants, but for most, homecoming is a bittersweet experience. "A lot of them took loans to pay the smugglers, or their families sold everything they had. So when they come back empty-handed like this, it's a challenge," says IOM's migration program manager in Lagos, Abrham Tamrat. Many end up trying to go back to Europe.

Yet putting a stop to this sector of modern slavery starts by stopping irregular migration, says Kara, the slavery economist. A 2016 IOM report found that 7 out of 10 migrants crossing from North Africa to Europe had experienced exploitation of some kind or another, including kidnapping for ransom, forced labor, illegal detention and sexual violence. As conditions in Libya deteriorate, the situation is likely to get even worse. In Europe, anti-migrant sentiment is driving those without papers deeper underground, where they are more vulnerable to exploitation.

By 2050, 40% of the world's poorest people will be living in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria, according to the 2018 Gates Foundation Goalkeepers report. If the right investments aren't made now, says Okokon, of the Italian anti-trafficking organization PIAM, even more people will risk the journey abroad. "If you really want to stop sex trafficking, give young Nigerians a reason to stay home. Invest in our youth. Give them jobs. If Nigeria is good for them, they won't risk their lives coming to Europe." At the same time, she adds, it's essential to open up more venues for legal migration. It is nearly impossible for young Africans with little means to come to Europe, yet there is clearly a demand for their labor. "Europe needs farmers, domestic workers, people to harvest. Africa has that." Soumahoro, the union representative in Italy, puts it more bluntly: "Humans are being sold because the embassies of Europe won't give visas to Africans."

As long as the opportunities for men and women like Iabarot are limited in their home countries, they will continue risking everything to find something else in Europe. Iabarot says he wouldn't go through Libya again, but he would consider leaving again by a different route. "I had to leave because there was nothing for me here. There still isn't," he says. "So what should I do?"

Contact us at letters@time.com.

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'It Was As if We Weren't Human.' Inside the Modern Slave Trade Trapping African Migrants

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By the time his Libyan captors branded his face, Sunday Iabarot had already run away twice and had been sold three times.The gnarled scar that covers most of the left side of his face appears to show a crude number 3. His jailer carved it into his cheek with a fire-heated knife, cutting and cauterizing at the same time.

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1 in 10 people in North Korea are forced into modern-day slavery. 2.6 million North Koreans are subjected to forced labor and exploitation by the state. Several defectors were interviewed (by The Walk Free Foundation) and many of them mentioned they had not been paid or their pay was subjected to state-held deductions. Even children are included in this labor. Punishment could include decreased food rations. Absence from work could also result in harsh punishment. Being absent regularly could result in being sent to a labor camp where they are subjected to hard labor for a minimum of six months. The Walk Free Foundation is working to end modern-day slavery worldwide.

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One in every 10 people living in North Korea are forced into modern slavery, used to prop up the repressive regime and keep its population under tight control.

According to the 2018 Global Slavery Index compiled by the Walk Free Foundation, more than 2.6 million people in North Korea are subjected to forced labor and exploitation by the state.

The foundation interviewed 50 defectors from North Korea, many of whom indicated they had not been paid or were subject to state-sanctioned pay deductions.

Walk Free Foundation's executive director of global research Fiona David told Business Insider that the data should be taken into account when engaging with North Korea.

One in every 10 people living in North Korea are forced into forms of slavery, which is used to prop up the repressive regime and keep the country's population under tight control, according to a new report.

The 2018 Global Slavery Index, compiled by the Walk Free Foundation, found that modern-day slavery is most prevalent in North Korea and other repressive regimes, though developed nations also played a role by importing $354 billion worth of goods produced as a result of forced labor.

According to the report, more than 2.6 million out of North Korea's 25 million inhabitants are subjected to modern slavery, the highest proportion of a single country's population worldwide. Most were forced to work with no guarantee of compensation.

Globally, the report estimates some 40.3 million people are trapped in modern slave conditions, which are broadly defined as forced labor, debt bondage, forced marriage, slavery and "slavery-like practices," and human trafficking.

The Walk Free Foundation is an Australia-based organization dedicated to monitoring and ending various forms of slavery worldwide and spurring global action to that effect. It was founded by the billionaire Australian mining mogul Andrew Forrest.

Defectors say North Korea forces its people to work, often without pay

The regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un uses several different methods to impose slavery on its people.

The Walk Free Foundation interviewed 50 North Korean defectors - 27 women and 23 men - who left the North sometime between 2011 and 2016. All described work in North Korea as centrally organized by the ruling party, and many indicated they had either not been paid, or their pay was subjected to state-held deductions.

Some interviewees reported that children and adults were forced to work unpaid through "communal labor" in agriculture or construction. Adults were sometimes forced to work 70 to 100 days in a row, and faced punishment or decreased food rations if they disobeyed orders.

Defectors also described labor training camps - essentially state-run prisons - where citizens who were unemployed for more than 15 days were sent to perform hard labor, usually for a minimum of six months.

Even absence from work is not permitted, and could result in harsh punishment.

"If you are absent without an excuse, you are detained in a labour training camp," a male defector said, according to the report.

Two defectors spoke of "shock brigades" also known as "stormtroopers" - groups of typically very poor men and women who were forced to perform heavy labor, often in construction, for years at a time.

One female defector said her monthly work salary was used to fund forced labour. "I did not receive compensation," she said. "From my workplace, they were taking money to support shock brigades and as a result of deducting such an amount from our salaries we did not receive any money."

The number of people subjected to forms of slavery in North Korea has more than doubled

The number of slaves in North Korea has jumped from 1.1 million to more than 2.6 million.

The jump in numbers is largely due to new data available through a collaboration with the UN's International Labour Organization (ILO) Committee of Experts, along with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Walk Free Foundation's executive director of global research Fiona David told Business Insider in an email.

The ILO took special interest in cases involving state-imposed forced labor, and applied newfound data to validated sources, David said, resulting in larger numbers than previously known.

The Walk Free Foundation has called on governments and businesses to prioritize human-rights when engaging with repressive regimes, particularly in light of President Donald Trump's summit with Kim Jong Un in June.

David emphasized how important it is for countries to adhere to financial and trade restrictions imposed on North Korea.

"Any trade, business or investment conducted with repressive regimes should be closely monitored to ensure it is not contributing to or benefiting from modern slavery," he said.

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1 in 10 North Koreans are forced into modern day slavery, human-rights study estimates

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One out of every 10 people living in North Korea are forced into slavery, used to prop up the repressive regime and keep its population under tight control. According to the 2018 Global Slavery Index, more than 2.6 million North Koreans are subjected to forced labor and exploitation by the state.

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There is a "free or almost free Black work force." Most prisoners at Louisiana Angloa prison which used to be a former slave plantation, pick cotton. They are watched by people on horseback. Many states also trade prisoners throughout the country.

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Oct 3 (Reuters) - A U.N.-appointed panel issued a report last week documenting "shocking" violations of basic human rights and pointing to "staggering" racial disparities that place the U.S. criminal justice system in a singular category on the world stage.

Practices that are routine in U.S. prisons, like shackling women during childbirth and unpaid forced labor, are an "affront to human dignity," and represent the "worst version of a racist criminal legal system" that perpetuates slavery to the present day, according to the U.N. report, which was published on Sept. 28.

The group of three experts condemned other rights violations, expressing alarm that solitary confinement, false arrests and disenfranchisement due to arrest have now become "generalized practice" in the U.S. They called for major reforms and made numerous specific policy recommendations, including withdrawing armed officers from routine traffic enforcement and from schools.

The panel included Yvonne Mokgoro, a former justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa and chairperson of the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund; Juan Mendez, a human rights law professor at the American University-Washington College of Law and former U.N. Special Rapporteur on torture and inhuman treatment; and Tracie Keesee, a former police veteran and administrator who is now president at the Center For Policing Equity. The report was based on an investigation that included visits between April and May to detention centers in Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis and New York, and testimony from officials and 133 affected individuals.

"We reject the 'bad apple' theory," and recognize "evidence suggesting that the abusive behavior of some individual police officers is part of a broader and menacing pattern," said Mendez in a Sep. 28 announcement.

The U.S. diplomatic mission in Geneva, which represents the U.S. in international organizations and treaties, didn't respond to a request for comment.

Besides the horrific nature of the practices documented, perhaps the most striking aspects of the report are the stark racial disparities among the subjects of the worst rights violations, including practices that are rarely documented in comparable countries.

In other words, the U.N. report shows not only that the U.S. criminal justice system is pervaded by certain uniquely inhumane practices, but also that the worst of those abuses are often reserved for non-white Americans - and especially Black people. That dynamic is a clear reflection of systemic discrimination and other legacies of our history of slavery and legalized apartheid, as the panel put it.

The U.S. "is the only country in the world that sentences children to life without parole," for example, the panel wrote in the report. Worse still, data shows that 62% of juveniles serving life without parole are of African descent.

Those kinds of disparities also are reflected in the available data about virtually all of the most appalling rights abuses, including mistreatment of pregnant women, use of "incommunicado detention" - false arrests that are not officially acknowledged, often accompanied by other ill treatment - and forced, unpaid labor.

Experts wrote that they were "astonished" to see that access to a "free or almost free Black work force" exists to this day. Most of the prisoners who pick cotton at Louisiana's Angola prison, a former slave plantation, are Black, and "under the watch of white 'freemen' on horseback," the panel observed.

Representatives at the Louisiana State Penitentiary didn't respond to my request for comment.

Louisiana's prison population is about 66% Black, even though Black residents only account for 32% of overall population, according to the Prison Policy Initiative.

Although it isn't noted in the U.N. report, Louisiana officials also have a practice of deliberately keeping people in jail well past their release dates. And many states still trade prisoners throughout the country - much like the convict leasing system that partly replaced slave labor after the Emancipation Proclamation.

Authorities and business-people who support Louisiana's system of forced labor have repeatedly sought to justify the practice with essentially the same "necessary evil" arguments made two hundred years ago by plantation owners, as legal scholar Michele Goodwin observed in a 2019 law review article on mass incarceration and "modern slavery." Goodwin is a professor at the University of California, Irvine School of Law.

The same dynamics persist with regard to other patterns documented by the U.N. panel.

Black women prisoners represent 34% of all incarcerated women and are more likely to be restrained and shackled than their white counterparts, the panel wrote.

A U.N. spokesperson told Reuters that the panel became aware of "several" cases where pregnant women lost their babies due to being shackled, and that all involved Black women.

The U.N. report also discussed "incommunicado detention," or arrests made without providing access to a lawyer or even information about the whereabouts of the detainee - another egregious category of rights violations that reflects similar disparities.

The panel singled out a "generalized practice" at Homan Square police facility in Chicago between 2004 and 2015, citing news reports that revealed an off-the-books warehouse that police officers used for interrogation and incommunicado detention.

The Chicago Police Department has said that the claims about the facility were inaccurate.

Of the thousands detained at the facility over a decade, 82% were Black, according to a news report in The Guardian in August 2015, which the U.N. panel relied on. Just two of the 22 individuals who described being held there said they were actually allowed to call relatives and attorneys - and both were white.

The report is yet another affirmation of how deeply systemic racism and anti-Blackness runs in our criminal justice system, and of the urgent, continuing need for institutional changes.

Reporting by Hassan Kanu; editing by Leigh Jones

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Opinions expressed are those of the author. They do not reflect the views of Reuters News, which, under the Trust Principles, is committed to integrity, independence, and freedom from bias.

Hassan Kanu writes about access to justice, race, and equality under law. Kanu, who was born in Sierra Leone and grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland, worked in public interest law after graduating from Duke University School of Law. After that, he spent five years reporting on mostly employment law. He lives in Washington, D.C. Reach Kanu at hassan.kanu@thomsonreuters.com

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US prisons rife with human rights abuses, especially against Black people, UN says

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A U.N.-appointed panel issued a report last week documenting "shocking" violations of basic human rights and pointing to "staggering" racial disparities that place the U.S. criminal justice system in a singular category on the world stage.

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Prisoners are used as free labor in numerous states while being paid only pennies in other states. This was exploited right after slavery was abolished, people used this law to continue exploiting Black people in America during the Jim Crow era.

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Captive Labor: Exploitation of Incarcerated Workers | ACLU

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We examined the injustices of prison labor nationwide — and lay the foundation for a more equitable path forward.

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" 4.8 people out of every 1,000 in the region in forced marriage." This shows how common of a thing it would be for young girls being forced into marriage in this region. More than 85% is forced into marriage by family pressure, and many of these girls are 16 years or younger. Children these ages are not even able to make a legal decision which leads them to be forced. It is also common for these girls to be forced in marriage to their own family members.

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Fifty million people were living in modern slavery in 2021, according to the latest Global Estimates of Modern Slavery. Of these people, 28 million were in forced labour and 22 million were trapped in forced marriage.

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50 million people worldwide in modern slavery

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Latest estimates show that forced labour and forced marriage have increased significantly in the last five years, according to the International Labour Organization, Walk Free and the International Organisation for Migration.

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A sex trafficking operation was caught and disassembled in Little Rock, Arkansas. The article specifically focuses on the services and assistance that the local and state government is providing for the victims.

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Arkansas State Police and other agencies across the state took part in a sex trafficking operation in Little Rock last month, leading to multiple arrests and victims being rehabilitated.

ASP said in a news release that the anti-human trafficking event consisted of law enforcement and victim service providers from around the state working together to combat human trafficking, recover victims, and make our communities safer.

The operation consisted of federal, state, local, and non-government organizations including the Arkansas Attorney General's Office, the Little Rock Police Department, Department of Homeland Security Investigations, Department of Finance and Administration, Harrison Police Department, Cabot Police Department, the Arkansas Fusion Center, along with victim advocates from the Regional Intervention of Sexual Exploitation "RISE," The Genesis Project, the Hub of Hope, Into the Light, Paws for Justice, Children's Protection Center and the NWA Forensic Nurse Team.

"It is important that we take a multidisciplinary and victim-centered approach to combat human trafficking together," said ASP Director Colonel Mike Hagar.

During the one-day operation, ten adult females and two minor females were contacted and offered victim services, including food, lodging, onsite medical services, counseling, therapy, and drug rehabilitation, ASP said.

ASP stated that five of the adult females accepted assistance and the minors were taken into protective custody and released to the Department of Human Services. Additionally, ten adult males were contacted and detained as part of the investigation.

State police said that details could be released due to this being an ongoing investigation. However, they said that the issue of human trafficking continues to be a problem in Arkansas and across the United States and law enforcement will continue to take it seriously.

"These efforts will go a long way toward making Arkansas an intolerable environment for human trafficking," said Col. Hagar. "The Arkansas law enforcement community is committed to entering the dark world of human trafficking with compassion so that we can pull victims into the light.

Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed an executive order in February making combating human trafficking one of the hallmarks of her administration and challenged each state agency to do their part.

"As a result, the ASP Criminal Investigation Division committed to making bold strides to make Governor Sanders' vision a reality," said Major Stacie Rhoads, CID commander. "If not us, who?"

Anyone with information on human trafficking or suspect human trafficking is occurring in your area, is asked to call the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-8888.

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Arkansas law enforcement agencies unite to combat human trafficking in Little Rock operati

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Arkansas State Police and other agencies across the state took part in a sex trafficking operation in Little Rock last month.