Melissa Pritchard in WQ: Today, more human beings suffer enslavement than during the three and a ha

Today, more human beings suffer enslavement than during the three and a half centuries of the transatlantic slave trade.
The International Labor Organization, a United Nations agency focused on labor rights, recently—and some would say conservatively—raised its worldwide estimate of the number of slaves from 12 million to nearly 21 million human beings, individuals unable to escape conditions of forced labor, bonded labor, slavery, and trafficking. Africa and the Asia-Pacific region together account for the largest number, close to 15 million people, but slavery is epidemic around the world and increasing.