For the people having the intellectual and human sensibility and dignity:
For the moment the International Labor Organization says that there are more than 40,000 slaves in Brasile (about 45% in the Fishing industry, about 90% can not write). .
http://www.ilo.org/
Quote: The chief coordinator of this project, Patricia Audi, is far better equipped than myself to discuss the details of this project so I shall not enter into more details at this time. However, it is important to place the issue of Brazilian slave labor in its wider international context. Is this a global problem? Does slavery and forced labor exist throughout the world today? If so, why? Is poverty the main factor to explain it and what can be done about it? What
approaches are needed to root out once and for all an unacceptable scourge of our modern society?
Regrettably, forced labor and slavery are global problems today. They are not relics of a bygone age. They do not survive in a few pockets in remote and isolated parts of developing countries. There are problems of forced labor in all continents in both developing and developed countries, in more open and in more closed societies. It would be rash to speculate as to the exact numbers affected. One author, a well-known author called Kevin Bales, who has a book in ten languages, now, has given a figure of twenty seven million slaves in the world today. This can only be a very rough estimate. At a conference, a very large conference, attended by over one thousand people on trafficking, at the European union in Brussels last week, reference was made to several millions of persons, mainly young women and children being trafficked into slavery for sexual or for labor exploitation. But such figures, I repeat, can at this time only be rough estimates. Forced labor is of its essence a largely clandestine and hidden phenomenon. Who are the victims? The victims, throughout the world, are vulnerable and powerless people often without identity documents or without organizations to represent them. The exploiters may be landlords, feudal landlords, they can be trafficking syndicates and intermediaries linked to organized crime. The agents who force labor, those responsible, may be quite humble individuals, with limited economic resources, such as the gatos or empreiteiros, such a well-known feature of Brazil’s rural labor markets. But the agents can also be highly sophisticated enterprises involved in operations worth billions of dollars.