[JURIST] The International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition was celebrated Sunday, coinciding with the International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-2024) [official website]. Irina Bokova, Director-General of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) [official website] declared [press release] that the day “is both a tribute to every victim and their resistance against slavery and a call for truth, justice and dialogue between peoples.” Bokova said:

Faced with the permanent dangers of racism and extremism, UNESCO is taking action to ensure that memory and history be forces for dialogue, tolerance and mutual understanding. By promoting the diversity inherent in nations, through the experience of slavery and the slave trade, we can better understand the world’s diversity and find the road to peace.

Bokova stated that through education about the slave trade the world can fight against racism and discrimination and promote dignity for people of African descent.

Mauritania, the last country to abolish slavery in 1981, adopted [JURIST report] harsher slavery laws last week, doubling prison terms for slavery convictions, declaring slavery a crime against humanity, and creating tribunals to handle slavery prosecution cases. However, throughout the world approximately 36 million people in the world live in a form of modern slavery [JURIST report], the Global Slavery Index (GSI) [advocacy website] reported in November. For the purposes of the study, GSI defined modern slavery as involving “one person possessing or controlling another person in such as a way as to significantly deprive that person of their individual liberty, with the intention of exploiting that person through their use, management, profit, transfer or disposal.” The data found within the 2014 report was based on random sampling surveys, which GSI claims used an improved methodology to uncover statistics of modern slavery that have been previously unknown. The report also provided an analysis of how governments are working to eliminate acts of modern slavery within their countries and which nations are vulnerable to continued human rights violations. GSI found that countries with government instability and high levels of prejudice have the highest levels of modern slavery and are the most vulnerable.