Global slavery includes human trafficking, debt bondage, forced labor, commercial sexual exploitation of children, and organ trafficking. Despite its official abolishment within the international community, global slavery continues to thrive in many parts of the world. The various types of slavery do not restrain themselves in a mutual exclusive manner; rather, they transcend and merge to create inter-connectedness within the illegal world of slavery. For instance, a person that is trafficked for the purpose of labor -- domestic or forced -- can also become sexually exploited and prostituted. This thesis discusses the nature and scope of the different faces of contemporary slavery, including human trafficking, debt bondage, and the sex tourism industry. While pervasive worldwide, human trafficking remains a major problem, especially in Central and Eastern Europe, the former republics of the Soviet Union, and Asia. Higher levels of unemployment, the demand for "exotic" women and the existence of well-organized trafficking routes and international criminal organizations has led to the development of this slavery. In short, human trafficking is said to exist in virtually every country of the world. The abundance of beautiful beaches and resorts, as well as the supply of cheap women and children in Southeast Asia and Latin America has led to a thriving sex tourism industry. In Central Asia and Africa, a high demand for manual labor, as well as certain religious and cultural factors, has given rise to the largest type of slavery in the world: debt bondage. An empirical aggregate-level analysis using OLS regression is performed to examine why certain countries have more indigenous people (native to that country) who become enslaved than others. Overall, a lack of human development proves to be a major factor in determining the number of enslaved peoples across countries.

This research examines the impacts and implications of the Philippine labor export migration policy on the human rights conditions of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) in Kuwait, Hungary, and Poland with the specific objectives of determining the adequacy of legal protections provided by the policy. Through the use of a mixed-methods approach, which included qualitative field interviews and quantitative analysis, along with policy examination and an interdisciplinary approach, this research has uncovered alarming patterns of “alienation” and “systematic precarization” of migrant workers. This has resulted in the deterioration of the employment conditions of OFWs. The study, as extensively discussed in Chapters 6 and 7, has shown that the precarization of migrant workers is continuously occurring in Central Europe, specifically in Hungary and Poland. Meanwhile, OFWs in both contexts, Kuwait and Central Europe, have been subjected to highly exploitative and oppressive working conditions comparable to historical servitude and state-induced debt bondage. Notwithstanding the Philippine labor export migration law (RA 10022) designed to protect OFWs, this study has found that it falls short of providing complete protective measures, especially with regard to abusive treatment, systematic alienation, and precarization of migrant workers. The study also shows that OFWs are trapped in a vicious cycle, where the breakdown of employee-employer relationships and enslavement-like treatment result in a violent crackdown on their fundamental rights, leading to their unfortunate fate. Therefore, there is an urgent need for policy reforms to improve the legal dimension of OFWs’ protection abroad. This calls for reconsidering the Philippine labor export migration policy absorbed toward the promotion of just, fair, and inclusive international and national labor migration regulation to meet the challenges posed by neoliberal policies.