Cicero said: «Freedom suppressed  again regained bites with keener fangs than freedom never endangered».

Modern slavery refers to situations where one person has taken away another person’s freedom — their freedom to control their body, their freedom to choose to refuse certain work or to stop working — so that they can be exploited. Freedom is taken away by threats, violence, coercion, abuse of power and deception. The net result is that a person cannot refuse or leave the situation.

Slavery has existed in different forms since ancient times. Despite being outlawed in most countries and the abolitionist movement in the 1800s, the crime persists in ways more pervasive and complex than ever.

The 1926 Slavery Convention or the Convention to Suppress the Slave Trade and Slavery was an international treaty created under the auspices of the League of Nations and first signed on 25 September 1926 [1]. The objective of the Convention was to confirm and advance the suppression of slavery and the slave trade. Ninety-nine countries have signed, acceded to, ratified, succeeded to or otherwise committed to participation in the Convention (as amended) and its subsequent Protocol. The parties committed themselves to the total suppression of slavery in all its forms and of the slave trade by land and sea. The last country to abolish slavery was the African state of Mauritania, where a 1981 presidential decree abolished the practice.

The term «slavery» itself is enshrined in the Oxford dictionary as: slavery is the system by which people are owned by other people as slaves [2].

Different countries use different legal terminologies, but «modern slavery» includes the crimes of human trafficking, slavery and slavery like practices such as servitude, forced labour, forced or servile marriage, the sale and exploitation of children, and debt bondage.

According to the UN Secretary-General's message of December 2, 2015 on the occasion of the International day for the abolition of slavery, there are approximately 21 million people in the world today in slavery [3]. The author of the message notes that it is difficult to collect accurate statistics.

So, according to the world slavery index for 2016, more than 40 million people were in slavery [4]. 71% of them are women and 29% are men (Figure 1).

Figure 1

Countries where forced labor was recorded most of all were: Iran, Cambodia, Pakistan, Southern Sudan, Mauritania, Afghanistan, Сentral African Republic, Burundi, Eritrea, North Korea [5]. In North Korea, more than 10% of the country's population (2.64 million of the 25 million inhabitants) are forced into forced labor by the state. In Russia, according to Walk Free Foundation, there are 794 thousand slaves [6]. This is a small indicator. Russia ranks only 64th in the overall list.

According to the statistics presented by BBC modern slavery differs from historical slavery in several ways:

1. There are more slaves than ever before, but they are a smaller proportion of the human race

2. No-one seriously defends slavery any more

3. Slavery is illegal everywhere and so requires corruption and crime to continue. The power of the slave owner is always subject to the power of the state; slavery can only continue to exist if governments permit it to, and some writers claim that government corruption is a leading cause of the persistence of slavery

4. Slaves are cheaper than ever and can generate high economic returns. Modern slavery is very cheap.

5. No industry depends on slavery in the way that the plantations did in the times of the Atlantic slave trade.

Nowadays slavery doesn't only come in the obvious form in which one person owns another person (which is traditionally called «chattel slavery). Other practices that amount to slavery are:

1. Bonded labour or debt bondage — this is when a person's work is the security for a debt — effectively the person has not been sold, but they are on «a long lease» which they cannot bring to an end, and so cannot leave their «employer».

2. Serfdom – this is when a person has to live and work for another on the other's land.

3. Child slavery – the transfer of a young person (under 18) to another person so that the young person can be exploited

4. Marital and sexual slavery – forced marriage, including selling wives, forced prostitution[7].

According to the global index, 22 % use sexual exploitation; 10 % use state exploitation; and 68 % other forms of forced labour (Figure 2)[4].

Figure 2

It must be pointed out that slaves are used for labor purposes in Russia. There is an acute problem with migrant workers. In 2003 ILO (International Labour Organization) experts organized surveys among migrants in some of Russian cities. The number of migrant workers in Russia was estimated from 3.5 to 5 million. Surveys showed that 24% of them were forced to work for free, 20% had limited freedom of movement, 21% were threatened and blackmailed by the employer (Figure 3).

Figure 3

Moreover here are known examples of the use of slave labor of homeless people in Russia. For instance, the gang of Alexander Kungurtsev – a criminal group that hunted in the 1990s, the production of alcoholic beverages using slave labor and murder in the Tyumen region. At the head of a gang there was a Manager of a farm in the village of Uporovo of the Tyumen region Alexander Yuryevich Kungurtsev. The brewery was established on the basis of the Kungurtsev farm where cheap labor force was used — the homeless. As a rule, homeless workers were paid with their own products — beer. For non-performance the workers were beaten by feet and brought to death [8].

There is other statistics, illustrating the use of homeless people in Moscow. According to the interview with the representative of the organization for the emancipation of slaves «Alternatives», 40% of the slaves are among those who live on the streets of Moscow, and the remaining 60% are fraudsters [11].

Furthermore slave labour of prisoners and former prisoners is widely used nowadays. The exploitation of prisoners labour was so beneficial that a system was being created to facilitate their return to the colonies and prisons, rather than their correction [9].

The situation with slavery is particularly acute according to statistics in Chechnya, Krasnodar Krai and the Far East. According to researchers today in Russia you can buy a man for only 15 thousand rubles and for 150 thousand rubles – a girl [12].

There are some figures that show the situation with slaves that from the point of view of the law enforcement agencies of the Russian Federation. There are only few cases where people were brought up to court for articles related to slavery [10]. In 2016 for kidnapping sentenced 281 people, for unlawful deprivation of liberty – 344 people, for  human trafficking  – 25 people, for use of slave labor – 8 people (Table 1).

Table 1

In conclusion it must be said that the slavery is growing besides of multiple international agreements and internal control. There is more help for slaves is given by from nongovermental organizations, but not goverments. These organizations take look for such victums, deal with statistics and assist with human rehabilitation. But such activities are difficult to perform without any financial support.

Summarizing the idea of slavery we can suggest the followings urgent actions:

1. Create a state organization, which help people, who got in dependence from other people. There should be a responsible official person to control this sphere.
2. Stop denying that slavery does not exist. It is not a past, it is reality in the world we live now. For example, the position of homeless can be worse: they do not only live in the street, but also give earned donation to their «lords».
3. Tell the police, if you know, that someone is being in cativity. In Russia over few thousands of people become missing. A lot of them are turned into slavery. It could be someone’s mother, grandmother, father, children and etc.
4. Change your attitude to prostitutes and migrants, because not all of them «work» legally and willingly. We must blame «slavery» like phenomenon and understand victims.
5. Do not trust in unreal promises: we cannot become top-model for one day, for instance.

Also, it is vital to make amendment into Criminal code. There must be a unique article dealing with slavery, which brings together existing articles now.