Swiss voters have rejected by a wide margin a proposal to introduce a guaranteed basic income for everyone living in the wealthy country after an uneasy debate about the future of work at a time of increasing automation.
London: Almost 46 million people are living as slaves globally with the greatest number in India but the highest prevalence of slavery in North Korea, according to the third Global Slavery Index released on Tuesday.
The index, by Australia-based human rights group Walk Free Foundation, increased its estimate of people born into servitude, trafficked for sex work, or trapped in debt bondage or forced labour to 45.8 million from 35.8 million in 2014. Andrew Forrest, founder of Walk Free, said the rise of nearly 30% was due to better data collection, although he feared the situation was getting worse with global displacement and migration increasing vulnerability to all forms of slavery.
But Forrest said a lack of hard data on slavery in the past had held back efforts to tackle this hidden crime and it was important to draw a “sand in the line” measurement to drive action. He challenged critics to produce an alternative.
The United Nation’s International Labour Organization estimates 21 million people globally are victims of forced labour but this does not take into account all forms of slavery. “Without measurement you don’t have effective management and there’s no way to lead the world away from slavery,” he said. “We want this index to be a call to action. I have not yet seen the government or the business reaction that we need to drive down slavery although it is on its way,” said Forrest, adding he had made efforts to ensure the supply chain of his mining company Fortescue Metals Group was slave free.
Forrest said the Global Slavery Index aims to measure the prevalence of slavery in the 167 most populous countries as well as the level of vulnerability of people to enslavement and strength of government efforts to combat this. The 2016 index again found Asia, which provides low-skilled labour in global supply chains producing clothing, food and technology, accounted for two-thirds of the people in slavery.
About 58% of people living in slavery are in five countries – India, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Uzbekistan. However the countries with the highest proportion of their population enslaved were North Korea, Uzbekistan, Cambodia, India and Qatar. The governments taking the least action to tackle slavery were listed as North Korea, Iran, Eritrea, Equatorial Guinea, and Hong Kong. By contrast the governments taking most action were the Netherlands, the United States, Britain, Sweden and Australia.
While Europe has the lowest regional prevalence of slavery, Walk Free said it was a source and destination for forced labour and sexual exploitation. The impact of a mass influx of migrants and refugees fleeing conflicts and poverty has yet to be seen. Forrest said India, while it had the highest number of slaves, deserved credit for starting to address this although surveys suggested domestic work, construction, farming, manual labour and the sex industry were still sectors of concern.
Forrest called on governments and companies to take action. “This is not AIDS or malaria. We have caused slavery and because it’s a human condition we can fix it,” he said.
Australian scientists today claimed to have unearthed a fragment of the world’s oldest known ground-edge axe, created up to 49,000 years ago, around the time humans first arrived on the continent. The latest discovery, about the size of a thumbnail, was made by Archaeologists of Australian National University (ANU) in Western Australia’s remote Kimberley region.
Archaeologists clashed at a conference in Egypt on Sunday, over a theory that secret burial chambers could be hidden behind the walls of King Tutankhamun’s tomb.
The survey asked students about their expectations as well like their background before entering an IIT, their political and religious beliefs and their plans after graduation. Inspired by Harvard Crimson’s Freshmen Survey, 254 of the freshers participated in the survey and their responses show the amount of money and work that goes into finally getting through the premiere institute .
Mumbai: Versova Resident Volunteers (VRV), an organisation that has been running a citizen-led campaign — Clean Up Versova Rock Beach set an example on Sunday on how a lot can be achieved when like-minded people come together. Starting at 7am, around 300 of them collected a whopping 87,000 kg of garbage from Versova beach, thus ridding it of a total of 1.45 lakh kg of trash in three days.
Former chief minister Ashok Gehlot accused the BJP government in Rajasthan of trying to wipe out “the creator of modern India” from history after reports that the country’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was removed from a school textbook.