The NGO FairWork supports support victims and potential victims of exploitation in their own languages, with legal support, referral shelter and other essential aid. Their work is made possible through a grant from the UN Voluntary Fund for the Victims of Contemporary Forms of Slavery.

The fight against all forms of slavery has turned more difficult under the pandemic, but anti-slavery activist Brahim Ramadhane won’t stop fighting. “I do this because I belong to this community of ex-slaves and I will give up my life, all of my life, for this fight.”

Leonardo Sakamoto is a Brazilian journalist and member of the Board of Trustees for the UN Voluntary Fund on Contemporary Forms of Slavery, who has spent the last 20 years fighting slavery and labour exploitation. He says it was his journalism that led him to become a human rights anti-slavery activist.

The trafficking of human beings is one of the world’s most lucrative businesses, generating billions of dollars while destroying millions of lives. OHCHR’s UN Fund for Contemporary Forms of Slavery provides legal, social and psychological assistance to thousands of people subjected to human trafficking for forced labour and sexual exploitation.

Brothers Said and Yarg both inherited the status of ‘slave’. They had no choice but to obey their master’s orders and were not allowed to go to school. They were also frequently subject to beatings. They were eventually able to escape and with the assistance of two anti-slavery organisations, they have been able to pursue legal action against their former master and begin their schooling.