**3.4 RQ4: What are the Nature, Forms, and Causes of Sexual Slavery and Reproductive Exploitation of Enslaved Women?**

### *3.4.1 Nature of sexual slavery*

Sexual slavery and the reproductive exploitation of enslaved women and girls are forms of human rights abuses. Some of the major societal and personal level factors sustaining these criminal activities are displacement (due to war and natural disaster), unstable family conditions or family rejection, insecurity, political instability, poverty, racism, and the legacy of colonialism, gender inequality, addictions, and mental health issues. Other factors include homelessness, being in the foster care system, the experience of neglect and domestic violence, previous experience of marginalization and discrimination, and identifying as LGBT.

The exploitation of enslaved persons includes the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor or services, slavery, or practices such as slavery, servitude or the removal of organs, lack of educational opportunities, high unemployment rate, lack of social and health care, as well as the lack of timely and effective protection of persons from violence and discrimination.

These could be categorized as traditional enslavement and modern-day slavery.



*Slaves' disembarkation during the Trans–Atlantic slave trade.*

*Twenty-First Century Slavery: A Psychosocial Exploration of Human Trafficking, Migrant… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.113170*


*Source: Data was culled from Sigismund Koelle's Linguistic Inventory of 144 informants who were interviewed about the means of their enslavement.*

#### **Table 4.**

*Enslavement methods identified by Koelle's informants [40].*

#### **3.5 Forms and causes of traditional enslavement**

For Africans, the perpetuation of the traditional forms of exploitation of enslaved women, girls, boys, and children was fueled by the gun-slave cycle for centuries. The rationale for the Europeans' engagement in slave trading was the need for manpower to work on their expanded plantation economies in South and Central America to satisfy the increasing taste in Europe for colonial goods, such as tobacco and sugar.

Forms of traditional slavery include the following:


During World War II and the second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), the Japanese government needed soldiers, laborers, and "comfort women," and they kidnapped approximately 200,000 Chinese, Korean, and Filipino women from impoverished backgrounds and coercively forced them into sexual slavery in Japanese military "comfort stations" [41, 42]. The comfort women were unpaid and forced to serve as many as 60 soldiers in 1 day, The "comfort women" who refused to have sex with the Japanese soldiers were raped and beaten. These women had syphilis, sexually transmitted diseases, post-traumatic stress disorders, and severe trauma [42–44].

*Twenty-First Century Slavery: A Psychosocial Exploration of Human Trafficking, Migrant… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.113170*

c. *Loss of bodily autonomy and reproductive abilities:* The slave woman or girl is voiceless and has lost total control of her personality, body, and reproduction to her master or mistress. The exploitation of a slave's reproductive ability dates back to the biblical account of Sarah's, Rachel's (Gen 30:3–7), and Leah's servants who were used as reproductive entities for their masters, Hagar, Bilhah (Gen 29:29; 46:25) and Zilpah (Genesis 30:9) were slaves given to their husbands to bear children. Hagar was an Egyptian slave of Sarah whom she as a wife to bear him a child. - Ishmael,

*After Jacob had fathered six sons by his wife Leah, Rachel gave her servant Bilhah to Jacob as a wife, and Leah gave her servant Zilpah to be married to Jacob as well. Each servant bore Jacob two sons. Dan was Jacob's fifth son, and the first son born by Jacob to Rachel's servant Bilhah (see Gen. 30:1–6).*


#### **3.6 Forms and causes of modern-day slavery and enslavement**

Modern-day slavery is a complex global health problem, an affront to human dignity, and a violation of core human rights [50, 51].

According to the latest global estimates of modern slavery by Walk Free [52], the International Labor Organization [53] and the International Organization for Migration [54, 55] about 49.6 million people are currently trapped in modern-day slavery. Africa accounts for about 9.2 million people trapped in modern-day slavery [56].

The victims of modern slavery are usually undocumented immigrants, runaway and homeless youth, victims of trauma and abuse, refugees, and impoverished individuals. Many of these people are in search of a better, better, happier life elsewhere in view of the lack of alternatives within their community. These sometimes make them easy targets of human trafficking, migrant smuggling, and enslavement.

Categories of modern-day slavery are diverse and entail the following:


There are varied forms of human trafficking:


contemporary times. The purpose of this form of human trafficking is the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, or receipt of persons solely for sexual slavery through coercive abusive and violent means. Women and girls account for 99% of victims in the commercial sex industry. Types of CSEA&C include prostitution, child sex trafficking, child sex tourism, child pornography, or other forms of transactional sex with adults or children. Commercial sexual exploitation of children is a form of child sexual abuse by adults with remuneration in cash or in kind to the child or to a third person or persons. Trafficked children are treated as sexual and commercial objects.

