**3.2 RQ2: What is the status of Africans in modern-day slavery and elements of human trafficking?**

Internationally, many Africans have been trapped in the modern slave markets while trying to escape poverty or insecurity, improve their socioeconomic status, and support their families [24, 25]. Many of the trapped victims often experience violent threats, rape, forced and inescapable debt, withholding of their travel documents (international passport), and the threat of deportation. Human trafficking, migrant smuggling, and enslavement violate the rights to life, equality, dignity, and security; the right to health; the right to freedom of movement; freedom from violence and abuse; and the right to be recognized as a person before the law. The basic elements of human trafficking as identified by Winterdyk J, Perrin and Reichel [26] are highlighted in the table below. This is in line with the National Human Trafficking Resource Center (NHTRC), International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the TVPA's Action-Means-Purpose or A-M-P Model which help to determine whether force, fraud, or coercion was present, and indicating non-consensual encounter (**Table 1**).
