Walk Free was estab­lished over a decade ago after Found­ing Direc­tor, Grace For­rest spent time liv­ing and work­ing in Nepal at a res­cue home for chil­dren who had been sub­ject­ed to var­i­ous forms of exploita­tion. It was there that Grace first wit­nessed the extent of the extreme and con­tin­ued com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion of human beings, and soon learnt that mod­ern slav­ery is one of the most prof­itable forms of organ­ised crime in the world, con­tin­u­ing to under­pin our glob­al economy.

At the end of that same year, Walk Free was estab­lished to address the root caus­es of mod­ern slav­ery and cre­ate sys­tems lev­el change.

Now for over a decade, Walk Free has stud­ied the num­ber of peo­ple liv­ing in mod­ern slav­ery around the world. Through each edi­tion of the Glob­al Slav­ery Index, our under­stand­ing of the prob­lem has deep­ened, our esti­mates have become more pre­cise, and our advo­ca­cy has catal­ysed glob­al efforts.