EVIDENCE ON THE SCALE OF THE PROBLEM

An esti­mat­ed 850 mil­lion peo­ple around the world lack offi­cial doc­u­men­ta­tion, dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly affect­ing dis­ad­van­taged groups includ­ing women, younger peo­ple, less edu­cat­ed peo­ple, rur­al dwellers, migrants, refugees and those liv­ing in pover­ty. There are sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences in access to doc­u­men­ta­tion among the focus coun­tries. For exam­ple, 96 per­cent of chil­dren under five are reg­is­tered at birth in Brazil, com­pared to 65 per­cent in Kenya and 77 per­cent in Nepal.

Glob­al­ly, an esti­mat­ed 49.6 mil­lion peo­ple, includ­ing more than 12 mil­lion chil­dren, are in sit­u­a­tions of mod­ern slav­ery. Sur­vivors of mod­ern slav­ery often face re-exploita­tion due to their lack of access to doc­u­men­ta­tion. Despite wide­spread acknowl­edg­ment of the height­ened risk faced by peo­ple who lack offi­cial doc­u­men­ta­tion, our research was unable to iden­ti­fy any data, glob­al­ly or in the focus coun­tries, on the extent to which those who are in sit­u­a­tions of mod­ern slav­ery lack doc­u­men­ta­tion, either as a causal fac­tor or a con­se­quence. This lim­i­ta­tion com­pli­cates efforts to esti­mate the scale of the issue. There is there­fore a press­ing need for detailed empir­i­cal research to unrav­el the intri­cate links between a lack of doc­u­men­ta­tion and the risks of mod­ern slavery.