The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has defended its recent report on “modern slavery” after the Union government questioned the authenticity of its estimates last week.
Backdrop
The ILO, which produced the report titled ‘Global Estimates of Modern Slavery: Forced Labour and Forced Marriage 2017’ along with Australia-based Walk Free Foundation (WFF), said that it doesn’t focus on specific countries but provides a global picture.
The estimates in the report do not focus on any one country but instead provide global and regional pictures of the situation.
Although country-wise figures were not mentioned in the 2017 ILO-WFF report, the study showed that 40.3 million people were victims of ‘modern slavery’ in 2016
The report, released on September 19, only mentioned that it interviewed 17,000 people for the survey in India.
IB missive
The Labour and Employment Ministry’s rebuttal came following a missive from the Intelligence Bureau (IB) asking the government to counter multiple international organisations on reports about slavery in India that can hurt India’s image and exports.
The Centre is exploring a rebuttal at an international level through consultations with the Ministry of External Affairs and other departments.
The Labour and Employment Ministry is also planning to conduct its own surveys on bonded labour in a bid to counter various estimates by private agencies.
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