Looking back today, it seems impossible that little more than a century ago men, women and children were still being sold as slaves, as though they were goods. For over 400 years, more than 15 million men, women and children were victims of the slave trade. It has been nearly 150 years since the United States House of Representatives abolished slavery; in the meantime the world has undergone epochal changes, electricity has been discovered, medicine has made giant strides, we have been to the moon, and yet slaves still exist.

Why this date

Today, in the twenty-first century, slaves still exist. As the visionary British author Aldous Huxley rightly wrote: "that men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history." Around the world, there are almost 40.3 million so-called "modern slaves", or roughly 5 people in every 1,000.

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To combat this social scourge and raise public awareness, 2 December marks World Day for the Abolition of Slavery. The day was established by the United Nations and commemorates the date on which the General Assembly adopted the UN Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others, on 2 December 1949.

"In the nineteenth century the international community came together to declare slavery an affront to humanity. Today, governments, civil society and the private sector must unite to eradicate all contemporary forms of slavery and to restore human rights and dignity to all those who have been deprived of them," the then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had declared.

Read also: The "migrant slave market" in Libya. Kidnapped and sold for 200 euros

What World Day for the Abolition of Slavery is for

The aim of the day is to shine a spotlight on the new forms of slavery in order to eradicate them. Forced labour, trafficking of minors and women, domestic slavery, forced prostitution, sexual slavery, forced marriages, the selling of wives and the forced recruitment of children for use in armed conflicts. A separate chapter is deserved by those exploited in agriculture: according to the 2014 report drawn up by the International Labour Organization, some 1.3 billion workers are exploited in the agricultural, forestry and fishing sectors.

The modern slavery

The "modern" forms of slavery are numerous and afflict every continent. According to the association Walk Free Foundation, Asia and Africa are the regions with the highest number of slaves, while the most virtuous nations are Iceland, Ireland and the United Kingdom. In this special ranking, in which a low position indicates a reduced percentage of slaves, Italy occupies 146th place, while Iceland is in 167th place.