 A new report by an international labour organization has chronicled the impact, the brutal impact for many, and the profits for some from the practice of forced labour. According to the report, forced labour in the private economy generates US dollars 236 billion in illegal profits per year. This is a dramatic rise from 10 years ago and reveals the need for more decisive action on the issue. We go to Abdul for the details of the report. You maybe take us to what are some of the salient aspects and then we can go on to what are the possibilities for addressing the crisis. Well Prashant, the international labour organization has prepared a report basically which talks about how forced labour has been used by the corporate houses primarily to earn a massive illegal profit. According to its finding, every year around 230 plus billion dollars of profits, illegal profits, are made by the private players through forced labour, which is very similar to what it is called slavery and IOL calls it modern slavery. It says that how the number of people who are forced to do work for the profit of certain corporate houses has increased since the last study which was conducted in 2014 and says that between 2016 and 2021, within these five years, the number increased by 2.7 million. So overall around 28 million people out of 1,000 every three and three and a half individuals are forced to do forced work for someone else's profit. It talks about how in this period also per capita profit from the forced labour has also increased from 8,000 dollars to around 10,000 plus dollars. That means that there is a very massive exploitation which is happening to the victims of forced labour. Who are these people who are basically forced to do work for someone else? These are primarily people who are trafficked across the borders. These are the people who are desperate, who are in desperation moving from one country to another. Most of them are migrants but also other people who are basically used by the, through the use of criminals and other elements used by the private corporate houses to basically work almost for free. So that is one of the basic part of this report says that the majority of that profit comes through the sexual labour exploitation of sex, basically women through sexual forced sexual labour and that basically has, that contributes around 170 plus million, sorry, billion dollars every year. So that shows that the majority of this comes through the sexual exploitation, sex trafficking and so forth. But a large part also comes from forced labour in industry and in other economic sectors. So in this context, what are the kind of measures that the world could take to actually address them? What does the report say on that? Well, the report is primarily talking about how this kind of labour is basically, of course, it completely dismantles human dignity. This kind of labour is similar to slavery and therefore there are already very strong laws made by not only the individual countries but also internationally which basically illegalizes all of these kind of practices. So the ILO talks about better implementation of the existing laws by the individual countries to be kind of, and this kind of forced labour which is similar to slavery but it also talks about how there is a need of ending the conflicts, there is a need of curbing all kinds of human trafficking in whatever way possible and the crackdown on all those illegal activities which ultimately uses the vulnerabilities of the people in different ways which would mean that there should be a better coordination among nations when it comes to curbing the international racket of human trafficking. It also would mean of course that there should be a massive crackdown on all those agencies and private players who basically see human vulnerability as a possibility of exploitation and in order to on maximum profits. So curbing the greed of the corporate houses is one way of, and that would mean of course that there are some examples of collaboration between the corporate houses and the state officials in several countries that also needs to be checked and controlled. So these are some of the recommendations which are all well known which needs to be implemented in order to control the forced labour, the rising profitability of the illegal slave, the kind of slave trade and that should can only be done with the greater productivity on behalf of the states involved and of course on behalf of the international organizations. Thank you so much, Abdul for that update. In less than three weeks, the fifth people's health assembly will begin in Argentina. The PHA is one of the biggest congregations of health activists in the world and is taking place at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic laid out the stark structural issues in the field of health care. For activists who are at the forefront of fighting these structural issues, the PHA is a space to analyze them plan strategies and seek to mobilize more people in the fight for what they call health for all. We go to Anna to hear more about the issue. Anna, thank you so much for joining us. So very important event coming up in the first week of April. That's the fifth people's health assembly, the last one was in 2018 in Bangladesh and a lot of discussions also taking place in the run up to it. So maybe could you tell us a bit first about the PHA itself? Why is it significant? A bit about its history maybe as well. The people's health assembly is one of the main events that the people's health movement does every couple of years in order to bring different struggles together and essentially to bring all those health activists who have been fighting for universal access to health care against the impact of big transnational companies on health but also those activists who have been campaigning on issues related to food and gender and migration and health to bring them all in one place and to facilitate exchange and just to kind of bring inspiration to the struggles moving forward. So as you said this is the fifth assembly that we're doing. It's the second one that's taking place in Latin America. The last one was in Ecuador in 2005. So of course you know this one is quite specific of course because it's the first one that's taking place after the COVID-19 pandemic. We're not running away from the fact that that is something that has marked the landscape global health and through that also the people's health movement a great deal but we're also hopeful that you know as we come again to to Latin America we'll be able to essentially look back and make concrete plans when it comes to the things that we can do and the things that we have done over the past five years can be used and in order to to bring us forward towards health for all as was the intention of the people's health movement from the very beginning. Right Anna so in this context you already mentioned COVID-19 but what are the kind of broad themes which are likely to be discussed during the people's health assembly? Well we're it's very broad if we can put it that way but essentially it is a very difficult task you know a lot can happen in five years a lot did happen in the past five years and because we're not able to meet every as often as we would like of course the people's health assembly is the space where we try to fit as many discussions as we can so this year actually in a couple of weeks we'll be talking about how health systems have been impacted by this latest round the posterity of prioritization what were the what was the resistance mounted to those trends both by health activists and by health workers of course we'll also be talking about the impacts and the interrelations of gender justice and health because we did see over the past past years big changes in both directions when it comes to women's rights in health particularly when it comes to reproductive and sexual health rights of course but also also many other many other health services that belong that could fall under this category one of the key and crucial issues of course is the issue of the war on Palestine the war on Gaza one of the things that the assembly will will strive to do is to show that the people of the world and the health activists of the world stand in solidarity with the people of Gaza and with the health workers who continue to work although the impacts continue and then in addition to that we'll also be trying to bring in and to reinforce the focus on some of the topics that health movements in Latin America have been proposing for a very long time that includes ancestral knowledge and the concepts concepts like when we feel and then of course we're also going to talk about food systems and the impacts of the current food systems and well more broadly maybe even commercial determinants on on human and planetary health and of course event taking place meeting taking place in a very strategic location that's Argentina where you know which has really been at the center of some many of the issues you've been talking about so what is the significance there and what are the kind of expectations over there well I think it would be fair to say that when we started to plan the this assembly we did know that it would have a particular strength if it was to be held in in Latin America and luckily there were many many comrades in Latin America who were willing to put all this effort into organizing an assembly to be fair we did not know at the time that Argentina would be coming going through this kind of political moment when the assembly was to be held but of course this only means that you know the presence of PHN becomes more important than the solidarity expands now also to our comrades in Argentina who have really done a tremendous effort to keep this debate about health and the importance of solidarity and how alive although we do know that they're going to very difficult moments at the time so this time the people self-assembly as well it was every single time until now I think it's also fair to say it's also a statement of solidarity towards the the PHN circle who is hosting it thank you so much Anna for those updates that's all we have in today's ddd brief we'll be back with a fresh episode tomorrow in the meanwhile do visit our website peoplesdispatch.org follow us on all the social media platforms and if you're watching this on youtube please hit the subscribe button