More than 42,000 adults and children who were kept in bondage or trafficked were found by worldwide authorities last year, according to a new State Department report. But there are more than 20.9 million victims of slavery worldwide, the International Labor Organization estimated recently, the State Department report noted. Of those, the State Department estimated that over 14 million were victims of labor exploitation, 4.5 million were victims of sexual exploitation and 2.2 million were forced into labor by the state. In a letter alongside the report, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stressed the need for freedom for victims worldwide as the U.S. approaches the 150th anniversary of its Emancipation Proclamation freeing its enslaved black people. "This struggle will not truly be won until all those who toil in modern slavery," she wrote, "are free to realize their God-given potential."
