There are an estimated 61,000 people living in modern slavery in Saudi Arabia (GSI 2018). It is a source and destination country for men and women trafficked from South and South East Asia and Africa. People voluntarily migrate to the country to work in a variety of sectors including construction and domestic service; many of these workers are vulnerable to forced labour. Traffickers and brokers often illegally recruit migrants to work in Saudi Arabia and subsequently forced them into domestic servitude or debt bondage. Female domestic workers are particularly at risk of trafficking due to their isolation inside private residences. Non-payment or late payment of wages remains a complaint from foreign workers, while employer's withholding of worker's passports remains a significant problem. Trafficking perpetrators include businesses of all sizes, private families, recruitment companies in both Saudi Arabia and labour-sending countries, and organized criminal elements. Mila* was trafficked to Saudi Arabia after being offered work that would allow her to support her children. Upon arrival, the work is not what Mila expected, she has been overworked, underpaid and subjected to daily discrimination.

The Global Slavery Index 2018 estimates that on any given day in 2016 there were over 3.8 million people living in conditions of modern slavery in China. Women and girls from South Asia, Southeast Asia and Africa are trafficked in to forced marriage in the country for fees of up to £30,000. The gender imbalance caused by the One Child Policy and the cultural preference for male children, has caused a shortage of women which has led to the trafficking of women to be sold as brides. As a result many women find themselves either deceived by promises of employment, sold or abducted and forced into marrying Chinese men who have paid for them. Ja Htoi Tsawm travelled to China often to do agricultural work for a few weeks or months at a time to support her four children after her husband, a drug user, abandoned the family. On a trip there in 2013, at age 29, she was trafficked by a woman she befriended as they worked together in a sugarcane field. She was held captive for two years. While she was gone, her in-laws sold her house and took the money. They put one of her children in an orphanage, and another of her children died while she was away.

The Global Slavery Index has estimated that there are almost 3 million people living in conditions of modern slavery in the region of the Middle East and North Africa. Oman is a transit and destination country for men and women primarily from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Philippines, most of whom migrate willingly as domestic servants or low-skilled workers in the country’s construction, agriculture and service sectors. Trafficked persons subsequently experience conditions of modern slavery such as the confiscation of passports, restrictions on movement, non-payment of wages, long working hours without rest and physical or sexual abuse. Anisa L.  from Zanzibar, left to find work abroad in Oman in 2011 where she worked for 2 years for 21 hours a day with no rest and no days off. From Oman Anisa travelled to Dubai for 2 years from 2013 to 2015 where she was charged for migrating by the agency arranging her travel.