Luis C d'Baca from the US State Department Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons; Kevin Bales, president of Free the Slaves; David Batstone, president of Not for Sale; and Joy Ezeilo, UN Special Rapporteur for Trafficking in Persons.

Over the past 20 years China has become the world's biggest exporter of consumer goods. But behind this apparent success story is a dark secret - millions of men and women locked up in prisons and forced into intensive manual labour.

In the midst of widespread poverty, fueled by economic inequality and rampant corruption, a new form of slavery - bridal slavery - has flourished in India. Women and young girls are sold for as little as $120 to men who often abuse them.

Poverty-stricken men from the north of Brazil are often lured to remote camps where they are used as slave labour.

There are at least 8.4 million child slaves in the world today, many of them held as forced labour.

It is a form of slavery that is passed down from one generation to the next, enslaving millions.

There are an estimated 1.4 million sex slaves in the world today and international trafficking is on the rise.

It is a nation built on the abolition of slavery, but there are at least 40,000 slaves in the US today. In the opening episode of Slavery: A 21st Century Evil, Al Jazeera's Rageh Omaar investigates food chain slavery in the US.