Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labour.

[1] Slavery
typically involves compulsory work with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the
party that holds them in bondage. Enslavement is the placement of a person into slavery, and
the person is called a slave or an enslaved person (see § Terminology).
Many historical cases of enslavement occurred as a result of breaking the law, becoming
indebted, suffering a military defeat, or exploitation for cheaper labor; other forms of slavery were
instituted along demographic lines such as race or sex. Slaves may be kept in bondage for life, or
for a fixed period of time after which they would be granted freedom.[2] Although slavery is usually
involuntary and involves coercion, there are also cases where people voluntarily enter into
slavery to pay a debt or earn money due to poverty. In the course of human history, slavery was a
typical feature of civilization,[3] and was legal in most societies, but it is now outlawed in most
countries of the world, except as a punishment for a crime.[4][5]
In chattel slavery, the slave is legally rendered the personal property (chattel) of the slave
owner. In economics, the term de facto slavery describes the conditions of unfree
labour and forced labour that most slaves endure.[6]
The Islamic Republic of Mauritania was the last country in the world to officially ban slavery, in
1981,[7] with legal prosecution of slaveholders established in 2007.[8] However, in 2019,
approximately 40 million people, of whom 26% were children, were still enslaved throughout the
world despite slavery being illegal. In the modern world, more than 50% of slaves provide forced
labour, usually in the factories and sweatshops of the private sector of a country's economy.[9] In
industrialised countries, human trafficking is a modern variety of slavery; in non-industrialised
countries, debt bondage is a common form of enslavement,[6] such as captive domestic servants,
people in forced marriages, and child soldiers.[10] Sexual slavery claiming the sanction
of Islam has also become widespread due to the rise of jihadism.[11][12]

Etymology
The word slave was borrowed into Middle English through the Old French esclave which
ultimately derives from Byzantine Greek σκλάβος (sklábos) or εσκλαβήνος (ésklabḗnos).
According to the widespread view, which has been known since the 18th century, the
Byzantine Σκλάβινοι (Sklábinoi), Έσκλαβηνοί (Ésklabēnoí), borrowed from a Slavic tribe self-
name *Slověne, turned into σκλάβος, εσκλαβήνος (Late Latin sclāvus) in the meaning 'prisoner of
war slave', 'slave' in the 8th/9th century, because they often became captured and enslaved.[13][14][15]
[16]
However this version has been disputed since the 19th century.[17][18]
An alternative contemporary hypothesis states that Medieval Latin sclāvus via *scylāvus derives
from Byzantine σκυλάω (skūláō, skyláō) or σκυλεύω (skūleúō, skyleúō) with the meaning "to strip
the enemy (killed in a battle)" or "to make booty / extract spoils of war".[19][20][21][22] This version has
been criticized as well.[23]

Terminology
There is a dispute among historians about whether terms such as "unfree labourer" or "enslaved
person", rather than "slave", should be used when describing the victims of slavery. According to
those proposing a change in terminology, slave perpetuates the crime of slavery in language by
reducing its victims to a nonhuman noun instead of "carry[ing] them forward as people, not the
property that they were" (see also People-first language). Other historians prefer slave because
the term is familiar and shorter, or because it accurately reflects the inhumanity of slavery,
with person implying a degree of autonomy that slavery does not allow.[24]