Slavery exists only clandestinely today; no country has legal slavery anymore.

Judge as of 2025-09-24. 'Legal slavery' means a legal system that recognizes the ownership of persons as property (chattel slavery). True: every country has formally abolished slavery in law, and slavery survives only illegally or in hiding (forced labour, trafficking, descent-based slavery that the law does not enforce). Mostly true: no country recognizes ownership of persons, but there are minor caveats the claim glosses over, such as constitutional exceptions for penal labour (e.g., the US 13th Amendment) or abolition laws that are barely enforced (e.g., Mauritania). Mixed: whether some state practices count as legal slavery is a real matter of dispute, e.g., state-organized forced labour openly run by governments such as North Korea's or Eritrea's. Mostly false: one or more states openly sanction forced servitude in law that is reasonably described as slavery, so the claim holds only in a narrow technical sense. False: at least one country's current law explicitly allows people to be owned as property.

Set before the research began.

1. E1 Far From Being Illegal, Slavery Isnt a Crime in 94 Countries - The Wire The Wire · 19 February 2020

   “Legal ownership of people was indeed abolished in all countries over the course of the last two centuries. But in many countries it has not been criminalised.”

2. E2 Far From Being Illegal, Slavery Isnt a Crime in 94 Countries - The Wire The Wire · 19 February 2020

   “In 94 countries, you cannot be prosecuted and punished in a criminal court for enslaving another human being.”

3. E3 Widespread Chattel Slavery in Mauritania: A Wake Up Call for Corporate Due Diligence — Corporate Accountability Lab Corporate Accountability Lab · 7 August 2025

   “Mauritania became the last country in the world to formally abolish slavery, declaring the practice unlawful in 1981. It was not until 2007 when the practice became criminalized under an anti-slavery statute.”

4. E4 General Assembly - UN Human Rights Office UN Human Rights Council, Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in Eritrea (A/HRC/29/42) · 4 June 2015

   “The commission concludes that forced labour in this context is a practice similar to slavery in its effects and, as such, is prohibited under international human rights law.”

E1 states that legal ownership of people has been abolished in every country, which supports the core claim that no country has legal slavery. The claim skips over some caveats. E2 reports that 94 countries do not make slavery a crime. E3 describes widespread chattel slavery in Mauritania, which abolished slavery in 1981 but only criminalised it in 2007, so abolition there is poorly enforced. E4 (2015) finds that Eritrea's state-imposed forced labour is "similar to slavery in its effects", but it does not say Eritrean law recognises ownership of persons, so it does not show legal slavery as the criteria define it.