A Not For Sale project
About SlaveryMap
Human trafficking is usually described in abstract statistics — tens of millions of people in modern slavery worldwide. SlaveryMap makes the crisis concrete and local, the same job it was built to do since 2008.
Where it started
Not For Sale was founded in 2007 after co-founder David Batstone discovered that a Bay Area restaurant he ate at regularly was trafficking its own kitchen and wait staff. The case became national news, and it became personal: if slavery could hide inside a place he ate dinner every week, it could hide anywhere. SlaveryMap, launched in 2008, was built to prove that modern slavery is not history — one documented case at a time.
Open Source Activism
SlaveryMap ran on a philosophy Batstone called "Open Source Activism": give people tools, not rules, and let local action connect to a global movement. Anyone could submit a case they had seen or uncovered, and the map grew the way an open encyclopedia grows — case by case, reviewed and refined by its community.
How cases are verified
Every decision behind SlaveryMap starts with the same question: does this put a survivor at risk? Cases are submitted by signed-in community members, drawn from credible news outlets, law enforcement records, court records, and reports from established NGOs. Before a case publishes, two other signed-in community members independently review it — they can confirm it, suggest an edit, or revert a change. Not For Sale sets the source standard and builds the platform; it doesn't sit between a submission and publication as a gatekeeper, the community does. Locations are never shown precisely; every point on the map is generalized to city level by default. Not For Sale retains one override: it can remove any published case it determines poses a risk. Read the full methodology.
Explore the data
Read the full record by documented case, by country, or by type of exploitation — or open the interactive map. New to the subject? Start with the frequently asked questions.