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Forced labour and slavery |
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Slavery existed in the territory of the modern state of Syria until the 1920s.
Syria was one of the destinations of the Red Sea slave trade and the Indian Ocean slave trade of enslaved Africans until the late 19th century. During the Armenian genocide in 1915–1923, many Armenians were enslaved by Muslims in Ottoman Syria and Iraq, many of whom where liberated when the areas was conquered by the British during the first world war. Slavery was formally abolished in Syria by the French colonial authorities in 1931. Many members of the Afro-Syrian minority are descendants of the former slaves.
In the 21st century, Islamic terrorists again practiced slavery in areas under their control in Syria and Iraq.