Nowhere
is slavery legal in the sense that no legal system
recognizes title or property in a living human
being. This means that no court will enforce a
contract to buy and sell slaves or enforce the right of
a master to the labor of his or her slave.

However,
although slavery, as a form of property recognized by
the state, has been abolished, millions of people are
still enslaved.

The
Society uses the definition of slavery enunciated in
1880 by the High Court of Allahabad in India, which, in
substance, is that a person is treated as a slave or is reduced
to a condition of slavery if another exercises power or
control over that person:
(1) to restrain their personal
liberty; and
(2) to dispose of their labor
against their will —
without lawful authority.

Slavery
is sometimes confused with other forms of servitude,
such as forced labor, bonded labor, pawnage and servile
concubinage.

The expression "forced
labor", in international law, refers to those
forms of labor obligations or penal labor imposed by a
state or an agency or agent of the government or state
and which are described in the Forced Labor Convention
1930 and the Abolition of Forced Labor Convention 1957.