Princess, 43, trafficked from Nigeria into prostitution in Italy

We saw people return from Europe rich. A woman said she would give me work in a Nigerian restaurant in Italy. When I arrived I was told I had to pay back a £40,000 debt before I could leave. They said they would kill me if I didn’t work as a prostitute. The work was so dangerous. I was stabbed twice. I managed to leave, and now I work to help other women escape. These traffickers take everything from you – all that makes you human. I say to the women I help: ‘Let us not rest until we have brought them all to justice.’

Photo: Quintina Valero for the Guardian

Mario, 26, kept in conditions of forced labour in a gold mine in Peru

A school friend said I could make good money fast in the gold mines, and introduced me to Señor Carlos. I was new to the job and didn’t know how to keep my money safe, so Señor Carlos offered to keep it for me. One day, a nice guy from the mine left with Señor Carlos. The next day, the guy was dead. I was terrified. I asked Señor Carlos for all my cash, but he refused. Then he beat me up, threatened to kill me, and dumped me in the jungle. Even now, all these years later, I’m terrified he’ll find me.

Photo: Marco Garro for the Guardian

Young-soon, 80, former prisoner and forced labourer in North Korea

I knew Song Hye-rim from school. One day, she told me she was moving into the ‘great leader’ Kim Jong-il’s residence. A few months later, my family and I were sent to Yodok, a prison camp. My parents and my eight-year-old son died of malnutrition there, and the rest of my family were either shot or drowned. Nine years later, after my release, I was told we’d been imprisoned because I knew about Kim Jong-il’s relationship with Song. Song Hye-rim and Kim Jong-il’s illegitimate son, Kim Jong-nam, was assassinated earlier this year.

Photo: James Whitlow Delano for the Guardian

Abul, 32, trafficked from Bangladesh into forced labour in Scotland

I was struggling to support my family when I saw an ad for chefs in London. The man I met said said we had to pay up front for our visas, so I borrowed £15,000 from moneylenders. When I arrived in the UK, the plan changed: now I was to get on a bus to Ballachulish, Scotland. It was so remote. I was the only worker for 37 hotel bedrooms, and two tourist coaches would arrive every day. Every month I needed to send money home, but I never got paid. The trafficker didn’t just take my money. He took everything from me.

Photo: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian

Oksana, 46, trafficked from Ukraine into forced labour in Russia

My mother was diagnosed with cancer and needed treatment, but couldn’t pay for it. My friend suggested we find work in Moscow. A nice woman met us at the station. She said we’d be caring for sick patients for $1,000 [£765] a month. But then we were told our job was to clean a three-storey house that had burned in a fire. We were given only one meal a day, and the guards raped us like monsters. My mum died four months after I got back. She never had her operation. When she saw the condition I was in, it killed her.

Photo: Maxim Khytra for the Guardian

Mai, 16, trafficked from Vietnam into China to be sold as a child bride

I was a good student. But my parents could no longer afford to send me to school, so they put me to work in the fields instead. One day I got chatting to a guy on Facebook. He said he was a police officer and that he could find me better paid work in China. I went to meet him, but a group of guys bundled me into a truck and drove into China. When we stopped, I ran for it. After a couple of days, some women took me to the local police and I was able to come back to Vietnam.

Photo: Abbie Trayler-Smith for the Guardian

Kwame, 14, and Joe, 12, were sold by their mother to a fisherman in Ghana

Our mother has sold us many times. There is only starvation and no safe home, so she sent us away. One time we were sent to Yeji. Our master was not a good person to us, he hit us with the paddle. We would go out on the fishing boat, with only one pull of food each day. We escaped when the master heard they were arresting people who had kids working on the boats. Now we live with a neighbour; she sends us to school. Sometimes we talk about going back to live with our mum, we miss her.

Photo: Lonnie Schlein/Ubelong

Sunita, 25, sold to a travelling circus in India

My grandmother took me to the circus one day and left me. I never saw my family again. I was amazed by the circus, they were like gods. They beat us and shouted, but it became normal. We travelled all the time. One day we were rescued and taken to a refuge in Nepal. They tried to give us new families, new lives, but all I could think about was performing. So some of us from the refuge created Circus Kathmandu. The circus is so beautiful, I don’t ever want to leave. A documentary about Circus Kathmandu, Even When I Fall, is released next year.

Photo: Kishor Sharma for the Guardian

Nicoleta, 34, Romanian survivor of forced labour and sexual slavery in Sicily

I came to Sicily with my husband. We needed to send money back to support our children in Romania. But the greenhouse farmer where we found work said I had to sleep with him, and if I refused, he wouldn’t pay us. My husband said it was the only way we could keep our work. My employer threatened me with a gun, and when he finished, he just walked away. This went on for months. I left both the farm and my husband, but found out it is the same wherever you try to find work here in Sicily.

Photo: Francesca Commissari for the Guardian

Jennifer, 35, sex trafficking survivor in the United States

I had a very abusive childhood. Then I met a man who treated me with respect. But he got me addicted to drugs and demanded I make money through prostitution. He branded ‘Property of …’ on my groin, then sold me to a drug gang. I was tattooed three more times by traffickers. The first time I got a tattoo covered up, I knew I was going to set myself free. That’s why I started helping other survivors to get their brandings covered up. Jennifer Kempton died in May 2017. Her legacy continues through her NGO, Survivor’s Ink.

Photo: Almudena Toral for the Guardian

Anita, 15, forced into child marriage in Kenya

I was out grazing the cows when my father said it was time to get married. I was woken up early and circumcised. The elders said the man was to be my only husband. He was 55. I was very confused. I was only 10. Nine months later, because I had not given him a baby, he began tasking me with the difficult jobs. I decided I had to escape – he beat me so hard my leg wouldn’t stop bleeding. I was taken in by the Catholic Sisters and started school in 2013. I hope to be a doctor.

Photo: Kate Holt for the Guardian

Ali, 24, from Bangladesh, trapped in debt bondage constructing tower blocks in Singapore

It cost me S$18,000 [£10,175] to get here. I was told I could earn S$1,000 a month as a construction worker, but I had to pay S$9,000 to the training centre and another S$9,000 in agent fees before I arrived. My family had to sell land, borrow money, even take out a bank loan to pay for it all. For three months we got no salary at all. Then we discovered our boss had fled Singapore. There’s no way to get the money from him now. I have my parents, three sisters and a brother to look after.

Photo: Tom White for the Guardian

Carla (not her real name), 19, escaped sexual slavery at the hands of criminal gangs in Honduras

Three gang members said we’d have to sell drugs for them. They said: ‘We’re giving you an order.’ They forced us into a car at gunpoint and drove us to a house in a poor neighbourhood. A policeman arrived and we thought we were saved. But he said, ‘It’s good you got some new girls, let me try them first.’ Every morning, men paid to have intercourse with us; every night we’d sell drugs. They gave us no food. Eventually, a client helped me escape. Now I’m applying for refugee status in Mexico.

Photo: Encarni Pindado for the Guardian

Nelson, 46, was trapped with his family in forced labour on a coffee farm in Brazil

I was born in Tanhaçu [in Brazil’s north-east], where the droughts are terrible. So my family and some friends found work on a coffee farm 1,200km away. We soon realised we were in trouble. There was no water to drink, and we had to sleep on tarpaulin in a decrepit house left to rot by the farmer. We became hostages, working every day for 11 hours, and received no food or payment for the whole harvest. The owner bullied us for three months until a local union rescued us from that hell and we returned home.

Photo: Lilo Clareto for the Guardian

Said, 16, and Yarg, 13, born into hereditary slavery in Mauritania

Our mother is a slave to the El Hassine family, so when we were born we became slaves to the family as well. We weren’t allowed to eat the same food, or sleep in the same rooms as them – we were not equal to the rest of the family. They would beat us for any reason at all. In 2011, we took our master to court and he was found guilty under the anti-slavery law. This was the first time that happened in our country. Now we are both in secondary school and we are proud because we are free.

Photo: Michael Hylton/Anti-Slavery International