Unreported World: Slaves of The Amazon

In the final programme of the ninth run of Channel 4's critically acclaimed foreign affairs series Sam Kiley visits Brazil to investigate claims of an alarming rise in slavery. He visits the heart of the Amazon, where 50,000 slaves clear an area of trees the size of Switzerland in a year. He comes across men who are so in debt to the company shop that they are unable to move on and finds people working in the charcoal industry who never get paid. Most landowners live thousands of miles away from the jungle and employ managers to do the work for them. Kiley asks whether the managers are guilty of exploiting the local workers and, given the structure of rural labour, considers whether the President of Brazil's promise to end all forms of slavery by the end of the year is a realistic proposition.