Global Slavery Index reports nearly 46 million people are enslaved in 2016

The Global Slavery Index reported their annual findings on Tuesday, putting the total number of enslaved people around the world at an estimated 45.8 million, up from an estimated 35.8 million in 2014. Fifty-eight percent of those living in slavery are in India, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, or Uzbekistan, the report found. Proportionally, North Korea, Uzbekistan, Cambodia, India, and Qatar have the highest populations of people in modern slavery, with one in every 20 people in North Korea being a slave.

"In North Korea, there is pervasive evidence that government-sanctioned forced labor occurs in an extensive system of prison labor camps while North Korean women are subjected to forced marriage and commercial sexual exploitation in China and other neighboring states. In Uzbekistan, the government continues to subject its citizens to forced labor in the annual cotton harvest," the report said.

The United States and Canada have among the lowest estimated prevalence of modern slavery by proportion to their population, along with the Luxembourg, Ireland, Norway, and Denmark. However, instances of slavery were found in all 167 countries included in the index, which was informed by 42,000 interviews by Gallup in 53 languages and across 25 countries.

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"We need to make it clear we're not going to tolerate slavery and when there is slavery in a regime we should not trade with them," the foundation's founder, Andrew Forrest, told CNBC. "This is not AIDS or malaria. We have caused slavery and because it's a human condition we can fix it."