Slavery is far from over

Last December multinational internet and software corporation Google donated 11.5 million dollars to several groups fighting modern-day slavery. This timely gesture constituted a new reminder of the fact that various types of human bondage continue to exist and proliferate in different parts of our planet, sometimes much closer to us than we imagine.

Among the organisations chosen by Google were International Justice Mission, a human rights agency working in 13 countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America; Polaris Project, one of the largest anti-slavery organisations in the United States and Japan; and Slavery Footprint, another US-based body focusing on the supply lines of 400 consumer products with the aim of identifying whether slave labour is used in the production of any of them.

Google’s donation not only will endow the above mentioned groups with much needed financial support, but will also help raise awareness for the need for new legislation in order to stop all types of slavery across the world.

Although slavery is often referred to as a past evil consigned to history books, nothing could be farther from the truth. Slavery persists today in both the developing and developed worlds, and in spite of the efforts of organisations like International Justice Mission or the London-based Anti-Slavery International, the malady seems to be getting worse by the day.

In this respect New York Times reporter Nicholas D. Kristof, recently noted that “at least 10 times as many girls are now trafficked into brothels annually as African slaves were transported to the New World in the peak years of the trans-Atlantic slave trade”.

Sadly, Kristof is not exaggerating.

The CNN Freedom Project has also recently revealed the extent to which slavery-associated violence is still prevalent in parts of the world by conducting interviews, often undercover, in places like Mauritania, where chattel slavery survives very much as it did back in the nineteenth century.

Other corporations, organisations and media outlets have joined forces to denounce modern-day forms of slavery worldwide. From the predicaments of Nepali migrants in the Middle East to child labour in Uzbekistan’s cotton industry, more and more information is made freely available, and those responsible are named and shamed.

The challenge, however, is daunting. Professor Joel Quirk from Witwatersrand University in South Africa explains “There is no longer one readily identifiable solution, but many overlapping strategies, which tend to be geared towards harm minimization, regulation and alleviation.”

Finding an actual solution is indeed quite difficult, to a large extent because the roots of modern-day forms of slavery are to be found in social problems like poverty and hunger, especially in the developing world. The lack of opportunities to improve basic conditions of existence leave people with no alternative but to fall into slavery in their homeland, or to migrate to the developed world in search for a better future.

It is there that they become easy prey for a range of people willing to profit from their misfortunes. Networks of prostitution and sex trafficking are a lucrative business from Amsterdam to New York. An example of how entrenched and well-disguised modern forms of slavery are in the developed world was recently highlighted by Goldman Sachs’ decision to sell its stake in the company which owns the backpage.com website, after the site was accused in 2010 of aiding and abetting forced prostitution and the exploitation of children and child pornography by carrying ‘adult’ classified advertising.

Beyond backstreet brothels, apparently innocuous websites, and fancy escort services, there are other ways of reinstating forced bondage. For a new, creative, and legal way of exploiting migrant labour we only need to look at the US state of Alabama and their new draconian anti-immigration law (HB 56). As reported by Axel Caballero in The Guardian, new illegal migrants who arrive in the state are now being detained and turned into a source of forced agricultural labour for the region and profit for the two major corporations that house the inmates and run the US private prison system, CCA (Corrections Corporation of America) and the GEO group.

The convenient silence of those with the resources to tackle the problem should not be tolerated any longer, because as Bishop Desmond Tutu put it, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”

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• conan_drum

  It seems in your fantasy world all whites are racists, especially if one writes a book about slavery.  A rather sweeping condemnation for reasons I am sure you are aware, as you appear to be interested in history you will know that at the time of the slave trade many people in UK (and elsewhere) worked in conditions that were quite close to slavery
  You must be unaware that racism is practised by African people
  also, but there it is usually called tribalism.
  You clearly are carrying a huge chip on your shoulder.

• conan_drum

  As someone said the two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity, you have just proved it again!

• rustle

  Read the original Jeremy G Hunter post, it’s not what he said in the second!

• mitchell_n_beard

  As always, Tutu says what needs to be said. Every time I go into Primark, or any other clothing store, I wonder what dirt wages enabled such cheap prices – or high prices hiding slave labor, as with this ipad?

• http://profile.yahoo.com/OOJV3DNPPYLKPAGABIJUK4IYRY lucian b

  when you are part of an image it is very hard to see the picture you are in,if you can give us an answer about all people migrating for work from all excomunist countries,why do they do that??and please ovoid to tell us that they want a better life only,in my opinion all what they want its decency and stability in their life

• http://www.yahoo.co.uk/ Firozali A.Mulla

  Read where it comes from? I thank you Firozali A.Mulla DBA

• http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001387934117 Ari Heart

  MarciabrixtonCollapse
  “I beg your pardon!” you may.

• http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001387934117 Ari Heart

  But tell me Marciabrixton, are you denying slavery exists today?

• http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001387934117 Ari Heart

  Why do you assume they were written by “some white racist”? There are indeed books written by “some white racist”, but there are also books written by African and African-Americans on this subject, they approach the subject objectively and with an intellectualism which you seem to be lacking.

• Biophiliac

  Gee you must have been the top winner on the debate teams at school with comebacks like that. Genius.