Top 10 Facts about Modern Slavery
March 23, 2008 · Print This Article
Our friends over at Free The Slaves (freetheslaves.net) have provided a lot of great resources about modern slavery. Begin with the “top 10 facts about modern slavery,” watch two great videos about human trafficking, preview the interactive map, and visit Free the Slaves for more information…
Top 10 Facts about Modern Slavery:
- Slavery: Forced to work without pay under threat of violence and unable to walk away.
- 27 million slaves in the world today
- Slavery is not legal anywhere but happens everywhere.
- The majority of slaves can be found in
- At least 14,500 slaves are trafficked into the
- Slaves work in fields, brothels, homes, mines, restaurants, — anywhere slave owners can feed their greed.
- Human trafficking is the modern-day slave trade.
- $90 is the average cost of a human slave around the world.
- Slave owners use many terms to avoid the word slavery: debt bondage, bonded labor, attached labor, restavec, forced labor, indentured servitude, and human trafficking.
- It is possible to end slavery in 25 years. Everyone has a role to play – government, business, international organizations, consumers, YOU.
Kevin Bales, explains how we can end slavery and human trafficking:
It is nonsense to label someone “the world’s leading expert on slavery”. It is dangerous to do so especially where that person has started an organisation that is identified with them as such.
No one defends slavery. At the same time, we shouldn’t uncritically accept as gospel every estimate about the magnitude of the problem. Especially since previous estimates about the number of sex slaves in America and Germany have been proven greatly exaggerated. For details, see http://glennsacks.com/blog/?p=1878
In brief, back in 1999, the US government estimated that 50,000 sex slaves were brought into the country annually. The feds began funding programs to combat the problem and ended up identifying only 1,362 victims since 2000. That’s 1,362 too many, but also a far cry from the number of purported victims.
Likewise, before the 2006 World Cup in Germany, it was alleged that 40,000 sex slaves would be imported to service the soccer fans. Here’s what the EU reported after the event:
“The reports - Council of the European Union documents 5006/1/07 and 5008/7 - are now available and they reveal a huge magnitude of error in the claims made by campaigners that were splashed across media headlines around the world (2). The five cases are 8,000 times less than the 40,000 predicted.
“‘The increase in forced prostitution and human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation during the 2006 World Cup in Germany which was feared by some did not materialize’, concludes one report. ‘There was no sign whatsoever of the alleged 40,000 prostitutes/forced prostitutes - a figure repeatedly reported, also in international media - who were to be brought to Germany for the 2006 World Cup.’”
Is it possible that advocacy groups who exist to combat social problems occasionally exaggerate the extent of the problem to garner more attention and to justify more funding?