Slavery

[bunn]

Last night on the local news, some person who had 'written a musical about slavery' said 'there are more people in slavery now than at the height of the Atlantic slave trade' and that 'there are slaves in every town and city in the UK'.

Can this possible be true? I know human trafficking exists, and is a terrible thing, but surely this has to be on a much smaller scale, given that it is illegal?

Comments

[chainmailmaiden]

Anti-Slavery International who work with Amnesty International on some campaigns, define a slave as someone who is:

1. Forced to work -- through mental or physical threat.

2. Owned or controlled by an 'employer', usually through mental or physical abuse or threatened abuse.

3. Dehumanised, treated as a commodity or bought and sold as 'property'.

4. Physically constrained or has restrictions placed on his/her freedom of movement.

They include bonded and forced labour, descent-based slavery, early and forced marriage, child labour and trafficking of people into forced labour as forms of slavery.

The International Labour Organization estimates at least 12 million people are in forced labour around the world, more than six million of whom are children. I don't know how they come by their figures, but since there are far more people in the world now than there were at the height of the Atlantic slave trade I'd be prepared to believe there are more now. Also, even though slavery is illegal very little is ever done to enforce the law.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Yes I looked at their site. Possibly I am cynical due to my extreme mistrust of numbers of all kinds, but I have become particularly cynical about numbers that include the word 'million' but refer to things that seem like they would be extremely easy to mis-represent by lots either way, and are basically uncheckable....

Hum.