So Let’s Have a Chat About Slavery

Odds are that you have never actually had such a discussion, or if you have it was about slavery in an historical setting, about things that happened many centuries ago. After all that is where we contextualise slavery, something that happened in the dim and distant past and not something that is compatible with our modern information technology driven society.

Sadly this is not the case, according to the UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, there are more people living in some form of slavery today than ever before in the history of the world. Yes slavery is alive and well but with a new name – human trafficking.

Human trafficking is defined as: “the buying and selling of men, women and children within countries and across borders in order to exploit them for profit” (IOM X Factsheet 2015). The purpose of this modern slavery includes:

• sexual exploitation,

• forced labour,

• forced begging,

• illegal adoptions,

• organ removal and

• forced marriage.

Apart from harvesting the organs of slaves this is exactly what slaves were used for thousands of years ago. It is estimated that there are 21 million slaves around the world today with 50% in being in Asia. Trafficking is also one of the fastest growing industries in the world generating US$ 150 billion in illegal profits annually with traffickers in Asia earn around US$ 5000/person trafficked.

Is this a problem we face in South Africa, yes , almost no country is immune to this perverse practice, perhaps this is not something we read about regularly and there is very little research done on the subject but it is clearly a problem that will only become bigger if we ignore it. So yes it is time not only for us to start talking about slavery but to start doing something about it.

Read more about this at iomx.org