UN Declaration of Human Rights: Article 4
Sunday, October 26th, 2008No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
This seems pretty obvious and to many the days of slavery would seem to be long past. Unfortunately that isn’t the case. The trafficking of people (modern day slavery) continues to happen on a global scale.
Not many countries are unaffected in some way by this hideous activity. It’s long past our historic notion of black slaves taken from Africa to the Empire and beyond. Today slavery consists of bonded labour, early or forced marriage, forced labour, slavery by descent, forced sex work and extreme forms of child labour.
None of it is pleasant.
It’s true that our economic system prizes cheap labour and so in a way encourages that drive. Certainly it makes one think about why and how this still happens? Certainly people look to escape poor circumstances and that can often lead them into the hands of traffickers of hope but deliverers of hell.
But wherever you are reading this from don’t think your country is immune to this. It isn’t.
