But for all the progress that we’ve made, the bitter truth is that trafficking also goes on right here, in the United States. It’s the migrant worker unable to pay off the debt to his trafficker. The man, lured here with the promise of a job, his documents then taken, and forced to work endless hours in a kitchen. The teenage girl, beaten, forced to walk the streets. This should not be happening in the United States of America.- President Barak Obama
"I want to be very clear: I'm talking about real slavery. This is not about lousy marriages, this is not about jobs that suck, this is about people who can not walk away, people who are forced to work without pay, people who are operating 24/7 under a threat of violence, and have no pay. It's real slavery in exactly the same way that slavery would be recognized throughout all of human history."
- Kevin Bales (from his TED Talk in 2010.)
| Then | Today |
|---|---|
| For most of history, in most places, slavery was legal. (1b, 1c) | Today, slavery is officially illegal around the world, though laws against slavery are not always enforced, and some countries lack laws covering some forms of slavery. Still, slavery as a criminal activity exists worldwide. (1c, 2) |
| The average cost for a old-world slave was around $12,000 to $40,000 (adjusted to today's currency), and were treated as a long term investment (1d, 2) | The average cost of obtaining a slave, worldwide, today is somewhere between $90 - $400. In North America, the cost is around $3,000 to $8,000--still a fraction of what it cost when slavery was legal here. The result of this is that today's slaves are often treated like disposable resources. (2) |
| Slaves were subject to beatings and other forms of violence and abuse. (1d) | Beatings and other forms of violence are still tools traffickers use to keep people enslaved today. (2) |
| Women slaves were often raped by their masters and subjected to other sexual exploitation. (1d) | Women in slavery today are still subject to rape, even when they are trafficked primarily for labor, not sex. (2) |
| Tattoos were used to mark people as slaves in ancient China, Greece and Rome, and branding was common during the trans-atlantic slave trade. In both ancient Rome and in the U.S. south, metal collars were sometimes put on slaves who tried to run away. (1d, 1e, 1f, 1g, 4) | Today, sex traffickers sometimes tattoo their victims so that they can mark prostitutes as "theirs" and track them down if they try to leave. These tattoos may be names or designs like logos, and often incorporate bar codes that can be scanned by smart phones. In Niger, Wahaya slaves are sometimes made to wear heavy brass ankle bracelets to signify their slave status. (5,6, 7a, 7b) |
| In the past, slavery was an important part of world economies, and a large percentage of many nations were slaves. Here is a sampling of nations who's historical slave prevalence we know (numbers are rounded). Percentage of Population Enslaved (by Year Recorded) 150 BC - Rome - 30-40% 1086 - England - 10% 1930 - Ethiopia - 12% to 25% 1910 - Korea - 30% to 50% 1860 - United States - 13% (1b,1g) |
The percentage of the world population enslaved today is lower than at any time in modern history, and the money generated by slavery today is the "tiniest proportion of the global economy to ever be represented by slave labor." (2) The exact percentage of slaves in the world today is impossible to determine as slavery today is mostly a criminal, underground activity, and no longer publicly recorded as it often was under legal slavery. But the largest slave population in the world today is most likely Mauritania, where an estimated 4% of the population is still enslaved. (2, 8, 9) |
SOURCES:
1. Wikipedia:
1b. Slavery
1c. Abolition of Slavery Timeline
1d. Treatment_of_slaves_in_the_United_States
1e. Human Branding
1f. History of Tattooing
1g. Slavery in Ancient Rome
1e. 1860 US Census
2. How to Combat Modern Slavery, 2010 TED Talk by Kevin Bales (Transcript)
3. Sexual Violence in Labor Trafficking
4. Object Record: Slave Collar
5. Tattood Trafficking Survivors Reclaiming Their Past - The Guardian
6. The Ink 180 Story
7. Anti Slavery.org
7a. Descent Based Slavery
7b. Wahaya: Young Girls Sold Into Slavery
(This article has been taken down, but there is another related article here. I do not know if it contains the exact info but does talk about the Wahaya practice)
8. Global Slavery Index - 2014 Report
9. "The Global Markets in Modern Day Slavery" by Gary Craig Criminal Justice Matters, Volume 97, Issue 1, 2014
10 "Twenty First Century Slaves: Combating Global Sex Trafficking" by Siddharth Kara
Did you know that slavery still exists today? I don't mean metaphorical slavery...I mean actual slavery where people are forced to work without pay, beaten, threatened, and not allowed to leave.
"I want to be very clear: I'm talking about real slavery. This is not about lousy marriages, this is not about jobs that suck, this is about people who can not walk away, people who are forced to work without pay, people who are operating 24/7 under a threat of violence, and have no pay."
- Kevin Bales (from his TED Talk in 2010.)
