Slavery



Slavery

Introduction

The elimination of slavery was the major purpose of 19th-century humanitarians, but now in the 21st century it requires new leaders with the same purpose. During my time at the United States State Dept. Office, which was to battle human trafficking, and later as representative at large on slavery in contemporary times, I came across various survivors of slavery. In the Gulf States, these included sex slaves, domestic service workers, child soldiers and even children used as camel jockeys.

When assigned to run the States Trafficking office in 2002, regardless of having already been involved in Human Rights concerns as a Washington Congressman, when it came to slavery like the majority of Americans, it was assumed that it had been eliminated in the 19th century. However I came to learn that slavery may be illegal all over the world but it still flourished all over anyways including U.S. (Brace, 2004).

Discussion

This has been by far one of the most serious yet neglected issues of our time. While in Amsterdam, Katya at a hospital, talked about how as a Czech youngster with a failing marriage and a young daughter was told by a family friend that she could earn by working in Amsterdam. She agreed, and left for the Netherlands with a trafficker who tricked them and drove them to his Dutch counterpart instead. They took the girls passports and belongings and took them to a brothel where she was threatened not to resist if she ever wanted to see her daughter alive. She was forced into sex slavery and freed after years with the help of a taxi driver.

In Bangkok there was a Catholic shelter where there was a teenager named Lord, whose parents sold her to a woman when she was 11 against the promise of an education. She was resold later to a factory where Lord was enforced to work for 14 hours per day without any wages. She was beaten, shot in the face, locked and chemicals were poured down her face each time she resisted. A government raid rescued them. In Uganda, there was Nancy who was abducted and trained to kill, including her family and friends and later given to a rebel commander though she later ran away. In United States, Susan who was an African American woman told her story of being terrorized during her teens by a Minneapolis pimp.

It is no coincidence that the majority of slaves we came across were women and girls, as the largest category of trafficking is of sex and domestic serving slaves making it one of the greater issues women face in this era. Feminists and faith-based groups are working for elimination of slavery. Saudi Arabia banned it in 1962 and in Mauritania; a little later its existence is profound. The state department has estimated that 17500 slaves are smuggled into U.S. annually. Most slaves are made to work as prostitutes, at massage parlors, domestic workers and other businesses that involve sexual ...