Causecast

by JESSICA WOLF, Contributing Writer

The cruel practice of forced servitude has been largely ignored in the 21st century media, but this trend is ending. Organizations like Abolish Slavery and Invisible Children are getting images of modern day slaves back in front of our lives. Now that even Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is writing about human trafficking, we may finally be able to eradicate slavery in all of its forms.

Though many may be shocked that slavery is still an issue in 2009, it’s worth noting the history of this practice to more fully understand our present.

The idea of owning another human being as property dates back to the most ancient of cultures and was an integral part of the society of ancient Greece and the Roman Empire, but slavery has permeated every culture on every continent.

Roman slaves ran the gamut from clerical workers, to forced gladiators to brutalized manual laborers and were often procured by sheer conquest as the powerful Empire cut its path across the continent and beyond. An estimated 25% of Rome’s entire empire at its height was enslaved persons, and anywhere from 30%-40% of the population of Italy itself was made up of slaves.

Spartacus wasn’t just a poorly cast movie, but was leader of one of the first notable slave uprisings in Roman culture and in the overall history of slavery. The two-year battle (73 BC-71-BC) between slaves and the Roman army resulted in 6,000 slaves being crucified along the Appian Way.

After Rome fell, slavery continued throughout European, Middle Eastern and Mediterranean countries, but mostly not in Rome’s hyper organized chain-gang fashion—that is until colonial America and the rise of the cotton plantation.

The earliest recorded arrival of slaves in the United States dates back to a Dutch trader who landed in 1619 in Jamesport, Virgina and who unloaded his African human cargo in exchange for food.

While America’s southern states and burgeoning cotton industry increasingly relied on slavery to operate, throughout the 1700s and 1800s European nations passed myriad laws designed to restrict slave trade between countries and abolish the practice of owning humans as property. During this time, the Quakers often played a huge role in advocating for the abolition of slavery.

The United States did not officially abolish slavery until after a bloody Civil War and the eventual passage of the 13th Amendment in 1865.

For Americans who were taught the stories of Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad and might believe the reality of human slavery belongs to the history books—the truth is a shocking blow.

The year 1949 marked the first United Nations Convention for the Suppression of the Trafficking in persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others.

Among the last countries to officially ban slavery were Saudi Arabia in 1962 and the United Arab Emirates in 1963—exactly 100 years after America’s Emancipation Proclamation that freed Confederate slaves.

According to the 2008 U.S. State Department Trafficking of Persons Report approximately 12.3 million people worldwide are held captive for debt bondage, forced labor, armed conflict and the sex trade. More than 800,000 people per year are trafficked across national borders, the report estimates, not including the millions of people bought and sold within certain countries. Up to 80 percent of transnational victims are women or girls and as many as half are children under the age of 18.

Countries that are the worst offenders and that the U.S. finds have not done enough to curb human trafficking are given a Tier 3 rating and are subject to increased scrutiny from our government and potential withholding of non-humanitarian, non-trade-related assistance.

According to 2008 reporting, Tier 3 countries include Burma, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Sudan, Syria and several others. The United States has threatened to impose sanctions on Tier 3 nations that do not improve.

Join with Causecast and our partner organizations Invisible Children and Abolish Slavery to end this continuing scourge. Read Causecast leader Aaron Cohen’s book Slave Hunter for first-hand accounts of how slavery is a continuing issue that may be more prominent and troubling than ever before.

Other groups who are battling the multimillion dollar global human trafficking industry include World Hope International, The Project to End Human Trafficking and The Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking.

Photo by doug88888, flickr