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Daily News Digest December 6, 2012
Slavery Today
Yes, we mean real slavery. People held against their will, forced to
work and paid nothing.
Sometimes the slave holder ‘pays’ a few grains of rice to keep the
slaves alive, or uses a bogus payment that the slave holder reclaims at the
end of the month. But the end result is what slavery is today and has
always been—one person controlling another and then forcing them to
work.
Through Free the Slaves’ research, first published in Kevin Bales’
Disposable People, our conservative estimate is that there are 27 million
people in slavery today. This means that there are more people in slavery
today than at any other time in human history. Slavery has existed for
thousands of years, but changes in the world’s economy and societies over
the past 50 years have enabled a resurgence of slavery.
Three trends have contributed most to the rise of modern-slavery.
1. The first, a recent population explosion has tripled the
number of people in the world, with most growth taking place
in the developing world.