Defining Modern Day Slavery

by Andre

There are More Human Slaves in the World Today Than Ever Before

After doing a fair bit of reading on the topic of slavery I am no longer surprised by the significance of the above words. I understand now that the world we live in has an underbelly swarming with slavery that is as much alive today as it was when the majority of the western world blindly concluded otherwise. I now pretend to believe that the powers that be are working to end this rarely talked about scar on human cooperation.

I am no longer surprised because of a newly formed, admittedly superficial understanding I have on the topic. I recently read E. Benjamin Skinner’s “A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery”, scoured the web for government reports and awareness sites, watched videos by Hollywood spokesperson Emma Thompson and a lecture by the U.S. ambassador on human trafficking Mark P. Lagon.

I absorbed and I consumed and eventually I was no longer surprised, no longer shocked, but thankfully no longer oblivious to the impossible scale of overcoming this horrible scourge.

The underlying issues in so far as finally ending slavery are incredibly vast. Determining factors such as lack of awareness, acknowledgement, funding, international pressure and reach are all preventing its end. Because of the scale of 21^st century slavery in the world, this is the first installment of a series of posts I will have on the topic.

Slavery Defined

Wikipedia opens that “Slavery is a legal system facilitating exploitation of labor.” Benjamin Skinner opens his book agreeing with another author that slavery is defined “as human beings forced to work, under the threat of violence, for no pay.” The United Nations expands on this by stating that human trafficking is “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control ove another person, for the purpose of exploitation.” Try saying that ten times in a row.

And then there is the United States. Their 2008 Human Trafficking in Persons report has the following definition:

The Trafficking Victims Protection Act defines “severe forms of trafficking” as:

1. sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act has not attained 18 years of age; or
2. the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.

Keeping with the Benjamin Skinner definition, it is claimed that there are upwards of 27 million slaves in the world today. If all of the slaves in the world were compared to my native land of Canada, 9 out of every 11 people in the population would be a slave. Surely, this is a poor excuse for an exercise but it puts things into some sort of perspective. It is of further noteworthiness that slavery is considered illegal in essentially all of the world’s sovereign nations.

So what’s the deal then?

“For God’s sake, don’t go talking about brutal slavery here. We have no steel pens: everyone is free. ”

The problem with these definitions is that there are always alternative ways of looking at any issue. A flip side to the coin as it were. Within the confines of A Crime so Monstrous, Benjamin Skinner writes about a Haitian trafficker that doesn’t sell children, but instead simply places them. He is doing them a favor, the trafficker suggests,  “because the child can’t eat” on his or her own. He suggests that he is merely performing a social service to these children by ensuring them a future with someone with the urban benefits that rural living wouldn’t otherwise provide. In Haiti, the tradition of something called the restavek system of slavery is so deeply entrenched into their history that Renel Costume, the man in charge of combating the restaveks acknowledged to having one himself yet proudly added “but I don’t rape them.”

In India, where the tradition of debt bondage is common in rural parts, suggesting slavery exists to a government official is almost as revolting as the word itself. Talking to the Social Secretary of Araria about slavery, Skinner was scoulded with “For God’s sake, don’t go talking about brutal slavery here. We have no steel pens: everyone is free. While it is not the highest virtues that govern the universe, it is not possible that slavery exists in this district.” The United States and United Nations both list India high on their respective lists of infractions in trafficking.

84,792 slaves were said to have been redeemed over an eight year period beginning in 1999.”

In Sudan, a country that has the worst possible ranking in the U.S. report, problems arising out of definition of slavery have hurt well funded rescue operations. Christian Solidarity International for example, has been successful in raising money for purchasing (redeeming) Sudanese slaves as a means of freeing those already victim to to the trade. 84,792 slaves were said to have been redeemed over an eight year period beginning in 1999. The legitimacy of this number has since been greatly debated. Questions regarding whether or not those freed were actually slaves and the at times controversial purchase price (which often went to SPLM rebels) all tainted the effort.

Charles Jacobs, a collaborator with the CSI continued his support with, “You can tell the difference between the villagers who are free and the slave kids. I mean, the slave kids are sickly and frightened and you can simply tell.” While John Eibner, the one in charge of CSI in Sudan defended the numbers, “Even if it is accurate that some of the folks being redeemed really aren’t slaves and then you say to yourself, ‘Well, okay, let’s say half of them aren’t.’ All that means is that you’re paying double the amount for those that are and I’d, in a way I’d say that’s acceptable.” As with everything else in this subject, much is controversial and I will elaborate on this specific case in a later post.

Agreeing to a definition yet stepping around it at all costs is not unique to slavery. As seen above, governments shy away from the term slavery in the same sense that the word genocide was avoided at all costs prior to Rwanda and during the early stages of Darfur. If what is indeed taking place is slavery, then the UN is essentially required to act. But wholesale actions of this type can be costly if in terms of direct expenditure as well as international trade.

Instead of slavery, governments confirm the likeliness of debt bondage, of human trafficking, or restaveks, involuntary servitude, peonage or any other number of other diluted terms. This fatal error in policy allows a blind eye to be turned by those who are supposed to be looking out.

As mentioned earlier, this is the first of many entries I hope to discuss on the topic of modern day slavery.

Please let me know your initial thoughts on the matter in the comments below.