( FIVE MINUTE READ)

Every 30 seconds, someone is abducted into slavery. That means, by the time you are done reading this blog article, there will be 4-5 more slaves in the world. This equates to 5.4 victims of modern slavery for every 1,000 people in the world.

It exists today in over 130 countries with billions in profits linked to forced labor. Modern slavery is very cheap. The average cost of a slave today is $90. Compare that to 1809 when average the price was $40,000

So what’s the connection to you?

At the moment you hear the world will never be the same due to COVID-19.

I am sure the same was said after world war one, world war two, and all previous pandemics.

Slavery is not simply a thing of the past.

As you read this post, you are probably using a smartphone, tablet, or laptop. Each device requires minerals – including gold. Perhaps the gold in your electronic device was mined by slaves.

Slave-owners often use euphemisms instead of the term “slavery” to avoid getting caught. Such euphemisms include domestic servitude, debt bondage, bonded labor, attached labor, restavec (a French word that means “one who stays with”), forced labor and indentured servitude.

The other forms of forced labor and servitude in the world today may share some slave‐like properties, and are no doubt as pernicious in their victimization and exploitation, indeed may in some cases be even more brutal than some high-end forms of sexual slavery, but they are not slavery, which is quite distinctive in its perfidy and its social, economic, cultural and psychological attributes and consequences.

Inflating these already horrendously high figures by conflating slavery with all forms of human domination and forced labor, however well-meaning, and whatever the rhetorical payoffs, simply invite skepticism and the charge of waging moral crusades undermining the desperately needed effort to abolish, once and for all, these evils from the world.

Although slavery is illegal in every country in the modern world there are at any given time, an estimated 40.3 million people worldwide are in modern slavery. And it is still as brutal and inhuman today as it was in history.

Human Trafficking is ranked as the 3^rd largest international crime industry – just behind Drugs and Arms Trafficking.

The complexity of the crimes makes it very difficult to quantify the scale of those living in modern-day slavery but it is estimated that 800,000 people are illegally trafficked across international borders every year.

Nowadays slavery doesn’t only come in the obvious form in which one person owns another person (which is traditionally called ‘chattel slavery’).

Migrant workers often become bonded labor to pay off those who smuggled them to the new country – they dare not break free for fear of being deported. Passports are confiscated from migrant workers to keep them in bondage.

In fact, 65% of the world’s slaves are in a forced labor situation.

I’m not sure what the average price of a slave is today, but it can’t be more than fifty or sixty dollars.

Almost half of the world’s slaves are found in India.

Every item we buy has a back story some good some bad.

Just think when we come out of this current Pandemic with a world economically on its knees what it is going to mean for those who have to earn a living to stay alive.

We might not be transporting slaves but if we don’t question where and who or what produced it, we will be contributing not to a global recovery but too enhanced slavery.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.