The new slavery
Vienna is hosting the first major international forum dedicated to the fight against human trafficking. UN officials rightly call it the hidden crime of globalisation and nothing short of modern day slavery.
It's an 'industry' with annual profits of an estimated $32 billion.
Astonishingly, one of the conference attendees called human trafficking more lucrative than the trafficking in arms.
Labels: human trafficking
posted by Brian @ Friday, February 15, 2008
1 comments
1 Comments:
It has been sooooo long since I have paid a visit, but it is good to be back tonight and see that you are still writing and publishing to the BSJ.
I saw a brief TV newsclip about the conference in Vienna on BBC World last week but did not realize that it was a major event to help curb the trafficking of human beings around the world.
It is a very big problem here in Europe, especially for poor women and girls from eastern Europe who are trafficked to the rich EU countries for prostitution and sex slavery. If they are lucky they may get low-paying physical labor jobs in agriculture (farms) and meat processing plants over here in Germany. Many unfortunately end up with "Curtain Nr. 1"... prostitution and lots of physical abuse from their pimps.
What I find ironic (and sad) about many peoples' attitude toward modern day slavery is that this severe worldwide crisis is largely ignored. People simply have other priorities so long as they or their children are not caught up in human trafficking and slavery.
You would think that this would be a subject of huge interest especially to black communities back in America, in a time when the people of the USA and Canada are celebrating and remembering Black History Month, but no___ barely a peep about freeing the victims of modern day slavery in the press and in the Sphere. Few fervant calls for working together nationally and globally to find solutions to this crisis is forthcoming from our civic, religious, and national leaders of color. Why is that? Do you know the answer? Is it because modern day slavery is no longer our problem, it is somebody else's problem now?
The UNODC and UN-GIFT websites have excellent coverage of the conference with document and report downloads. Here is the link in case some of your readers are interested:
http://www.ungift.org/
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