21st century slavery:

23 March 2009

Throughout the world's darkest history we find entire civilizations built on the
backs of slaves, and the modern ages reveal forced labor feats that rival the
building of the Egyptian pyramids. Bloody human hands have hacked out thousands of
kilometers of sea and river canals, railway lines, and highways as global
industrial empires were built at the price of human bondage.
Today, the face of 21st century slavery has changed a little. The numbers and
profits have increased, as well as the clandestine methods of human trafficking.
According to the USA Federal Bureau of Investigation, human trafficking alone
generates a staggering $9.5 billion in yearly revenues worldwide. The
International Labor Office estimates that there are more slaves today than any
other time in human history. Worldwide estimates are that 27 million men, women,
and children, are in slavery today, at any given time, and exponentially growing.

The international slave trade reaches into every country around the world, it
includes the old fashioned buying, selling and owning of humans as well as many
forms of sexual exploitation and "bonded" labor. In the so called advanced
countries, the largest category is sex slavery, which is linked to legalized or
tolerated prostitution. In the Near East, the largest category is domestic
servitude slavery, fed by a massive migration of young women from South Asia. On
the Indian subcontinent, the largest category is bonded labor slavery of the
lowest castes in rice mills, carpet factories and brick kilns. In Africa and Sri
Lanka, the largest category is child soldier slavery.

Over the past decade, trafficking in human beings has reached epidemic
proportions. The search for work abroad has been fueled by economic disparity,
high unemployment and the disruption of traditional livelihoods. Traffickers face
few risks and can earn huge profits by taking advantage of large numbers of
potential immigrants. Trafficking in human beings is a crime in which victims are
moved from poor environments to more affluent ones, with the profits flowing in
the opposite direction, a pattern often repeated at the domestic, regional and
global levels. It is believed to be growing fastest in Central and Eastern Europe
and the former Soviet Union.

In the decade since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world has become the
target of a new global crime threat from criminal organizations and criminal
activities that have poured forth over the borders of Russia and other former
Soviet republics. The nature and variety of the crimes being committed seem
unlimited, trafficking in women and children, drugs, arms trafficking, stolen
automobiles, and money laundering are among the most prevalent. Russian organized
crime is unique in the degree to which it is embedded in the post Soviet political
system.

At the same time, it has certain features in common with such other well known
varieties of organized crime as the Italian Mafia. The latter has a complicated
history that includes both cooperation and conflict with the Italian state. Much
more than was ever the case with the Italian Mafia, however, Russian organized
crime is uniquely a descendant of the Soviet state.

Trafficking is almost always a form of organized crime and Russia is one of those
unfortunate countries that has the receptive environment in which organized crime
thrives. Organized crime is deeply rooted in the 400 year history of Russia's
peculiar administrative bureaucracy, but it was especially shaped into its current
form during the seven decades of Soviet hegemony that ended in 1991. This ancestry
helps to explain the pervasiveness of organized crime in today's Russia and its
close merger with the political system. Organized crime in Russia is an
institutionalized part of the political and economic environment.

How people are attracted, recruited and exploited is not a mystery. The global
economy has lifted many of the world's workers into the middle class. But it has
also widened the gulf between the rich and the poor, particularly in Africa,
Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Southeast Asia and India. Regions that suffer
flooding or desertification, the destruction of forests and natural disasters
create desperate migrants willing go anywhere to survive. With the collapse of
communism, the transition to market economies has turned millions into casualties
of rapid economic change.

In the past slavery meant one person legally owning another person. Today there is
no place in the world that allows legal ownership of human beings. In many cases,
however, non ownership turns out to be in the interest of the slaveholder, who now
enjoys all of the benefits of slavery without any responsibilities. Thus, modern
slavery is not typically chattel slavery, where a person is born, captured, or
sold into permanent servitude. It is debt slavery that is most common today. A
person pledges to work against a loan of money, but the length and nature of the
work are not defined and the loan may never get paid off, the debt sometimes
passed down for generations.

Government corruption, and often collusion, plus the threefold increase in the
world's population since World War II, have led to literally a glut in potential
slaves. Slaves have simply become so cheap that they are not seen as a capital
investment.

In this way the new slavery mimics the world economy in a shift away from
ownership and fixed asset management. The new slavery simply appropriates the
economic value of individuals while keeping them under control, but without
asserting ownership or accepting responsibility for their survival.
Although the new slavery evokes universal condemnation, the tangle of current
international and domestic laws and overlapping jurisdictions makes it difficult
to prosecute slave runners, even when they are identified. Most traffickers
receive light sentences. A USA federal law that forbids any "sale into involuntary
servitude" carries a maximum penalty of only 10 years in prison.

Ultimately, the problems created by the global phenomena, such as migration and
trafficking, require a global solution. And in an age that has been marked by a
huge upsurge of rhetoric about human rights, a global solution must match this
with implementation and with accountability. Because as this economic crisis
deepens, so shall the pool of potential victims swell.