Part 3: Combating Modern Slavery
Tuesday 1st June, 2010
Kevin Bales and his organisation, Free the Slaves, advocate how to combat modern slavery from an economic standpoint. According to Free the Slaves, a major difference between modern slavery and slavery of the past is the value of a life.
In our over populated world ‘humans are now dirt cheap, use them up and then throw them away,’ Kevin says. In some countries a slave can be bought for around $90, in Nepal and India they can bought for as little as $5. With an estimated 27 million people in bondage Free the Slaves has identified Greenland and Iceland as the only countries in the world where they can find no evidence of slavery.
An economic crime, done to make a profit, it is a multi billion dollar economy that underpins some of the worst industries on Earth, including the destruction of our environment. Around the world slaves are used to cut down forests in the Amazon, in the mining industry in Africa, and in work which is destroying eco systems in south east Asia, etc. Kevin describes what is happening in our environment and human rights as a harrowing lineage
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Major supporting factors for modern slavery include the population explosion, increased extreme vulnerability, and poverty. There are many different contributing dynamics such as civil war, poverty, ethnic conflicts, disease, ethnic cleansing, etc. Today about one billion people live on the edge, in situations where they don’t have any opportunities and are usually destitute and extremely vulnerable. Kevin says ‘the biggest factor against them is the absence of the rule of law. There is no protection for many of these people and thus corruption moves in.
If you can use violence with impunity you can reach out and harvest the vulnerable into slaves.
All too often people step into slavery unwittingly. A truck drives into the village, a man asks who wants a job? Come with me...
The children are hungry, medicine is needed, there are many reasons why people go with these men even though they look suspicious. So they leave with them and soon enough they find themselves in dirty, dangerous, demeaning work conditions. They try to leave and the hammer comes down and they discover they are enslaved. Kevin has heard this story all around the world.
Free the Slaves estimates that in third world countries the cost of freedom, including rehabilitation, for one individual could be approximately $400, in countries like the US it is more like $30,000.
Economic well being equals being slave proof.
Sustainable freedom for the 27 million slaves in the world would cost $10.8 billion, the average American expenditure on blue jeans. On a global level this is not a lot of money. It is nothing compared to the liberation and rehabilitation of 27 million lives. This means not just freedom, but building lives of dignity, autonomy, economic independence, and citizenship.
Free the Slaves has a vision of building sustainable freedom where people on the ‘edges’ can become consumers and producers, building their own economy which will begin to thrive. Kevin is emphatic that we cannot repeat what happened in America in 1865 when 4 million people were lifted up out of slavery and dumped without any political participation, decent education or any kind of opportunities in regard to an economic future. Four million individuals sentenced to generations of racism, violence and discrimination.
America, Kevin points out, is still paying the price.