Modern Day Slavery: Time to make a #STAND

There are four year olds being raped in brothels right now.

I heard this phrase often this summer. Alongside a good friend and armed with an iPad, I became one of ‘those’ people who need “just a couple of minutes of your time” and with whom you avoid eye contact with at all costs.

I honestly would never have expected to find myself volunteering my time for ‘some cause’ as, like much of our generation, being raised on charity adverts has desensitised my reaction to images of poor children while failed campaigns to ‘make poverty history’ have made me question whether overcoming such vast problems of injustice is even possible.

Moreover, in light of the social and economic troubles, the government seems justified in its argument to solve the internal before we can focus on the external.

Nonetheless I found myself listening to my friend talk about the real experiences of a single four year old who was being used as an example of the thousands of children trapped in various forms of modern day slavery.

Since the UK abolition of the slave trade in 1807 the term slavery is only really associated to this specific era of forced labour and nowadays we tend to resort to terms like ‘human trafficking’. Yet, to me at least, these terms mask the fact that slavery, alongside all its baggage of negative images and uncomfortable feelings, exists today.

From forced unpaid work, to child labour and sex slavery, 27 million individual human beings, nearly three times those involved across the 300-year span of the old slave trade, are trapped right now by methods like violence, fear and debt bondage and made into commodities.

While you’ve been reading this article around 13 more individuals have been taken into slavery.

The problem isn’t just abroad either: last year 200 recently trafficked individuals were found a few hours away in London. Please forgive the film reference but I’m sure most of us would attempt a Liam Neeson if it were our loved ones that were ‘Taken’ and yet these slaves or ‘commodities’ were and still are somebody’s something. Taken, as a film so frequently quoted and used by parents to terrify their children away from ‘party holidays’, most people hear the message that we are all vulnerable to human trafficking and the slavery it entails yet we remain so inactive. Our Western lifestyles and more specifically the goods we use every day are most likely supported by slaves and, in turn, the $32 billion annual turnover (International Labour Organisation) of the criminal activity that is slavery is most likely supported by us.

I am guilty of owning slaves: 39 according to slaveryfootprint.org. Yet our society blessed us with the freedom of speech which we can use to speak on behalf of those literally chained by slavery. By signing petitions like #STAND we can show our support for the proposed 2014 Modern Slavery Act which will make it easier to condemn slave owners in courts and more difficult for goods that aren’t slave free, such as 70 percent of cotton currently imported into the UK, to enter the country.

Furthermore we are empowered by our position as consumers, and individually we can reduce our ‘slave ownership’ by simply purchasing Fair Trade options which are, more often than not, found at competitive prices. This is because the fair wage comes from a better division of profit across the supply chain, not just asking for more money; I can personally vouch for the great value of Tesco’s own brand Fair Trade tea bags.

On a wider scale if we as a university can call for ‘No More Page 3’, surely we’re just as entitled to demand more #SlaveFree options? While you’ve been reading this article around 13 more individuals have been taken into slavery and, while I chose to work for no money this summer they, alongside 27 million other real people, do not have that choice. Will you #STAND?

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Photo: flickr/Imagens Evangélicas