When was the last time you heard or talked about slavery? It isn’t really a topic that you would bring up in conversation today. Once you learned about it in school it seems like it just… vanished. Like It just disappeared from the Earth once the United States abolished it. But that isn’t true. That’s just a myth, an assumption you’ve made in your head. There are actually about 50 million people trapped in slavery at this very moment. 50 Million people without free will. 50 million people that you didn’t even know existed.
You might be thinking, That can’t be true. How could something that terrible slip under my radar? That is because you allowed it to. We all did. We all let it. Up until a year ago, I didn’t know it still existed either. But we made assumptions. We assumed that slavery couldn’t exist in our modern day, and therefore didn’t bother to look into it. We all just dubbed it as a common belief that it didn’t exist anymore. But really, all the proof we needed was just a click away.
When you think of slavery, you probably think of the mainstream version of literally owning another person. But really, it can come in many forms. These include: Forced labor, Human trafficking, Domestic servitude, and Debt bondage. These also fall under the umbrella of “modern slavery”. As the name conveys, modern slavery is refers to forms of slavery that occur in our modern day. But more specifically, according to Walk Free it is, “situations of exploitation where people are unable to leave or refuse due to violence, threats, coercion, abuse of power, or deception.” As said before, some of the most common versions are bonded labor, forced marriage, and human trafficking. It differs from historical slavery because back then it was seen as common practice but is now done secretively and under the radar. But that doesn’t mean it has died down, there are actually more slaves now than ever before, although now it is a smaller percentage of the human population.
It is truly saddening how there isn’t enough being done to eradicate this evil, especially considering how 167 of the world’s countries face some sort of slavery. This is due in part to how half of the world’s countries don’t have proper legislation against slavery, since they assumed that it ceased to exist and thus there was no need for it. How could whole countries not know about the struggles its people face within them? Ongoing conflict, political instability, poverty, and forced displacement also play large roles in the continuation of slavery. These situations cause many people to be vulnerable and get exploited into slavery. Corruption within many governing bodies of many countries is also a huge factor. Slavery is only as prevalent and dominating as it is since governments around the world are permitting it and are not passing enough laws to properly protect the people.
I fear that another reason for why we didn’t believe in and acknowledge modern day slavery was because it didn’t affect us directly. I myself have avoided serious issues because I thought that it didn’t affect me personally, but I was wrong. Even though I am not literally a slave myself, its wicked nature circulates to everyone. This idea is well in Martin Luther King Jr’s Letter from Birmingham Jail in which he preached, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” And so, I hope you’ve come to acknowledge slavery’s every growing evil, and remember, slavery isn’t a thing of the past, so we have to work to eradicate it from our futures.
Photo Credits: On Deviant Art by Skaengie
Nathaneal (Nati) Negatu- Latin-DMSF Class of 2028