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| Emancipation Proclamation (Francis Bicknell Carpenter) |
Many who have heard dramatic accounts of Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation are
under the illusion that slavery is a thing of the distant past.
Nevertheless, MSN News
reports that slavery is a tragic reality for approximately 30 million people,
almost half of whom are in India. Enslavement occurs when people are "trafficked into brothels, forced into manual labor, victims of debt bondage or even born into servitude…"
"Slavery" has been formally defined by the Global Slavery Index 2013 as "the possession or control of people to deny freedom and exploit them for profit or sex, usually through violence, coercion or deception."
After India, the other "top ten" slavery countries (in descending order) are as follows:
China, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Russia, Thailand, Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar, and Bangladesh. The
Index
reports that these ten countries "account for three-quarters of the world's slaves."
Walk Free CEO Nick Grono says that this type of data is especially important because "if you can't measure it [slavery], you can't devise policy to address it."
Resources
http://news.msn.com/world/30-million-people-are-slaves-half-in-india
Copyright October 18, 2013 by Linda Van Slyke All Rights Reserved
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