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Child Exploitation: How Old or How High?

When he asked me in broken English with his heavy Vietnamese accent how old of a girl I was interested in, I felt nothing inside me. Watching him hold his hand at his waist and then moving it up to his chest, indicating the size of a girl I supposedl

The Plague of the Other

I have been moved recently, as a result of reading an outstanding book, "Esctatic Nation,” by Brenda Wineapple, to reflect once again on what I describe as “The Plague of the Other.” I refer here to the human tendency to lift ourselves up by comparin

Not just Awareness but Action - A Hawaii Nurse’s Path Toward Sex Trafficking Restoration

In a 2009 presentation by International Justice Mission, I was exposed to the heart breaking global atrocity of human trafficking. I knew the issue of slavery was an international problem yet was completely unaware of the scope of the issue existing

David Brion Davis: An Appreciation

On July 28, President Obama awarded the National Humanities Medal to eminent historian of slavery David Brion Davis. This is no small achievement. The Medal is the highest honor bestowed by the National Endowment for the Humanities, a prize that “hon

Aftercare and Slave Labor - The Necessity to Care for Others

When you read about the suffering of people in slavery, it is hard to conceive how anyone who survives slavery could ever hope to recover and lead a normal life. Both historic slavery and modern day human trafficking inflict seemingly unbearable suff

What It Takes for Real and Lasting Progress in Eradicating Contemporary Slavery

Earlier this year I developed a paper upon which this article is drawn. My purpose in developing that paper was to gather learnings from the history of reform movements which could inform how we tackle the challenge of eradicating contemporary slaver

Slavery Surrounding the Unaccompanied Minor Crisis

News headlines are abuzz of the unaccompanied minor crisis at the U.S.’s southwest borders. Officials estimate that at least 60,000 children have made their way, undocumented, into the U.S. during the last year. In the wake of other major conflicts a

Flor Molina

In 2001, Flor Molina became a victim of slavery in the garment industry in Los Angeles. She was an easy target: a desperate mother who had just lost her baby because she didn't have the money to hospitalize her sick child. This article originally app

Ishmael Beah

Ishmael Beah was only 12 years old when a government army pulled him into the Sierra Leone armed conflict in 1993. Confused and afraid, Beah witnessed and participated in the atrocities of the civil war until he was rescued by UNICEF in 1996.  Accord

James Annan

As the youngest child of an illiterate family, being enslaved was not uncommon in Ghana when James Kofi Annan was growing up. He had not begun primary school when he was sent away by his father to work in a fishing village nine hours away from his ho