Search

Rotherham, England and Child Sex Trafficking

On August 21st Alexis Jay released a report titled “Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham: 1997-2013.” Her findings have taken the human trafficking world by storm, as she claims more than 1,400 girls, mostly between the age

What Can Ordinary People in Ordinary Places do to Bring and Sustain Freedom for the Enslaved?

The pungent smell of stale urine set me back a step. Rats rested in leisure. The sound of disease could be heard echoing off the worn walls, and if these walls could talk, as the saying goes, few could stomach the stories. I moved forward, up two fli

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

Dina Chan

In 1993, Dina Chan found herself owned by a pimp in northern Cambodia. An orphan who got into debt for overdue rent payments and tuition fees, Chan was trafficked from Phnom Penh to Stung Treng at the age of 17. Her narrative describes police corrupt

Beatrice Fernando

A divorcee at age 23, Sri Lankan Beatrice Fernando answered an ad from a local agency looking to employ housemaids. Desperate to support her three-year-old son on her own, Fernando agreed to travel and work as a maid in Lebanon. Unbeknownst to her, t

Biram Dah Abeid

A descendant of slaves himself, Biram Dah Abeid began to formally fight slavery and discrimination in Mauritania through an organization he formed at age 19: the National African Movement. He openly addressed the Secretary of State at the time, Colon