Speeches & Op-Eds
Ending Modern-Day Slavery
Op-Ed by Dr. D. Brent Hardt, Charge d’Affaires, a.i.
June 14, 2007
Two months ago, the international community marked the 200th anniversary of the 1807 abolition of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Throughout schools in The Bahamas, schoolchildren are taught that William Wilberforce’s efforts were finally culminated in 1833 through the Abolition of Slavery Act. In the United States, Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery in 1862, though it took three years of bloody warfare to make it real. These are important milestones in human history that promised a brighter future where respect for the dignity of human beings would be universal.
Today, sadly, the world is witnessing a new version of slavery. Once again, human beings are being recruited, transported, bought and sold into forced labor or commercial sex exploitation. Trafficking in persons is the 21st Century version of human slavery, and it is alive and thriving in countries on every continent, including the United States, and potentially The Bahamas.
As unimaginable as it may seem, there today over a million men, women and children around the world trapped in a vicious web of exploitation from which they cannot free themselves. These victims of trafficking see little of life before they see the very worst of life--an underground of brutality and lonely fear.
People are trafficked for many reasons: for prostitution or exotic dancing, domestic servitude, and forced labor into construction, agriculture, sweatshops, and factories. When employers use the threat of deportation, withholding of documents, or other coercion to exploit workers to serve at lower wages, work longer hours or endure dangerous conditions, this constitutes human trafficking.
Almost every country in the world has a trafficking problem, and our 2007 Country Report on Trafficking assesses the extent of the problem in 165 countries. The United States reports in detail each year on our own trafficking problems and our efforts to meet the requirements of our domestic anti-trafficking legislation. Human Trafficking is a universal problem that requires a concerted international response if we are to eliminate this modern day slavery.
In the case of the Bahamas, our just-released 2007 Country Report on Trafficking in The Bahamas observes that many migrants who may arrive voluntarily in The Bahamas to work as domestic servants, gardeners, or in construction, may over time become subject to labor exploitation. Employers may coerce such migrants to work long hours for no pay or below the minimum wage by withholding documents or threatening arrest and deportation. Some commercial sexual exploitation of women and minors may also exist. All of this is not to suggest that the problem is widespread, but that it is a problem with the potential to become more widespread.
The first step to addressing this problem is a comprehensive network of laws that make human trafficking illegal. Other countries in the Caribbean region, including Jamaica and Guyana, have recently passed anti-trafficking legislation. Such legislation would provide specific protections for trafficking victims. These are essential because only with those protections will victims feel comfortable coming forward to identify employers who may have victimized them and to assist in prosecution of traffickers.
Eliminating modern day slavery requires openness to international cooperation, a recognition of the worldwide dimensions of the problem, and concerted action by all governments across the globe.
Throughout the world, governments, citizens and churches have awakened to this challenge. The number of prosecutions of traffickers worldwide rose again last year. Many countries have passed anti-trafficking laws. The United Nations has developed a Convention against Trafficking, and many nations have ratified it. President Bush has made combating trafficking in persons one of his top international priorities, and the United States provided over $75 million to support anti-trafficking efforts worldwide in 2006.
We have already begun working with the Government of the Bahamas to build understanding and awareness of this challenge by providing training to law enforcement officers and consulting with immigration officials. The development, passage and enforcement of anti-trafficking legislation would allow The Bahamas to do its part in eliminating this modern day affront to human dignity.