21st Century Abolitionism

This is a very real and disturbing story that often doesn’t get enough attention. Slavery still exists, and it may not be in the forms you expect.

Ambassador John Miller is head of the State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. But he has a simpler word for what he is combating: "slavery." Trafficking, or "modern-day slavery," as Miller calls it, is fast becoming one of the early 21st century's foremost human-rights issues.

The U.S. intelligence community's most recent estimate is that 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders every year. Estimates of the number held against their will within individual countries run much higher. "There are probably millions of victims worldwide," says Miller, a former Republican congressman who bounces with energy and leads the U.S. anti-trafficking effort from a nondescript office a few blocks from the White House.

People are trafficked and coerced into prostitution (probably the largest category), domestic servitude, factory or farm labor, or even bizarre niche categories, such as child camel jockeys in the Persian Gulf states. The FBI estimates that trafficking in drugs, arms, and people makes billions of dollars a year for organized crime.

Unfortunately, movies like Pretty Woman glamorize or at least give a rather hazy view of what prostitution is really like. It is not a young woman getting picked up by a rich bachelor and falling in love. It is most often the poor and the young. They are tricked into leaving their homes and are then forced into prostitution. They are exploited. They are slaves to cruel taskmasters.

More attention needs to be given to this horrible attack on human rights and dignity.