DENVER – With an estimated 27 million people enslaved around the world, academics at a recent international conference on human trafficking explored ways they could help end the shameful practice.
Professors, students, nongovernmental organizations and others gathered at the Conference on Religion, Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery, held at the University of Denver, to share information about human trafficking in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and the United States.
They brainstormed ways that universities and individuals can help fight human trafficking, including forming anti-slavery societies on campuses, incorporating the topic into a wide range of courses, buying products from companies that don’t use slave labor and making more people aware of the problem.
“This is the imperative for our time, just as civil rights were for the ’60s,” says Dr. James Brewer Stewart, founder of the group Historians Against Slavery.
According to panelists, human trafficking reaps big profits, collectively exceeding those of most corporations, and has been part of the history of many societies. Trafficking has grown alongside free trade, globalization and other economic and social trends, they said. But hard data are difficult to collect, and many people regard the problem as too overwhelming and distant for them to confront. Victims are often abducted, lured with false job offers, sold by relatives or sometimes enter into slavery voluntarily to help their families.
According to several conference speakers, most modern slaves are unaware of their rights, fearful of everyone and humiliated by what happened to them. In many cases, they wind up in foreign countries where they do not speak the language and are cut off from those who can help.
During the United States’ slavery era, the price of a human being was roughly $40,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars. Today, it is anywhere from $30 to $1,000, according to Patrick Soch, a panelist and graduate student at DU’s Iliff School of Theology.
