Slavery Remembrance Day 23rd August, 2010
Today marks the 12th International Slavery Remembrance Day for the abolition of the Slave Trade. We had our delightful Victoria Kuhr on BBC’s breakfast radio in Plymouth this morning, speaking STOP THE TRAFFIK’s part on what slavery looks like today.
The date commemorates those who worked together around the world to end an inhuman system, which saw almost 30 million men, women and children displaced from Africa.
These victims endured the trauma of being forcibly taken and sold as slaves in the different slave trading systems. Those sold into chattel slavery were subject to forced labour on the sugar plantations in the Caribbean, where the life expectancy did not exceed six years after their arrival.
Today it is estimated that at least 12.3 million people are still victims of forced labour worldwide. Of these 2.4 million are as a result of human trafficking. But there’s no one source continent and no one destination. Trafficking affects Trafficking affects every continent and most countries. 300 years after slavery’s abolition – how is this form of slavery the fastest growing international crime?
Slavery ended because of the courageous acts of all those who rose together against its oppression and did something to STOP IT. We need to continue acting together to end all forms of slavery everywhere. When people act, things change!