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The slaves among us could work next door
“Human trafficking” is often thought to mean for the purpose of commercial sex, but that’s only half of it, according to Steven Inrig. “It gets packaged as prostitution, but it’s more multi-dimensional,” says Inrig, who teaches ethics and health policy at the UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas. “Some experts say 50 percent has nothing to do with prostitution.” An estimated 27 percent of slave trade victims work at domestic service, 10 percent are employed in agriculture, five percent in sweatshops and four percent in service industries, he said. “It could be going on at your dry cleaners, or where you get your nails done.” Inrig addressed journalists at the annual convention of the Evangelical Press Association in Dallas in early May. Human trafficking is EPA’s 2010 cause of the year. He said today’s slave trade — “the ultimate commodification of life” — is the second largest criminal industry in the world, and “the U.S. is not immune to its reach.” Trafficking was defined as “the recruitment, transportation, harboring, or obtaining of a person for involuntary labor or services by force, fraud or coercion.” An estimated four million people are trafficked every year for a variety of purposes, such as commercial sex, agricultural work or housekeeping. Hotels are increasingly becoming an industry used for trafficking The Marketplace July August 2010
sources of labor. Moreover, the chocolate industry has gotten together in an unprecedented effort to develop a cocoa protocol to cleanse its supply chain. “All the major chocolate companies, labor unions, consumer groups, anti-child labor groups and Free the Slaves were called together to get slavery out of the cocoa product chain,” he said. “It was unique — the first time that a whole industry had committed itself to working together to remove slavery from its products.” Individual investors, he said, could do their part. “Ask your investment manager or mutual fund or retirement account
workers, he said. He cautioned journalists to be wary of inflated statistics, noting that precise figures are hard to come by. His “safe” figure was 12 to 25 million people worldwide in some form of forced labor, with 800,000 to 900,000 of them in the U.S. According to the U.S. State Department, 14,500 to 17,500 foreign nationals are trafficked into the country each year, he said. The most likely victims were impoverished people who lacked a social safety net. Many were recruited through addiction, indebtedness, confiscated documents and threats of violence.
“It could be going on at your dry cleaners, or where you get your nails done” Campaigns of religious and human rights groups were making a difference, said Inrig. “The numbers are improving.” He cited initiatives on the business front, such as the Fair Trade movement which has encouraged companies to eliminate forced and high-risk 22
provider to ensure that your investments are fighting slavery, not feeding it.” He praised the Socially Responsible Investment movement as being “way out in front when it comes to helping individuals and institutions to use their investments for social aims.” They do this in three ways, he said: 1. Screens to exclude offending companies. 2. Shareholder activism — investing in publicly traded companies to speak out as a shareholder and force better anti-slavery practices. 3. Community investment — investing in businesses that specifically benefit communities coming out of slavery. ◆
