Still Slavery

Article 4

No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

This one has to be the most heartbreaking to write about. Here we almost 146 years after Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation - following the battle of Antietam - the bloodiest day in the American Civil War, and the world still hasn't eliminated slavery. One need only look at Nicholas Kristof's page on the NY Times site and see his columns about sex slaves in Cambodia. In one series of columns, he bought the freedom of two girls, hoping to give them a new and better life. After following-up, he finds one of the two is back at the brothel.

It should be no surprise that one effective way to deal with this is to fight poverty and illiteracy. It is a lack of food and resources that drives youth to unfamiliar cities, as it is a lack of money that drives parents to sell their kids. People face uncertain futures and are therefore easy targets for slavery.

Kristof also points out though that President Bush had been doing a good job in bringing attention to the issue and shaming countries into cracking down on the illegal sex trade. (This is a lesson I keep stressing; that the evangelical population in the US can be a great partner for human rights issues.) But despite some of Bush's efforts and Kristof's columns, this issue is barely debated. In the US, the debate over slavery tore our country apart. But now, there is a gross silence - one that ignores if not condones the practice.

To fight this, and so many of the other human rights issues we come across, anti-poverty and attention are two of our best tools for the long-term battle.