Modern Day Slavery

The story as seen from Yahoo...

A sobering new report from the State Department finds that more than 12 million people worldwide are victims of "trafficking in persons" — trapped in forced labor, bonded labor or forced prostitution. But  just 4,166 people were convicted of trafficking last year, the report says.

Even so, awareness of the reach of modern slavery has made such crimes easier to report and police, the study  says. Ambassador-at-Large Luis
CdeBaca, who heads the State Department's anti-slavery efforts, noted that 116 countries have adopted anti-trafficking laws since the United Nations enacted a law against  modern slavery 10 years ago. Last year marked a high-water mark, both in identifying trafficking victims and in mounting successful
prosecutions.

"Countries that once denied the existence of human trafficking now work to identify victims and help them overcome the trauma of modern slavery, as well as hold responsible those who enslave others," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a letter accompanying the report.

But there's still much work ahead, the report says. The State Department estimates that only 0.4 percent of all modern slavery victims were identified last year. Human trafficking is a multibillion-dollar business — and will probably grow so long as global governments fail to crack down on it more forcefully.

Read the whole story here.

How can you help?  Here are a couple of organizations: Not For Sale Campaign and International Rescue Committee.