Now an enlightened and globalised world overwhelmingly condemns slavery. Yet 27 million human beings are bound in physical or economic slavery. The new slave trade comes closer to home than most Australians realise. The Herald's Slavery in the 21st Century series this week points to a shameful trafficking - hundreds, perhaps thousands, of women from Asia and Europe illegally brought to work in brothels in Sydney and Melbourne in a form of indentured servitude displaying all the repugnant hallmarks of slavery. These young women belong to an international tide of women and children caught in bondage by poverty and exploitation.
Children make rugs in India, fish seas off Indonesia, work cocoa farms in Ivory Coast.
Filipina women are violently abused working as domestic servants in the Middle East. Thai women are pressed into prostitution. So, too, are women in East Europe, Africa and South and Central America. Most countries have signed the 1956 United Nations conventions against slavery but the trade thrives through the corruption of police and government authorities, especially in nations where traditional power structures devalue women. The UN believes most people treated like slaves are Asians in debt bondage.