Or perhaps the World Bank, the organisation responsible for restructuring the Cote D'Ivoire's economy in the interests of farmers and workers. If it had, it would have seen what we saw. It is a measured, yet powerful indictment of the inability of international law and free-market forces to protect the most vulnerable people in the world. Back then, a slave owner could produce documents to prove ownership. Now, it's a secretive trade which leaves behind little evidence.
Modern slaves are cheap and disposable.
They have three things in common with their ancestors. They aren't paid, they are kept working by violence or the threat of it and they are not free to leave. People are still living like this all over the world. Kate and Brian's most upsetting meeting was with Drissa, a young man from neighbouring Mali who had been tricked into working on a cocoa farm and had tried to run away. His back was still raw from a beating which had almost flayed him alive months earlier.