Detractors, including Anti-Slavery International, the UN children's agency Unicef, and Save the Children call her the 'loony libertarian'. They say paying dealers will only prolong the practice of slave-trading. Cox says she is tired of waiting for the international community to come up with a long-term solution, and while it does not, someone must act. Sudan, the largest country in Africa, is the only place in the world where political slavery persists. Around 14,000 people in Sudan have been enslaved since the mid-Eighties, casualties of 18 years of continuing civil war between government and rebels, which has killed two million people and displaced five million.
Most slaves sleep with animals, in quarters separate from their master's house.
They are disciplined and taught the new language of their owners. Often they are shot, whipped, abused and given new names. Many blank out their pre-slave past, scarred by memories of rape and ransacked villages. I try to play tennis to keep fit because one never knows when we are going to have to run for our lives through the bush. She often interviews freed slaves at length.