More Slaves Today Than at Any Time in History

There are more slaves today than at any time in human history, reported Benjamin Skinner, a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School of Government. An estimated 27 million people in the world are forced to work, held through fraud, under threat of violence, for no pay beyond subsistence, in forced marriages, in sex-trafficking and prostitution.

Though mostly illegal and called by different names, slavery nevertheless exists today in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Southeast Asia, Romania, Sudan, Haiti, Brazil, Latin America, and even in the United States.

It was reported in Time magazine, Jan. 18, 2010: “Despite more than a dozen international conventions banning slavery in the past 150 years, there are more slaves today than at any point in human history.”

Ancient cultures made slaves of those captured during wars in Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Greece, China, India, Africa and Rome. Julius Caesar conquered in Gaul and brought so many captured “slavic” peoples into to Rome that the term “slav” took the connotation of permanent servant – “slave.” Over half of Rome’s population were slaves.

Another form of slavery was generational indebtedness, spread by Roman Emperor Diocletian. The Roman economy was so bad that people unable to pay their mortgages abandoned their properties, renounced their Roman citizenship and went off to live with the barbarians. Diocletian made it so people could never be free from their debts, tying them and their children to the land in perpetuity, creating the feudal system. (Read more from “More Slaves Today Than at Any Time in History” HERE)

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