While the common understanding of slavery is what happened in the American South, people are still being held against their will, bought and sold, beaten and forced to work for someone else. Today, the term human trafficking is commonly used, and the inhumane act is carried out worldwide.
In fact, slave trading today is much cheaper and easier than it was in 1850, according to the nonprofit Free the Slaves. New Slavery, they explain, is about the profit, not ethnicity. It happens everywhere, including the US and Europe, often in the agriculture, mining and prostitution sectors. There are 27 million slaves in the world today.
Singer and musician Jason Mraz has joined the ongoing effort in place by Free the Slaves and recently returned from a trip to Ghana. There, he joined the team on a rescue mission to free child fishing slaves in the Yeji region surrounding Lake Volta. ”Slavery today is hidden from our view. It doesn’t look the same as it did two, three hundred years ago,” said Mraz on AP Live.
Mraz explained he really didn’t know how he was going to be able to contribute during the mission. “I certainly had my fears because the work we were going to be doing over there certainly had its share of dangers,” he said. After a short while though, he realized what a powerful difference was being made. ”Working alongside those activists, their strength became my own,” he continued.
Free the Slaves attempts to discover slaves, notify any family of the situation and remove him or her from their owner’s grasp. If that can be done successfully, the work then involves rehabilitating the children and helping them to reintegrate back into society. The task is very difficult since most of the children’s owners will hide them or threaten the rest of the community so they’ll keep rescuers from collecting the enslaved child.
Through funding by Free the Slaves, local groups are able to place themselves in the lake region of Ghana where much of the fishing industry trafficking happens. After being removed, these children are given three meals a day, are prepared for school and get to relearn what it means to be a kid.
“You can tell the work Free the Slaves is doing is giving kids new opportunities to trust adults and to experience love,” said Mraz.
The singer truly believes that ending today’s slave trade is completely possible. It’s just a matter of spreading the word and then taking action. People have the ability to freely and widely communicate today, and if slavery could be abolished in the US hundreds of years ago with very limited mass communication abilities, then ending human trafficking is certainly within our power today.
Freeing people today, “it’s about empowering them, giving them the chance to sustain their independence,” said Mraz.
“We live in a time where we don’t need more ideas,” he said. “I think we’re swimming in solutions, we just need more volunteers. So if there’s anything in this world that fires you up, lean into the discomfort and go out there and do something and make a difference.”
Photo courtesy of Free the Slaves, photo by Haags Uitburo via Flickr.