There are more slaves alive today than all the people stolen from Africa in the time of the transatlantic slave trade. Put another way, today's slave population is greater than the population of Canada, and six times greater than the population of Israel.
Kevin BalesSlavery is an obscenity. It is not just stealing someone's labor; it is the theft of an entire life.
Kevin BalesSlavery is theft - theft of a life, theft of work, theft of any property or produce, theft even of the children a slave might have borne.
Kevin BalesMost of the people who come into slavery today, the people who enter into slavery for the first time in the present moment, are not captured, they're not knocked over the head, it doesn't follow the old sorts of mechanisms.
Kevin BalesYes, twenty-seven million in slavery is a lot of people, but it is just .0043 percent of the world's population. Yes, $23 billion a year in slave-made products as services is a lot of money but it is exactly what Americans spent on Valentine's Day in 2005. If humans trafficking generates $32 billion in profits annually, that is still a tiny drop in the ocean of the world economy.
Kevin Bales