Recently I’ve been reading ‘A Crime So Monstrous‘ by E. Benjamin Skinner. It’s a captivating look into the nature of the modern slave trade (AKA Human Trafficking) around the world.

Skinner’s research is very practical. He travels to places under cover, arranges to meet with a trafficker, and organizes to buy a person. During the book he also meets with various politicians and NGO staff, as well as parents whose children have been abducted.

Some of the things that Skinner discovers as he travels are shocking, especially where concerned with organizations who are perceived to be doing good. He notes that in southern Sudan, where research has shown there are around 11,000 people missing due to slavery, there is a Christian organization called Christian Solidarity International (CSI) who claim to have freed more than 80,000 slaves. It seems that the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (who are fighting for freedom from the North) have been using CSI’s ‘redemption’ process as a means to fund their troops through the use of fake slaves.

While in Haiti he comments:

Locals say that the main contribution of the peacekeepers to Haiti’s economy comes via the brothels

In other words those we expect to fulfill roles of integrity: keeping peace, dealing with injustice, tackling poverty; are actually propagating the problem.

Reading this convinces me that we have to do something to fight this injustice. There is nothing noble about celebrating the life of abolitionists like William Wilberforce without addressing the fact that today there are more people in slavery than at any other moment in history.