Yuko Narushima; 8/8/08
More slaves are alive today than were shipped out of Africa for the Atlantic slave trade during the last millennium, says Kevin Bales, an American academic on modern slavery. The professor of sociology and author of several books on the topic said global conditions had produced a market for slaves which continued to boom, including in Australia. “The population explosion, combined with the economic and social vulnerability of large numbers of people in the Third World, means that there is a glut of slaves on the market,” he said. Internationally, there are 27 million people who work without pay, under the control of violence or threat, or as slaves.
