This year, we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the passing of the act that ended the transatlantic slave–trade. It’s an important point in history to mark, and it matters that we honour those who struggled – for a long time, and against deep opposition – to bring about this change.
But it also matters that we recognise that although this trade is now illegal, slavery is still a reality in the world.

In 1998, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights wrote this
Slavery continues to be reported in a wide range of forms; traditional chattel slavery, bonded labour, serfdom, child labour, migrant labour, domestic labour, forced labour and slavery for ritual and religious purposes.

Latest estimates are that, around the world, 27 000 000 people are enslaved.

There is child trafficking in Sri Lanka; children are “recruited”, often forcibly, into the fishing work camps, and kept in remote and harsh conditions to work in the fleets.

From Mumbai, India, comes the story of Salma (not her real name) The eldest of five children in a family living in desperate poverty, when she was 14, her parents with a neighbour’s help sold her to a brothel for £9. She was promised a domestic job, but repeatedly raped and starved until her will to resist was broken. She was freed through the intervention of an NGO, and her parents requested the chance to see her over a religious festival. During that time, she was sold again, this time at the street side to truck drivers.

She has since been rescued again, and now lives in a safe refuge.

One of the features of a certain understanding of military jihad, as it is practiced in Sudan by the Islamist National Front regime, is the belief that all those who oppose it – Muslims, Christians and traditional believers, - are appropriate subjects for enslavement. In a typical raid by the soldiers of this regime, the men in a village are killed, and the women and children taken as slaves and concubines.

And it is not only in far away places….

Several trafficking across Europe is on the increase; women in Eastern European countries are promised jobs in the prosperous west – and sometimes pay all their life savings in order to be brought here. Then they are raped and beaten, their passports removed and kept in captivity, forced to act as prostitutes. They are threatened with punishment because, without passports they are here illegally. Their families at home are threatened.

Women come to Britain and the US to work as domestic staff. Again, they can find passports removed, and so they are unable to leave their employers. They can then discover that they are being required to work every day, work unreasonably long hours, work for little or no pay.

Let us celebrate and rejoice in the memories of those who worked to change the law. And let us honour their work and memory by keeping the struggle going.

Here is one project for your information and prayers:

A project is being established in Soho to work with trafficked women, primarily offering support and care. But it will also provide a link, if requested, to a project in King’s Cross which has been running for some years and which supports women who want to leave the sex trades, and find a way fo establishing a new a life, or perhaps returning home. Please pray for those who do the work, for those who support it, and for those who will be reached. This is a very new project, but as we learn more about it, and in particular, as we learn more about how we can support it, we will make that known.
Then there is chocolate!

For many of us, one of the goodnesses of being alive. But did you know that Cote d’Ivoire, in West Africa produces more than 40% of the world’s cocoa crop. In 2002 it was discovered that 284000 children were trapped in forced labour in the West African cocoa industry, the majority in Cote d’Ivoire. Most had been trafficked from Mail, Burkina Faso and Togo. The industry said this would be ended by 2005.

It has not been.

Some changes have been made – the industry has put some projects in place to encourage education and to train farmers to be more efficient, and so not to need such mass labour.

But this does not actually deal with the main problem, the trafficking of people for labour. Until the industry can guarantee that the chocolate we eat is not made from beans picked by trafficked children, things have not really changed.

One of the weapons used by the earlier campaigners to change the law on the salve trade was to boycott sugar produced by slaves in plantations.
We can do the same.

To gain the label “fair trade”, chocolate manufacturers must guarantee that not trafficked labour has been used in its production. There are many varieties of fairly traded chocolate, and more and more outlets are supplying it. By exercising the power we have as consumers, we can have a direct effect on this.

For more information, visit the website www.stopthetraffik.org

The transatlantic slave trade was outlawed 200 years ago. It was a long and hard campaign, but it began to change things.

We can celebrate this – but our celebration is hollow and short-sighted if we are not also continuing the campaign in our time, and in our situation.