Discuss the meaning and significance of the modern slave trade for the development of human rights.

Slavery is an ancient practice that continues to this day in many forms, including slavery as it is understood in the context of pre-Civil War America, sex trafficking involving children and adult women, forced marriage, and forced labor. Each of these forms of slavery are present across much of the world. In wealthy Persian Gulf countries like the United Arab Emirates, desperately poor foreign laborers from Pakistan, Philippines, India and other countries are attracted to...

Slavery is an ancient practice that continues to this day in many forms, including slavery as it is understood in the context of pre-Civil War America, sex trafficking involving children and adult women, forced marriage, and forced labor. Each of these forms of slavery are present across much of the world. In wealthy Persian Gulf countries like the United Arab Emirates, desperately poor foreign laborers from Pakistan, Philippines, India and other countries are attracted to the Gulf fiefdoms by promises of well-paid work—only to find themselves caught in a trap involving forced servitude under abysmal conditions. In the United States, sex trafficking involving young women is a serious and omnipresent problem. In northern Africa, slavery—mostly involving the victimization of blacks from sub-Saharan Africa by avaricious “businessmen” in the northern Maghreb region of the continent—has grown exponentially worse with the increased migration of immigrants from the south to the north (namely, those seeking refuge across the Mediterranean Sea in Europe). In short, slavery remains a very prominent problem in the twenty-first century.

The meaning and significance of the modern trade for the development of human rights is dismal. In the aftermath of the horrific devastation of World War II and the Holocaust, the newly-established United Nations passed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article IV of which reads as follows:

No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

The preamble to this seminal if less-than-successful declaration emphasized the primacy of human dignity in international relations and, obviously, the universality of its intentions. The opening passages of this preamble reads:

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world. . .

Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom. . .

The fact that slavery remains a seemingly intractable problem in the modern era is a testament to the failure of humanity to abide by these basic principles. If it were only isolated incidents or individuals guilty of human trafficking, slavery, indentured servitude, and so on, then the relationship of slavery to the development of human rights would not be as consequential. There is a very real limit (short of military intervention) on how more “civilized” nations can address these problems in developing countries. The continued prevalence of various forms of slavery in much of the world, however, is a blemish on the record of the civilized world in virtue of its failure to adequately address the problem of human rights abuses. The meaning and significance of the modern slave trade to the development of human rights is substantial and troubling. Slavery in the twenty-first century is an indication that the primacy of the individual and his or her right to freedom has failed to find a sufficiently wide audience to prevent its recurrence.