Segment 1: A Robust Source of Cheap Labor. Our guest on this edition of The Doug Noll Show is Siddharth Kara (www.siddarthkara.com), one of the world’s foremost experts on human trafficking and contemporary slavery. Siddarth was an investment banker on Wall Street in the late 1990’s but the seeds of his deep interest in modern slavery started in the early 90’s when he volunteered in a refugee camp in Bosnia. While volunteering he heard a lot of stories about genocide and rape camps and the trafficking of women and girls by Serbian soldiers, which prompted him to leave the corporate world and jump into the field of human trafficking to try to research the subject and educate people about the issue as best as he could.
Human trafficking, slavery and child labor have morphed into a robust source of cheap labor for a multitude of businesses. Forced labor (or servitude) can be defined as workers who are held 18 hours a day in horrific and dangerous working conditions, paid 10 to 15 cents per hour, and are so poor and desperate that they don’t have a choice to leave. If it involves a minor, it’s child labor, and if someone has has been recruited and transported some distance to this condition, it’s human trafficking. This is happening all over the world, including within the United States. It’s much more broad-based and pervasive than most people realize.
Segment 2: The Research Gap. We need to close the research gap and understand how human trafficking is functioning, where and why it is functioning, and the scope of the problem. Siddharth and his colleagues are focusing now on detailed analysis that gives them a foundation on which to tackle the issue. The research is fairly dangerous to conduct. The researchers go into the situation and interview the exploited laborers and document the details of the slavery.
The fundamental thesis that has emerged from Siddharth’s extensive research is that the enormity and persistence of human trafficking is driven by the ability of the exploiter to generate immense profits at little risk. Siddharth estimates the global profit of slavery exceeds $95 billion. There’s a lot of money to be made.
Segment 3: Bonded Labor and Sex Trafficking. Bonded labor can be defined as laborers who trade their labor under slave-like conditions for credit to a wealthy land or business owner. This exists even today in south Asia due to poverty and the caste system. Siddharth has documented laborers working for 20+ years to pay a debt as little as $50 or $100.
No region of the world is immune from sex trafficking. Siddharth has found and documented forced prostitution and pornography in all areas of the world. Sex trafficking is by far the most profitable form of slavery in the world today. It is easy to take a human and sell them over and over again, and generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit. The numbers are staggering.
Segment 4: Modern Day Abolitionists. So what can be done? Firstly, raise awareness. Understand the issue and how it touches your life. The things we purchase every day could easily be tainted by child labor and forced labor. Secondly, organize ourselves and create a social movement to abolish these practices. We need to create a robust and informed outcry of modern day abolitionists that puts pressure on corporations and law makers to ensure these violations of fundamental human rights don’t persist.
To listen to the entire interview: