Ran into Kevin Bales today at a meeting with legal and human rights experts in DC. He has been a wonderful friend to our work. If you have not picked up a copy of one of his many groundbreaking books, I would do so today.

Kevin is one of the foremost statisticians compiling the compelling evidence of slavery’s world-wide prevalence today. In many ways, the issue of modern-day slavery is one that has been alive in the public and media’s eye for only a few years, even as the issue itself has been growing in magnitude for centuries. Many of us, myself included, used to believe slavery was a thing of the past, a crime that came to an end with the Civil War here in the U.S. 

Bales has made it clear however, through years of careful research, that there are more slaves today than were trafficked from Africa over 400 years of the transatlantic slave-trade combined.

In 2001 the U.S. Department of State opened the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP Office), ushering the issue of human trafficking in its many forms into the eye of the public and media. In 2003, National Geographic printed an article that cited the existence of 27 million slaves in the world today - a number put forward by Kevin Bales through his research. This article among other publications was a catalyst for media attention to the issue of modern-day slavery, and much has changed in just a few short years in terms of the awareness and concern of the general public.

There are still many hearts, minds, and wills to be captured as we seek total eradication of human trafficking in all of its forms. But the tide is rolling…