[H_E_Pennypacker]

I don't mean to undermine this powerful report but slavery is alive and growing across the planet. I think it's important to remember that there are higher percentages of slaves in the world now than there were back in the days the Western world considers the slave era. So, Mauritania is far from being the last stronghold. Al Jazeera and Rageh Omar produced an excellent series on modern day slavery.

[olavk]

Don't you mean that there are higher absolute numbers of slaves today? I have a hard time believing that there is a larger percentage of slaves today than in the roman empire. That would mean there is something like a billion slaves today.

Edit: Wikipedia says there are estimated 12-27 millions slaves today, which is a lot of people, but certainly not as high a percentage of the worlds population.

[bmj]

I agree with the grandparent, but I'm skeptical of the numbers quoted, too. Slavery, along with child and sex trafficking, is certainly still a huge problem, but because it happens in the shadows, most people don't know about it.

[yitchelle]

And, because it occurs in the shadows, the true numbers will never been known.

[conroy]

For those interested, here is a link to the series that H_E_Pennypacker mentioned. http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/slaverya21stcenturyevil/

[mtts]

Indeed. And most slavery in the world today is extremely complicated (in order to make it less obvious that it is in fact slavery) and nasty, making the slavery discussed in this article almost seem benign by comparison: it's out in plain view, it involves black people and it takes place in a backwards country far, far away.

Much different from, say, indentured servants in Dubai, Eastern European prostitutes or illegal immigrants in Europe.

[mattdeboard]

Did you actually read the article? "benign" doesn't belong in the same dictionary as the words that should be used to describe the slavery described in it.

[mtts]

If you look up what gets covered by the relatively innocuous term "Human trafficking" you'll find it can get much, much worse.

[randallsquared]

It appears that a terrible consequence of redefining prostitution or immigration law as "slavery" is that it may lead to regarding the original, actual slavery as "benign by comparison".

[mtts]

"Illegal immigrants" : forced to work off their debts to the people who smuggled them into Europe, usually in illegal sweat shops or worse:

"Eastern European prostitutes" : a subset of illegal immigrants who are forced to work as sex slaves.

[wisty]

I half expected it to be an article on the US prison system, or the abuse of indentured migrant workers (Dubai was the poster child for a time).

But this seems worse. It's not people who were conned, or made bad decisions but people who were born into slavery. Westerners have a big bias towards rational choice - there's an assumption that it's always worse to deprive someone of choice in the first place than to take advantage of their mistakes; without considering any of the context.

A burglar is often assumed to be worse than a con artist, even if the con artist steals far more. Sometimes we may take this assumption to an illogical extreme.

[pbiggar]

I read a book about slavery by the guy who runs "Free the Slaves". It gave 6 case studies of slavery in the modern world, and Mauritani was one of them. It was the only one which seemed remotely humane.

In all of the others - ranging from indentured servanthood (yes, still slavery) in India and Pakistan, to kidnapped children in Brazil - the people were treated as expendable. Work them til they die, then get new slaves. By contrast, the institutional slavery in Mauritania, slaves are often treated like family.

I don't think we should argue which is worse - many have given their lives for their freedom so it doesn't seem like we can decide which is more important - but I don't think how they got in their situation makes them worse. (And rereading your comments now, perhaps we actually agree on this).

A final note: many other slaves are born into slavery, certainly indentured servants often pass on their debt to their children, and similar with lower caste slaves in India. In Thailand, parents are known to sell their young girls to the sex trade, which is roughly the same.

[wisty]

What I'm saying is that how they got in their situation isn't as big a factor as the conditions they are in. And yes, I think we both are making very similar arguments.