In 1863, Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation which declared slaves to be freed in the United States. Many of us think slavery has ended since then. But the reality is there are more slaves today in the world than when Lincoln was alive.
27 million slaves aren’t just numbers that don’t matter. Each of those 27 million individuals has a story to tell and they are waiting for us to rescue them.
I think about Amanda, an 8-year-old girl who was trafficked through various cities in Cambodia and sold on streets and the Internet for men willing to pay for sex. She endured unimaginable nightmares of abuse and rape for six years.
I think about Katya, a 22-year-old woman from Greece. Living in poverty and desperate for a job, she responded to a newspaper ad seeking waitresses. Upon arriving in Athens, she was told that she would not be waitressing; instead, she was forced to strip, dance and have sex with paying customers. She was a victim of sex trafficking.
I can’t forget about Rajesh, who took a small loan of 1,200 Rupees ($35) from a landlord when he was 20 years old to help pay for his family’s medical bills. For 30 years, no matter how hard or how much Rajesh worked in the landlord’s fields, his debt was never paid in full. He was trapped in bonded slavery.
I can’t forget about Guillermo, who was offered the chance for well-paid work in the United States.
Once in Florida, he was sold to a labor contractor for $1,100. The contractor explained that he would have to work 14 hours of backbreaking labor on tomato farms to pay back the money he now owed him.
We can do something to stop these injustices. We can raise our voices to end modern-day slavery. Check out the END IT movement, which has seven coalition partners, including Love146, A21 Campaign and our alliance partner International Justice Mission—all fighting to end modern-day slavery.
Watch this short film from the Passion Conference about many faces of modern-day slavery.
