Our Priority: Counter Modern Day Slavery

Slavery is not a thing of the past, It still exists today, so much that in fact, there as never been as many slaves in the world as in 2011.

It is a global affliction that contributes towards increasing poverty, infectious diseases, lack of education, criminality and even terrorism.

Slavery takes many forms, the most commonly known is the sex trafficking of women and children. This form of slavery makes hundreds of thousands of new victims every year.

But slavery also takes form by the violation of labour laws and workers rights, by debt bondage or by threats of violence towards the victims and their loved ones.

In addition to the devastating impacts on the physical and psychological health of the victims, slavery also affects families and therefore whole communities.

In 2011, the condemnation of slavery is unanimous. No individual or State can pronounce itself in favour of slavery without being harshly reprimanded.

Yet, the revenues resulting of slavery and the trafficking of human beings eclipses the revenues related to arms trafficking and is just behind the ones coming from drug trafficking without however attracting as much political attention.

For us at OMDAC, the collective ignorance in regards to the breadth of this issue, coming mainly from the lack of financing in the research and awareness of this scourge, is in itself an absurdity. Moreover, The lack of political will, combined with the insufficient endorsement of concrete actions on the field, contributes in keeping the public eye away from the realities pertaining to modern day slavery, which is to our sense strictly unacceptable.

Slavers and traffickers have a multilateral approach to achieve their goals.

In order to counter them, we therefore need to come up with a response that is itself multilateral in nature. More precisely, we need to initiate work towards:

• Increasing awareness and mobilizing the population in order to gain stronger political will and increase the financing of different programs

• Develop, in collaboration with experts, tools that would enable local and national authorities to correctly enforce laws and bring the perpetrators to justice.

• Create or participate in economic and social development projects to slow down the flow of potential victims and help current victims by giving them alternatives to slave labour.

THIS IS WHAT OMDAC STANDS FOR

THE CAUSE NEEDS YOUR SUPPORT

INFORM YOURSELVES AND SPREAD THE WORD!