Aidan McQuade

Fight goes on

This year marks the bicentenary of Britain's abolition of the slave trade, an important step on the way to ending one of the most brutal chapters in human history. But the achievements of 1807 did not end slavery as a practice or system.
Today at least 12 million people are in slavery worldwide. They are forced to work through the threat or use of violence. They are denied freedom, dehumanised and treated as property or bought and sold.
In Ghana, girls as young as five are used as domestic slaves; boys are used as bonded labour in India's brick kilns; in Brazil, men are used as forced labour to clear the Amazon; and women are trafficked to the UK and forced to work in agriculture.
Even though slavery is illegal under international law, no region is free from this abuse and slavery is found in most countries.
In the UK, hundreds of men, women and children are trafficked each year into a range of exploitative labour and sexual exploitation.
Shirani* was trafficked from Sri Lanka to the UK as a domestic servant. She was forced to work between 16 and 18 hours a day, every day. She was only given leftovers to eat and was treated with brutality. The only time she was allowed out was to go shopping.
However large the problem of slavery is, solutions are possible. The people of Hull, whose history is deeply rooted in abolition, are carrying on the tradition set by William Wilberforce and his fellow abolitionists. More than 3,000 people from Hull have signed Anti-Slavery International's Fight for Freedom 1807-2007 Declaration, which Hull City Council and Wilberforce 2007 are supporting, demanding the eradication of slavery once and for all. The fight is not over.

Aidan McQuade
Director, Anti-Slavery International
www.antislavery.org

*not her real name