Slavery's staying power

In its first term, the Bush administration spoke out strongly against human trafficking, laying out the most aggressive anti-slavery agenda since Reconstruction. But politics hamstrung its implementation. Pressed by a coalition of academic feminists and evangelical conservatives, American officials focused mainly on eliminating prostitution, despite overwhelming evidence that, worldwide, more than 90% of modern-day slaves are not held in commercial sexual slavery.

Before his reelection, President Bush spoke frequently about slavery, including two rousing speeches he gave before the U.N. General Assembly. But in each case, the president only detailed his concern for those in the commercial sex industry, never mentioning debt bondage (in which a person is forced into slavery in order to pay off an initial debt) or labor trafficking. Over the last two years, the State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons has dedicated four times as much of its budget to fighting sex slavery as it did to combating other forms of slavery.

"It is a vicious myth that women and children who work as prostitutes have voluntarily chosen such a life for themselves," asserted a 2005 State Department fact sheet. Thus the victimization of Ashley Alexandra Dupre, the high-priced call girl frequented by Eliot Spitzer, who until Monday was New York's governor, is equated to the slavery of the young woman in the Bucharest brothel.

Even though there are more slaves in the world today than ever, as a percentage of world population, there are fewer than ever. In a generation, bondage could be eradicated. But for this to happen, the U.S. must lead the way.

First, however, it must define the terms carefully. A current legislative fight is underway about just what slavery means. Over the objections of a few anti-slavery stalwarts in the Justice Department, the House of Representatives passed a bill in December that expands the current anti-trafficking legislation to cover most forms of prostitution, coerced or not. If approved in its current form by the Senate and signed by the president, the law will no longer address slavery exclusively and will instead become a federal mandate to fight prostitution on a broad scale.

Prostitution is always degrading, and it is often brutal -- but it is not always slavery. Equating the scourge of slavery with run-of-the-mill, non-coerced prostitution is not only misleading, it will weaken the world's efforts to end real forced labor and human trafficking.

Slavery in all its forms is a crime against humanity. Rambho's bondage is no more or less tolerable than that of the young woman offered to me in Bucharest. Both are abominations, and both are our collective burden to abolish.