Content area
Full Text
Today, I want to discuss an issue that [. . .] ought to concern every person, because it is a debasement of our common humanity. It ought to concern every community, because it tears at our social fabric. It ought to concern every business, because it distorts markets. It ought to concern every nation, because it endangers public health and fuels violence and organized crime. I'm talking about the injustice, the outrage, of human trafficking, which must be called by its true name-modern slavery.
Now, I do not use that word, "slavery," lightly. It evokes obviously one of the most painful chapters in our nation's history. But around the world, there's no denying the awful reality. When a man, desperate for work, finds himself in a factory or on a fishing boat or in a field, working, toiling, for little or no pay, and beaten if he tries to escape-that is slavery. When a woman is locked in a sweatshop, or trapped in a home as a domestic servant, alone and abused and incapable of leaving-that's slavery.
When a little boy is kidnapped, turned into a child soldier, forced to kill or be killed-that's slavery. When a little girl is sold by her impoverished family-girls my daughters' age-runs away from home, or is lured by the false promises of a better life, and then imprisoned in a brothel and tortured if she resists-that's slavery. It is barbaric, and it is evil, and it has no place in a civilized world.
Now, as a nation, we've long rejected such cruelty. Just a few days ago, we marked the 150th anniversary of a document that I have hanging in the Oval Office- the Emancipation Proclamation. With the advance of Union forces, it brought a new day-that "all persons held as slaves" would thenceforth be forever free. We wrote that promise into our Constitution. We spent decades struggling to make it real. We joined with other nations, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, so that "slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms."
A global movement was sparked, with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act- signed by President Clinton and carried on by President Bush.
And here at CGI [Clinton Global Initiative Annual...