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Slavery & St. Patrick – 16 Mar 2010

March 17th, St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated across the world. But few people remember how his life in Ireland began as a child slave.

When he was about 16 Patrick was captured from Britain by Irish raiders and taken as a slave to Ireland. He was forced to work looking after pigs for six years before escaping and returning to his family. Patrick later returned to Ireland as a missionary after a vision where he saw the Irish people calling out for him to come and share the good news of Christ. The history of Ireland was irrevocably changed because of one slave boy.

Modern-day Slavery

There are 27 million people in slavery today. This means that there are more people in slavery today than at any other time in human history. Slavery has existed for thousands of years, but changes in the world’s economy and societies over the past 50 years have enabled a resurgence of slavery.

One hundred and forty-three years after the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed in 1865 and 60 years after the U.N.‘s Universal Declaration of Human Rights banned the slave trade worldwide, slavery — or, as it is euphemistically called, human trafficking — is actually thriving. It is, as Hillary Clinton has said, “the dark underbelly of globalization.”

Slavery has many forms — debt bondage, forced domestic servitude and forced prostitution — still exists is, indeed, shocking, mostly because it is invisible to those of us who don’t know where to look for it.

This new slavery has two prime characteristics: slaves today are cheap and they are disposable.

Cheap, Disposable People

• An average slave in the American South in 1850 cost the equivalent of $40,000 in today’s money; today a slave costs an average of $90.
• In 1850 it was difficult to capture a slave and then transport them to the US. Today, millions of economically and socially vulnerable people around the world are potential slaves.

Slavery in Ireland today

Sadly it is also happening in Ireland today; people are being trafficked into our country to provide slave labour or forced into prostitution. Others are being trafficked through Ireland to other destinations.

The 2008 US State Dept “Trafficking in Persons Report” says “Ireland is a destination country for women, men, and children trafficked for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor… Women from Eastern Europe, Nigeria, other parts of Africa as well as smaller numbers from South America and Asia, have reportedly been trafficked to Ireland for forced prostitution. Labour trafficking victims reportedly consist of men and women from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt, and the Philippines”. Find out more about trafficking in Ireland from Ruhama

Rescuing girls from slavery

When she was 13, Farheen was sold to a brothel owner in Mumbai for 5,000 rupees (€65). Her captivity lasted for years and years.

But, one day, outside the brothel, Farheen met staff at Tearfund’s partner Aruna. The Aruna team worked tirelessly for eight years to secure her freedom. Now, Farheen is a cleaner at the Aruna drop-in centre in the mornings and works as a counsellor for a government organisation in the afternoon, visiting girls who work as prostitutes.

Tearfund partners in India are successfully working together to end child slavery. They are raiding brothels to rescue girls, prosecuting brothels which are involved in trafficking and providing care and rehabilitation so that these girls can once again lead a live of freedom.

• More about: Vulnerable Women
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