How many slaves work for you?

By Charlotte Shurtz

Buying, selling, and trafficking humans ended with the Civil War, right? Actually, human trafficking is still a problem today. Human trafficking happens in every country even though it is illegal all over the world. The exact number of slaves is difficult to estimate, but there are at least 27 million slaves worldwide. That is 27,000,000 people who are forced to labor in dangerous conditions for hours at a time, not paid for their work, abused physically, sexually, mentally, and emotionally, and prevented from leaving. Made in a Free World is an organization that identifies human trafficking in supply chains, from raw materials through every step to final assembly. They have identified products such as electronics, clothing, and foods that were made or harvested by modern slaves. I recently took their slavery footprint survey to see how many slaves work to make the things I own and buy on a regular basis. Let’s be honest; I was flabbergasted by what I learned.

My slavery footprint is 28 slaves.

Twenty-eight slaves is four times the size of the family I grew up in. That is a lot of people. Here are a few of the things I learned about where these slaves probably work.

• Slaves are used in Southeast Asia for the shrimp sent to the U.S. They work 20 hours a day and are sexually assaulted if they try to escape. Many of my favorite foods, such as chocolate and tomatoes, are also harvested by slaves.
• I don’t own a lot of makeup, but it is probably made by slaves. #WearNoMakeup
• Coltan is a mineral that slaves are forced to mine. It is used to make capacitors used in electronics, like the smartphone, laptop, tablet, and camera that I own
• I own a bicycle and helmet. Slaves work every day for months without a day off in sporting goods factories.Cotton is harvested by children in Uzbek. Additionally, clothing is sometimes made in factories that use slave labor to keep their products cheap.
• In addition to working with businesses to make sure their supply chains a slavery free, Made In A Free World works with consumers like you and me to use purchasing power to reward companies who have slave-free supply chains and punish companies who don’t change their supply chains. You can take the quiz at slaveryfootprint.org to find out how many slaves work for you and learn about using your purchasing power to change the world!

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Was slave labor used to make your smartphone? That new shirt you just bought? The chocolate bar you ate earlier today? Not in the modern world, right? Unfortunately, the answer is yes, yes, and yes. Charlotte Shurtz, a BYU student, shares how she took the slavery footprint survey to find out how many slaves work for her. #BYUAHTC #MadeInAFreeWorld #HumanTrafficking

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Was slave labor used to make your smartphone? That new shirt you just bought? The chocolate bar you ate earlier today? Not in the modern world, right? Unfortunately, the answer is yes, yes, and yes. Find out how many slaves work for you at slaveryfootprint.org. #BYUAHTC #MadeInAFreeWorld #HumanTrafficking