Shailesh Vara MP is Shadow Deputy Leader of the House and Joint Vice-Chairman of the All Party Group on Trafficking of Women and Children.
Two-hundred years have passed since Parliament formally outlawed slavery, but for the thousands of victims of modern-day human trafficking, many of whom come to this country every year, slavery is anything but a thing of the past.
Today’s various forms of slavery are increasingly covert and deceptive than the Transatlantic Slave Trade ever was, and their effects are equally horrendous. Men, women and children are smuggled across borders for exploitation of all types – sexual servitude, crime, forced labour and even the removal of organs for illegal sale. Once detained, victims have few options and are often held through practices such as debt bondage, violence, kidnapping, and false promises of paid labour. Victims are kept silent with threats against them as well as to their families back home. With nowhere else to turn, they painfully endure the tragic consequences of a trade that, until recently, has often been overlooked by the authorities in this and other countries.
Of the thousands who fall victim to the horrors of modern day slavery, children are the most defenceless. Children as young as six are brought into Britain in their hundreds every year to be used as slave labour or as victims of paedophile rings. Sometimes they have been sold by their own parents and at other times they have been kidnapped. When they outlive their usefulness, they are discarded and left to fend for themselves. Currently there is no national mechanism for the identification and protection of these children. Instead, most are dealt with under the immigration system after being considered as children seeking asylum.
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