Antislavery Efforts Must Focus on Demand | TakePart Social Action Network™

Posted by Siddharth Kara on May 20, 2009 at 5:25 pm

In the course of talks at universities, NGO’s, and even bookstore readings, I have often been asked the following question: “How can we end slavery without ending poverty, corruption, and social injustices against women, children, and minorities?” Good question, and many of you may be wondering the same. Fortunately, I have an answer.
As I argued in my last blog on takepart.com, understanding contemporary slavery as a business is crucial if we are to design a more effective abolitionist response. This business and economic analysis reveals many crucial pieces of information, including the immense profits generated by human exploitation as well as the business models of various modes of slavery, which can reveal vulnerable points that can and must be exploited if we are to rid the world of these crimes.
Each mode of slavery is governed by distinct manifestations of two forces – supply and demand. As an example, let’s take a look at sex trafficking, the most profitable and fastest growing component of modern-day slavery. The supply-side of this barbaric industry is driven by immense and longstanding forces relating to poverty, lawlessness, social instability, corruption, military conflict, and acute bias against female gender and minority ethnicities. Remedying these forces will require considerable long term efforts, which is why so many people ask – how can we solve slavery without solving these problems? For many forms of slavery, like trafficked sex slaves, we do not have to rely on the attenuation of these supply-side forces in order to make a significant dent in the business of slavery. Fortunately, the demand side of this industry is far more vulnerable to intervention.
The demand-side drivers of the global sex trafficking industry are:
1) male demand for commercial sex
2) slave exploiter demand to maximize profit, and
3) consumer demand for lower retail prices, or the price elasticity of demand.

These latter two elements are economic drivers of demand, and I argue in my book that they present the most effective way to virtually abolish, if not eradicate, the global sex trafficking industry. I won’t burden this blog with the details, but for now I can share the following essential thesis – the enormity and pervasiveness of the global sex trafficking industry is driven by its ability to generate immense profits ($36 billion in 2007) at almost no real risk. The absence of real risk is largely due to poorly enforced laws, very low prosecution and conviction levels, systemic corruption, poor victim-witness protections, and insufficient economic penalties in the law.
Remember, slaves provide a virtually nil cost of labor. Labor is almost always the highest cost component to any business. When operating costs are substantially reduced, slave exploiters can in turn reduce the retail price of the products or services they are selling, which then elevates consumer demand for those products or services (price elasticity), which then feeds additional slave exploiter demand to acquire more slaves. This aggregate demand among slave exploiters and consumers is the most deadly driver of the global sex trafficking industry. Accordingly, the most effective efforts to eradicate sex trafficking are those that reduce aggregate demand by drastically increasing the costs and risks associated with the exploitation of trafficked sex slaves (thereby inverting the thesis I described above). There are specific tactics that can achieve these ends, including several that can be undertaken by individual citizens. Here are a few:
1. Initiate media and outreach campaigns to lawmakers demanding a more aggressive demand-side approach to contemporary slavery (details of what this means are in my book);
2. Initiate media and outreach campaigns to corporations whose products you purchase demanding they certify their supply chains are free of slave labor, under threat of migrating your consumption to competitors who do;
3. Liaise with local law enforcement through a system of community vigilance committees (CVC’s) to seek out signs of slave exploitation for the purpose of proactive, human-rights intervention in such establishments;
4. Support NGO’s with victim-witness shelters or empowerment programs through financial or volunteer contributions. For example: Free the Slaves, Polaris Project, International Justice Mission, and ASSET
There are many more tactics that must be undertaken by governments, international organizations, and NGO’s to provide a comprehensive demand-side response to slavery. Also, some modes of contemporary slavery are not as amenable to a demand side approach. Fortunately, those that are amenable are invariably the most profitable segments of slavery, so this is as good a place as any to start. Given the limited impact of supply-side efforts across the last decade, the time for a more tactical, resource-driven, business-analysis informed demand-side antislavery campaign is long overdue!
http://www.takepart.com/blog/2009/05/20/antislavery-efforts-must-focus-on-demand/