A top destination for current slavery is the United Kingdom

Organized criminal gangs in the UK “import” people from various countries and regions: Eastern Europe, South America, Africa, China; and compel them to work under the threat of violence or death.

The victims, often under the age of 18, are forced to labor in factories or—more horribly—into sexual exploitation.

Many are lured to Britain by the promise of employment, often expecting a much better job than is available in their home country. After they arrive, their new employers usually commandeer their passports and other legal documents; barring their ability to return home.

Human trafficking, the modern-day version of slavery, is a lucrative business. According to an estimate by the International Labor Organization, it brings in $32 billion a year worldwide.

Last December during the House of Commons daily debates, MP Caroline Spelman said that “the average earnings of a trafficked prostitute for his or her pimp are roughly £100,000 [$190,000].”

Authorities do not know exactly how widespread the problem is, but rough numbers offered by the government are viewed as gross underestimates. The more deeply the matter is investigated, the higher official estimates rise.

News outlets have begun to report on individual cases, bringing the problem into public view.

Worldwide estimates of human trafficking vary widely

Anywhere from 700,000 to two million people are sold into slavery each year. A report by the Joseph Rowentree Foundation estimates that at any one time “more than 12 million people may be working as slaves."

The report also points out that there are at least 360,000 slaves living in industrialized nations. In response to this rising problem, Britain’s Metropolitan Police Service recently launched a new team designed to address human trafficking and its effects, both in the UK and abroad.

A commander from the MPS explained, “The victims can be male or female, adults or children who are trafficked for exploitative labor or forced prostitution work.”

The commander also said it is a “global problem” and that the team will work with other nations to “significantly disrupt these criminal networks.”

The British government is beginning to address the problem by planning to increase awareness inside the UK and in the countries from which the slaves are coming.

Slavery has existed throughout history

Although most countries today have legally banned it, the practice of human beings owning other human beings still exists, largely done in secret.

Many in the world long for real solutions to the lingering troubles that have always plagued humanity. Today, this remains only a hope, a wish.

Man’s problems have been constant throughout history. While we now possess more knowledge than ever before, humanity’s troubles and ills remain the same: insoluble.

The term slave came into existence long after the beginnings of human bondage were a form of servitude

In the Middle Ages, the warring Germanic people subjugated a great part of the Slavic population of east-central Europe. Conquered Slavs were bought and sold throughout the West, even as far from their homeland as Moslem Spain.

• From the Slavs' own name for themselves came their conquerors' Sclavus, in the Latin which served medieval Europe as a universal language.
• By the ninth or tenth century, sclavus was used to designate any human chattel, whatever his origin.
• This sclavus is the ancestor of our Modern English slave.

"Slavery", unlike the word sclavus, was not an invention of the Middle Ages

• The Latin language needed a "slave" word long before the Christian era.
• The term used in classical Latin was servus which is the ancestor of Modern English servant.
• In the Middle Ages, servus came to be used for a particular type of slave.
• The medieval servus, or serf, as it became in French and later in English, was not a personal slave.
• The serf belonged to the land on which he was born and only indirectly to the possibly temporary possessor of that land.
• The memory of slavery reappears unrecognizable in the breezy Italian greeting and formula of farewell, ciao. It is a dialectal alteration going back to the Latin sclavus.
• Servus is also the background for the French word concierge, "resident doorkeeper", which was derived from the Latin word conservus, "fellow slave".

One example of modern slavery

In 1807, Britain passed the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, a law banning the legal trade of slaves. Rather than ending the slave trade, this has merely forced it underground 200 years later, a hidden slave trade continues around the world.