21st-Century Slavery

In preparing lessons for our after-school children’s programs this week, I’ve had to grapple with an extremely troubling issue: human trafficking. As the soccer World Cup approaches in June, we’re trying to make children and teenagers aware that traffickers are expected to descend on Cape Town in large numbers.

The depth of evil associated with this issue is astonishing. I was shocked to read that today, despite more than a dozen international conventions banning slavery in the past century and a half, there are more slaves than at any point in human history. Children are lured away from their homes (or off the streets for those who have no homes), with the promise of a better life. People of all ages are bought and sold as if they are nothing more than cattle. Kids as young as 3 and 4 are exploited sexually , offered up for prostitution and for pornographic purposes. The list of atrocities is long and painful to confront.

The problem is especially acute in South Africa, where there are an estimated 38,000 children trapped in the sex trade. According to a January 18 article in Time magazine, “More than 500 mostly small-scale trafficking syndicates … collude with South African partners, including recruiters and corrupt police officials, to enslave local victims.”  For the four-week period of the World Cup, Cape Town public schools will be closed, meaning more children will be on the streets and vulnerable to those who would seek to take advantage of them.

I can’t comprehend the hardness of heart that would compel a person to treat a child, or person of any age, in this way. If you don’t believe Satan is real, then just google human trafficking and read some of the horror stories. Only a supernatural force of evil could influence people to sink to such depths.

But there is hope in the One who has already overcome the devil and all the havoc he has wreaked on the world. God is a God of justice and He “works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed” (Psalm 103:6). He has made it clear in Scripture that He loves children and all who are oppressed, and that there is misery in store for those who mistreat children:

Jesus “called a little child and had him stand among them. And He said … if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea” (Matthew 18: 2-3, 6).

“If God is for us, who can be against us?” Paul rhetorically asked in Romans 8:31. Still, these little ones need your prayers, as do teenagers and others who are vulnerable to those who would exploit them. For more insight into South Africa’s human trafficking crisis, see http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1952335,00.html. For more information on the issue in general, see http://www.justiceacts.org.