More from Baronness Cox

Back on the 4th March, 2009, we posted an item about the visit of Baronness Cox to New Zealand. While she was here, Baroness Cox gave two lectures, one in Auckland and one in Christchurch. The Auckland lecture was to be recorded and put online, but apparently isn't available yet. (We'll try and keep tabs on when it comes online.)

In the meantime, if you want to see Baronness Cox talking, you can see a clip from the Breakfast programme that appeared on the 25th March this year, in which the Baronness talks to Paul Henry about modern-day slavery. The clip seemed to me a bit fiddly to get up and running, but maybe I'm having a bad day. Suffice to say, it can be viewed - with perseverance - once the brief ANZ Bank ad has flitted by.

Wanna own your own slave?

The Chicago Sun-Times columnist, Cathleen Falsani, points out that it's more than 165 years since slavery was made illegal in the USA.

It's sixty years since the United Nationas declared, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that: "No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms."

Yet in 2008 there are more slaves in the world than were taken during 400 years of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, according to the documentary film, Call + Response. This film is a combination of music focusing on slavery, and images of people who are suffering in slavery around the world.

Of the 27 million slaves worldwide, half are children and 80 percent are female.
Some more stats:

• • Slave traders made $32 billion last year.

• • The average cost of a slave is $90.

• • More than one-third of all prostitutes in South and East Asia are children.

• • More than 17,500 people are trafficked as slaves to the U.S. each year.

• • Fifty percent of slaves in the U.S. work in agriculture, manufacturing or domestic work.

For more information go to the Call and Response website. A question worth asking: how many slaves are there in New Zealand?