The prison industrial complex aside, debt slavery — the reality that millions upon millions of people in the Global South must daily pay on a debt they had no part in accumulating — is one of today’s most overlooked injustices. At the same time these impoverished nations are expected to reach the Millennium Development Goals, they remain financially unequipped to even begin addressing the issues of inadequate healthcare, HIV/AIDS, high levels of child/infant mortality, and universal education. One large part of the reason is debt.
Bob Edgar, the General Secretary of the National Council of Churches, wrote “Ending Debt Slavery”, the column below, for Commondreams.org. The op-ed draws a comparison between activists who rallied against the enslavement of their fellow human beings more than 200 years ago to what’s happening today in the economic justice movement.
Edgar notes that while slavery is illegal in most places around the world, the very legal debt slavery still persists and is sanctioned by the same governments who eventually wrote law that constitutionally ended the enslavement of human beings by another human being.
Ending Debt Slavery
By Bob Edgar
Last week marked the 200th anniversary of the end of the transatlantic slave trade. Two centuries later, it is clear that one of history’s most towering evils, the enslavement of human beings, came to an end only when citizens challenged their governments to understand slavery as incompatible with basic laws of God and humanity.
Around the world today, citizen campaigners are leading their governments to understand that deadly poverty and crippling debt, slaveries of our own age, similarly are incompatible with the basic laws of human dignity. READ FULL ARTICLE