TACKLING MODERN SLAVERY IN THE COMMONWEALTH
RIDDING OUR WORLD OF MODERN SLAVERY BY 2030
Alex Norris, MP
is the Labour (Co-op) Member of Parliament for Nottingham North, and has been an MP continuously since 8 June 2017. He currently undertakes the role of Shadow Minister (Health and Social Care).
When most people think of the word ‘slavery’, images of people shackled, abused, and imprisoned all-too-often come to mind. It’s thought of as a despicable practice from a by-gone time, confined to a shameful period in Western civilisation. Yet globally, there are more people enslaved today than at any time in our history. Researchers believe that around 13 million people were captured and traded between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries. Staggeringly, as of last year, experts estimate that more than three times this amount are currently living as modern day slaves around the world. Of this number, over two thirds are women and around a quarter are thought to be children. Now standing at over 40 million people, the numbers are staggering and hard to fathom. To put this overall figure in context, a larger number of people than the entire population of Canada are currently ensnared in we now term ‘modern slavery’. These people are forced to work against their will, have their liberty stolen, and are treated as a commodity by their exploiters. While the world may have moved away from the transatlantic slave ships of centuries gone by, the demoralising and dehumanising practices we see – or don’t see – inflicted upon over 40 million of our fellow human beings is a perennial mark of shame on
the international community. Both in my own UK Parliamentary constituency of Nottingham North, and across the UK more widely, the majority of people are unable to properly explain what modern slavery is, or identify the many issues associated with it. The national numbers are stark: one in five people in the UK don’t know what it is, while two thirds don’t know how to spot the tell-tale signs of this exploitation. Perhaps most terrifyingly, one in ten people believe they may have come across a victim of this heinous crime, yet half of these wouldn’t know what action to take if they did. We all have a role to play in ridding our communities, our countries and the world at large of this scourge. We need to educate, inform, and enable people to take a firm stand against modern slavery. And we need people and countries to commit to taking a lead on this. This is an issue I’ve been committed to leading on in the UK for several years now. Prior to being elected as a Member of Parliament in 2017, my work in the Trade Union movement and with the Co-operative Party led me to campaign to end this practice – and to encourage others to do likewise. What has become increasingly clear to me over many years is that it demands a truly coordinated response, at a local, national, and global level. The need for a decisive, joined-up approach has never been more clear.
142 | The Parliamentarian | 2020: Issue Two | 100 years of publishing 1920-2020
Since I became an MP, my work with the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association UK (CPA UK Branch) has enabled me to help to keep this crucial issue on our national political agenda. In 2018, I was privileged to travel to Malawi with the CPA UK Branch to meet with Parliamentarians and Malawian law enforcement agencies to share our experiences of modern slavery and to discuss the best ways through which we can stop it from happening in the future. This wasn’t about mandating a ‘one size fits all’ approach to combatting modern slavery; it was geared towards using expertise from both our countries to find
“We all have a role to play in ridding our communities, our countries and the world at large of this scourge. We need to educate, inform, and enable people to take a firm stand against modern slavery. And we need people and countries to commit to taking a lead on this.”
