Awards

• Winner of Co-winner - Frederick Douglass Book Prize 2010

Overview

"Every year, hundreds of thousands of women and children are abducted, deceived, seduced, or sold into forced prostitution, coerced to service hundreds if not thousands of men before being discarded. These trafficked sex slaves form the backbone of one of the world's most profitable illicit enterprises and generate huge profits for their exploiters, for unlike narcotics, which must be grown, harvested, refined, and packaged, sex slaves require no such ""processing,"" and can be repeatedly ""consumed."" Kara first encountered the horrors of slavery in a Bosnian refugee camp in 1995. Subsequently, in the first journey of its kind, he traveled across four continents to investigate these crimes and take stock of their devastating human toll. Kara made several trips to India, Nepal, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark, Albania, Moldova, Mexico, and the United States. He witnessed firsthand the sale of human beings into slavery, interviewed over four hundred slaves, and confronted some of those who trafficked and exploited them. In this book, Kara provides a riveting account of his journey into this unconscionable industry, sharing the moving stories of its victims and revealing the shocking conditions of their exploitation. He draws on his background in finance, economics, and law to provide the first ever business analysis of contemporary slavery worldwide, focusing on its most profitable and barbaric form: sex trafficking. Kara describes the local factors and global economic forces that gave rise to this and other forms of modern slavery over the past two decades and quantifies, for the first time, the size, growth, and profitability of each industry. Finally, he identifies the sectors of the sex trafficking industry that would be hardest hit by specifically designed interventions and recommends the specific legal, tactical, and policy measures that would target these vulnerable sectors and help to abolish this form of slavery, once and for all. The author will donate a portion of the proceeds of this book to the anti-slavery organization, Free the Slaves."

Full Product Details

9780231139601

Table of Contents

Reviews

Sex trafficking is more of a problem than most people realize. Read this well-written book and find out. -- Kirk Douglas Sex trafficking is a crime that shames us all. To fight it we need to research it, know it in depth, and calibrate measures accordingly. Siddharth Kara's compelling economic and strategic analysis is very useful to our work. Readers will gain a deep understanding of the functioning of modern-day slavery as well as what can be done to eradicate it. -- Antonio Maria Costa, executive director, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime I approached this book with a certain weariness. Having worked on the subject of sex trafficking for many years, I was unenthusiastic about yet another expose or cri de coeur from a business executive turned human rights advocate. I could not have been more wrong. This is a unique and inspiring book--an honest, lucid, and immensely intelligent account of a devastating yet pervasive aspect of contemporary globalization. It deserves to be widely read by anyone who wants to understand one of the most persistent and complex human rights violations of our times. -- Jacqueline Bhabha, Harvard Law School Siddharth Kara has done a great service by laying bare the realities of sexual exploitation of women and girls around the world and the scale of this modern slavery. His analysis is rooted in an understanding of the way unregulated economic globalization has impoverished whole regions, failed to improve the miserable lot of women in many countries, and facilitated global criminal networks. His book should be widely read and his recommendations taken very seriously. -- Baroness Vivien Stern, King's College London This book could not be more important. After years of witnessing slavery and meeting with slaves, Siddharth Kara illuminates one of our most pressing human rights issues. He offers brand new research and reliable facts, shattering the myths and sensationalism that tend to surround this topic. Everyone should read this book: it will change the way we think about our world. -- Zoe Trodd, Harvard University An impressive, scholarly book that will prove an asset for the global anti-trafficking movement in the next decade. -- Holly Burkhalter Stanford Social Innovation Review Fall 2008 A disturbing and illuminating study of one of the underbellies of economic globalization: the global sex trafficking industry. -- Padraig Carmody Irish Times 1/7/09 An eloquent, campaigning book that addresses an evil that belittles our humanity. -- Jonathan Birchall Financial Times 1/25/09 The best book ever written on human trafficking for sexual exploitation. Representing a new period of solid yet humane scholarship, this breakthrough analysis represents a quantum leap in the study of this subject. Simply beyond anything I have seen anywhere. -- Kevin Bales, president of Free the Slaves This is an important and necessary work and it will educate many people about sex trafficking around the globe. -- Meredith Ralston H-Human-Rights 4/1/10

Corporate executive Kara uses his business background to analyze the global sex-exploitation industry, in an attempt to stir action to eradicate it.A former investment banker now on the board of the abolitionist organization Free the Slaves, the author inserts into his economic analysis poignant revelations of sex-trade victims and accounts of his personal struggles to find them, talk to them and expose their plight. Beginning in 2000, he traveled within India, Nepal, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Italy, Moldova, Albania, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Mexico and the United States, interviewing sex workers in brothels and shelters, their families, police and attorneys, and even a brothel owner. He opens with an overview of the sex-exploitation industry and a list of the measures that he recommends be taken to do away with it. Each of the subsequent chapters focuses on a region of the globe and includes the disclosures made to him by young girls and women forced into the sex industry, his on-the-spot observations and often hair-raising experiences and his analysis of the structure of sex trafficking in that area. In India, he reports that thousands of young girls are shipped from poor villages in Nepal every year. In Europe, he finds that the trade is largely operated by organized crime, with Italy as the hub. In Eastern Europe, he cites governmental, judicial and law-enforcement corruption as the biggest hurdle to stopping the industry. The final chapter argues that longstanding global socioeconomic factors, such as extreme poverty and bias against women and ethnic minorities, determine the supply side of the industry. Therefore, he concludes, the short-term approach to abolition should focus on disrupting demand by raising the economic cost of being caught. Appendices cover other forms of slavery, such as bonded labor, and the specific economics of sex-slave establishments in various parts of the world.Fueled by the author's outrage, the personal passages come alive, but they're buried in a mass of data more suited to an economics textbook. (Kirkus Reviews)

Sex trafficking is more of a problem than most people realize. Read this well-written book and find out. -- Kirk Douglas Sex trafficking is a crime that shames us all. To fight it we need to research it, know it in depth, and calibrate measures accordingly. Siddharth Kara's compelling economic and strategic analysis is very useful to our work. Readers will gain a deep understanding of the functioning of modern-day slavery as well as what can be done to eradicate it. -- Antonio Maria Costa, executive director, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime I approached this book with a certain weariness. Having worked on the subject of sex trafficking for many years, I was unenthusiastic about yet another expose or cri de coeur from a business executive turned human rights advocate. I could not have been more wrong. This is a unique and inspiring book - an honest, lucid, and immensely intelligent account of a devastating yet pervasive aspect of contemporary globalization. It deserves to be widely read by anyone who wants to understand one of the most persistent and complex human rights violations of our times. -- Jacqueline Bhabha, Harvard Law School Siddharth Kara has done a great service by laying bare the realities of sexual exploitation of women and girls around the world and the scale of this modern slavery. His analysis is rooted in an understanding of the way unregulated economic globalization has impoverished whole regions, failed to improve the miserable lot of women in many countries, and facilitated global criminal networks. His book should be widely read and his recommendations taken very seriously. -- Baroness Vivien Stern, King's College London This book could not be more important. After years of witnessing slavery and meeting with slaves, Siddharth Kara illuminates one of our most pressing human rights issues. He offers brand new research and reliable facts, shattering the myths and sensationalism that tend to surround this topic. Everyone should read this book: it will change the way we think about our world. -- Zoe Trodd, Harvard University An impressive, scholarly book that will prove an asset for the global anti-trafficking movement in the next decade. -- Holly Burkhalter Stanford Social Innovation Review Fall 2008 A disturbing and illuminating study of one of the underbellies of economic globalization: the global sex trafficking industry. -- Padraig Carmody Irish Times 1/7/09 An eloquent, campaigning book that addresses an evil that belittles our humanity. -- Jonathan Birchall Financial Times 1/25/09 The best book ever written on human trafficking for sexual exploitation. Representing a new period of solid yet humane scholarship, this breakthrough analysis represents a quantum leap in the study of this subject. Simply beyond anything I have seen anywhere. -- Kevin Bales, president of Free the Slaves This is an important and necessary work and it will educate many people about sex trafficking around the globe. -- Meredith Ralston H-Human-Rights 4/1/10

Sex trafficking is more of a problem than most people realize. Read this well-written book and find out. -- Kirk Douglas Sex trafficking is a crime that shames us all. To fight it we need to research it, know it in depth, and calibrate measures accordingly. Siddharth Kara's compelling economic and strategic analysis is very useful to our work. Readers will gain a deep understanding of the functioning of modern-day slavery as well as what can be done to eradicate it. -- Antonio Maria Costa, executive director, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime I approached this book with a certain weariness. Having worked on the subject of sex trafficking for many years, I was unenthusiastic about yet another expose or cri de coeur from a business executive turned human rights advocate. I could not have been more wrong. This is a unique and inspiring book& mdash;an honest, lucid, and immensely intelligent account of a devastating yet pervasive aspect of contemporary globalization. It deserves to be widely read by anyone who wants to understand one of the most persistent and complex human rights violations of our times. -- Jacqueline Bhabha, Harvard Law School Siddharth Kara has done a great service by laying bare the realities of sexual exploitation of women and girls around the world and the scale of this modern slavery. His analysis is rooted in an understanding of the way unregulated economic globalization has impoverished whole regions, failed to improve the miserable lot of women in many countries, and facilitated global criminal networks. His book should be widely read and his recommendations taken very seriously. -- Baroness Vivien Stern, King's College London This book could not be more important. After years of witnessing slavery and meeting with slaves, Siddharth Kara illuminates one of our most pressing human rights issues. He offers brand new research and reliable facts, shattering the myths and sensationalism that tend to surround this topic. Everyone should read this book: it will change the way we think about our world. -- Zoe Trodd, Harvard University An impressive, scholarly book that will prove an asset for the global anti-trafficking movement in the next decade. -- Holly Burkhalter, Stanford Social Innovation Review A disturbing and illuminating study of one of the underbellies of economic globalization: the global sex trafficking industry. -- Padraig Carmody, Irish Times An eloquent, campaigning book that addresses an evil that belittles our humanity. -- Jonathan Birchall, Financial Times The best book ever written on human trafficking for sexual exploitation. Representing a new period of solid yet humane scholarship, this breakthrough analysis represents a quantum leap in the study of this subject. Simply beyond anything I have seen anywhere. -- Kevin Bales, president of Free the Slaves This is an important and necessary work and it will educate many people about sex trafficking around the globe. -- Meredith Ralston, H-Human-Rights

Author Information

Siddharth Kara is a former investment banker and business executive who set aside his corporate career to pursue anti-slavery research and writing full-time. He currently serves on the board of directors of Free the Slaves, an organization dedicated to abolishing slavery worldwide. In 2005, he was invited to testify in front of the US Congressional Human Rights Committee.

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