No Air to Breathe: Victims of Sex Slavery in the U.K.

Today slavery is recognised as a heinous violation of numerous human rights and a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute. It is prohibited under a number of international law instruments, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, and the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Nevertheless, 250 years after the famous decision in Somerset v. Stewart, when Lord Mansfield was reported to have announced that the air of England was "too pure for slaves to breathe," the U.K. is still a country of destination for thousands of persons who are trafficked for the purpose of forced labour in agriculture and sweatshop industries, involuntary domestic servitude, and sexual exploitation. An increasing number of them are women and children, who are sold and re-sold, kept imprisoned, raped, beaten, humiliated, and psychologically abused in the billion-dollar industry of sexual exploitation.