Human slavery is a difficult idea to comprehend. Treating another person as a piece of property is so fundamentally alien to every philosophical and legal tenet of our age that most people assume that slavery is a purely historical phenomenon. They are wrong. Slavery is very much alive. It continues to be a blight on humanity, an evil that every government and every individual must combat.

It is estimated that at least 700,000 people, and possibly as many as 4 million, were bought, sold, transported and held against their will -- in other words, were treated like slaves -- worldwide last year. More horrifying still, many of those individuals were children. These people are usually forced to work, either as menial laborers in sweatshops or in the sex trade. Some are conscripted into militaries. All are treated as chattel for the financial gain of the traffickers and their clients.

There are many reasons for the trade in human beings, but the usual one is desperation. In countries troubled by political and economic instability, traffickers promise higher wages and good working conditions to lure people into their networks. In cities, they advertise in newspapers. In rural settings, they offer parents hope that their children will have a better future. Every lie -- including promises of marriage -- is made. In societies that put less value on the life of a girl or woman, it does not take much to convince a family to turn her over to a trafficker. In some cases, kidnapping occurs.