Reblogged from Right from Yaad: Behind the Boko Haram headlines, slavery in Africa is the real crisis. The original post is at The Conversation.Please give it a read.

The world needs to know that slavery is alive and well– and a growing problem. The above article by Emma Christopher at the University of Sydney highlights slavery issues in African countries.While the rise of radical Islam is the real reason for the increase in slavery and abductions, Christopher has some powerful facts and figures to illustrate just how widespread slavery there is.

Slavery has always existed in Africa and that predates the European slave trade that began in the mid-15th century. The Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, and Arabs, collectively, used Africa as a source for slaves over thousands of years. Africans enslaved other Africans as well.

With the advent of Islam around 610 A.D., the slave trade flourished between Muslims and kingdoms in western Africa. When the Europeans showed up, some Africans sold other Africans to them. Slavery was already big business and some African kingdoms profited from it.

Today Muslims are capturing Christians to make them slaves, including kidnapping Christian girls and forcing them to convert to Islam and become good little veiled wives and/or selling them as sex slaves– either way, they’re being raped. This long legacy of human rights violations continues.

Here in the United States sex slavery is a problem and now and then you’ll see a story in the news about wealthy people, often immigrants, being caught keeping slaves. What hits the news is just the tip of the iceberg. From 600,000 to 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders every year. Human trafficking is the largest growing criminal industry in the world.