African women – survivors and activists – have been on the forefront of global movements speaking out against these abuses. Here, too, there are clear continuities with historical forms of wartime captivity. Second, during recent African wars, militias kidnapped women and forced them into marriage, and sexual or conjugal slavery. This points to continuities in the types of services required, as well as the traffic geographies that connect vulnerable people from the South to demand in the North and Near East, as well as from poorer peripheries to urban centres within different regions in the South. But in the past such a demand was largely met through the provision of enslaved persons who could be used for sexual and conjugal purposes. This, today, is outlawed and prosecutable as either slavery or forced marriage. African women and children are caught in illegal networks controlled by sex traffickers who cater for a persistent demand in vulnerable (and therefore sexually abusable) persons. The forms of power that allowed slaveholders to coerce enslaved persons into unwanted marriages (or out of wanted ones) haven’t disappeared.įirst, slavery has not ended.
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