Today marks the cul­mi­na­tion of National Slav­ery and Human Traf­fick­ing Pre­ven­tion Month. Pres­i­dent Obama pro­claimed Jan­u­ary, 2010 to be ded­i­cated to pro­mot­ing anti-trafficking work. On Feb­ru­ary First, the United States hon­ors the sign­ing of the res­o­lu­tion that for­mally abol­ished the legal­ity of slav­ery in the United States on Feb­ru­ary 1st, 1865.

The 13th Amend­ment to the Con­sti­tu­tion pro­claimed that “Nei­ther slav­ery nor invol­un­tary servi­tude… shall exist within the United States.” Though 145 years have passed, slav­ery con­tin­ues to flour­ish and more peo­ple are enslaved today than ever before. Nev­er­the­less, Free­dom Day hon­ors an impor­tant mile­stone for erad­i­cat­ing slav­ery and acknowl­edg­ing the fun­da­men­tal aber­ra­tion of the crime. The day also serves as an oppor­tu­nity for anti-trafficking orga­ni­za­tions and activists to revi­tal­ize their work.

As Pres­i­dent Obama stated in his procla­ma­tion “The United States was founded on the prin­ci­ple that all peo­ple are born with an unalien­able right to free­dom — an ideal that has dri­ven the engine of Amer­i­can progress through­out our his­tory. As a Nation, we have known moments of great dark­ness and greater light; and dim years of chat­tel slav­ery illu­mi­nated and brought to an end by Pres­i­dent Lincoln's actions and a painful Civil War. Yet even today, the dark­ness and inhu­man­ity of enslave­ment exists. Mil­lions of peo­ple world­wide are held in com­pelled ser­vice, as well as thou­sands within the United States… [W]e acknowl­edge that forms of slav­ery still exist in the mod­ern era, and we recom­mit our­selves to stop­ping the human traf­fick­ers who ply this hor­rific trade.”

National Free­dom Day is an oppor­tu­nity to honor and remem­ber the impor­tant work to erad­i­cate slav­ery that has been done and to recom­mit efforts to deliver on the 13th Ammendment's dec­la­ra­tion that slav­ery shall not exist in the United States, while expand­ing that promise so that slav­ery does not exist any­where in the world.

Pic­ture by Josh Nichols

via The Human Traf­fick­ing Project: National Free­dom Day 2010.

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