The Global Slavery Index provides a ranking of 162 countries, reflecting a combined measure of three factors: estimated prevalence of modern slavery by population, a measure of child marriage, and a measure of human trafficking in and out of a country. The measure is heavily weighted to reflect the first factor, prevalence. A number one ranking is the worst, 160 is the best.
The Walk Free Foundation asserts there are 30 million slaves suffering today.
If you want a vivid image of the under-reported facets of Sudanese culture in the wake of South Sudan’s secession, check out this four-part Slate series.
The new country, which is likely to be called South Sudan, faces many hurdles. The biggest is a shocking lack of public services. At the moment southerners are loyal mostly to belligerent tribal chiefs, not the nascent government that led the fight for independence. That government will win the trust of its citizens, and with it permanent peace, only when it starts visibly caring for them. That will not be easy.
South Sudan occupies one of the least developed and most remote parts of Africa. Many of its 8m-14m inhabitants—nobody knows the exact number—live in unmapped lands. The whole region has perhaps 100km (62 miles) of paved roads, half in the capital, Juba, and the other half on Chinese-run oilfields. The few existing dirt roads between settlements are littered with potholes, some so big that cars disappear into them. Large parts of South Sudan can be reached only by helicopter—or on foot. As one official wonders, “How to administer a territory you cannot visit?”
Here is Time magazine’s treatment of the Sudan crisis from 2004. We’ll see what crisis January 2011 brings…
Between 2002 and 2008, sub-Saharan Africa started growing again, buoyed like much of the rest of the world by the global commodity boom and Chinese investment. Thus ended one of the most dismaying periods in the continent’s recent history, a generationlong stretch during which most countries in the region saw per capita incomes fall, sometimes to levels not experienced since the end of colonialism.
Read on from Francis Fukayama’s contribution to Slate
Nelson Kasfir tires to respond to his research question:
“In causing civilian atrocities on such a massive scale, has the Sudanese government adopted a policy of cultural annihilation, or has it decided to crush a rebellion to protect its dominance?”