ABSTRACT
In a democracy, all citizens deserve respect. No group can be singled out and identi ed as second-class citizens. e integrity of the individual is also a basic premise of human rights irrespective of the gender or marital status of that individual. At the same time, another basic premise of both democracy and human rights is tolerance of individual di erences, whether those differences concern gender, race, ethnicity, religion, or ideas. ere are “more slaves alive today than all the people stolen from Africa in the time of the transatlantic slave trade” (Bales 1999). Bales estimates that there are more than 27 million people today “enslaved by violence and held against their will for purposes of exploitation,” and the number is increasing. A feature of the new slavery is that slaves become disposable once the slave holder has used them.
