Compelling human rights issue

There are 27 million slaves in the world today, according to Kevin Bales, author of "Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy" (University of California Press, 1999). The most common victims of contemporary slavery are the poor, uneducated and vulnerable, notably women, children, migrant workers, refugees, groups attributed low social status and indigenous peoples.

Anti-slavery International, possibly the oldest human-rights organization in the world, has an extensive Web site http://www.anti-slavery.org/ devoted to this topic. Featured are descriptions of current human-rights campaigns and resources, including videos, teaching packs, full-text of reports submitted to the United Nations and links to related Web sites.

While not all sweatshops utilize true slave labor, researchers with an interest in working conditions in factories of multinational corporations and their subsidiaries can go to the National Labor Committee's site at http://www.nlcnet.org/ for more information. The International Organization for Migration at http://www.iom.ch/ is another organization on the Internet with valuable information for those interested in reporting on the trafficking of migrants.

The "Online Resources" region of BISON http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/e-resources/ contains several databases useful for researching several facets of this topic. Try searching "LegalTrac," "Business Index ASAP," "Expanded Academic ASAP," "Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals," "PAIS," "Contemporary Women's Issues" and "Women's Resources International." Finally, don't forget to search the UB Libraries Catalog http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/e-resources/bison/ to find such useful publications as the Anti-Slavery Reporter and various Human Rights Watch reports.

For assistance connecting to the World Wide Web via UB computer accounts, contact the Computing Center Help Desk at 645-3542.

-Austin Booth and Nina Cascio, University Libraries