Louise Shelley

On her book Human Trafficking: A Global Perspective

Cover Interview of April 10, 2011

Editor’s note

Originally, this interview ran on the Rorotoko cover page under the headline

“Human trafficking will remain a defining problem of the 21st century.”

We highlighted two quotes.

On the first page:

“Human smuggling and trafficking have been among the fastest growing forms of transnational crime—because current world conditions have created increased imbalances of demand and supply. Imbalances of supply and demand have created a flourishing business for traffickers.”

On the second:

“There was no single model of slavery. Slavery was different in the American colonies, Brazil, and the Horn of Africa. Just as the trade in humans was shaped in the past by cultural, geographic, and economic forces, today’s human trafficking is also shaped by these forces as well as historical traditions.”

globalization / gender / 20th century / children / human rights / migration / 21st century / slavery / crime /

[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.

Carolyn J. Dean,
Interview of February 01, 2011

The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.

Jerome Kagan,
Interview of September 17, 2009