Siddharth Kara

First encounters with the world of sex trafficking and slavery

In most media interviews Kara is asked what made him decide to end his career as a young, successful New York investment banker to focus on the investigation and eradication of modern slavery around the world. Kara attributes this decision to an experience in his college years that proved to be a pivotal point in his life. While an undergraduate at Duke University, Kara co-founded the "Duke Refugee Action Project", which was the precursor to the prestigious Hart Leadership Program at the Sanford School of Public Policy^[3] The project was set up to enable students to volunteer in Bosnian refugee camps in the former Yugoslavia.^[4] He and a few other students obtained a grant from the University, learned basic Bosnian, and procured placements from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to volunteer at camps in the region. That summer, he lived as the refugees, in wretched conditions with barely enough to eat. During this time, he heard countless tales of brutish atrocities, including tales of Serbian soldiers who would raid Bosnian villages, execute the men, then round up the women and young girls, rape them and traffic them to brothels across Europe.^[5]

During his subsequent years as an investment banker at Merrill Lynch in New York, Kara continued to be haunted by the tales of sex trafficking from the refugee camp. Subsequently, while a postgraduate at Columbia University, he became increasingly aware of the need for a more analytical finance and economics approach to understanding this unconscionable crime and eradicating this highly profitable global business.^[6] The summer he graduated from Columbia, he embarked on the very first of several long self-funded journeys across the world to research human trafficking and other forms of contemporary slavery. He was struck more than ever by the insidious and pervasive nature of these human rights violations and so upon his return, decided not to resume his career in investment banking, in order to be able to continue his research and analysis of contemporary slavery.^[7] He moved to Los Angeles, where he worked and consulted by day, while continuing to make research trips around the world. During this time, he wrote a screenplay as well as his first non-fiction book based on his accumulating research.^[8] Subsequently, Kara obtained a law degree from London, England, all the while continuing to work, write, and travel extensively to advise on and advocate against modern day slavery.

During his extensive travels across six continents, Kara has witnessed firsthand the sale of human beings into slavery, interviewed over one thousand former and current slaves of all kinds, and confronted some of the individuals who trafficked and exploited them.^[9]

Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery (2009)

Kara's first non-fiction book on contemporary slavery, Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery was published by Columbia University Press in January 2009. In May 2010, a second edition was published in paperback. The book won the 2010 Frederick Douglass Book Prize, a highly prestigious award that is given to the most outstanding nonfiction book on the subject of slavery and/or abolition and antislavery movements. Since the inception of the Award in 1999, numerous books on the subject of modern-day slavery have been submitted, but Kara's book was the first to be awarded the prize.^[16]

The book has been recommended by the Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.^[17] It has been lauded by academics, policy-makers^[18] and the press, with the Financial Times describing it as an "eloquent and campaigning book",^[19] and slavery experts heralding it as "groundbreaking"^[17] and the "best book yet on the enduring problem of modern-day slavery".^[20]

In the book, Kara draws on his background in finance, economics and law to provide what is widely considered to be the first ever comprehensive business, economic and legal analysis of contemporary slavery worldwide, focusing on sex trafficking, its most profitable and barbaric form.^[21] He provides a riveting account of his journey into this unconscionable industry, sharing the moving stories of its victims and revealing the shocking conditions of their exploitation. He describes the local factors and global economic forces that gave rise to this and other forms of modern day slavery across the last two decades and quantifies, for the first time, the size, growth, and profitability of each slave industry.^[22] Finally, he recommends the legal, tactical, and policy measures that would target vulnerable sectors in these slave industries, and help to abolish slavery, once and for all.^[1]

Bonded Labor: Tackling the System of Slavery in South Asia (2012)

Kara’s second non-fiction book on contemporary slavery, Bonded Labor: Tackling the System of Slavery in South Asia was released by Columbia University Press in October 2012. It is Kara’s second explosive study of slavery, this time focusing on the pervasive, deeply entrenched, and wholly unjust system of bonded labor. While sex trafficking is the most profitable form of modern-day slavery, bonded labor is the most prevalent form.^[23]

The book has received high commendations from scholars, activists, non-profit organisations and governments, and was covered as part of a three part series on the CNN International primetime news program Connect the World with Becky Anderson.^[24][25] It has been lauded as "a necessary book for all those concerned with the struggle against contemporary forced labour and slavery" by the International Labour Organization of the United Nations, "perhaps the most ambitious and reasoned treatment of this form of slavery in the modern era" by Humanity United, "a must-read for all those who work against modern day slavery" by award-winning activist Ruchira Gupta, and a book "instinct with a passion for a world free from exploitation and for all to enjoy dignity and fulfilment" by noted social activist and leader Swami Agnivesh.^[26]

In the book, Kara delves into bonded labor to provide one of the first thorough economic, historical and legal overviews of this ancient and ever-evolving mode of slavery, which ensnares roughly six out of every ten slaves in the world. Kara travels to the far reaches of South Asia to uncover the brutish realities of bonded labor in such industries as hand-woven-carpet making, tea and rice farming, construction, brick manufacture, and frozen-shrimp production. He describes the violent enslavement of millions of impoverished women, children, and men who toil in the production of numerous products at minimal cost to the global market. He also follows supply chains directly to Western consumers, vividly connecting regional bonded labor practices to the appetites of the world. Kara's concludes with ten specific initiatives to eliminate the system of bonded labor from South Asia once and for all.^[27]

Tainted Carpets: Slavery and Child Labor in India's Hand-Made Carpet Sector (2014)

Kara was the lead investigator and author of the report, Tainted Carpets: Slavery and Child Labor in India's Hand-Made Carpet Sector, which was released through the Harvard School of Public Health in January 2014.^[28] This report is the largest single first-hand study of slavery and child labor conducted to date, and also the largest single study of slavery and child labor in the supply chain of any commodity. Spanning hundreds of productions sites across nine states in northern India, the study found appalling working conditions endemic to India's carpet sector, including estimated prevalence rates of 45% for forced labor, 28% for bonded labor, and 20% for child labor. Production sites of over 172 exporters of carpets from India were found to be tainted by these offences. These same exporters are directly linked to the sale of carpets at some of the largest retailers in the United States. The report makes concrete recommendations on how to improve the disturbing conditions that were found.

Modern Slavery: A Global Perspective (2017)

Kara’s third non-fiction book on contemporary slavery, Modern Slavery: A Global Perspective was released by Columbia University Press in October 2017. It is the third of his contemporary slavery book trilogy. This searing exposé documents one of humanity’s greatest wrongs and lays out the framework for a comprehensive plan to eradicate it.

The book had its launch at the United Nations in October 2017 and has been lauded by experts in the field, including Luis CdeBaca, former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons and Swanee Hunt, former U.S. Ambassador to Austria.^[29]

In Modern Slavery, Kara draws on his many years of expertise to demonstrate the astonishing scope of slavery and offer a concrete path toward its abolition. From labor trafficking in the U.S. agricultural sector to sex trafficking in Nigeria to debt bondage in the Southeast Asian construction sector to forced labor in the Thai seafood industry, Kara depicts the myriad faces and forms of slavery, providing a comprehensive grounding in the realities of modern-day servitude. Drawing on sixteen years of field research in more than fifty countries around the globe, including revelatory interviews with both the enslaved and their oppressors, Kara sets out the key manifestations of modern slavery and how it is embedded in global supply chains. Kara argues that slavery offers immense profits at minimal risk through the exploitation of vulnerable subclasses whose brutalization is tacitly accepted by the current global economic order. In Modern Slavery, he provides a business and economic analysis of slavery based on metrics and data that attest to the enormous scale and functioning of these systems of exploitation. Beyond this data-driven approach, he unflinchingly portrays the torments endured by the powerless.^[30]

The CNN Freedom Project: Ending Modern Day Slavery (2011–present)

Kara is a regular contributor to The CNN Freedom Project: Ending Modern Day Slavery, CNN's major year-long initiative, launched in 2011, to expose modern-day slavery around the world and highlight the efforts being made to eradicate it.^[34] His unique journey across South Asia to research for his second book on bonded labor was covered as a ten-week series in 2010 on the CNN International primetime news program Connect the World with Becky Anderson.^[35] The launch of his book was subsequently covered in a three part series on the same news program.^[24][25]

Harvard University

In the Fall of 2009, Kara became the first Fellow on Human Trafficking with the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.^[2] In the Spring of 2012, Kara taught the first course on human trafficking at the Harvard Kennedy School. He also accepted a joint appointment as a Visiting Scientist on Forced Labor at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard School of Public Health.^[36] In the Spring of 2013, Kara became an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy^[37] to continue to teach the only course on slavery and trafficking at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He also accepted an appointment as the Director of the Program on Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.^[38] Kara also sits on the editorial board of the Cambridge University Press book series Slavery Since Emancipation, which is sponsored by Historians Against Slavery.^[39]

University of California, Berkeley

In the Spring of 2016, Kara became a Lecturer in Global Poverty and Practice^[40] at the Blum Center for Developing Economies at the University of California, Berkeley, teaching the same course on slavery and trafficking that he teaches later in the year at Harvard University.