Kevin Bales

Kevin Bales is touted as "the world's leading expert on modern slavery" and he is President of Free the Slaves.

In September 2009 Christian Parenti penned a scathing criticism of Bales, noting how in an interview aired on Democracy Now! his "comments about his organization and the chocolate industry that were either willfully naïve or simply dishonest" and that his "behavior is utterly unconscionable."

Biography

"He is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Roehampton University in London, and serves on the Board of Directors of the International Cocoa Initiative.

"Bales's book Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy published in 1999, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and has now been published in ten other languages. Archbishop Desmond Tutu called it "a well researched, scholarly and deeply disturbing expose of modern slavery". A revised edition was published in 2005. This book was based on the first-hand in-depth study of five slave-based "businesses" in five different countries: Thailand (prostitution); Mauritania (water selling); Brazil (charcoal production); India (agriculture); and Pakistan (brick making).

"Bales is a Trustee of Anti-Slavery International and was a consultant to the United Nations Global Program on Trafficking of Human Beings. He has been invited to advise the US, British, Irish, Norwegian, and Nepali governments, as well as the governments of the Economic Community of West African States, on the formulation of policy on slavery and human trafficking. He recently edited an Anti-Human Trafficking Toolkit for the United Nations, and published, with the Human Rights Center at Berkeley, a report on forced labor in the USA."

• Director, Alliance to Stop Slavery and End Trafficking

In 2007 he wrote the introduction for Martin Bunzl's and Kwame Anthony Appiah's edited book Buying Freedom: The Ethics and Economics of Slave Redemption (Princeton University Press, 2007).

Books

• Trapped: modern-day slavery in the Brazilian Amazon‎ by Binka Le Breton; foreword by Desmond Tutu and preface by Kevin Bales (2003)
• Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy‎‎ by Kevin Bales (2004)
• Understanding global slavery: a reader‎‎ by Kevin Bales (2005)
• New slavery: a reference handbook‎‎ by Kevin Bales (2005)
• Ending Slavery: How We Free Today's Slaves‎‎ by Kevin Bales (2008)
• Slavery Today‎‎ by Kevin Bales, Rebecca Cornell (2008)
• To plead our own cause: personal stories by today's slaves‎‎ by Kevin Bales, Zoe Trodd (2008)
• Documenting Disposable People: Contemporary Global Slavery‎‎ by Kevin B. Bales, Roger Malbert, Mark Sealy (2008)
• The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America Today‎‎ by Kevin Bales, Ron Soodalter (2009)
• Modern Slavery: The Secret World of 27 Million People‎‎ by Kevin Bales, Zoe Trodd, Alex Kent Williamson (2009)

Criticism

• Michael Barker, "Combating (Some) Slavery", Swans Commentary, September 7, 2009.