In February 1807, Great Britain's Parliament voted to abolish the slave trade. Amazing Grace, a film about William Wilberforce, the great reformer who led that fight, recently opened in Canada.

Yet, as we celebrate the 200th anniversary of a historic victory for human rights, we should be aroused by an evil of similar proportions in our time - the wholesale trafficking of millions of women and children in the global sex trade. Legal slavery may be abolished, but de facto slavery has returned.
The career of Wilberforce offers not only inspiration to modern day reformers, but hard lessons too.

Wilberforce was only 21 when he entered the House of Commons in 1780, as was his friend William Pitt. When my students today wonder if young people can ever have any influence, I refer them to Wilberforce and Pitt. They set out to change the world immediately upon graduating from university, and by and large, succeeded.

Wilberforce did not do it alone: He was inspired by John Newton, an evangelical pastor, former slave captain, and author of the haunting hymn "Amazing Grace," and a number of Anglican, Methodist, and Quaker reformers.

Small groups can move mountains. Perseverance is another lesson: Wilberforce announced his intention to present a bill to abolish the slave trade in 1787 (initially supported by only 16 members).

Slowly, ever so slowly, support grew until, finally, in 1807, after 20 years of agitation, the deed was done. Never giving up is another Wilberforce legacy for discouraged social activists.

But there is another aspect to the Wilberforce story which has particular application to the modern dilemma of human trafficking.

After Britain abolished the slave trade, the law still had to be enforced. Good intentions are not enough. In a 19th-century example of humanitarian international action, Britain organized embargoes on states that continued to trade in slaves, and employed its navy off the coast of Africa to interdict slavers who flouted the law.

The British West Africa Squadron was established to ensure that no British captain traded slaves along 5,000 kilometres of the African coast. Slavery was a global evil; its eradication required a global response.

This last lesson demands our attention.

On an issue like slavery or human trafficking, it is insufficient to be virtuous only at home.

In Canada, we have made great strides in recent years on the issue of trafficking: organizations, like the Salvation Army or the Future Group, have led the way in educating the public and suggesting ideas to Parliament.

In 2005, the Criminal Code was amended to make human trafficking a crime; in 2006, regulations were changed to stop treating trafficked women as criminals, and instead to treat them as the victims they are.

A February 2007 report by the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, Turning Outrage into Action, had a list of useful proposals, such as human trafficking courses at the Canadian Police College, more resources for law enforcement, and educating prosecutors and judges about the new legal tools at their disposal.

On Feb. 22 this year, the House of Commons unanimously passed a motion calling on the Harper government to adopt "a comprehensive strategy to combat the trafficking of persons worldwide".

But cleaning up our act at home is not enough. Between 700,000 and 4 million people are annually trafficked worldwide. Stopping the trade will take an international coalition, similar to the one that stopped legal slavery in the 19th century.

International protocols and commitments exist, but no country has made human trafficking its central foreign policy priority, as Wilberforce encouraged Britain to do.

The United States, for example, has a $100 million budget for fighting human trafficking (the highest in the world) but spends $19 billion against drug trafficking.

Canadian priorities are similar: In testimony to the Standing Committee, it was revealed that in Montreal, there were eight investigators in the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children Unit, compared to 60 officers assigned to drugs.

Churches, NGOs, and women's groups around the world are seized with the human rights disaster of trafficking.

What is needed now is a state to make this cause a priority. In Canada, we have done so in the past: Land mines were a top concern of NGOs, but only when Canada led the way and organized a major conference was the international community galvanized.

Everyone, from the leaders of the G 8 powers, to Interpol, to cops on the beat, to prosecutors and judges, must be energized to destroy the international gangs that prey on millions of women and children.
Canada should make the spirit of Amazing Grace central to our foreign policy, thereby encouraging the world to march to this tune.

by Thomas S. Axworthy
Reprinted with permission

Thomas S. Axworthy is the chair of the Centre for the Study of Democracy at Queen's University.