Ambassador CdeBaca, left, with Ricky Martin, as the pop star-turned anti-slavery activist presented a study, financed by the Ricky Martin Foundation, of human trafficking in Puerto Rico. February 2010.

“In examining [modern day slavery], we not only see the incredible human rights abuses inflicted on these individuals but also realize that European and American consumers would likely have no idea that what they were eating was tainted by slave labor. Similarly, women in prostitution are all too often dismissed as unworthy of sympathy. If foreign nationals, they are jailed and deported. If citizens, in many countries they are punished while their clients walk freely. Rather than asking if they might be victims of a crime, society turns its gaze away.”

—Luis CdeBaca, Anti-Human Trafficking Ambassador of the U.S. State Department, during a speech today at the University of Luxembourg, titled “The Global Fight Against Human Trafficking: Ten Years After Palermo”