// Watch the full work of Selim Harbi for FairPlanet at www.fairplanet.org/dossier/beyond-slavery/

Despite global efforts to tackle slavery and eliminate all forms of servitude in modern society, the centuries-old practice continues to metamorphose assuming more sophisticated, dangerous and brazen trend dividing the global community on ethnicity and region as it did hundreds of years back.

While slavery has long been entrenched in numerous societies world over since time immemorial, the 15th century Trans-Atlantic trade that saw up to 12 million slaves most of them from West Africa hounded into ships and transported to Europe and Americas to work in tobacco and cotton farms, has had the biggest and most devastating impact on especially Africa and altered global politics and relations.

From Cape Verde where Portuguese merchants set up their first slavery hub and actively advanced the sale and buying of black slaves for centuries, to the less discussed but equally key Barbary slave trade in North Africa and the East African Muslim Arabs-dominated slavery where young men and women were forcefully taken to the Middle East through the Sahara Desert and the Indian Ocean, serfdom has since its embryonic phase robbed Africans some of its most able and healthiest men and women.

This dossier takes a different approach to the dominant conversation on slavery that often lean on imperialism. We seek to trace the history of slavery from the perspective of those who were affected by it and tell their stories through millions of their descendants who were robbed off their heritage, culture, identity.

// We're pleased to start this series by our collaboration with filmmaker Selim Harbi. The dossier can be found here: www.fairplanet.org/dossier/beyond-slavery/

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