Source: Landreth Planet
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Project Summary:

Our project attempts to bring in a different aspect of our "Middle Passages" history by highlighting another slave trade on the African continent. Beginning with the Ottoman Empire, the Trans-Saharan slave trade became a major industry for West Asia, or what is referred to as the Middle East. Slaves were brought from many different regions which were but not limited to Western Europe, North Africa, South Africa and East Africa.

However, it soon became increasingly difficult to obtain white slaves, so slaves from Africa were brought to the Middle East on a massive scale to work as domestic and sex slaves. The fictional story of Alimah and Nasiche, as narrated in our short video, creates a basic outline of the lives of many girls in the past and present who are still being trafficked to the Middle East. The primary traffic routes entail countries from the Horn of Africa such as Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, Uganda, Kenya, and Eritrea to Middle East countries such as Lebanon, Saudia Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Yemen.

This cross analysis of slavery from the past to the present shows the similarities between these two moments in history even though times have changed. Sex slavery has become a major industry in which human beings especially females are used and abused for the pleasures of others.

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