CMS supports another champion of the fight against modern slavery in Dr Lalita Edwards, who works with women sold into prostitution in India. These women face constant violence, poverty and malicious pimps. Their children suffer too.

"Six-year-old Bharat wanted to know if I had as many husbands as his mother has," says Lalita. "Seven-year-old Rajkumar's mother is too embarrassed to answer his questions about her work."

Rajkumar's mother could well be one of the thousands trafficked to the red-light areas of Pune and Mumbai from Nepal and Bangladesh. In Bangladesh, mission worker James Pender is helping the Church to set up a social programme to provide poor women with alternative means of employment, in order to reduce the risk of them being trafficked into the sex trade.

"Every year, 20,000 women and children are trafficked from Bangladesh," James reports. "Typically, traffickers first fix their 'target' and go to the woman's family to convince them to send her abroad for marriage or employment. They target illiterate, poor, powerless and already vulnerable women, who are less able to seek redress on their return."

The problem affects Britain too. Even government figures state that up to 1,400 women are trafficked into the UK for sexual exploitation each year.

This slavery of war, poverty and human trafficking entails bondage and premeditated destruction of its victims' humanity and, sometimes, death.

CMS believes that African Snow will shine a light onto the world's conscience and galvanise people into action on behalf of today's slaves.

Greg Obong-Oshotse