On 1 April 2009, in keeping with other OSCE countries, Britain set up a National Referral Mechanism to collect data on trafficking. The figures are almost absurdly small but they are revealing of the pernicious and global nature of modern trafficking. Of the 69 victims documented between 1 April and 30 June, one was under ten years of age, eight between 12 and 15, and ten were aged 16 or 17. China, Vietnam, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Nigeria were the countries most represented. Behind each of these cases lies a story of poverty, longing and deception. These are the narratives of the modern world, of people pushed and pulled by forces not of their making to feed a global hunger for profit and cheap labour.

Not long ago, I was introduced to Mira in London. Soon after her 17th birthday, her father and older sister disappeared in Ethiopia. Where they had gone was never discovered, but since Mira's father had spent several years in prison as a former security officer in the military dictatorship of Mengistu Haile Mariam, it was probable that he had many enemies. Mira's mother, who was Eritrean, did not long survive her husband's abduction. In a matter of weeks, she had a heart attack and died.

This was in 2000, and Addis Ababa, where Mira's family lived, was not a good place for a young orphan girl of mixed Eritrean and Ethiopian parentage. The long-running conflict over the countries' shared borders, which had seen thousands of people expelled and many others accused of spying and imprisoned, simmered on.

But the family friend to whom Mira turned for help was resourceful and before long she had been introduced to a rich Saudi Arabian businessman and was on her way to Jeddah, to take up a job as nanny to his two children, a boy of eight and a girl of three. Grieving for her lost family, Mira wanted to survive. What she did not know was that a prolonged nightmare was only just beginning.

Mira's new employers were well-connected and extremely rich. The house in which she found herself was vast, with marble floors, enclosed in a guarded compound. She slept on the ground, in the corner of the kitchen. There were no wages, no time off, no new clothes and very little food. She could eat, she was told, the leftovers from the children's plates. "They treated me like an animal," Mira cries when she describes the scene. "Sometimes, the children had spat out the food and that was all that I was given. People here treat their cats better." To make certain that she never left the compound, her employers locked her in.