Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery

Lecture Resources

Resources for Classroom Presentations to students 10 to 12 years-old

Some of the published articles listed below may prove to be useful in preparing talks intended for youth, 10 to 12 years-old. They were culled from the Human Trafficking Lecture Resources page, and made suitable for this age group by removing articles with references to sexual activity, violence and other topics that may not be suitable or interesting to 10 to 12-year-olds. Innovative educational programs in the public schools may be key to solving part of the problem by reducing the scale of local domestic trafficking. If we can teach children, in a sensitive way, about how they may be targeted for kidnapping and slave labor, and how to raise a fuss and get help from people around them when/if they sense that they are being entrapped, their chances of escape are greatly enhanced.

Deception of Parents - Burkina Faso

Children saved from 'slavery'

Agence France-Presse AFP, Ouagadougou, 2004-05-08

www.news24.com/Africa/News/Children-saved-from-slavery-20040507

[accessed 24 January 2011]

The traffickers had managed to win the confidence of the children's parents by convincing them that the youngsters were to be taken to Mali to study the Qu'ran, a police officer told reporters.

Many Muslim children from Burkina Faso undergo religious studies in neighbouring country.

The official daily Sidwaya reported that the real fate of such victims, snatched in several provinces in Burkina Faso, was to work on agricultural plantations during the day and left to forage for their own food at night.

Deception of Parents - Gabon

Written statement from Anti-Slavery International for agenda item 13 of the provisional agenda

UN Economic and Social Council, Commission on Human Rights, 56th Session, Geneva, 20 March- 28 April 2000

At one time this article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]

[accessed 5 September 2011]

Traffickers promise good money and training in order to persuade the parents to send their children abroad. However, after the children arrive in Gabon neither the child nor their parents are paid for the work they do. The children interviewed in Gabon often told harrowing stories of their journey from Bénin to Gabon and many complained of bad working conditions and being deprived of food once they arrived. Over half of the children interviewed said that they had been beaten by their employers

Even where children are rescued from these conditions, they are likely to encounter feelings of alienation from their own family and culture and must undergo a long and difficult task of reintegration.

Deception of Victims - Viet Nam – China

Trafficking of men appears in border provinces

VietNamNet Bridge, September 27, 2007-- Source: VTV

humantrafficking21.blogspot.com/2007/10/trafficking-of-men-appears-in-border.html

[accessed 15 August 2012]

Two months ago, a woman came to Phu’s hamlet to recruit workers to work in China with a monthly income of VND3.6 million ($220). Eight young boys, including Phu went with the woman to China but only Phu and another boy named Phan Van Lin could escape from the brick kiln. “We didn’t know that we were sold till we arrived at the brick kiln. If we didn’t work, we would be beaten by the brick kiln owners,” he said.

Trafficking of women is popular but trafficking of men is still very strange to both the people and state agencies. Young boys like Diu and Phu want to denounce the woman who sold them to China but the Vietnamese laws don’t have regulations on this crime yet.

Disappearances – Children & Adults - El Salvador

El Salvador: Where are the "disappeared" children ?

Amnesty International, Index Number: AMR 29/004/2003, 28 July 2003

www.amnesty.org/es/documents/AMR29/004/2003/en/

[accessed 24 February 2015]

Thousands of people disappeared in El Salvador during the armed conflict that shattered the country between 1980 and 1991. Hundreds, probably thousands, of them were children. Their families have been looking for them, as experience has shown that many are alive but unaware of their circumstances and identity. Government authorities are not helping.

Some were taken to orphanages and other institutions, others were held at military bases or kept in the houses of the soldiers and their families. Yet others were put up for adoption (both within the country and abroad). These are the disappeared children of El Salvador, whose families have been searching for them ever since.

Exploitation of Children - Mali

Chocolate and Slavery: Child Labor in Cote d'Ivoire

Samlanchith Chanthavong, Trade & Environment Database TED Case Studies Number 664, 2002

www1.american.edu/ted/chocolate-slave.htm

[accessed 20 February 2011]

elib.unikom.ac.id/files/disk1/476/jbptunikompp-gdl-gunardiend-23777-9-chocolat-y.pdf

[accessed 12 June 2017]

SLAVERY AND THE LINK TO CHOCOLATE - Slave traders are trafficking boys ranging from the age of 12 to 16 from their home countries and are selling them to cocoa farmers in Cote d'Ivoire. They work on small farms across the country, harvesting the cocoa beans day and night, under inhumane conditions. Most of the boys come from neighboring Mali, where agents hang around bus stations looking for children that are alone or are begging for food. They lure the kids to travel to Cote d'Ivoire with them, and then the traffickers sell the children to farmers in need of cheap labor (Raghavan, "Lured...").

Exploitation of Children - Tanzania

Helping Children Reclaim Their Lives [PDF]

14 February 2006

www.tanzaniagateway.org/docs/reducing_childlabor_tanzania_through_Education.pdf

[accessed 28 December 2010]

In rural Tanzania, one out of three children between the ages of 10 and 14 work outside the family. They labor as farm workers, miners, domestic servants, and prostitutes, often under abusive and exploitive conditions.

DETRIMENTAL WORKING CONDITIONS - Commercial agriculture in Tanzania employs large numbers of these youngsters. They provide much of the manual and machine-based labor on tobacco, coffee, tea, sugarcane, and sisal plantations. (Sisal is a fibrous crop from which rope is manufactured.) For example, in one area of the coastal region, 30 percent of the sisal plantation workers are children aged 12 to 14. They labor up to 11 hours per day with no specific rest periods, six days a week. Their wages are half that of adults, while nourishment and lodging are inadequate. Only half have completed primary school. Some plantations require as much as 14-, 16-, or even 17-hour work days. Mines and quarries also employ large numbers of youth who spend most of their days toiling above or below ground in very hazardous conditions. They risk injury from dust inhalation, blasting, mine collapse, flooding, as well as illness from silicosis.

Exploitation of Children - Togo

HRW Report:  Togo - Borderline Slavery - Child Trafficking in Togo

Human Rights Watch, 1 April 2003

www.hrw.org/en/node/76184/section/1

[accessed 30 December 2010]

www.hrw.org/report/2003/04/01/borderline-slavery/child-trafficking-togo

[accessed 13 August 2020]

SUMMARY - TOGO'S TRAFFICKED GIRLS - Girls interviewed by Human Rights Watch were typically recruited into domestic or market labor either directly by an employer or by a third-party intermediary. Most recalled some degree of family involvement in the transaction, such as parents accepting money from traffickers, distant relatives paying intermediaries to find work abroad, or parents handing over their children based on the promise of education, professional training or paid work.

SUMMARY - TOGO'S TRAFFICKED BOYS - Boys interviewed by Human Rights Watch were for the most part recruited into agricultural labor in southwestern Nigeria. A small number worked on cotton fields in Benin, and one child was recruited into factory work in Côte d'Ivoire. Traffickers tended less to make arrangements with boys' parents than to make direct overtures to the boys themselves-tempting them with the promise of a bicycle, a radio, or vocational training abroad. Contrary to expectation, they were taken on long, sometimes perilous journeys to rural Nigeria and ruthlessly exploited. Most were given short-term assignments on farms where they worked long hours in the fields, seven days a week. "When we were finished with one job, they would find us another one," one child told Human Rights Watch.

Boys worked from as early as 5:00 a.m. until late at night, sometimes with hazardous equipment such as saws or machetes. Some described conditions of bonded labor, whereby their trafficker would pay for their journey to Nigeria and order them to work off the debt. Many recalled that taking time off for sickness or injury would lead to longer working hours or corporal punishment.

Forced Begging - Bulgaria & Greece

Human Trafficking Scheme from Bulgaria Busted in Greece

Sofia News Agency, August 16, 2012

www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=142382

[accessed 17 August 2012]

Police in Greece have cracked a network for human trafficking from Bulgaria, in which Bulgarians were forced to beg.

The undisclosed number of Bulgarians were held in an apartment in the central Greek city of Larissa.

The Bulgarians were among the country's poor, and were lured with promises for work in Greece. After that, they were forcefully held, were made to beg in various European countries, and were severely beaten at each attempt to escape.

Greek police discovered the network, after a 58-year-old male Bulgarian was hospitalized after being abandoned outside the city following such a beating.

Forced Begging - France

Romanian Premier Interviewed in 'Le Monde'

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty RFE/RL Newsline, 02-08-05

www.hri.org/news/balkans/rferl/2002/02-08-05.rferl.html#69

[accessed 5 February 2011]

[69] ROMANIAN PREMIER INTERVIEWED IN 'LE MONDE' - Prime Minister Adrian Nastase said in an interview to the French daily "Le Monde" on 2 August that Romania finds itself in an "extremely delicate and difficult situation" as a result of the Romany criminal networks allegedly engaging in human trafficking and forcing handicapped children into begging in France.

Forced Begging - Guinea Bissau

Guinea-Bissau-Senegal: On the child trafficking route

UN Integrated Regional Information Networks IRIN, Bafata, 23 November 2007

www.irinnews.org/report/75485/guinea-bissau-senegal-on-the-child-trafficking-route

[accessed 1 March 2015]

Children, brought from Guinea-Bissau to Senegal years ago, line up at the airport in Dakar to return home after years of beatings and forced begging.

100,000 CHILD BEGGARS - In 2004, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimated there were up to 100,000 child beggars in Senegal (close to one percent of the population), the majority of them talibés. The head of UNICEF in Guinea-Bissau, Jean Dricot, says most of those child beggars come from Guinea-Bissau. “They don’t have schools. They don’t have access to healthcare. They sleep 40 or 50 to a room. They spend all day on the street getting money that they have to hand over at night,” Dricot said. Jorge, the young talibé, is now back in his country, owing to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and a Senegalese government-run welcome centre called Ginddi, two of many institutions assisting in the repatriation of children to Guinea-Bissau.

Forced Begging - Yemen – Saudi Arabia

Children in Poor Countries Need Help

International Herald Tribune, July 29, 2010

gulfnews.com/news/gulf/yemen/gangs-smuggling-yemeni-children-to-saudi-arabia-1.273504

[accessed 4 December 2011]

GANGS SMUGGLING YEMENI CHILDREN TO SAUDI ARABIA - Saudi and Yemeni officials said gangs in Yemen are kidnapping children and sending them to Saudi Arabia as beggars. Some families "rent their children" to these gangs for want of money. Children are mostly sent to Makkah and Madinah.

How to get Help - USA

Anti-Human Trafficking Resources - 888-3737-888

Homeland Security

www.dhs.gov/files/programs/gc_1265647798662.shtm

[accessed 8 January 2011]

VICTIMS - If you are a victim, or believe you might be a victim, of human trafficking, seek help. The toll-free National Human Trafficking Resource Center Hotline is available to answer calls in over 170 languages from anywhere in the country, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every day of the year.

Call for help. Call with questions - Any time - Any language - 888-3737-888

Call 911 if you are experiencing an emergency

Kidnapping - China

China Arrests Nine for Human Trafficking

Xinhua News Agency, July 25, 2007

www.christiantoday.com/article/china.arrests.nine.for.human.trafficking/11849.htm

[accessed 28 January 2011]

Chinese police raided a human trafficking ring and arrested nine people for kidnapping and selling children in northwestern and central China, state media reported on Wednesday.

The traffickers snatched more than 20 children and sold some in Hongtong county in the northern province of Shanxi, where kidnapped teenagers and children were found working as slaves in brick kilns in a widely publicised scandal, the Xinhua news agency said.

Xinhua said two of the kidnappers, Wang Aizhong and Li Caimei, tricked kids to get on to their motorcycle on their way to school or broke into houses to snatch babies.

Kidnapping - Laos

Powell Cites Exploitation In 10 Nations

Associated Press AP, June 15, 2004

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41729-2004Jun14.html

[accessed 17 February 2011]

Khan was 11 years old when she was kidnapped from her home in the hill country of Laos. She was taken to an embroidery factory in Thailand, and with dozens of other children was made to work 14 hours a day for food and clothing. They received no wages.

Labor - Adult - Vietnam

Boycott "Blood Cashews" From Vietnam

Press Release, BPSOS - Boat People SOS, June 13, 2012

www.law-forums.org/boycott-blood-cashews-from-vietnam-t70609.html

[accessed 16 February 2016]

dvov.org/2012/06/13/anti-human-trafficking-coalition-launches-campaign-to-boycott-blood-cashews-from-vietnam/

[accessed 3 March 2019]

At a recent hearing before the US Congress, Dr. Nguyen Dinh Thang, Executive Director of Boat People SOS (BPSOS), reported that Vietnamese prisoners, including political prisoners, have similarly been subjected to forced labor: "One Montagnard, jailed from 2002 through 2009, had to do this for 7 years. His hands were injured by the caustic resin from the cashew nuts because he was not allowed to wear gloves."

Speaking for CAMSA, Mr. Vu Quoc Dung, Secretary General of Germany-based International Society for Human Rights, denounces the dangerous cashew work in prisons such as the Z30A Prison in Xuan Loc, where political prisoners are forced each to process 32 kg of class B cashews daily. Some prisoners have developed blindness as a result. Many have suffered injuries to their faces and hands. Those failing to meet the assigned quota would be beaten with a whip and kicked. Political prisoners who oppose forced labor have reportedly been shackled and held in solitary confinement.

Labor - Child - Afghanistan

Afghan carpet weavers are unpaid slaves, rights activist says

Syrian Arab News Agency SANA, December 1, 2005

www.rawa.org/carpet.htm

[accessed 18 January 2011]

AFGHANISTAN: CARPET WEAVERS ARE UNPAID SLAVES, RIGHTS ACTIVIST SAYS - Thousands of women and girls who weave world famous Afghan carpets are treated as unpaid slaves by their male relatives, a rights activist said.  The women and girls, some as young as 11, spend up to 18 hours at wooden looms in dusty, dark and wet rooms.

Labor - Child - Argentina

Global March Worst Forms of Child Labour Report 2005

The US Dept. of Labor's 2003 Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labour

beta.globalmarch.org/worstformsreport/world/argentina.html

[accessed 16 August 2012]

CHILD SLAVERY - . In a recent raid by the police, Bolivian boys were discovered working as slaves in an Argentine factory; These boys were forced to work 19-hour shifts, they are prohibited from leaving, and they are often beaten to keep up the pace. Authorities are still investigating how these undocumented youths slipped past the border. The minors continued to work for almost two years, still receiving no pay, and falling into further debt imposed by their 'owners.' All too often those who risk coming to the city center find themselves working in factory jobs in conditions of contemporary slavery.

Labor - Child - Egypt

Egypt - Underage And Unprotected: Child Labor In Egypt's Cotton Fields

Human Rights Watch Reports, Egypt, January 2001

www.hrw.org/reports/2001/egypt/Egypt01.htm#P46_655

[accessed 3 February 2011]

Each year over one million children between the ages of seven and twelve are hired by Egypt's agricultural cooperatives to take part in cotton pest management. Employed under the authority of Egypt's agriculture ministry, most are well below Egypt's minimum age of twelve for seasonal agricultural work. They work eleven hours a day, including a one to two hour break, seven days a week-far in excess of limits set by the Egyptian Child Law.¹ They also face routine beatings by their foremen, as well as exposure to heat and pesticides. These conditions violate Egypt's obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child to protect children from ill-treatment and hazardous employment. They are also tantamount to the worst forms of child labor, as defined in the International Labour Organization's Convention 182, which Egypt has not yet ratified. Children were forcibly recruited to take part in pest management as recently as ten years ago, and some farmers continue to believe that they will be fined if they resist their children's recruitment. However, most children today are compelled to work by the driving force of poverty.

Labor - Child - Nepal

NEPAL:CHILD LABOR  Hard Reality

Nirakar Poudel, Media for Freedom, Nepal, August 5, 2007

-- Source: www.mediaforfreedom.com/ReadArticle.asp?ArticleID=3055

www.iccle.org/050807.php

[accessed 23 February 2011]

An orphan from an early age, Madan Karki (name changed),14, used to work at his uncle's small farm in Jeevanpur of Dhading District, 50 kilometer west of capital. Madan's job was to take the cattle for grazing the whole day. One day, a family friend approached him with offer for work at his home in Kathmandu with a promise that he will be admitted in a school.

However, the man instead engaged him at a carpet factory in Kathmandu. Working like a bonded labor, Madan was forced to learn knotting wool rugs on heavy wooden looms. His workdays started at 4 am in the morning till 11 at night. The earthen floor of the factory was his bed. When the owner obtained a rush order, he and the other boys would have to work throughout the entire night. Despite his hard work, the owner always scolded and physically abused him.

After working in harsh conditions for about eight months in the factory, Madan –who was not paid - fled the factory to work as a helper in a gas tempo. Now, he earns about Rs 1000 (approximately $15) a month. Madan's case is not a unique one as this is the reality of many child workers in Nepal.

Because Nepal's dependency on child labor is so deeply entrenched, only half of the children are allowed to complete the fifth grade of school. The ILO reports showed that. Children are employed in eighteen different sectors like in brick kiln, coal mines, child prostitution, mug house, leather processing industry, coal mine, stone quarrying, match factory, house-hold helper, bonded labor, street children, mine and carpet factory, drug trafficking, transport sector etc. About 1.4 million children are not provided the salary for their work and 1.27 million children are working in worst forms of labor.

Labor - Child - Sierra Leone

Children working in Sierra Leone mines

Lansana Fofana, BBC News, Freetown, 28 August 2003

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3189299.stm

[accessed 22 December 2010]

BLESSINGS - Undoubtedly, the children number several thousands, and many of them get the blessing of their parents, who have come to see them as breadwinners of the impoverished families. Over the past few days, I have been visiting the mine sites here and what I see is incredible. The children aged between seven and 16 go to the mines as early as 0800 and work through to 1800. They do hard labour, like digging in soil and gravel, before sifting with a pan for gemstones and shifting heavy mud believed to contain diamonds.

Labor - Child - Uzbekistan

The Curse of Cotton: Central Asia's Destructive Monoculture

International Crisis Group, Asia Report N°9328, Bishkek/Brussels, 28 February 2005

www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/asia/central-asia/093-the-curse-of-cotton-central-asias-destructive-monoculture.aspx

[accessed 16 January 2011]

www.files.ethz.ch/isn/28408/093_curse_of_cotton_central_asia_destructive_monoculture.pdf

[accessed 5 October 2016]

The economics of Central Asian cotton are simple and exploitative. Millions of the rural poor work for little or no reward growing and harvesting the crop. Forced and child labor and other abuses are common. Schoolchildren are still regularly required to spend up to two months in the cotton fields in Uzbekistan. Despite official denials, child labor is still in use in Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. Students in all three countries must miss their classes to pick cotton. Little attention is paid to the conditions in which children and students work. Every year some fall ill or die. Women do much of the hard manual labor in cotton fields, and reap almost none of the benefits. Cash wages are minimal, and often paid late or not at all.

Poverty - Cambodia

Child trafficking takes new forms in Southeast Asia

Rafael D. Frankel, Special to The Christian Science Monitor, Battambang Cambodia, December 12, 2001

www.csmonitor.com/2001/1212/p7s2-woap.html

[accessed 26 January 2011]

When he was 12, his parents in rural Cambodia sold him to a trafficker who forced him to beg on the streets of Bangkok, Thailand, and the resort town Pattaya. He lived with seven other children in one room. All were Cambodian. Some were as young as six.

"The trafficker told my parents he would send them $55 a month," the boy says. "But I would earn $18 or $25 every day or night I begged."

Over the next three years, the boy escaped twice and made his way home. But the trafficker found him, repurchased him, and took him back to Thailand. The second time, his parents sold his younger brother as well.

Poverty - Madagascar

Gem industry in need of regulation

UN Integrated Regional Information Networks IRIN, Ilakaka, 17 September 2003

www.irinnews.org/report/46200/madagascar-feature-gem-industry-in-need-of-regulation

[accessed 19 February 2011]

One of the most disturbing aspects of Madagascar's gem industry has been the use of children to work in the mines. A report by the International Programme for the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC), a branch of the International Labour Organisation, has warned that children as young as eight are being used in mines - because they can get into the cramped spaces in the mines more easily than an adult.

The report noted that children are often exposed to very serious dangers and can, for example, die of suffocation if the mine caves in. Dominique Rakotomanga, who works for IPEC in the capital, Antananarivo, told IRIN: "This is a really big problem, especially in Ilakaka. We are trying to raise awareness about the problem, find alternative ways for the children to make a living, and ensure that they don't miss out on their education. But because of the poverty here and elsewhere, it is very tempting for them to work underground."

Poverty - Nepal

Why Nepal's freed labourers want to return to slavery

Sanjaya Dhakal, Kathmandu, OneWorld South Asia, January 27, 2004

us.oneworld.net/places/nepal/-/article/why-nepals-freed-laborers-want-return-slavery

[accessed 9 December 2010]

sajha.com/archives/openthread.cfm?threadid=13840

[accessed 13 August 2020]

"Between 15 and 20 percent of the families declared free have returned to the same old practice of slavery," says Dilli Chaudhary, president of an NGO called Backward Society Education.

Bonded labourers in Nepal are called "kamaiyas" and belong to the country's backward Tharu community. It is sheer poverty that forces the poor to borrow rice and food from their employers - generally big landlords - and get trapped in slavery.

Under the practice, once indebted, the labourer and his heirs are 'bonded' to the landlord. They had to actually reside on the landlord's property until the debt was completely repaid, which seldom happened.

Slavery in the Home - Domestics - Cameroon to USA

Beatings, Isolation and Fear: The Life of a Slave in the U.S.

Pierre Thomas, Jack Date and Theresa Cook, ABC News, May 21, 2007

abcnews.go.com/WN/story?id=3190006&page=1

[accessed 26 January 2011]

Evelyn Chumbow was once a slave, but not in some distant country. She worked right here in the United States.  Chumbow, now 21, was brought to suburban Maryland in 1996 from her native Cameroon by Theresa Mubang. Mubang promised Chumbow's family that if 11-year-old Evelyn came to America, she would have the prospect of a bright future and a first-rate education, as she had been a top student in her native country. Instead, after she arrived, Mubang enslaved the child in her home, forcing her to work long hours and depriving her of the education she was promised, and never paid her a dime.

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