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Human Trafficking
& Modern-day Slavery Lecture
Resources
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Resources for
Classroom Presentations to students 13 to 15 years-old Some of the
published articles listed below may prove to be useful in preparing talks
intended for youth, 13 to 15 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 and other topics that
may not be suitable for 13 to 15-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 youth, in a sensitive way, about how they may be targeted for
exploitation, and how they can 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. It is
important for them to learn not to allow themselves to be enticed by
seemingly friendly acquaintances and making bad decisions that can have
terrible consequences. Commodification of Children - Albania For Albanians, It's Come to This: A
Son for a TV Nicholas Wood, The New York Times, Durres,
Albania, November 13, 2003 www.essex.ac.uk/armedcon/story_id/000159.html [accessed 18 January 2011] Fatmira Bonjaku's husband is in jail, accused by the police of
selling their 3-year-old son to an Italian man in return for the television
set that six other children watch in the family's dimly lighted room. The
police also say her husband had plans to sell their newest born, whom she is
breast feeding. Over the past 12
years, since the collapse of Stalinism here, a substantial trade in children
has established itself in Albania, Europe's most impoverished and long most
isolated country. Commodification
of Children - Morocco Street Life BBC World Service, 1st July 2000 www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/people/highlights/streetlife.shtml [accessed 21 February 2011] SLAVE TRADE - The neglect of
Morocco's street-children is just the tip of the iceberg of Morocco's child
crisis. Across the kingdom, I encountered dozens of children treated as
commodities, just as the slave trade of old.
'Parents are raising their children for sale,' says Bashir Nzaggi, news editor with the respected Moroccan newspaper,
Liberation. 'They send them to work in the towns, and never see them except
to collect their pay-packets. Debt
Bondage - India The Enslavement Of Dalit And Indigenous
Communities In India, Nepal And Pakistan Through Debt Bondage [PDF] UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and
Protection of Human Rights, February 2001 At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 6 September 2011] SUMMARY - This paper
describes the gross and continuing violation of the rights of millions of
people in India, Pakistan and Nepal, who are trapped in debt bondage and
forced to work to repay loans. Their designation as persons belonging outside
the Hindu caste system is a major determining factor of their enslavement.
Evidence from all three countries shows that the vast majority (80%-98%) of
bonded labourers are from communities designated as
“untouchable”, to whom certain occupations are assigned, or from indigenous
communities. In the same way that caste status is inherited, so debts are
passed on to the succeeding generations. Debt
Bondage - Pakistan Slavery in the 21st century Alan McCombes, Scottish
Socialist Voice, November 2001 www.scottishsocialistvoice.net/2001/12/slavery-in-the-21st-century/959 [accessed 21 December 2011] Bonded labour otherwise known as debt slavery is rampant in
Pakistan. The system works as follows. Desperately poor families go to a
feudal employer usually a brick kiln owner or a carpet manufacturer and ask
them for a loan, perhaps to pay for medical treatment for a sick child. In return for the loan,
the entire family is turned into the private property of the employer. They
are forced to work long hours for pitiful wage and half of these wages are
kept by the factory owner as payment towards the loan. The loan may take a generation or more to pay
off. But until it is paid, the family are held in
slavery. Iqbal had been sold
by his mother to a carpet manufacturer at the age of four. For years he spent
twelve hours a day, seven days a week working in carpet factories for a
pittance. He eventually rebelled
against his conditions and became a major figure in the BLLF. At the age of
12 he was traveling Pakistan addressing mass meetings and leading demos of
thousands of children against industrial slavery. To this day, his murder has never been
satisfactorily explained. 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 - Malaysia Kin of human trafficking victims
seek Government intervention Asian News International ANI, Kendrapara Orissa, June 10, 2007 news.webindia123.com/news/ar_showdetails.asp?id=706100694&cat=&n_date=20070610 [accessed 20 February 2011] "Our brothers
(in Malaysia) are being tortured by their employers. They get meals only once
a day and are made to work for more then 12 hours a
day," Behra added. A Bhubaneswar-based
placement agency lured seven youths of Kendrapara
District's Mangalpur and Raghunathpur
villages with an offer of lucrative job at Omega Wood Industry in Kuala
Lumpur. The youths also paid the
placement agency over 100,000 rupees for a job in Malaysia. The moment they
landed in Kuala Lumpur on January 10, their passports and visas were snatched
by a member of the placement agency.
They were then taken to the jungles. But instead of getting an office
job, they were forced to do physical labour and
were kept in inhuman conditions. Deception
of Victims - Taiwan Deutsche Presse-Agentur
(German Press Agency) DPA, [accessed 29 August 2014] According to
police, the ring arranged for the Indonesian women to come to Taiwan in
arranged marriages, but turned them into slaves after they had arrived on the
island. 'They would confiscate the Indonesian
women's passports and force them to work in factories, sometimes for up to 18
hours a day, and hand over part of the salary to the human traffickers,' Lai
Ching- tzung, spokesman for the Keelung Police
Bureau, told reporters Luciana, one of the
victims, said she did not know it was a trick because she had a bona fide
wedding with her Taiwanese husband in Indonesia. 'But after he had brought me to Taiwan, he
vanished, and the criminal ring forced me to work in a factory in central
Taiwan,' she said on TV. Deception
of Victims - Tonga Former Human Trafficking Victim
Speaks Out KGMB CBS 9 News - May 3rd 2008 www.antitraf.net/home.php?mode=more&id=70&lang=en [accessed 11 June 2013] HAWAII - This young
Tongan named Francis came here in 2001, Lueleni Maka promised him $240 a week. He was paid only $20. "I ask him about the rest of my money.
Said he sent em back to my family, so I called my
parents and they said they never get nothing from
him," said former victim Francis. Maka told Francis he
would turn him into immigration if he tried to escape the pig farm he stayed
at. "He make
me afraid of him. He hit me a couple of times. yeah.
metal frames, I get scars on my back from him. Get
guys they worse than me. He beat 'em up till blood
coming out their mouth and nose. it's very sad. We
cannot do nothing. we so
scared of him," Francis said. 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 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 Aboriginals - CAR Crime & Society - Comparative
Criminology tour of the World - Central African Republic Dr. Robert Winslow, San Diego State
University, A Comparative Criminology Tour of the World www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/rwinslow/africa/central_african_republic.html [accessed 28 January
2011] TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS - The indigenous Ba'Aka often are coerced into agricultural, domestic, and
other types of labor within the country. The Ba'Aka
often are considered to be the slaves of other local ethnic groups, and
subjected to wages far below those prescribed by the labor code. Additionally
there have been credible reports of three cases in which persons obtained a Ba'Aka child by deception and subsequently sent the child
to Europe for adoption. One of the cases reportedly involved the implicit
cooperation of government authorities. Exploitation
of Children - Mali Chocolate and Slavery: Child Labor in 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: 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 - Armenia Gyumri’s Human Trafficking Victims Varduhi Zakaryan,
Hetq Online, January 15, 2007 hetq.am/eng/news/5409/gyumris-human-trafficking-victims.html/ [accessed 5 September 2014] “Seven of us lived
in one room, where we didn't even have the most basic facilities. We would be
kept partly hungry almost all the time – there would be days when we would
eat dry bread, cabbage stems and even days when we would go hungry. We had
already been working in those conditions for eight months when we learned
that Ararat had not sent any money back to our families, even though he would
swear on his brother's grave that our families were receiving payments
regularly each month,” narrated 42-year old Robert Karapetyan,
a resident of Gyumri. Labor
- Adult - Bahrain Confronting the Taboo of Human Trafficking John Defterios, Khaleej Times Online, 13 March 2009 www.cnn.com/CNNI/Programs/mme/blog/2009/03/horrific-traffic.html [accessed 18 August 2015] Forty-year-old Suryavathi Rao fled the home of her employer that morning
shoeless with only a nightgown and bible to her name. The years of domestic labour have taken
their toll. She could easily pass for
60 if not a few years older. After
working 16 hours a day, seven days a week for a year and a half, Suryavathi could not take it anymore. She said through a translator that her meagre salary of $108 a month
had not been paid for six months. She
complained about not being fed meals and surviving on the generosity of her neighbour another domestic worker who pulled together
leftovers to get by. Suryavathi could not get
through three sentences without breaking into tears. As a result of her fleeing for protection,
she has become a runaway worker with no rights. Her employer holds her passport. The best she can hope for is to get the
passport back and hope that the shelter can give her enough money to buy a
ticket and fly home to Southern India.
It is not that simple of course, since back home Suryavathi
fears she won’t be welcomed back due to her “failure” to send back money and
keep a job. This is the life of a forced labourer and
the complex world of human trafficking.
Technically, Suryavathi was not trafficked. She had a sponsor agency that she paid
$1100 to back in India and is still charging here 5 per cent a month interest
on the balance. But she certainly did
not expect slave like conditions when she arrived. Labor
- Adult - Botswana Botswana in sweat shops, human trafficking
crisis Gowenius Toka,
Sunday Standard, 21-10-2007 www.sundaystandard.info/article.php?NewsID=2186&GroupID=1 [accessed 23 January 2011] www.sundaystandard.info/botswana-sweat-shops-human-trafficking-crisis [accessed 28 May 2017] The Sunday Standard
turned up further information that another company, Zheng Ming, which
operated a sweatshop in Ramotswa, was part of an
international trade in modern day slavery. Industrial Court Judge, Elijah Legwaila, would later rule that “it appears that Chinese
nationals pay large sums of money to recruitment agencies who send them
abroad with all sorts of promises and that some Chinese nationals even leave
China with promises of work in developed countries and that by the time such
people land at any destination they have neither the money nor the bargaining
power to protect their rights. “These Chinese
nationals are then housed and fed in compounds at the pleasure of the
employer. Their passports, air tickets, work and residence permits are retained
by the employer.” Legwaila
was passing judgment in a case in which Bin Quin Lin, a Chinese national
working for Zheng Ming Knitwear, was held in forced labour
without pay. Chinese investors are the biggest investors in the textile
industry which exports garments to America under the lucrative AGOA
agreement. Labor
- Adult - El Salvador Testimony of Sonia Beatriz Lara Campos The National Labor Committee, October 1999 At one time this article had been archived and
may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 5 September 2011] About 800 people
work there. There are 8 production lines, with 60 to 63 people in each,
plus other sections. The work
shift is Monday to Friday, beginning at 6:50am. They give us between 12
and 12:55 for lunch, with no other break. Leaving time is 7pm. On
Saturdays we worked from 6:50am to 4pm. Last year in April
we began to work at night. We worked from Monday to Friday 6:50am to 7pm, and from 7:30pm to 10:30pm. On Saturdays we
worked from 6:50am until 7pm. And on Sunday we worked from 6:50am to
5pm. Or, if we weren’t going to work on Sunday, we would work on
Saturday all night until 5:00 on Sunday morning. The overtime hours, and working on Sundays, was
obligatory. As an inspector, I was required to work all these hours on
my feet. Labor
- Adult - Eritrea Eritrea 'like a giant prison', claims human
rights group Xan Rice in Nairobi, The Guardian, 16 April
2009 www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/16/eritrea-africa-human-rights-refugees [accessed 4 February 2011] Government's
policies on torture, conscription and mass detention creating refugee crisis,
Human Rights Watch says. Eritrea is
becoming a "giant prison" due to its government's policies of mass
detention, torture and prolonged military conscription, according to a report
published today .
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said state repression had made the tiny Red
Sea state one of the highest producers of refugees in the world, with those
fleeing risking death or collective punishment against their families. There is no freedom
of speech, worship or movement in Eritrea, while many adults are forced into
national service at token wages until up to 55 years of age. Labor
- Adult - Haiti Slavery: Worldwide Evil Charles Jacobs, President, American
Anti-Slavery Group At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly still be accessible [here]
[accessed 5 September 2011] HAITI: SUGAR SLAVES - Next time you
add sugar to your coffee, think of Andre Prevot. A
Haitian, Prevot met a man who promised him a good
job nearby in the Dominican Republic (DR). But, as we've seen with the Asian
slavers, this is a classic lure. "He took me across the border and sold
me to the Dominican soldiers for $8," explains Prevot.
Once in their custody, he suffered the fate of thousands of his countrymen
who are forced against their will to cut cane for six or seven months — from
December to June — for little or no money. Though many
Haitians work willingly in the Dominican sugar plantations (Haiti is one of
the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere), there is a perennial
shortfall at harvest time. The State Sugar Council, known as the CEA, fills
the gap with a system that violates nearly every internationally recognized
labor code against forced labor. Although political turmoil in Haiti has put
an end to cross-border recruiting, the enslavement of blacks continues. Labor
- Adult - Indonesia Indonesia's Footwear Workers Too Thin For
Aerobics Charles Wallace, Los Angeles Times,
Tangerang, 17 October 1992 At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 6 September 2011] Suyatmi, a shy, 20-year
old factory worker, is too poor to know much about sneakers. She's never
heard of Bo Jackson and is too skinny to care about aerobics.
Her world consists of a rented, 5-foot sqaure room in a shantytown where she sits on the
concrete floor with three other young women.
Every day a t 7 a.m., Suyatmi
begins work at P.T. Hardaya Aneka Shoes Industry,
one of six companies in Indonesia making shoes for Nike Inc., the spectacurly successful U.S. sporting goods company. Her
production "line" of 30 workers produces 350 pairs of Nike's glitzy
footwear a day. Suyatmi
and her co-workers earn a base salary of 1,900 Indonesian rupiahs a day, the
equivalent of $1.15. Working a six-day week, with a
least two hours of overtime each day, she takes home about $17 per week. The
company also gives her lunch and a bus ride to work.
"Some days it's hard," she said.
"But I'm just happy to have a job." Labor
- Adult - Indonesia Human Trafficking, Migrant Labor Often
Linked in Indonesia News Blaze, June 11, 2007 -- Source: U.S.
Department of State iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/article/2007/06/20070607164452dybeekcm0.7253229.html#axzz3BKE2hiUo [accessed 24 August 2014] More than 2.5
million Indonesians from poorer regions support their families every year by
traveling overseas seeking work as domestic servants and laborers. Most work
in Malaysia and Saudi Arabia, but hundreds of thousands of others also can be
found in Singapore, Japan, Syria, Kuwait, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Some of these
individuals find work through officially sanctioned recruiting agencies. But Susilo estimates that more than half of would-be migrant
workers bypass these programs for the deceptive ease of working through less
reputable recruiters who, like traffickers the world over, confiscate
passports, trap would-be workers with exorbitant loans to travel abroad and
force them into laboring in dangerous and abusive work environments in a
futile effort to repay their unmanageable debts before sending money home to
their families. Labor
- Adult - Japan Forced Labor? Male Migrant Workers In Suvendrini Kakuchi,
Inter Press Service IPS, www.atimes.com/atimes/Japan/GF09Dh02.html [accessed 16 February 2011] www.ipsnews.net/2005/05/labour-japan-male-migrant-workers-too-have-it-tough/ [accessed 7 June 2017] "While the
problems of human trafficking focuses on women forced into sexual slavery in
Japan, there are many cases of coerced male labor in the country, a situation
that still goes ignored and needs urgent attention," said Tomoyuki
Yamaguchi, a counselor at the Asian Peoples' Friendship, a non-governmental
organization (NGO) supporting migrant workers. He points out that complaints by male workers sound very similar to
those of trafficked women, such as low wages, long and exhausting working
hours, and violence from their bosses.
The bulk of complaints are over unpaid overtime, sometimes running
into years, and injuries in the workplace. The counselor said many of the
workers were reluctant to confront their bosses for fear of being deported
for violating their tourist visas. Labor
- Adult - Poland - Italy Human Trafficking Ring Raided in Associated Press AP, articles.chicagotribune.com/2006-07-20/news/0607200423_1_trafficking-ring-arrests-labor-camps [accessed 28 August 2014] "Gangsters
working in Poland recruited people looking for seasonal jobs picking fruit
and vegetables in Italy through announcements in local newspapers," Bienkowski told a news conference. He said workers
had to pay travel costs and a one-time work-finders fee of up to $280. But
once in Italy, their situation quickly deteriorated. The workers were
promised $6.30-$7.50 per hour before leaving, but received only $1.25 an hour
after arriving, Bienkowski said. They were
quartered in barracks with horrible sanitary conditions and had to pay for
food and board, which pushed most of them into debt. Labor
- Adult - Russia Trafficking in Russia Anti-Slavery International At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly still be accessible [here]
[accessed 11 September 2011] CASE STUDY: SERGEY'S
STORY
- Sergey is 27 years old and from Perm in Russia. In 2001 he saw an advert in
a local newspaper for a job agency recruiting construction workers to work in
Spain. The salary offered was US$1,200 per month. This was much more than his
monthly salary of just $200 and more than he could ever hope to earn in Perm.
He applied to the agency who booked his plane ticket to Madrid on the
condition that he would pay back the money when he started work. On arrival in
Spain, Sergey was picked up by a person from the "agency" who took
his passport. He was taken to Portugal and forced to work on a construction
site without pay for several months. The site was surrounded by barbed wire.
Without his passport he was afraid that the Portugese
authorities would arrest him. One day Sergey managed to escape and begged his
way to Germany. Because he did not have a passport the German authorities
arrested him. He stated the police beat him and took away what little money
he had before deporting him to Russia. Labor - Adult - USA Indian workers' struggle shines light on
human trafficking, slave labor Sunil Freeman, Party for Socialism and
Liberation PSL, July 4, 2008 www2.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=9509&news_iv_ctrl=1036 [accessed 18 June 2013] www.liberationnews.org/08-07-04-indian-workers-struggle-shines-html/ [accessed 26 February 2018] The plight of
immigrant Indian workers who were deceived into virtual slavery has brought
attention to the vile practice of human trafficking. Indian workers protest slave-like
conditions before the Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., June 11. The
workers took jobs with Signal International to work on the U.S. Gulf Coast
following the devastation of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The Indian workers
were told they would receive "green cards," allowing them permanent
legal residence in the United States. Many who left their families behind in
search of better wages had been told they would be able to bring their
relatives. The promises were all lies.
Instead of receiving permanent legal status, the workers—who had paid fees of
up to $20,000 to Signal—received 10-month H-2B temporary worker visas. The workers were essentially trapped, and
their employers knew it. Their documents were stolen and wages were withheld.
For all practical purposes, slavery had returned to Louisiana. Labor
- Adult - USA Human trafficking cases increase in El Paso Louie Gilot,
Libertas, November 12, 2006 libertasuiuc.blogspot.com/2006/11/human-trafficking-cases-increase-in-el_12.html [accessed 8 January 2011] Gardes showed the
photograph of a field worker standing on top of a large farm truck -- a scene
common across the Southwest. His name is Ricardo, she said. He was smuggled
across the border in Arizona and abandoned in the desert for eight days with
only three days' worth of food and water. He was found by another smuggler
who offered to guide him, for a fee. When Ricardo couldn't pay, the smuggler
sold him to a Florida labor contractor for $1,100. This became
Ricardo's debt. He worked in a field for $80 a week to repay it. At the same
time, his trafficker overcharged him for rent and other necessities. Gardes said he was never meant to be able to repay the
debt. One day, another trafficking victim escaped, was recaptured and
was beaten in front of Ricardo and the others. "At this point, Ricardo
realized this was really slavery," Gardes
said. 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] [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 [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 - Bulgaria/Austria How the new Fagins
are bringing child slavery to Britain Olga Craig, Bojan
Pancevski, and David Harrison, The Telegraph, 04
Jun 2006 [accessed 20 January 2011] Two years ago, when
she was 10, Dochka lost what was left of her
innocence when she was sold to a band of child traffickers by her mother and
aunt in Bulgaria. Bewildered and terrified, the little girl was transported
to Austria, forced to learn the skills of a pickpocket and put to work. 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 - Ghana The Protection Project - Ghana [DOC] The Paul H. Nitze
School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), The Johns Hopkins University www.protectionproject.org/human_rights_reports/report_documents/ghana.doc [Last accessed 2009] FORMS OF TRAFFICKING - Children from
Ghana are reportedly trafficked to neighboring countries to work on farms or
in fishing villages,
and they are trafficked internally for similar purposes. One
boy from Immuna, a fishing village in the Central
Region of Ghana, was forced to work without pay for more than 5 years in a
fishing community close to Yeji, located on the
Volta River. He was one of hundreds of children rescued from forced labor in Yeji fishing communities in 2004 by the International
Organization for Migration (IOM). Akateng, a fishing community in the Manya
Krobo District in the Eastern Region, has been
identified as a child-trafficking zone by the Ministry of Women and
Children's Affairs. It is estimated
that more than 1,000 children are working as slave laborers on fishing boats
across the country. The children are
usually told that they are going to live with relatives who will care for
them and send them to school; however, they end up working long hours on
fishing boats. Boys frequently get stuck in nets at the bottom of the lake. 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: International Crisis Group, 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. Official
Complicity - Maldives Human trafficking in the Maldives? Maldives Dissent, March 8, 2009 maldivesdissent.blogspot.com/2009/03/human-trafficking-in-maldives.html [accessed 20 February 2011] The Human Rights
Commission of the Maldives has in its latest report slammed the country's
treatment of migrant workers, warning that the practice of bringing a person
in for one job and making them work on another may amount to human
trafficking. Migrant labourers pay as much as 2,000 US Dollars to agents to
get into what they think is the lucrative Maldives labour
force, only to be hoodwinked into lesser jobs, lesser pay and appalling
working conditions. What is even more disturbing is that it is now almost
certain that Maldivian government officials and employment agents have
profited from this exploitation. But the
dispossessed labourers found themselves in a place
that couldn't have been more different to their dreams. Without proper
documents they were unable to report to the police and susceptible to
exploitation and extortion by unscrupulous Maldivians. Poverty
- Bangladesh Human Trafficking Becomes Attractive Nation.ittefaq.com, 11 February 2005 –
Source: nation.ittefaq.com/artman/publish/printer_16178.shtml Click [here]
to connect to the article. Its URL is
not displayed because of its length [accessed 21 January 2011] They
said tens of thousands of women and children are trafficked out each year
from Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world. Poverty provides
traffickers with people who have no alternatives for survival. They trust the
offers of work or marriage abroad, which promise security but lead them to
slavery. Poverty
- Benin Scale of African slavery revealed BBC News, 23 April, 2004 news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3652021.stm [accessed 23 January 2011] COMPLICITY - Much
of this trade in children often has the tacit collaboration of the victims'
own families where it is seen not so much as criminal activity but as a way
for a large family to boost its poor income. The story of Joseph
in Benin is fairly typical. When he
was 13 years old, a stranger arranged with his parents for him to go to neighbouring Togo for a better life. However, he was put to work from 0500 to
2300 each day as a domestic help and was regularly beaten. It took him three years of saving money to
be able to phone home and be rescued by an uncle. Now 16 years old, he is
back in school. "I was so happy
to see my little brother again when I returned home to Benin," he says. Poverty
- Benin African "slave ship" highlights
spread of child slavery Trevor Johnson, World Socialist Web Site,
19 April 2001 www.wsws.org/articles/2001/apr2001/slav-a19.shtml [accessed 23 January 2011] Although there may
be a superficial resemblance to the African slave trade of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, the driving forces behind this modern form of
slavery are entirely new. The roots of today's slave trade are to be
discovered in the way that capitalism has developed in Africa during the last
few decades. The conditions of
extreme poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa have attracted transnational
corporations (TNCs), which can profit from Africa's rich mineral resources
and other primary products by exploiting the plentiful cheap labour needed to produce and process them. The TNCs are
able to sell these products in Europe and America for many times more than
they cost to produce. 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 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. Slavery
in the Home - Domestics - USA Child maids now being exported to US Associated Press AP, Dec-28-2008 www.nbcnews.com/id/28415693/ns/us_news-life/t/child-slavery-now-being-imported-us/#.U-pBb6Oumdk [accessed 12 August 2014] www.cleveland.com/world/index.ssf/2008/12/child_house_maids_now_being_ex.html [accessed 29 June 2017] Shyima was 10 when a
wealthy Egyptian couple brought her from a poor village in northern Egypt to
work in their California home. She awoke before dawn and often worked past
midnight to iron their clothes, mop the marble floors and dust the family's
crystal. She earned $45 a month working up to 20 hours a day. She had no
breaks during the day and no days off. Once behind the
walls of gated communities like this one, these children never go to school.
Unbeknownst to their neighbors, they live as modern-day slaves, just like Shyima, whose story is pieced together through court
records, police transcripts and interviews. Shyima cried when she
found out she was going to America in 2000. Her father, a bricklayer, had
fallen ill a few years earlier, so her mother found a maid recruiter, signed
a contract effectively leasing her daughter to the couple for 10 years and
told Shyima to be strong. She arrived at Los
Angeles International Airport on Aug. 3, 2000, according to court documents.
The family brought her back to their spacious five-bedroom, two-story home,
decorated in the style of a Tuscan villa with a fountain of two angels
spouting water through a conch. She was told to sleep in the garage. It had no windows and was neither heated
nor air-conditioned. Soon after she arrived, the garage's only light bulb
went out. The Ibrahims didn't replace it. From then
on, Shyima lived in the dark. She was told to call them Madame Amal and
Hajj Nasser, terms of respect. They called her "shaghala,"
or servant. Their five children called her "stupid." All material used herein
reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial,
nonprofit, and educational use. PLEASE
RESPECT COPYRIGHTS OF COMPONENT ARTICLES.
Cite this webpage as: Patt, Prof. Martin, "Human Trafficking
& Modern-day Slavery – Resources for Classroom Presentations to students
13 to 15 years-old", http://gvnet.com/humantrafficking/111-ages13-15.htm [accessed <date>] |