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Human Trafficking
& Modern-day Slavery Lecture
Resources
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[Lecture Resources | Resources for Teachers |
Country-by-Country Reports ]
Labor - Child
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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. 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. 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. Cote
D’Ivoire NGOs: gladiators of freedom [PDF] L. Corradini
& Asbel López, The
UNESCO Courier, June 2001 unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001227/122747e.pdf#122766 [accessed 30 January 2011] [page 40] At five in the morning,
well before most children get up to go to school, 12-year-old Abula sets out on a six-kilometre
barefoot trek along a road made of mud and stone to work on a coffee
plantation in Bouafle, Côte d’Ivoire. When he gets there,
wet and tired, the foreman tells him where he is to plant that day. “You have
to work fast because they threaten to punish and starve us if we don’t do the
set amount of work,” he says. “If we can’t work because we’re ill, we risk
being physically tortured. One day I saw them torture two friends of mine who
wanted to escape. Both of them ended up dead.” Cuba Book Review by Russell L. Blaylock, MD --
Source: NewsMax.com, Jan. 11, 2002 [accessed 17 July 2013] The stories of
immense human courage, while bringing you to tears, also fills you with hope
for the world, knowing that there are still men left in the world of such a
caliber. Particularly touching was the story of the young Pedro Luis Boitel thrown in a prison where he was starved, beaten
daily and tortured beyond human endurance for the crime of disagreeing with
the supreme leader. During imprisonment his legs became infected secondary to
the torture wounds. At that point he weighed a mere eighty pounds. He was
denied medical attention and eventually both of his legs had to be amputated.
He still refused to yield to his torturers. Not satisfied, Castro ordered him
thrown in an even worse dungeon where he soon died. This story was to be repeated
thousands of times. As proclaimed by
Hillary Clinton in her book, It Takes a
Village, Castro also boldly stated that the children belong to the State.
Forced labor and indoctrination disguised as education was enforced with a
gun. Children were forcibly taken away from their parents at a tender age and
made to do hard labor in the cane and tobacco fields. The American media saw
it as Cuban patriotism, as did the useful idiot American students who travel
to Cuba with the Venceremos Brigades. 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. Equatorial
Guinea Child Labor Increasing in Equatorial Guinea afrol News (African News
Agency), 21 November 2000 At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 13 June 2013] According to a
report released today by the Global March Against Child Labour documenting
child labour all over the world, there is no escape for children suffering
the "worst forms of child labour" in Equatorial Guinea. This
includes child trafficking, child prostitution and other labour by children
which should be attending school classes. Equatorial Guinea
is also reported to one of the destinations for regional child trafficking.
The report mentions "networks that feed the domestic labour market"
in Equatorial Guinea with children from Benin, Ghana, Nigeria and Togo.
Equatorial Guinea has a long history of forced labour, both domestic and on plantations,
going continuously back to early colonial times 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. India Police rescue trafficking suspect from mob
fury July 17, 2007 www.kalingatimes.com/orissa_news/news/20070717_Police_rescue_trafficking_suspect.htm [access date unavailable] Police on Tuesday
rescued a former employee of a Bhubaneswar-based placement agency facing
charges of trafficking youths from this region to Malaysia from a frenzied
mob in Nikiraia village, 15 km from here. The
villagers gave vent to their anger as about four youths from the area
reportedly enslaved in Malaysia since their departure three months back. The mob badly beat
up Sunil Das and held him captive in the village. The irate mob pounced on
him demanding the refund of money that the Malaysia bound youths had paid to
the placement agency, police said. A Dalit youth from
this part of the state had undergone a two-month-long nightmarish ordeal in
Malaysia and escaped from the clutches of a well-knit human trafficking
racket, bringing to the fore the harrowing plight of a number of unemployed
local youths still stranded in Malaysia in their quest for greener pastures. Mongolia U.S. Customs Commissioner Issues Detention
Order on Clothing Produced in www.customs.gov/hot-new/pressrel/2000/1128-00.htm [accessed 7 September 2014] Evidence obtained by
Customs investigators suggests that factory managers are forcing employees,
some of whom are minors, to work 14-hour days, 7 days a week. In addition, it
has been reported that factory management is deducting unreasonable amounts
of money from the workers' salaries without paying overtime. It has also been
reported that minor age children are being treated as adult age workers,
which is a violation of Mongolian law. In addition, working conditions at
both factories are said to be poor and employee housing is substandard. 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. 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. Uzbekistan The Curse of Cotton: Central Asia's
Destructive Monoculture 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. Zambia Massive child labour
in Zambia denounced [Category – Labor-Child] afrol News, 25 October
2002 -- Sources: ICFTU & afrol archives www.afrol.com/News2002/zam008_labour_report.htm [accessed 17 January 2011] With children
working in dangerous occupations including portering,
street begging and domestic labour, child labour is a widespread problem in The UN labour agency, ILO, has published figures that estimate
that over 550,000 children were working in 2001. 85 percent of these were
involved in the so-called "worst forms of child labour."
According to the ICFTU report, "as the number of Zambians dying of
HIV-AIDS continues to increase, the numbers of orphans, and the number of
households headed by a child, increases as well. Nearly all of these children
are working." Neither were
children safe from the perils of prostitution. The report states that
"there are reports of forced prostitution [in Zambia], particularly of
children, of the trafficking of women and children to neighbouring
countries for the purposes of prostitution, and of combatants from neighbouring Angola kidnapping Zambians and taking them
back to Angola to perform various forms of forced labour." - htcp All material used herein
reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial,
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Cite this webpage as: Patt, Prof. Martin, "Human Trafficking
& Modern-day Slavery – Lecture Resources - Labor - Child",
http://gvnet.com/humantrafficking/111-labor-child.htm [accessed <date>] |