Author Topic: Modern Slavery (Read 7104 times)

hubag bohol · « **on:** April 17, 2011, 02:54:51 PM »

What is modern slavery?

Millions of men, women and children around the world are forced to lead lives as slaves. Although this exploitation is often not called slavery, the conditions are the same. People are sold like objects, forced to work for little or no pay and are at the mercy of their 'employers'.

Slavery exists today despite the fact that it is banned in most of the countries where it is practised. It is also prohibited by the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1956 UN Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery. Women from eastern Europe are bonded into prostitution, children are trafficked between West African countries and men are forced to work as slaves on Brazilian agricultural estates. Contemporary slavery takes various forms and affects people of all ages, sex and race.

Common characteristics distinguish slavery from other human rights violations. A slave is:

* forced to work -- through mental or physical threat;
* owned or controlled by an 'employer', usually through mental or physical abuse or threatened abuse;
* dehumanised, treated as a commodity or bought and sold as 'property';
* physically constrained or has restrictions placed on his/her freedom of movement.

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hubag bohol · « **Reply #1 on:** April 17, 2011, 02:55:57 PM »

What types of slavery exist today?

Bonded labour affects millions of people around the world. People become bonded labourers by taking or being tricked into taking a loan for as little as the cost of medicine for a sick child. To repay the debt, many are forced to work long hours, seven days a week, up to 365 days a year. They receive basic food and shelter as 'payment' for their work, but may never pay off the loan, which can be passed down for generations.

Early and forced marriage affects women and girls who are married without choice and are forced into lives of servitude often accompanied by physical violence.

Forced labour affects people who are illegally recruited by individuals, governments or political parties and forced to work -- usually under threat of violence or other penalties.

Slavery by descent is where people are either born into a slave class or are from a 'group' that society views as suited to being used as slave labour.

Trafficking involves the transport and/or trade of people -- women, children and men -- from one area to another for the purpose of forcing them into slavery conditions.

Worst forms of child labour affects an estimated 126 million** children around the world in work that is harmful to their health and welfare.

** ILO

http://www.antislavery.org/

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hubag bohol · « **Reply #2 on:** April 17, 2011, 02:57:30 PM »

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hubag bohol · « **Reply #3 on:** April 17, 2011, 03:00:04 PM »

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hubag bohol · « **Reply #4 on:** April 17, 2011, 03:09:30 PM »

The number of slaves today remains as high as 12 million to 27 million, though this is probably the smallest proportion of the world's population in history. Most are debt slaves, largely in South Asia, who are under debt bondage incurred by lenders, sometimes even for generations. Human trafficking is primarily for prostituting women and children into sex industries. It is the fastest growing criminal industry and is predicted to eventually outgrow drug trafficking.

Total annual revenues of traffickers were estimated in 2004 to range from US $5 billion to US $9 billion. Due to the illegal nature of trafficking and differences in methodology, the exact extent and growth of the industry is unknown. According to United States State Department data, an "estimated 600,000 to 820,000 men, women, and children [are] trafficked across international borders each year, approximately 70 percent are women and girls and up to 50 percent are minors. The data also illustrates that the majority of transnational victims are trafficked into commercial sexual exploitation." However, they go on to say that "the alarming enslavement of people for purposes of labor exploitation, often in their own countries, is a form of human trafficking that can be hard to track from afar." --Wiki

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hubag bohol · « **Reply #5 on:** April 17, 2011, 03:47:59 PM »

Slavery is not dead, just less recognizable.
Today, 27 million people are enslaved, more than at the height of the transatlantic slave trade.

By Susan Llewelyn Leach, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor / September 1, 2004

Slaves are cheap these days. Their price is the lowest it's been in about 4,000 years. And right now the world has a glut of human slaves - 27 million by conservative estimates and more than at any time in human history.

Although now banned in every country, slavery has boomed in the past 50 years as the global population has exploded. A billion people scrape by on $1 a day. That extreme poverty combined with local government corruption and a global economy that leaps national boundaries has produced a surge in the number of slaves - even though in the developed world, that word conjures up the 19th century rather than the evening news.

"For an American audience, their conceptualization of slavery is locked into a picture from the past," says Kevin Bales, president of Free the Slaves (www.freetheslaves.net), a nonprofit in Washington. "It's fixed in the slavery of the deep South and it's about African-Americans being enslaved on plantations with chains and whips and so forth."

Modern-day slavery has little of the old South. Of those 27 million, the majority are bonded laborers in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal - workers who have given their bodies as collateral for debts that never diminish no matter how many years, or sometimes generations, the enslaved labor on. Cooking the books is an early lesson for slaveholders.

Yet despite this new largely unacknowledged slavery epidemic, Dr. Bales is optimistic. While the real number of slaves is the largest there has ever been, he says, it is also probably the smallest proportion of the world population ever in slavery. Today, he adds, we don't have to win the legal battle; there's a law against it in every country. We don't have to win the economic argument; no economy is dependent on slavery (unlike in the 19th century, when whole industries could have collapsed). And we don't have to win the moral argument; no one is trying to justify it any more.

The fact that it's still thriving, he explains, comes down principally to ignorance about the institution and lack of resources directed at eradicating it.

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hubag bohol · « **Reply #6 on:** April 17, 2011, 03:48:58 PM »

Lack of public awareness is strikingly apparent in developed countries, where few are conscious that it is not exclusively a third-world problem.

Although the numbers are small relative to the worldwide challenge, in the developed world slavery happens uncomfortably close to home. For instance, between 14,000 and 17,500 people are trafficked into the United States annually, according to the US government, most forced into the sex trade, domestic servitude, or agricultural labor. At any one time, between 52,000 and 87,000 are in bondage. And much of that is in plain view, in towns and cities across the country, experts say. People simply don't recognize it.

In June, an Indian domestic in Brookline, Mass., won a court case against an Omani couple who had barred her from leaving their apartment unescorted for more than a year, forcing her to look after their four children, cook, and clean without proper pay or meals. An alert neighbor who caught wind of her plight helped her escape.

But that is the exception, suggests Tommy Calvert of American Anti-Slavery Group in Boston. "Law enforcement and legal professionals don't always identify a victim of slavery as such." And the public is even less likely to recognize the signs.

Last month, the State Department issued a fact sheet urging citizens "to help end modern-day slavery" and warned "it may even be happening in their own backyards."

It's where domestic violence was 35 years ago, Bales say. No one talked about it, no shelters existed, and no one had written a pamphlet laying out what it looked like.

That's about to change. A pamphlet on slavery is in the works, says Bales, who hopes to get it distributed to neighborhood watch groups around the US before the end of the year, if funding comes through. The draft, titled "How can I recognize trafficking victims" includes a list of "visible indicators" of whether an establishment is holding people against their will and the physical signs that a person might be enslaved. Once people are better informed, he expects a flood of cases.

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hubag bohol · « **Reply #7 on:** April 17, 2011, 03:49:59 PM »

Part of the confusion about slavery, says Bales, is that it has evolved over the centuries and what we traditionally thought of as slavery - chattel slavery - looks very different these days. But the definition remains the same: "Slavery is the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised" (Slavery Convention of the League of Nations, 1926).

In his book "Disposable People," Bales says ownership is no longer an attractive proposition for most slaveholders because the price of slaves is so low. In 1850, a slave would cost about $40,000 in today's dollars. Now, you can buy a slave for $30 in the Ivory Coast. The glut "has converted them from being the equivalent of buying a car to buying a plastic pen that you use and throw away," he says. That makes maintenance of the "investment" a low priority, and little care is taken for slaves' well-being.

The most common type of slavery is debt bondage which traps 15 million to 20 million in loan agreements they can never pay off. Others are lured by false promises into forced labor situations, where they are coerced to stay under threat of violence. Slavery also includes the worst forms of child labor and sexual exploitation of women and girls.

The fastest growing type, however, is trafficking ("forcing and transporting people into slavery"). According to a Department of Justice report in June on human trafficking, 600,000 to 800,000 people are trafficked across national borders each year (and millions more are trafficked within their own countries). Of those, about 80 percent are female, and an estimated 70 percent end up in the commercial sex trade, the report says. The United Nations estimates that the profits from human trafficking (about $9.5 billion last year) rank it among the top three revenue earners for organized crime, after drugs and arms. In 10 years, it's expected to be the top source of revenue.

This rapid rise has been met with new laws in the US (the Trafficking Victims Protection Act 2000, which was reauthorized and expanded last December), a rapid ratification of the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime put forward in 2000, which also came into force last December, and greater sharing of information and coordination among nations to combat trafficking.

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hubag bohol · « **Reply #8 on:** April 17, 2011, 03:50:45 PM »

The UN declared 2004 International Year to Commemorate the Struggle Against Slavery and its Abolition, even though, ironically, there are more slaves now than there were even at the height of the transatlantic slave trade.

Enforcement is one stalling point in its eradication. A Human Rights Watch report issued in July, for instance, looks at the pattern of exploitation of foreign domestic workers in Saudi Arabia. Although the Saudis are held to account for a judicial system that makes its almost impossible for foreign nationals to appeal their circumstances, says Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Middle East and Africa for HRW, the sending countries shirk their responsibilities, too. "They need to better protect their nationals," she says. "Unfortunately, each one [of the sending countries] says, if we make it tough for Saudi [Arabia] then they will just go to Pakistan [for foreign workers]. And Pakistan says, if we make it tough, then they will just go to the Philippines. So it's a race to the bottom."

Even when law enforcement is not in question, uncovering cases can be like looking for clues in the dark. Last year, only nine trafficking cases were prosecuted in the US with a total of 17 convictions - the smallest sliver of those working the new slave trade. "The thing that is unique about human trafficking and enslavement," says Bales "... is that it's a crime of seriousness equal to kidnapping, torture, murder etc. and yet it has the 'dark figure' [a criminologist's term for crimes that remain hidden, unreported] of bicycle theft."

The conditions of those enslaved are usually filled with physical and mental abuse and violence - or at least the constant threat of it - and sometimes unimaginable deprivations. Girls are frequently "broken in" to the profession of prostitution, for instance, through beatings and rape, and if they are rebellious, they may end up dead. Long hours, sometimes 15 or more a day, with no days off, privacy, or adequate food are common.

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hubag bohol · « **Reply #9 on:** April 17, 2011, 03:52:00 PM »

For those who escape servitude, the road to freedom can be uncertain. A UN fact sheet on contemporary slavery hints it may be easier to free the body than the mind: "Even when abolished, slavery leaves traces. It can persist as a state of mind - among its victims and their descendants and among the inheritors of those who practiced it - long after it has formally disappeared."

To see what happens when a country does no more than liberate its slaves, says Bales, look at the US. "It had one of the largest botched emancipations in human history. Four million people dumped into the economy without any kind of tools, capital, education, political participation, rehabilitative care. Nothing. And we're still paying the price."

Rehabilitation, as crucial as it is, is still an infant science. Lone individuals like Vivek and Vidyullata Pandit in northern India, a husband-and-wife team, have developed their own system of rehabilitation for bonded laborers. But more universal treatment protocols are perhaps years off. Currently, programs adapt models used for victims of torture or domestic violence.

"Bondage can be compared to living in a prison or a mental institution," Bales writes in "Disposable People." "Those who get out have to learn about living in the 'real world.' "

And sometimes, freed slaves do return to their slaveholders, unable to cope outside the strict confines of their former existence.

"The three most important things people need to fight bonded labor," says Vidyullata Pandit on the website of the Unitarian Universalist Church, which funds their work, "are knowledge of the law, self-confidence to bring about change, and ... conviction to ensure they don't go back to bonded labor once they are released."

http://www.csmonitor.com/

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hubag bohol · « **Reply #10 on:** April 17, 2011, 03:59:57 PM »

An estimated 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders each year; approximately 50 per cent of all victims are children; 126 million children work in the worst forms of child labour â€“ one in every 12 of the worldâ€™s five- to seventeen-year-olds; there are an estimated 300,000 child soldiers involved in over 30 areas of conflict worldwide, some younger than 10 years old.

According to the reports, women and children make up the overwhelming majority of victims, typically being sold into the international sex trade for prostitution, sex tourism and other commercial sexual services, and into forced labour situations in sweatshops, construction sites and agricultural settings. In other forms of servitude, children are abducted and forced to fight for government military forces or rebel armies, and to act as domestic servants and street beggars.

These people have no choice over the course of their lives, no rights, and are often beaten, abused and threatened with violence. Slavery is flourishing in many parts of the world and it is every bit as ugly as it was 200 years ago. Contemporary slavery takes various forms and affects people of all ages, sex and race.
The reports of these crimes are buried in the mass media, somewhere between the coverage of the war in Iraq and Hollywood divorces. The exploitation of human beings, the robbing of the soul in the worse way, or the degradation of the innocent carries less weight in the mass media.

More at: http://news.maars.net/blog/2011/03/24/modern-slavery-people-for-sale/

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hubag bohol · « **Reply #11 on:** April 17, 2011, 04:04:19 PM »

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hubag bohol · « **Reply #12 on:** April 17, 2011, 04:07:43 PM »

The Cocoa Industry

Today about 70% of the world's chocolate comes from West Africa, while the remaining bit is harvested in Central/South America and Asia. About 40% of the world's cocoa comes from the small West African country Ivory Coast where in 2002 it was discovered that 284,000 children were trapped in bonded labor on cocoa farms. 15,000 of those children have been trafficked from surrounding countries, the majority of which are Mali, Benin, Togo and Burkina Faso. Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon, West Africa's other cocoa producers are also known to receive and provide trafficked children. In 2001 a senator from Iowa, Tom Harkins and a House Representative from New York, Eliot Engel attempted to create a bill requiring chocolate manufacturers to put a label on their products showing the chocolate products that were not made by slaves. The chocolate industry protested this act saying that it would cause consumers to boycott, hurting the cocoa farmers even more by bringing in less money, and causing them to use more slaves. The chocolate industry began publicizing action they would take to eliminate child slavery in order to stop the government from taking action. The Chocolate Manufacturers Association adopted the Harkins-Engel Protocol aimed at establishing mechanisms to end â€œthe worst forms of child labor.â€ Harkins and Engel set a 2005 deadline for the chocolate companies to eliminate child slavery, however it was extended to 2008 when it was not reached. The 2008 deadline has passed with little change made.

According to the World Cocoa Foundation 50 million people worldwide depend on cocoa as a source of livelihood. It is a 13 billion dollar per year industry in the United States bringing in over 400 thousand tons of cocoa beans. By the time these cocoa beans reach the big chocolate manufacturers it is impossible to know which beans were harvested by slaves, and which were not.

More at: http://knol.google.com/k/modern-day-slavery#

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hubag bohol · « **Reply #13 on:** April 17, 2011, 04:09:17 PM »

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hubag bohol · « **Reply #14 on:** April 17, 2011, 04:12:14 PM »

http://www.kurtloba.co.uk/

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hubag bohol · « **Reply #15 on:** April 17, 2011, 04:16:28 PM »

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Lorenzo · « **Reply #16 on:** April 18, 2011, 02:29:51 AM »

paita kaayo ani. ma sakit atong dughan ug mo basa ta ani. salamat for this good information, Nong.

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chriswise · « **Reply #17 on:** April 27, 2011, 12:36:35 AM »

http://www.kurtloba.co.uk/

paita diay,,maayo pay mag poyo sa BOHOL managat,magdaro,,di pa ma slave,,

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hubag bohol · « **Reply #18 on:** April 27, 2011, 05:42:39 AM »

paita diay,,maayo pay mag poyo sa BOHOL managat,magdaro,,di pa ma slave,,

Daghan jud ang peligro kon manimpalad sa laing lugar...

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chriswise · « **Reply #19 on:** April 27, 2011, 08:13:20 PM »

Daghan jud ang peligro kon manimpalad sa laing lugar...

layo pod tag layasan,kay walamay trabahong kapahimongtan deri..

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hubag bohol · « **Reply #20 on:** April 27, 2011, 08:34:59 PM »

layo pod tag layasan,kay walamay trabahong kapahimongtan deri..

Mao lagi pud. Morag layo-layo man tingali imong gilagpotan, Bay Chris, unsa may hitsura sa mga nitibo diha...

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chriswise · « **Reply #21 on:** April 27, 2011, 08:37:47 PM »

Mao lagi pud. Morag layo-layo man tingali imong gilagpotan, Bay Chris, unsa may hitsura sa mga nitibo diha...

murag taga bohol japon,he,he,,

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hubag bohol · « **Reply #22 on:** April 27, 2011, 08:42:08 PM »

murag taga bohol japon,he,he,,

Mga bungoton diay?

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chriswise · « **Reply #23 on:** April 27, 2011, 08:51:14 PM »

muling perting bootana,,samot ma tog..

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hubag bohol · « **Reply #24 on:** April 27, 2011, 09:08:48 PM »

muling perting bootana,,samot ma tog..

Aw, bootan man jud basta bungoton...

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chriswise · « **Reply #25 on:** April 27, 2011, 09:11:24 PM »

Aw, bootan man jud basta bungoton...

moingon paman gani,,na dai ako nalay off sa suga,,he,he,he,,nya bognaw kaayog tingog pero init na jamo bilahan,,hehe,he,,,,diba bai bugs,,,,

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hubag bohol · « **Reply #26 on:** April 27, 2011, 09:19:01 PM »

Init diay ang duga?

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chriswise · « **Reply #27 on:** April 27, 2011, 09:30:07 PM »

Init diay ang duga?

aw o kay gi itos man una,,

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hubag bohol · « **Reply #28 on:** April 27, 2011, 09:37:03 PM »

aw o kay gi itos man una,,

Espiso diay kaayo kon maohon...

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chriswise · « **Reply #29 on:** April 27, 2011, 11:04:36 PM »

murag kalamay,,he,he,he,,lisord bai,,

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hubag bohol · « **Reply #30 on:** April 28, 2011, 04:17:15 PM »

Aw, tam-is jud hinuon, pwede kuno pakamatyan...

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chriswise · « **Reply #31 on:** April 30, 2011, 05:21:11 PM »

Aw, tam-is jud hinuon, pwede kuno pakamatyan...

labi napod,,he,he,,

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hubag bohol · « **Reply #32 on:** May 01, 2011, 09:15:08 PM »

labi napod,,he,he,,

Pakamatyan ba, unya adto ra pud banhawa...

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chriswise · « **Reply #33 on:** May 02, 2011, 03:50:18 PM »

modern hero diay bai

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hubag bohol · « **Reply #34 on:** May 02, 2011, 04:27:45 PM »

He he, from slave to hero, morag Spartacus, o kaha Conan the Barbarian...

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chriswise · « **Reply #35 on:** May 02, 2011, 05:11:08 PM »

He he, from slave to hero, morag Spartacus, o kaha Conan the Barbarian...

agoy ganahan jod kag spartacus,,,no,,,na complito nimo tan aw,,nahan kang DOMINA,,he,he,

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hubag bohol · « **Reply #36 on:** May 02, 2011, 05:37:22 PM »

agoy ganahan jod kag spartacus,,,no,,,na complito nimo tan aw,,nahan kang DOMINA,,he,he,

Hmm, kini siya imong buot ipasabot, Bay Chris?

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Bambi · « **Reply #37 on:** May 04, 2011, 05:04:57 AM »

In Germany..we have a new term of MODERN SLAVERY.- The new hired laborers. They will share their monthly salary to the job agencies whom helped them to find the so called LEIHARBEITER - Temporary laborer job ....in which anytime to be fired out- ARBEIT TO GO - Worker to go!

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chriswise · « **Reply #38 on:** May 06, 2011, 08:46:56 PM »

Hmm, kini siya imong buot ipasabot, Bay Chris?

agoy ka bai,,tumpak,,nahan diay ka ana,,he,he,he,,alalay ni domina nalang imo,he,he,he,

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hubag bohol · « **Reply #39 on:** May 07, 2011, 07:02:01 AM »

He he, OK ra nako kadtong one of the 74 virgins bay...

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