It’s time to end slavery once and for all

[namkha]

It’s time to end slavery once and for all

http://www.equaltimes.org/opinion/its-time-to-end-slavery-once-and-for-all

By Aidan McQuade

2 December 2013

Today is the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery. It is a moment to reflect upon the progress, or lack of, in the continuing struggle to eradicate slavery.

Anti-Slavery International can trace our origin back to the beginning of that struggle at the end of the 18th century when Thomas Clarkson, my most illustrious predecessor, first took up the task of organising to end slavery.

Modern slavery ranges from the exploitation of migrant workers in Qatar (pictured) to chattel slavery in Mauritania (Photo/ITUC/Matilde Gattoni)

As the oldest international human rights organisation in the world we have a longer historical perspective on the issue than most, as well as a broader, geographical perspective than many.

So in considering the challenges in combating contemporary forms of slavery there are a couple of matters that I think it is worth reflecting upon.

First through the history of the struggle against slavery there has been an erroneous belief in ‘silver bullets’, simple solutions that will end any particular problem, whether it’s ending the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade or making slavery itself illegal.

Each of these achievements has confined slavery further and further to the margins of society, but none of them have managed to eradicate it completely.

This is simply because slavery evolves faster than the systems hitherto established to eradicate it.

The term slavery may describe situations as varied as that of the thousands of South Asian migrant workers trapped in forced labour to build the infrastructure for Qatar’s World Cup, to women kept as domestic slaves in a London household for 30 years, to a family born into chattel slavery in Mauritania, to the young women and girls who are kept in forced labour in India, the world’s largest democracy, to produce garments for the high streets of the Global North.

What is needed is a more dynamic and permanent set of processes that will progressively reduce the scope of slavery and contribute to the empowerment of those vulnerable to it.

Each of these diverse situations requires a different set of response to ameliorate it.

But if we look more closely at these various forms of slavery, we can see that slavery emerges at the conjunction of three broad factors: individual vulnerability (usually this includes poverty but it can simply be about physical weakness); social exclusion; and failure of government and the rule of law.

Discrimination

The issue of social exclusion, and with it discrimination, is a fundamental one in slavery.

In Latin America today many forced labourers are indigenous people.

In Western Europe most people in slavery are migrants workers.

In South Asia most people in slavery are Dalits or from other scheduled castes or minority groups.

This is important for a variety of reasons, not least that it inhibits the issue from becoming a political one. If slavery is being inflicted upon groups and individuals who the wider society simply does not like, then that wider community is more likely to tolerate the abuses without demanding that their governments do something about it.

Child labourers enslaved in the garment workshops of Delhi tell how when the workshop owners fail to pay bribes to the police, the police come, arrest the children and hold them hostage, stopping work, until the bribes are paid.

And slavery is very much a failure of government and the rule of law.

The appalling lack of capacity of Indian courts exacerbates further these factors.

The backlog of cases means that few do come to trial, effectively making a nonsense of the promises of that country’s laws and constitution.

So a central front in the struggle to end slavery must relate to building the capacity of states to effect rule of law.

There must be sufficient judges properly trained in human rights in general and in anti-slavery rights in particular to ensure that rule of law pertains within the states borders for all its citizens.

And beyond those borders states should ensure that they deploy labour attaches to every country that their citizens travel to for work to press for the respecting of their rights.

Global economy

Of course, there remains a huge lacuna with regards to international rule of law and this is the question of how, in this globalising political economy, international businesses and individual business executives can be held to account on human rights issues in their supply chains.

This is a central requirement in the struggle against contemporary slavery, particularly as they extend their operations into countries whereextant evidence shows slavery is rife and regularly pollutes business supply chains.

If history shows us one thing it is that a request for voluntary initiatives to respond to systemic abuses such as slavery in international business supply chains do little to change the system.

What is needed is a change in the system such as that which the UK has pioneered on bribery.

In other words there is a need to introduce extra-territorial legislation to make explicit the legal accountability of international business entities and their executives in relation to slavery in their supply chains.

The second major challenge to consider is the comforting myth that slavery is a thing of the past.

Recent International Labour Organization (ILO) data estimates that there are still at least 21 million people in slavery across the world, so we still have a long way to go before slavery is completely eradicated.

One consequence of this is that development and anti-poverty work as currently practiced are substantially blind to the continuing atrocity of the millions of people in slavery across the globe.

Hence development practices often threaten to either absolutely or relatively worsen the situations of those in slavery.

For example in 2005 during the West African famine our colleagues in the organization Timidria noticed that slaves were being used in food for work programmes: they were being sent to these schemes by their masters who would then confiscate the ration card they received for their labour.

In other words an important and well-meaning humanitarian programme was contributing to the absolute worsening of their lives.

Matters may have improved somewhat since 2005, but this is not an isolated case. Hence the imperative of reducing slavery needs to become a central focus of the entire international development sector.

This can be obtained by two principle means.

First slavery eradication must be made a post-2015 development goal,

recognising the fundamental constraint that slavery is on poverty reduction as well as the continuing human rights atrocity that it is. Second, and to advance this development goal, all aid actors must be required to state how their programmes address the challenges of slavery and non-gender based discrimination in their operations.

It should be an acceptable response to say that it will have no impact: some programmes will necessarily respond to other priorities.

But the requirement should be that at least they consider this matter in the same way as they are now rightly required to consider gender in programming.

Slavery is a human institution and like all human institutions it can be changed by human action. But we must stop just tinkering at its edges and instead aim to destroy it utterly.

http://www.equaltimes.org/opinion/its-time-to-end-slavery-once-and-for-all

Edited December 4, 2013 by namkha

[GimmePonics]

To end with slavery for once, you need to end with power and therefore money...

Otherwise some people (because of their circumstances) will subject themselves to slavery.

Fuck the corporate world, I wanna go live to Himalayas :\

[Bad Penny.]

I wanna go live to Himalayas

India,pakistan,nepal and china all have slaves,look at the top ten list.

[Boojum]

To be honest (and I admit I'm very drunk so probably talking arse) I think the point that the writer of the article is missing is that a HUGE proportion of modern slavery is driven by the west (us) and it's driven by our insatiable appetite for cheap goods. The clothes that we wear are mostly made in 3rd world sweatshops (often by child labour) - not just the jeans and sweatshirts for less than a fiver that they sell in Asda, but also the big name brands, the expensive designer labels - they are made side by side with the cheap clothes and just get a label sewn in that adds £30 to the price. The electrical goods we buy are made in similar places - as I mentioned yesterday in another thread the iphone and ipad are made in sweatshops by what is, to all intents and purposes, slave labour. A lot of us know this at the back of our minds, but we still buy the stuff. Shit, there are vegetarians that don't eat meat because of the cruelty involved but are happy to buy sweatshop clothes and iphones It's the elephant in the room of western consumerism. And I'm no better myself, I recognise the problem when I'm drunk and ranting about it here and now, but I still bought a hoodie from Asda that cost me £4 - there's no way that wasn't made in some sweatshop somewhere by what is, in reality, slave labour We don't think about the things we buy (well most of us don't) and so those of us that don't are, in our own small way, complicit in slave labour.

[GimmePonics]

India,pakistan,nepal and china all have slaves,look at the top ten list.

And? Slavery is everywhere mate... Being paid £5/hour of work in my eyes is slavery.

What I meant was that I want to go live in a place where there is no "society" and no "money"

Deep in Himalaya im sure i would find that

[Bad Penny.]

And?

Just saying,himalayas isnt some type of utopia,I saw several kashmiri carpet factories using young kids working their looms in dimly-lit sheds to understand that.

[namkha]

And? Slavery is everywhere mate... Being paid £5/hour of work in my eyes is slavery.

What I meant was that I want to go live in a place where there is no "society" and no "money"

Deep in Himalaya im sure i would find that

anywhere in the Himalaya where there aren't any people - but the problem is anywhere and anytime it is possible for there to be people in the Himalaya you will find them it is not some kind of wilderness - and as said, there is plenty of slavery in those regions

being paid five quid an hour in the UK is shit - but it's not slavery

Edited December 4, 2013 by namkha

[GimmePonics]

Just saying,himalayas isnt some type of utopia,I saw several kashmiri carpet factories using young kids working their looms in dimly-lit sheds to understand that.

Still, I think I would find what I am looking for there...

Back to my first post, "To end with slavery for once, you need to end with power and therefore with money"

I did not say that I wouldn't find slavery there. My point is untill people stop looking for power and money, slavery will always be #1 employer.

Like Boojum said, we comply with everything and we should be aware of that. Because we keep feeding the slavery machine. But IMO slavery can and it is happening indoors as well but in a more light version

[Moi]

sometimes i think the exploitation of people by keeping them in their place on minimum wage through politics could be a mental slavery because it's force upon them, tho liberation is where I'm at because I can influence the change I want be it for my self and potentially others, but I know a lot of people will never be where I'm at because the people who control the main things don't want them to be and keep most dumbed down through distraction.

we shackle ourselves to each other through ignorance most of the time

[GimmePonics]

exactly. people gave a meaning to the word slavery but it is much more than what the word means.

In some way point we all are victims of slavery.

[namkha]

if you thinking picking orders at Amazon is slavery, you need to do a little reading - that or give yourself a good firm elbow in the face (try it, I dare you)

this is about the enslaved children on Britain's prohibition cannabis farms

http://therealseedcompany.wordpress.com/2013/12/02/wont-you-please-think-of-the-vietnamese-slave-children-2/

Edited December 5, 2013 by namkha

[Grimweeder]

an the best way to end slavery on cannabis farms is to end prohibition, we all know that. but the gov are still looking for an answer to a problem which has long been solved. well it should have been solved anyway.

Edited December 10, 2013 by Grimweeder

[Hostile]

as I mentioned yesterday in another thread the iphone and ipad are made in sweatshops by what is, to all intents and purposes, slave labour. A lot of us know this at the back of our minds, but we still buy the stuff.

Apple products are made in Foxconn factories, which are sweatshops, but the workers aren't slave labour: they choose to take those jobs, and they compete aggressively to earn and keep those jobs. The alternative employment opportunities for the working class in China are far, far worse. A worker at Foxconn has higher pay, more benefits and, most importantly, a chance to save up and buy their children a future. When you buy an Apple product you're essentially funding the slow expansion of the Chinese middle class.

Now the kids who mine the conflict minerals that get used to make the Apple products, those are slaves.

Shit, there are vegetarians that don't eat meat because of the cruelty involved but are happy to buy sweatshop clothes and iphones

That analogy would work better if animals were lining up and working hard in order to earn the opportunity to be turned into meat. Foxconn isn't a slaughterhouse, it's a ladder to eventual prosperity. Big difference.

Also, you mentioned child labour. Try and bear in mind that these children wouldn't be sitting in school or playing XBox if they weren't working in a factory: they'd be doing whatever they needed to do to survive, which horrifically includes child prostitution. You'd be doing them no favours by putting them out of a job.

It ain't a necropost if it's still on the front page of the subforum. New rule.

[Bones de WeedZard]

That analogy would work better if animals were lining up and working hard in order to earn the opportunity to be turned into meat. Foxconn isn't a slaughterhouse, it's a ladder to eventual prosperity. Big difference.

while I bow ta yer knowledge of China's budding capitalist trickery, I think the above is bull, an' @@Boojum 's analogy stands!

*mumbles* fecken vegetarians! lolz

[stummer]

Slavery to me would be working a job which doesn't change your life in anyway. Work minimum wage and try live in london, might aswell be inside doing time for at least trying to better your situation.