Jolt of Reality
The Western world has been busy of late congratulating itself for its rejection of slavery, for having gone against the grain of its time in recognizing that no human being should ever be in the position of enslaving another. In Canada, Great Britain and by extension her colonies, and in the United States and Europe the two centuries since the abolition of slavery was recently celebrated.The realization of the affront to humanity and decency that was slavery and the prodigious effort made by a few morally superior people in high office to end that practise resulted in freedom for blacks in the Western world.
From pre-biblical times to the present, slave ownership represented a way of life, an economic yardstick of momentum where human beings, young and old, were forced to work long hours performing menial work that profited their owners, allowing them only the very basic necessities of life.
Slavery, the abduction of young people from their homes, the sale of young people by their hopelessly indigent families is still in practise throughout Asia and Africa. Wars in countries like Angola resulted in the abduction from villages of young people to be trained as child soldiers and army prostitutes. Christian groups from the West have been busy 'buying' child slaves for the purpose of freeing them and offering them a new life.
Children as bonded workers, unable to work their way to freedom, enslaved to a system that holds profit above basic human rights, along with women and children whose poverty-stricken existence renders them susceptible to human traffickers in the sex trade are an unacceptable scourge.
Nor are these covert operations restricted to third-world or emerging economies, since it's recognized with no little amount of shame that these situations arise in developed countries as well.
During the annual meeting of the South Asian Association of Regional Co-operation attended by the heads of state for Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, all countries where children are used as indentured labourers or forced to work as prostitutes, a demonstration was mounted against the practise of selling children into slavery.
Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save the Children Movement) launched the demonstration, for all the good it appears to do, for the mendacious practise of using children as slaves is well known to the heads of state of these countries, and to save face laws are enacted to make the practises unlawful, but are simply not enforced. The economies of some countries depend in some measure upon the very practise which enables a wealthy few to grow wealthier.
Children, whose nimble, capable fingers are recognized as having the skills to produce objects that clumsier adult fingers cannot, like tying tight knots in hand-made rugs, are not supposed by law, to be working, but covertly they do. Children as young as 6, 7, 8 years of age are engaged in the production of goods for sale to markets abroad. A 10-year-old child will want to work, knowing that his poverty-stricken family cannot afford to feed all the hungry mouths, and will apprentice as a leather-goods maker, unpaid for his labours for the first two years of his apprenticeship.
Children are sold by their indigent parents at prices between 500 and 2,000 rupees, to those who will then own these children and place them within their workforce. Buffaloes, by contrast, are worth up to 15,000 rupees ($404). Children are expendable in poverty- stricken environments whose parents cannot afford to feed them. These children, once sold into slavery are most often never seen again by their parents.
The group, Save the Children Movement, claim more than 50,000 Nepalese children and 40,000 Bangladeshi children are bought and sold across borders every year by people whose job it is to round up workers for farms, carpet factories, quarries and brothels. Children are exchanged for as little as $5, their parents believing sometimes that they are being taken to work as domestic servants who will eventually send money back home.
Other parents are indebted to money lenders and use their children to pay off their debts. In the world of gross impoverishment different modes of conduct and ethics compel people to make their decisions, and perhaps rationalize them. Up to 15 million children in India, most from low-caste families are estimated to have been enslaved for the purpose of paying off family debts.
In 2006 India introduced a law to ban children under the age of 14 from working as domestic servants or in the food and hospitality sector. Offenders face two years in prison. Yet these are the more identifiable instances of child labour, the visible ones. India also years ago outlawed discrimination against its low caste population, but having passed such laws nothing has materially changed.
In fact, in relatively wealthy India, whose emerging economy is rivalling that of another populous demographic in China, a recently released report indicates that children account for one-fifth of India's workforce in sandstone quarries, and nearly one-third of sex workers. Infinitely less visible than the labour produced by child labourers in hotels or food production.
It's estimated that India, despite its laws, has more than 12.6 million child workers between the ages of 5 and 14. In Asia overall, that number is closer to 122 million, according to the International Labour Organization. Can life conceivably become more onerous and miserable for children?
Does this not diminish life for all of us, knowing that quality of life is completely absent for so many of the world's most vulnerable?
Labels: Realities
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, April 05, 2007
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