Slavery: In the East and in the West
17 Friday Oct 2014
Posted Inequality, Politics, Society
in17 Friday Oct 2014
Posted Inequality, Politics, Society
in17 Friday Oct 2014
Posted Inequality, Politics, Society
inA 2007 documentary “Very Young Girls” demonstrated, many in the U.S. are coerced into participating at a young age and gradually shifted into a life that very much resembles slavery.
A less visible but still prevalent form of slavery in America involves illegal migrant labourers who are lured with the promise of work and then manipulated into forced servitude, living without wages or freedom of movement, under constant threat of being turned over to the police should they let up in their work. Walk Free cites “a highly developed criminal economy that preys on economic migrants, trafficking and enslaving them.” That economy stretches from the migrants’ home countries right to the United States.
The country that is most marked by slavery, though, is clearly India.
As per Walk Free Foundation’s report, there are an estimated 14 million slaves in India – it would be as if the entire population of a European country was forced into slavery. The country suffers deeply from all major forms of slavery, according to the report. Forced labour is common, due in part to a system of hereditary debt bondage; many Indian children are born “owing” sums they could never possibly pay to masters who control them as chattel their entire lives. Others fall into forced labour when they move to a different region looking for work, and turn to an unlicensed “broker” who promises work but delivers them into servitude. The country’s caste system and widespread discrimination abet social norms that make it easier to turn a blind eye to the problem. Women and girls from underprivileged classes are particularly vulnerable to sexual slavery, whether under the guise of “child marriages” or not, although men and boys often fall victim as well.
One of the world’s most vulnerable populations for enslavement is Haitian children. Haiti has the world’s second-highest rate of slavery — 2.1 percent, or about one in every 48 people, many of them underage. There’s even a word for it: “restaveks”, from the colonial French for “reste avec” or “stay with”. Traditionally, the word refers to a poor family sending their child to live with and work for a wealthier family. Often it is innocuous. But it can also encompass parents who feel they have no choice, typically because they have no income other than what they derive from selling their children into forced labour conditions that strongly resemble slavery. About one in 10 Haitian children are believed to participate. Those who run away, according to the report, are often “trafficked into forced begging and commercial sexual exploitation.
In The Haitian Times last year, columnist Max Joseph wrote, “For Haitians or any member of the African Diaspora for that matter, the word “slavery” is distinctively associated with the transatlantic slave trade in which millions of Africans were forcibly uprooted from their villages and sold like domesticated animals in faraway lands. “The notion of associating the restavèk phenomenon with slavery is a naked attempt at trivializing one of the most grotesque episodes in human history,” Joseph wrote.
What’s perhaps most amazing about the prevalence of slavery around the world, throughout the East to the West, is how similar it can look across very different societies. The risk factors might change from one place to another, the causes varying widely, but the lives of the enslaved rarely do.
16 Thursday Oct 2014
Posted Inequality, Politics, Society
in16 Thursday Oct 2014
Posted Inequality, Politics, Society
inTags
#BAD2014, #BlogAction14, #OCT16, Governance, Inequality, Slavery
The United States, per capita, has a very low rate of slavery: just 0.02 percent, or one in every 5,000 people. But that adds up to a lot: an estimated 60,000 slaves, right there in America.
But, the rich, developed countries tend to have by far the lowest rates of slavery. Many reports say that effective government policies, rule of law, political stability and development levels all make slavery less likely. The vulnerable would be less vulnerable if those who would exploit them face higher penalties and greater risk of getting caught. A war, natural disaster or state collapse is likely to force helpless children or adults into bondage because of lack of governance. Another crucial factor in preventing slavery is discrimination. When society treats women, ethnic groups or religious minorities as less valuable or less worthy of protection, they are more likely to become slaves. It is, in fact, evident in the Middle East, esp. in Iraq or Syria today.
Slavery is also driven by extreme poverty, high levels of corruption and toleration of child marriages of young girls to adult men who either may be paying their parents a “dowry” or not depending on cultures and the situation in a given country. Haiti, in Pakistan and in India, more than 1 percent of the population is estimated to live in slavery because of either lack of good governance or cultures. Now, it is estimated that 30 million people are living as forced labourers, forced prostitutes, child soldiers, and child brides in forced marriages and, in all ways that matter, as pieces of property. They are under servitude of absolute ownership literally, in these countries.
Two other bright red regions are Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe. Both are blighted particularly by sex trafficking, a practice that bears little resemblance to popular Western conceptions of prostitution. Women and men are coerced into participating, often starting at a very young age, and are completely reliant on their traffickers for not just their daily survival but basic life choices; they have no say in where they go or what they do and are physically prevented from leaving. International sex traffickers have long targeted these two regions, whose women and men are prized for their skin tones and appearance by Western patrons. And this is happening because of the variation in the quality of governance in these counties in comparison to the countries that have better governance which corroborates that inequality is multidimensional.
16 Thursday Oct 2014
Posted Inequality, Politics, Society
in