Slavery is Alive and Well

In America we think of slavery as an embarrassing part of our past history.  In 1860 close to 5 million people were enslaved in the United States.  Over several hundred years approximately 9.5 million Africans were captured and enslaved.  But it may surprise you that slavery is alive and well today.  By some estimates there are 27 million people enslaved around the world today.  The CIA estimates that 50,000 women and children are enslaved here in the United States.

The following is reprinted from: www.iAbolish.com

• The 1927 Slavery Convention outlawed slavery worldwide. Article 2 states that the members will take the necessary steps "to bring about, progressively and as soon as possible, the complete abolition of slavery in all its forms." Slavery is defined as forced labor without pay under the threat of violence.
  
  
• Though the legal argument against slavery has been won, slavery persists and even thrives in some parts of the world. By a conservative estimate, 27 million people are enslaved today worldwide -- more than at any time in history.
  
  
• The classic form of chattel slavery- in which slaveholders maintain ownership no longer through legalities but through the use of violence - persists to this day in a few countries. In Sudan, a radical ruling regime has revived a racially-based slave trade, arming militia forces to raid civilian villages for slaves. In Mauritania, slave raids 800 years ago began a system of chattel slavery that continues to this day, with Arab-Berber masters holding as many as one million black Africans as inheritable property.
  
  The most common form of slavery is debt bondage, in which a human being becomes collateral against a loan. With a massive population boom in regions of staggering poverty, some families have nothing to pledge for a loan but their own labor. With inflated interest rates, debts are often inherited, ensnaring generations. 15 to 20 million slaves are in debt bondage in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan.
  
  
• Another common form of slavery is forced labor, where individuals are lured by the promise of a good job and instead find themselves enslaved. Migrant workers are particularly vulnerable, and small organized-crime rings fuel a booming international trade in human beings. Trafficking often flows from developing nations to the West. For instance, CIA estimates that 50,000 women and children are trafficked into the US each year as slaves.
  
  
• A form of slavery most common in South Asia is sex slavery, where girls forced into prostitution by their own husbands, fathers, and brothers earn money for the men in the family to pay back local-money lenders. Others are lured by offers of good jobs and then beaten and forced to work in brothels.
  
  
• Slave labor produces goods we use every day. Examples include: sugar from the Dominican Republic, chocolate from the Ivory Coast, paper clips from China, carpets from Nepal, and cigarettes from India.
  
  
• Slavery occurs in every continent in the world except Antarctica. A few selected hotspots include:

  ALBANIA: Teenage girls are tricked into sex slavery and trafficked by organized crime rings
  BRAZIL: Lured into the rainforest, families burn trees into charcoal at gunpoint
  BURMA: The ruling military junta enslaves its own people to build infrastructure projects, some
  benefiting US corporations.
  DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: Haitians are rounded up at random, taken across the border, and
  forced to cut cane in sugar plantations
  GHANA: Families repent for sins by giving daughters as slaves to fetish priests
  INDIA: Children trapped in debt bondage roll beedi cigarettes 14 hours a day
  IVORY COAST: Child slaves forced to work on cocoa plantations
  MAURITANIA: Arab-Berbers buy and sell black Africans as inheritable property
  PAKISTAN: Children with nimble fingers are forced to weave carpets in looms
  SUDAN: Arab militias from the North take Southern Sudanese women and children in slave raids.
  THAILAND: Women and children become sex slaves for tourists
  UNITED ARAB EMIRATES: Bangladeshi boys are transported and exploited as jockeys for
  camel racing
  UNITED STATES: The CIA estimates that 50,000 people are trafficked as sex slaves, domestics,
  garment, and agricultural slaves

For more information, please call 617-426-8161 or visit http://www.iAbolish.com

This link is from a series of programs by the BBC.  Excellent information on the history of and current world situation as it relates to slavery. http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/specials/1357_slavery_today/index.shtml

An additional link on information related to the sexual slavery of women from the countries of the Former Soviet Union: Articles related to the slave trade in FSU women  http://www.brama.com/issues/havrylenko.html

Organizations working to assist in the freeing of slaves:

http://www.antislavery.org/

UKRAINE 

La Strada-Ukraine 
PO Box 246
01030 Kyiv Ukraine
Tel/Fax: (380-44) 224-04-46
Hotline: +38 (044) 224-0446
lastrada@ukrpack.net

RUSSIA 
Association of Crisis Centers <<Stop Violence>>
St. Dm. Ulyanova, 3
117333, Moscow Russia
Tel: 7-095-135-1163
Tel/Fax: 7-095-335-9648 
Perm Center Against Violence and Human Trafficking
P.O. Box 7015
Glavpochtamt, Perm, Russia
no-violence@narod.ru 

Hotline for Detained Foreign Workers
78 Allenby Street, Tel Aviv, Israel
Tel: 03-5173533
Fax: 03-5173081
mcharbit@netvision.net.il 


Hotline for Migrant Workers
33 Hahashmal St.
Tel Aviv 65117 
Tel: 972 3 5602530
Fax 972 3 5605175 
Mobile: 972 54 788122
emileven@hotmail.com 

Isreal Women's Network 
Kav La'Oved
PO Box 2319
Tel Aviv 61022 Israel
Kav1@netvision.net.il 

International Human Rights Law Group
Initiative Against Trafficking in Persons
1200 - 18th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20036
Tel: 202-822-4600, ext. 27
Fax: 202-822-4606
trafficking@hrlawgroup.org

Human Rights Watch
1630 Connecticut Avenue, N.W.,
Suite 500
Washington, DC 20009 
Tel:1-(202) 612-4321
Fax:1-(202) 612-4333
hrwdc@hrw.org