Stop the Traffic

"No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms" Universal Declaration of Human Rights , Article 4

In the West African country of Togo, a young boy who up until that point had managed to attend school wanted to enter high school but he could not afford the fee of about $A8 a year. The Headmaster of the school kept on asking him to leave. Eventually he was forced to leave school. Another young girl in Togo was forced to leave school after the death of her father from AIDS. This was when they were introduced to traffickers. These people promised them jobs and training in nearby Côte d'Ivoire. They dreamt of coming home with an education that they could not afford in their own country as well as a large sum of money with which they could help their struggling families. These stories are repeated all over West Africa. Children and young people with hopes and dreams and yet the reality was very different. They were taken to work on cocoa plantations, in factories, selling milk at the markets or doing domestic work in people's homes. They received no pay or training. They were treated poorly, often being subject to physical and psychological abuse. Many ran away if they could.

In northern Uganda thousands of children have been abducted and forced to fight for the Lord's Resistance Army (a rebel group) or to do hard physical labour like carrying heavy equipment over long distances. They are treated as virtual slaves.

In Mexico a young woman was told by an acquaintance that restaurant work was easy to get across the border in the United States and that she would be able to earn money to support her impoverished parents and daughter. Once she arrived in the US she was told that she was to work as a prostitute. She protested but was then told that she owed a smuggling debt and that she would have to work to pay this off. If she refused she was beaten or raped. She became pregnant and was forced to have an abortion. The cost of the abortion was added to the smuggling debt. She was 18 years old when she was trafficked.

In the "hungry months" from June to August as villagers wait for the new harvest, young Nepalese women are particularly vulnerable to the smart young men arriving offering marriage and all the comforts of modern life in the capital Kathmandu. Otherwise it might be the offer of employment or of education by a relative. They do not realise that they will find themselves in the brothels of India unable to escape. Sometimes a payment of about $5 is made to the girl's family. These same girls are then sold to Brothel owners for up to $1800.

Young boys and girls from the same villages are also sold to carpet factory owners in the urban centres as a way of repaying debts to unscrupulous moneylenders. It is estimated that almost half of all workers in Nepalese carpet factories are children existing as no more than slaves. Far from being abolished in the 19 th century, slavery is alive and well in the 21 st.

According to UNICEF the trafficking of human beings is worth around $10 billion to crime gangs around the world, almost as much as the drug trade. It is estimated that around 900,000 people are trafficked across borders each year and this does not include those that are trafficked within their own countries. This means that at any one time many millions of men but mainly women and children are living as virtual slaves.

It is estimated that there are at least 1000 victims of trafficking in Australia, mainly for the purposes of prostitution.

What is trafficking?

It is the modern day slave trade. Traffickers use actual or threatened violence or trickery to get them away from their homes and families. They make false promises and build up false hopes in their victims. These victims are then forced to work against their will as prostitutes, domestic servants, factory workers and farm labourers.

Why are people trafficked?

The main factor that makes a person vulnerable to being a victim of trafficking is poverty. The promise of an escape from grinding poverty to a well paid job in a big city is very tempting. Coupled with threats of violence, there is no resisting the trafficker. Once away from their families the victim is easily controlled through violence and intimidation as well as with financial pressure of the "debt" that has to be repaid to the victim's "owner" i.e. the price that was paid to the trafficker.

Who is a slave in the 21 st century?

• Someone who is forced to work under physical or psychological threat
• Someone who is "owned" or controlled by an "employer"
• Someone who is dehumanised and treated as "property"
• Someone who has no freedom of movement under threat or intimidation

Types of slaves

• Chattel slavery: the "traditional" type of slavery where people are abducted from their homes and families and traded as commodities and can even be inherited. This type of slavery exists in African countries like Mauritania, Sudan and Sierra Leone
• Debt Bondage: the most common form of slavery today. This is when a person's labour is used as security for a loan. When it then cannot be repaid, a family member" labour is sold to repay the loan. A person literally becomes the property of the moneylender to do with as he wishes.
• Forced labour: where people are promised well paid jobs and training only to be forced to work for no payment under threat to themselves or to their families.
• Sex slavery: women who are forced or tricked into prostitution by relatives or as payment to money lenders
• Slave labour is used in the production of many common items that are used every day like cocoa beans from Côte d'Ivoire, carpets from Nepal and cigarettes from India.

How can it be that slavery still exists in this day and age? The answer is that it will continue to exist while there are people willing to exploit the poor and vulnerable. The answer to the problem of trafficking is not only to prosecute the traffickers but also to reduce the vulnerability of the potential victims through education and most importantly, by reducing poverty. Not to do so is to treat the victims of trafficking as having less value than other human beings.

"By placing human rights at the centre of our analysis, we are forced to consider the needs of the trafficked person - and thereby to confront the poverty, inequality and discrimination which is at the root of the phenomenon…" - UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, June 2001