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In almost total
silence, their plight unknown, there are at least 27 million
people around the world today living in slavery. Many believe this conservative figure
falls far short of the reality. Until recently, the practice
of slavery was thought to be largely exclusive to war-torn countries
such as Angola, Sudan, Somalia and Chad. Today, even in relatively
peaceful regions, slave trafficking is on the rise.
A joint
report in 2001 by the Shengen Commissions (which study free travel between the
countries of the European Union) and the Anti-Mafia Commission
of the Italian parliament estimates that the number of people
living in a situation of forced servitude is in the region of
200 million. But even the most cautious figures show that today
there are more people living in slavery-like conditions today
than at any other moment in history. There is no doubt that there
are millions of men, women and children, from the
Philippines to Bangladesh, from Brazil to Italy and the Dominican
Republic, who live in conditions of direct physical or economic submission. In Mauritania
and Sudan, entire peoples are someone's property. The contemporary
forms of slavery include forced labor and prostitution, debt servitude
and child labor. Slaves today may be concubines, camel jockeys
or sugarcane cutters, road construction workers, rug weavers
or loggers. Though we do not see many images of whips and chains,
and people are not sold at public auction, the slaves of today
in many cases are subjected to treatment even more brutal, and
conditions even more horrifying than their predecessors.
Slave
trade at work
In
1926, the Slavery Convention, held under the auspices of the
League of Nations, defined slavery as 'the status or condition
of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the
right of ownership are exercised'. Slavery was thus recognized
in the broad sense, paving the way for identifying it in its
new variations. There are different mechanisms of subjugation,
for the purposes of labor, for example: children forced to
work in textile mills in India, in the mines in Congo or
making cooking oil in the Philippines; women in the factories
of Vietnam; Burmese emigrants in Thailand; and Haitians cutting
sugarcane in the Dominican Republic. Or they could be slaves
on the banana plantations of Honduras or the people subcontracted
by shoe factories in Cambodia.
Sexual
slavery
is another major form of human subjugation. In addition to the
prostitution networks and sexual exploitation involving women, children and immigrants
over much of the world, a business with a turnover of $7-13 billion
a year, there are also some forms of marriage in which women
become slaves. In effect, while Article 1º of the Supplementary
Convention on the Abolition of Slavery (1956) bans 'any practice or institution
in which the woman, 'without the right to refuse,
is promised or given in marriage on payment of a consideration
in money or in kind to her parents, guardian, family or any other
person or group', or in which 'the husband of a woman,
his family, or his clan, has the right to transfer her to another
person for value received or otherwise'.
The reality is that practices remain in place around the world
allowing marriages in exchange for money or some type of economic benefit. This
practice often turns into the 'purchase' of the bride and her
'services'. In some places, it is the bride's family must pay
a dowry to the groom or his family, and if that sum cannot be
handed over in full before the marriage, the woman is 'retained'
within the marriage and subjected to punishment, mistreatment
and other forms of violence as long as
the debt is not paid.
In many cases, modern slavery, particularly in rural areas, can
be traced to the repayment of family debts through the
sale of family members, usually children, or through servitude
to the creditor.
The widespread decline in the market for agricultural products
and local natural disasters has forced small farmers to amass
debt in order to
survive; many have inherited debt several generations old. Such
is the case of the Adivasi indigenous peoples in India, the peasant
farmers in some areas of Brazil and the people of Bolivia's jungle
regions who are forced to sell their harvests and their lands
at rock-bottom prices. Debt also imprisons immigrants
who cross borders illegally in search of work, and once at their
destination find that their income must go to the networks that
brought them there, to cover supposed expenses such as transport,
food and lodging.
Like the children who are forcibly recruited into Sudan's army
or by Somali warlords or Liberian guerrilla forces, many adults
are forced, kidnapped or coerced into enlisting, whether in the
regular army or with guerrillas, paramilitaries or other armed
opposition
groups.
Old-style
slavery
There
are an estimated 90,000 slaves in Sudan. The vast majority are
black Christians captured by governmental militias and sold to
Arabs in the country's north. According to some reports, there
is not a village in the north where slaves bought from the military
cannot be found. Although Islam bans the taking of Muslim slaves, the
fact is that some of the black population of southern Mauritania
for example, despite being Muslim are treated as slaves. There
is no country nowadays in which slavery is legal, but in some
places the ban has been merely a formal declaration without any
effect in practice and no change in the economic,
social, political or cultural conditions that force women, men and
children into situations of slavery.
The industrialized world, which has carried high the banner of
human
rights,
does not generally call attention to the phenomenon of slavery.
Championing the human rights cause has its origins in the Cold
War, when it concerned
denouncing abuses committed by states, preferably -though not
exclusively- within the socialist camp. The West defended prisoners
of conscience, dissidents, intellectuals and victims of torture
in order to exert pressure over governments. In other words,
efforts were inspired by political motives.
Today's slavery is rooted in the absolute poverty of an ever-increasing
portion of the world's population. It also emanates from the
systematic exploitation of the weakest in society practiced by
some individuals and companies with power. The causes
of this misery are apparently not considered enemy enough to
be fought by the powerful West. Denouncing slavery would be to
denounce the hidden factors that foster it. For the slaves of
the 21st century are children of wars, of the merciless competition
of the markets, of the need to cut costs and of the desolation
that corporate
capital
has created in all corners of the
world.
*Published in The World Guide
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