Slavery in the Modern World: A History of Political, Social, and Economic Oppression, 2 volumes

Slavery in the Modern World Slavery in the Modern World A HISTORY OF POLITICAL, SOCIAL, AND ECONOMIC OPPRESSION Volum...

Author: Junius P. Rodriguez (editor)

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Slavery in the Modern World

Slavery in the Modern World A HISTORY OF POLITICAL, SOCIAL, AND ECONOMIC OPPRESSION Volume 1: A–N

Junius P. Rodriguez, Editor

Copyright 2011 by ABC-CLIO, LLC All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rodriguez, Junius P. Slavery in the modern world : a history of political, social, and economic oppression / Junius P. Rodriguez. p. ; cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-1-85109-783-8 (hardcopy : alk. paper) · ISBN 978-1-85109-788-3 (ebook) 1. Slavery·History·20th century. 2. Slavery·History·21st century. I. Title. HT867.R63 2011 306.3'620904·dc23 2011019834 ISBN: 978-1-85109-783-8 EISBN: 978-1-85109-788-3 15

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This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook. Visit www.abc-clio.com for details. ABC-CLIO, LLC 130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911 Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911 This book is printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America Every reasonable effort has been made to trace the owners of copyright materials in this book, but in some instances this has proven impossible. The editors and publishers will be glad to receive information leading to more complete acknowledgments in subsequent printings of the book and in the meantime extend their apologies for any omissions.

Contents

VOLUME 1 List of Entries

vii

ESSAYS

1

Slavery and Abolition in the 20th Century Suzanne Miers

3

Coercion and Migration Annie Fukushima

17

Enslavement Claudia San Miguel

34

Organized Crime and Enslavement Marylee Reynolds

47

Sweatshop Labor Judith Ann Warner

60

ENTRIES, A–N

69


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ENTRIES, O–W

435

DOCUMENTS

595

Index

829

v

List of Entries

Anti-Slavery Award

„A School For Iqbal‰ Campaign ÂAbd Abolition of Slavery Act Abolitionism Abolitionism, British Abolitionism and Prostitution AboriginesÊ Protection Society Action pour le Changement Addams, Jane Adoption of Children Ordinance Law Afghanistan African Network for the Prevention and Protection against Child Abuse and Neglect (ANPPCAN) African Squadrons Agnivesh, Swami Ahmad, Muhammad Ahmed, Zafaryab Al-Diein Massacre Alexander II Alien Tort Claims Act All Pakistan Brick Kiln Owners Association (APBKA) American Anti-Slavery Group (AASG) Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society (ASAPS)

Anti-Slavery International Anti-Slavery Society Antislavery and Labor Movements Arana, Julio César Asia Monitor Resource Center (AMRC) Asian Migrant Center (AMC) Asian-American Free Labor Institute (AAFLI) Asociacion De Trabajadora Autónomas „22 De Junio‰ de El ORO Australia Baker, Samuel White Barya Beria, Lavrenty Pavlovich Berlin Conference Bhagwati, P. N. Bhatta Mazdoor Mohaz (BMM) Bok, Francis Piol Bol Bonded Labor Bonded Labour Liberation Front (BLLF) Brazil vii

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List of Entries

Bride-Price Broad Meadows Middle School Brussels Act Burma Burma Peace Foundation Burma Project/Southeast Asia Initiative Buxton, Thomas Fowell Cadet, Jean-Robert Cambodia Campaign for Migrant Domestic WorkersÊ Rights Cane Harvesters Cardoso, Fernando Henrique Cariye

Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Women and Children Convention of Saint Germain-en-Laye Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) Convention on the Rights of the Child Convict Leasing Côte dÊIvoire Cotton, Samuel L. Cox, Caroline COYOTE Czech Republic

Casement, Sir Roger

Debt Slavery

Cash Crops Caste

Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women

Central Asia

Declaration on the Rights of the Child

Charcoal

Decree Respecting Domestic Slavery in German East Africa

Chattel Slavery Child Labor Child Labor Coalition Child Prostitution Child Rights Information Network (CRIN)

Devadasi Doe v. Unocal Domestic Workers Dominican Republic Douglass, Frederick

Child Soldiers

Dred Scott v. Sandford

Children

Economic Globalization

Chulalongkorn (Rama V), King

ECPAT

Coalition against Trafficking In Women (CATW)

El Monte, California, Sweatshop Case

Company Codes of Conduct

The Enlightenment

Emancipation Proclamation

Concubines Convention against the Worst Forms Of Child Labour

False Adoption Fanon, Frantz

List of Entries

Female Genital Mutilation

Indonesia

Fernando Pó, São Tomé, and Príncipe

Industrial Revolution

Fishing Platforms

Inheritability of Slavery

Forced Prostitution

International Agreement for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic

Foreign Aid France Free the Slaves Freedom Network (USA) Gabon Garrison, William Lloyd Garvey, Marcus Germany Green Revolution

International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women of Full Age

Gulag (Main Administration of Camps)

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

Haile Selassie I

International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights

Haiti Hak Sun, Kim Haratine Hardenburg, Walter Ernest Hassaniya-Berbers Huerta, Dolores Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) Human Rights Day Human Trafficking for Labor Purposes Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation Ibn Saud, Abdul Aziz Illegal Migration Incest

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International Day for the Abolition of Slavery International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and Its Abolition International Labour Organization (ILO) International Needs International Organization for Migration International Program on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) Jim Crow Laws Just War Theory and Slavery

India

Khan, Ehsan Ullah

Indian-Mestizo Captives

Koran and Antislavery

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List of Entries

Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan

North Africa, Abolition in

Kosoko, Oba

Omona, George

NUPI

Organized Crime and Slavery Land Reform

Oxfam International

Latin America, Antislavery and Abolition in

Palermo Protocol

Lavigerie, Charles-Martial-Allemand

Pandit, Vidyullata

League of Nations

Pandit, Vivek

League of Nations Covenant

Pastoral Land Commission (CPT)

Leopold II

Peonage

Lim, Janet

Peruvian Amazon Company (PAC)

Lincoln, Abraham

Peshgi

Macías Nguema, Francisco Mauritania Mexico Migrant Workers Model Business Principles Morel, Edmund Dene Movement to Abolish Prostitution and Pornography (MAPP)

The Philippines Plessy v. Ferguson Pornography and Children Prison Labor Prisoners of War Prostitution Protection Project

Mui Tsai

Reemergence of Slavery during Era of World War II

Muscat and Oman, Abolition of Slavery in

Rehabilitation Programs

NAACP Resolution to Combat Modern-Day Slavery

Restavek

Reparations Rezende Figueira, Ricardo

National Child Labor Committee (NCLC)

Sauckel, Fritz

National Islamic Front (NIF)

Saudi Arabia, Abolition in

Nazi Germany and Prostitution

Serfdom

Nazi Slavery

Servile Marriage

Nevinson, Henry Woodd

Sex Workers Union of Cambodia

Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs)

Sexual Abuse Sharecropping

List of Entries

Shoishab Shramajeevi Sanghatana

UNIFEM: WomenÊs Human Rights Programme

Social Reintegration of Former Slaves

United Nations Ad Hoc Committee on Slavery

SOS Esclaves (Mauritania)

United Nations and Antislavery

South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude (SACCS)

United Nations International ChildrenÊs Emergency Fund (UNICEF)

Slavery Convention of 1926

Spain State Law and Order Committee (SLORC)

United Nations Protocol

Sudan and South Sudan

United Nations Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery

Sudan Peace Act

United Nations Trafficking Protocol

Sudan PeopleÊs Liberation Movement/ Army

United States

State Regulations on the Reform through Labor

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Sudrat Srisang Survival International Sweatshop Watch

Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (VTVPA) of 2000 Vidhayak Sansad

Thailand

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Violence against Sex Workers

Thirteenth Amendment Tippu Tip

Wao-Afrique

Trafficking

White Slave Traffic Act

Transnational Institute (TNI)

White Slavery

Trokosi

Wilberforce, William

Tubman, Harriet

World Anti-Slavery Convention

Turabi, Hassan al-

World Bank

Ukraine

World Congress against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children

Underground Railroad

World Muslim Congress, Sixth

Undocumented Aliens

World Trade Organization

Essays


By the beginning of the 20th century, chattel slavery was no longer legal in most of the world outside of the Arabian Peninsula and Ethiopia. A chattel slave was a possession, who could be bought, sold, or transferred at the will of his or her owner. Such slaves owned nothing and had no control over their lives or families. Their subjection was complete, lifelong, and hereditary. This type of slavery had existed since ancient times and was widespread and legal in much of the world until the late 19th century. Although by definition chattel slaves were simply commodities, their worldly status and lifestyles varied considerably. Many were agricultural laborers or domestic servants, often harshly treated, but some were respected retainers, trusted soldiers, and even, particularly in the Muslim world, high officials of state. The most fortunate of the women were beloved concubines or even the powerful mothers of rulers. Some of the males were eunuchs, particularly valued by rulers as soldiers and officials because they could not father rival dynasties. They also served in harems and tended mosques. Chattel slavery came under growing attack in the Western world during the 18th century and was gradually eliminated in many European possessions, the United States of America, Latin America, and various other areas in the 19th century. The last Western country to outlaw it was Brazil in 1888. The abolitionist movement had a number of roots. The most vocal protagonists were evangelical Christians who thought slavery was a sin. Moreover, the various missionary societies who worked among slave-owning peoples thought it impeded the spread of Christianity. Philosophers and activists regarded it as incompatible with human rights. Economists believed it was less profitable than wage labor. The working classes, particularly in 20th-century Great Britain and the United States, increasingly saw it as a threat to free wage labor. In the early 20th century, chattel slavery was still legal in Arabia, then mainly under Ottoman rule, and in the small enclaves claimed, but not ruled, by the British, notably the Aden Protectorate and the sheikhdoms on the Persian Gulf. It was widely practiced in much of Africa, particularly in the more remote areas barely 3

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Slavery and Abolition in the 20th Century

occupied by the European colonial powers, such as Niger and Mauritania and parts of Assam and Burma. It was also legal in some independent states such as Thailand (Siam) and Nepal. It was practiced in parts of the Philippines and Baluchistan. Remnants of it were also found in Korea. In Ethiopia, it was legal and widespread, slave raiding was endemic in some areas, and slave trading was a fact of life. As long as there was a demand for slaves, slave raids, the slave trade, and the export of slaves, particularly from Africa, continued. They were gradually reduced as the colonial powers gained control of the coastal areas during the late 19th and early 20th centuries and later occupied most of the interior. However, a small-scale slave traffic across the Red Sea and Indian Ocean continued as an illegal smuggling trade from the East African coast, parts of India, Baluchistan, Southeast Asia, and even China. Muslim pilgrims on their way to Mecca from all over the world, traveling overland or by sea, were also often enslaved on their way to or in Arabia itself. On the African continent, in the early 20th century, slave raids were slowly eliminated, and slave trading was gradually reduced to a small smuggling trade as new areas were brought under European control. They continued in remote areas, such as Mauritania and the Sahara fringe, on a diminishing scale throughout the colonial era. Small-scale trading, particularly in children, was also endemic in much of Africa. During the period of conquest, it was as much in the interests of the colonial rulers to keep slaves in place and working as it was in the interests of their owners. Each colonial power dealt with the question in its own way. Their aim was to end or modify slavery slowly so as not to disrupt the existing economies by provoking resistance on the part of the owners or wholesale flight by the slaves. The British, whose empire was the most extensive, outlawed slavery in very small areas designated as colonies. The greater parts of their territories were designated “protectorates,” in which slavery was not initially under attack. They introduced a system worked out in India in the 19th century, simply announcing that slavery no longer had any legal status. Slaves could stay with or leave their owners as they wished. The theory was that slavery would gradually die out with minimal disruption as, on the one hand, the supply of new slaves was cut off, and on the other, job opportunities or access to land became available to former slaves, and economic development allowed masters to hire free labor or turn to other forms of investment. Other powers developed their own policies for ostensibly ending slavery, but often tacitly allowing it to continue or finding means of using slaves for their own projects. The Portuguese declared slavery illegal, but in practice it simply continued under another name and in another form. The Belgians virtually ignored it. The French, however, outlawed it in West Africa after failing to stop the wholesale exodus of slaves from one area in 1905–1906. In time, as European control increased, the end of raids and wars curtailed the supply of slaves. Moreover, large


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numbers of followers ceased to be the main requisite for power and prestige, and where poll or hut taxes were imposed on owners, slaves became an expense and not a source of wealth. In Africa, however, many slaves, having little alternative, simply stayed with their erstwhile owners. Where possible they renegotiated their terms of service. Some became sharecroppers. Others performed various services for their owners, or paid them part of any wages they earned. In many areas, such services eventually became largely symbolic, but social discrimination continued right through the century, particularly when it came to questions of marriage, inheritance, rights to land, and religious ceremonies. In the 1920s, particularly in the Arabian Peninsula and in Ethiopia, slavery was both legal and widely practiced. Arabia was the main importer of slaves. Their fate varied. They might be servants of poor Bedouins, pearl divers, dockers, camel drivers, domestic servants, concubines, or eunuchs. Many were illegally imported from eastern Africa, Baluchistan, India, Southeast Asia, and even China. Ethiopia was a ready source of supply as raiding continued on the frontiers, and slaves were seized by unpaid soldiers and officials or sent as tribute to the rulers. Pilgrims on their way to or from Mecca were enslaved despite the fact that Islamic law forbade the enslavement of Muslims. In areas where the colonial rulers had ended the legal status of slavery, they had a desperate need for labor to develop their new territories. Hence, they used various means of coercion to force indigenous peoples into the labor force. These devices became known as “new forms of slavery.” Some of the worst cases were in Africa. Thus, in King Leopold’s Congo Independent State, French Equatorial Africa, and Portuguese Africa, concessionaire companies were given exclusive rights to certain products such as rubber or other forest products in a particular area. Some also had administrative powers. The result was that unscrupulous employees, determined to meet targets, simply forced the inhabitants to collect these products, taking no account of the Africans’ own agricultural cycle and often committing atrocities. Africans were killed, mutilated, beaten, or fined, and their wives and children were held as hostages until arbitrary quotas were met. The colonial powers also conscripted Africans as forced labor, often performed far from home with great loss of life, due to ill-treatment and undernourishment, but also because of exposure to new disease environments and unfamiliar foods. Thousands died during World War I in the British East African Carrier Corps. Between 1921 and 1934, 14,000 to 20,000 conscripts died building the French Congo railway. The Portuguese ran a virtual slave trade in so-called contract workers to their islands of São Tomé and Principe, and on the mainland, Africans were forced to work for Portuguese companies or other European enterprises for six months of the year for a pittance. In settler colonies, large areas were alienated for European settlers, and Africans were only allowed to live in increasingly inadequate and underdeveloped reserves, forcing the men

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and some women to work for low wages in the colonial economy. Wages could be kept at a minimum because families produced their own food in the reserves. Africans were also driven onto European estates as squatters, forced to work for the landowners in return for the right to grow some crops but without security of tenure. Another device was to make people grow export crops such as cotton on their own land, in often unsuitable soils. In other parts of the world, notably Latin America and the southern United States, former slaves became sharecroppers and peons—and formed a poverty-stricken underclass. Some indigenous peoples, as in Putumayo, were virtually enslaved by rubber-producing companies. In the Indian subcontinent, whole families fell into debt bondage. This was virtual slavery as the debts could never be repaid and were sometime hereditary. All of these abuses were attacked in the metropoles, by various groups of abolitionists vying for funds for their causes. Prominent among them were missionary societies, who believed that these practices impeded the spread of Christianity and who called on church groups to denounce slavery. A minority were activists, such as Edmund Dene Morel, who founded the Congo Reform Association and believed that human rights included recognizing indigenous peoples’ rights to their land and their right to live by their own creeds and customs. The most prominent organization was the British Anti-Slavery Society, which in 1909 amalgamated with the Aborigines’ Protection Society, to form the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society (ASAPS). The purpose of the society was to use peaceful means to protect colonial peoples from both chattel slavery and various forms of “new slavery.” In spite of its tiny budget and small membership, this society, called Anti-Slavery International from 1990, was, and remained, the acknowledged world leader of the antislavery movement. The main abolitionist struggles of the early 20th century were fought out in the metropoles by these groups, who tried to muster public support against governments anxious to make their colonial possessions pay and businessmen determined to make profits. At the end of World War I, the victorious allies decided that the slave trade and slave raids had virtually ended. They abrogated the Brussels Act (1890), which they wished to end for other reasons. However, Article 23 of the Covenant of the League of Nations bound members to secure “fair and humane” conditions for labor in all countries with which they had commercial dealings. Former German and Ottoman territories were shared out among the victorious colonial powers as mandates to be ruled in the interest of their populations until they were ready for self-government. In the mandates, slavery was to be ended as soon as social conditions allowed it. In 1919, the Convention of Saint Germain-en-Laye replaced the Brussels Act and bound signatories to suppress slavery in all its forms. These were vague commitments without time limits. There the matter would probably have rested had not news arrived of widespread slave raiding and slave trading in Ethiopia. This was quickly followed by evidence of an active slave traffic across the Red


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Sea, particularly to the new kingdom of Hejaz, founded when the Ottoman Empire was broken up at the end of the war. Finding the British government unwilling to take action, the secretary of the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society, John Harris, waged an active press campaign and persuaded the delegate from New Zealand to raise the question at the League of Nations. Dramatic proof that the slave trade was active was furnished by the capture in 1922 of a slaver carrying victims from Ethiopia to Arabia. The result of this humanitarian campaign was that, in spite of the opposition of the colonial powers, the league appointed a Temporary Slavery Commission in 1924 to inquire into slavery in all its forms. This had been the aim of the antislavery society from its formation in 1839. It enabled the commission, which was composed of seven independent members, including former colonial governors and officials and a representative of the International Labor Organization (ILO), to discuss questions not previously considered forms of slavery. The colonial powers did what they could to hamstring the commission, restricting its sources and limiting its range of inquiries, particularly in the case of forced labor, which was, as has been seen, widely practiced in all their territories in various forms. In its report, however, this commission extended the definition of slavery to include pawning (the pledging of a person as collateral for debt), forced marriage, child marriage, the transfer or adoption of children to exploit them, debt bondage and peonage, serfdom, forced crop growing, and, most controversial of all, forced labor. The British member, Lord Lugard, forced the hand of his government by sending it a draft convention against slavery. The British felt bound to negotiate a treaty based on this report, but they watered it down to protect their own interests before presenting it to the League of Nations. The result, after much haggling by the colonial powers, each trying to defend their own practices, was the Slavery Convention of 1926, which was still in force at the beginning of the 21st century. This convention defined slavery as “the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership were exercised.” It thus went far beyond the chattel slavery hitherto under attack, but it was vague and the various forms of ownership identified by the commission were not listed in the convention. Moreover, signatories were merely bound to secure the “progressive” disappearance of the various forms of servitude under attack, and no time limit was set. Forced labor was always to be paid for and performed near home and was only to be used “exceptionally” and for “public purposes.” These purposes were not defined, nor were the terms of service. Finally, signatories were only bound to end it “progressively and as soon as possible.” The convention was weakened by the fact that no monitoring system or means of enforcement was established. The league, it was held, could not interfere in the internal affairs of states. Clauses against the maritime slave trade proposed by the British were rejected. Instead, the powers with territories in areas where the slave

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trade was still active agreed to sign a further agreement against it, but this was never done. Moreover, signatories of the convention could exclude any of their territories to which they did not want to apply it. The British, for instance, excluded the Indian princely states as well as unadministered tracts in India and Burma. The French excluded Tunisia and Morocco. There was also no means of forcing countries like Saudi Arabia, where slavery was rife, to sign the convention. Although the convention had these serious weaknesses, it was the first international legal document to establish a moral position condemning slavery, the slave trade, and a range of practices previously not considered forms of slavery. It thus marked the beginning of the international attack on them. One of the most significant results was that the forced labor question was taken up by the ILO, which negotiated the Forced Labor Convention of 1930. Although chattel slavery had now been condemned in an international instrument, it only died out slowly. ASAPS continued to press for its abolition worldwide and was joined by various other nongovernmental organizations, as well as dedicated individuals. It was they who called public attention to the continuing plight of certain chattel slaves, shaming governments into action. Thus, the first serious steps against slavery in the Sudan, for instance, were taken by the British only in the late 1920s. Attitudes changed slowly, however, and ending the legal status of slavery was only the first step. Slaves anxious to leave their owners had to assess their chances, in the case of men, of finding other means of livelihood. For women it was even more difficult unless they could find a male protector. Some women, particularly in rural areas, were still under their masters’ control in Sudan 30 years later. In Ethiopia horrendous reports were still being received of slaving on the frontiers right up to the Italian occupation in the mid-1930s. In Sierra Leone, although slaves were told they were free and officials were forbidden to recognize slavery in the late 1920s, in practice little changed. Many former slaves, now called cousins, continued to work for their former owners without pay in return for access to land, lodging, and food as late as 1956. In French-ruled Mauritania, women and children in particular were retained as slaves despite the outlawing of slavery. Similarly, slavery continued in Niger through the 20th century. In the 1930s, as the result of continuing humanitarian pressure, a second slavery committee was formed by the League of Nations, the main result of which was the establishment of a permanent committee, the Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery, which met from 1935 to 1938. Due to its British member, this committee continued the attack begun by the first committee on the various practices that it had designated as slavery. These included particularly the Chinese practice of “adopting” children, mainly little girls who were called mui tsai (“little sister” in Cantonese). Ostensibly adopted, usually because their parents could not afford to keep them, many ended up as unpaid ill-treated domestic drudges. Unknown numbers were brought to the island of Hong Kong and other British possessions


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in Southeast Asia, as well as to French and Dutch territories. The committee also discussed other forms of child labor, as well as debt bondage, peonage, serfdom, pawning, and slavery in the Muslim world. In 1935, in the midst of the committee’s proceedings, the Italians conquered Ethiopia using the suppression of slavery as one excuse for their unprovoked attack. The advisory committee collected a great deal of information, and by the outbreak of World War II, some progress had been made by the colonial powers, particularly the United Kingdom and France, who demanded reports from colonial governors and in some cases, reviewed and reenacted some of their antislavery laws. The Italians claimed to have outlawed slavery in Ethiopia. The committee, however, died of attrition as the result of events leading to World War II. The 1920s and, more particularly, the 1930s were notable for the emergence of new forms of servitude. From the early 1920s, the Russians were using political and other prisoners as forced labor in gulags. Victims were worked, often to death, in horrendous circumstances, producing gold, timber, and other export goods, and building dams and roads. Capitalist firms in the Western world feared they would be undercut and Western trade unions believed that free labor was threatened. The basic facts were known by the 1930s, but these gulags were not discussed by the League of Nations committees. They fell into the realm of forced labor. In any case, the Soviet Union was not a member of the League of Nations, and thus beyond the reach of its committees. Moreover, the full development of the gulags occurred only during and after World War II. In the 1930s, Nazi Germany instituted concentration camps in which Jews and Gypsies, together with political prisoners and other persons considered undesirable, were worked to death. Inmates incapable of work were killed on arrival. During the war itself, the Germans expanded these camps and also forced thousands of workers from all over occupied Europe to work as virtual slaves, producing arms and other goods for the German war effort. The concentration camps were not discussed by the league slavery committees, although much was known about them by 1938. Germany had by then withdrawn from the league. The recruitment of foreign slave laborers only took place during the war after the committee had ceased to meet. After the end of the war in 1945, many of the prewar concerns discussed by the Advisory Committee on Slavery no longer existed. Slavery had been outlawed in Ethiopia in 1943, as the result of the British expulsion of the Italians and the restoration of the emperor. In 1946, the French ended the use of forced labor. In the 1950s, the communist conquest of China cut off the supply of new mui tsai, which Britain had already done much to suppress in its own colonies. Chattel slavery, however, remained legal in Saudi Arabia, Oman, and the British satellites on the Persian Gulf. It also continued illegally in Mauritania and Niger and other areas on the Sahara fringe. Forced labor in various forms still continued in, for instance, Portuguese African possessions, where labor laws required people to work in the

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colonial economy for half the year, for a pittance. Moreover, debt bondage remained widespread, particularly on the Indian subcontinent. As early as 1946, the ASAPS now led by Charles Greenidge, began agitating for the appointment of a United Nations permanent committee against slavery on the lines of the last League of Nations committee. The charter of the United Nations, issued in 1945, stated that one of its aims was to promote respect for the observance of human rights and to ensure fundamental freedoms for all without respect to race, sex, language, or religion. Slavery was not specifically mentioned, but its eradication was clearly implied. However, like the league, the United Nations was hamstrung by the same inability to enforce its treaties or interfere in the internal affairs of member states. It was also deeply divided on what constituted human rights. It was dominated on the one hand by the United States and its democratic allies and on the other by the Soviet Union, which now led the much expanded communist world. Their concepts of freedom were different. The United States and its allies stressed political rights; freedom of expression, information, and religion; freedom from arbitrary arrest; the right to a fair trial; and other components of the rule of law. The communist world stressed economic and social rights, equal opportunity, and the right to education. It condemned racial discrimination. This was a weak point for the United States because of its treatment of non-whites, and for the colonial empires, which discriminated against their indigenous subjects. The slavery question became a pawn in the struggle for the hearts and minds of the so-called nonaligned states, former colonies such as India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Ghana, and many others, which, as they became independent, took their places at the United Nations. The Anti-Slavery Society persuaded the Belgian delegate to raise the issue of slavery at the United Nations. There was a fatal division between the socialist Eastern bloc and the democratic Western bloc as to what constituted slavery. The Russians thought of it as the chattel slavery of old and the various other practices condemned by the league committees. The British, anxious to divert attention from the chattel slavery in their South Arabian protectorate and their satellites on the Persian Gulf, claimed that it included forced labor, peonage, and mui tsai, which still continued in China. In 1949, the United States proposed an inquiry into forced labor everywhere. A UN committee was finally established to deal with slavery only. Forced labor was once more the province of the ILO. This ad hoc committee was appointed in 1949 to “survey the field of slavery and other institutions or customs resembling slavery” (Economic and Social Council, Resolution 238[IX], July 20, 1949). Its four members met in 1950 and included Greenidge, the secretary of the AntiSlavery Society. It had more leeway than the league committees had to solicit and collect information. However, it broke up early and in disorder, largely because it was attacked by Peru, Colombia, and Chile for discussing peonage.


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However, it had important results. The United Nations took over the 1926 Slavery Convention, and Greenidge presented the British government with a new convention to include the practices defined as slavery in the report of the Temporary Slavery Commission but not formally incorporated in the 1926 treaty. These were debt bondage, serfdom, forced marriage, and the adoption of children for their exploitation. He also suggested treating the maritime slave trade as piracy. The British felt bound to present a watered-down version of this to the United Nations, and the result after much wrangling was the negotiation of the Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery (1956). This convention had an unexpected result. It ended all of Britain’s treaty rights to search shipping on the high seas, a practice now resented by rising powers such as Iran and Pakistan, and that had barely been used by the scaled-down British navy after World War II. A step forward was the condemnation in the convention of peonage, debt bondage, forced marriage, and adoption for exploitation. This was followed by the negotiation by the ILO of the Abolition of Forced Labor Convention of 1957, which outlawed forced labor for economic advantage, political repression, and labor discipline—a clear attack on the gulags. These were being dismantled in the Soviet Union after the death of Joseph Stalin, but were being introduced in China and other communist powers to suppress dissent and to produce goods for export. The long struggle for the supplementary convention focused attention on Arabia, which became the center of the antislavery struggle for the next few years. There was still no means of forcing states to sign or carry out the two antislavery treaties. The British, however, began to pressure the sheikhs in Qatar and the Trucial Coast to end slavery. As oil revenues mounted, Qatar did so in 1952, paying compensation to slave owners. Britain also formed a special force ostensibly to suppress the trade on land in the Trucial States and Oman, and to drive out the Saudis from the Buraimi Oasis, where they were accused of slave dealing. The next few years were a period of turmoil in the Middle East, as Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal and launched a campaign of revolutionary socialism aimed at ousting colonialism from the Arab world together with all the feudal rulers. The development of the oil industry enabled fugitive slaves to find jobs and opened up new avenues of investment for their owners. Much publicity was given in the Western press to the enslavement of pilgrims to Saudi Arabia coming from as far away as West Africa. In 1962 pressure on the Saudi rulers mounted as Egypt sent a force to support a military coup in Yemen, where the new government declared an end to slavery. Soon after, Saudi Arabia declared slavery abolished and offered compensation to owners. This led to the announcement by the Trucial sheikhs, under British pressure, that slavery had long been illegal in their territories. In the Aden Protectorate, the British, faced with rebellion, left in 1967 without having officially ended slavery, but their left-wing successors soon outlawed it. Finally, in 1970

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a British-supported coup in Oman led to its abolition by the new sultan. Chattel slavery was now illegal everywhere. This, however, does not mean that it had ended everywhere. Evidence of its persistence in Mauritania surfaced in the 1980s, and new laws against it were issued by Niger in 2005. Moreover, many ties between former slaves and their former owners or their descendants were still active at the end of the century, even among members of both groups who had immigrated to France. If slavery was now illegal everywhere, the demand for cheap and subservient labor was growing rapidly with globalization, and the last years of the 20th century saw an enormous increase in the “new” forms of slavery now called “slavery-like practices.” The abolitionists, led by the Anti-Slavery Society, focused full attention on them and encouraged the formation of local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to attack them. After a long struggle led by the society and a series of UN-commissioned reports, the United Nations finally formed a working group on slavery, later called the Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery. It consisted of five members of the Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and the Protection of Minorities. Its first meeting was in 1975, and with one exception it met annually until the end of the century. It consisted of one member from each of the five areas into which the United Nations divided the world— the Western democracies, the Eastern (originally communist) bloc, Africa, Latin America, and Asia. This committee had no powers of investigation and no way of enforcing its resolutions. In its early years, it was divided by the Cold War and by the issue of apartheid in South Africa. Only after these issues were settled was it able to conduct its meetings with less desire to score political points against adversaries and more willingness to listen to the cases brought to its notice by NGOs, international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), UN organizations such as UNESCO, UNICEF, UNDP, and others, including Interpol. The work of this virtually powerless committee, together with that of the much more effective ILO, publicized the many and varied forms of servitude that existed at the end of the 20th century. Many of them were as old as or older than slavery. Some, such as forced prostitution, had been considered by various committees of the League of Nations. By the end of the 20th century, however, they were all brought to the Working Group, which changed its name to bring it into line with its work. It thus became the Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery. A separate group was formed to deal with the exploitation of indigenous peoples. By 1975 chattel slavery and the slave trade were only practiced in a few remote areas. Many more people were affected by contemporary forms of slavery. As the colonial empires disintegrated, some states became richer as they developed their resources, while others sank into greater poverty. As globalization intensified, so labor began to be organized in different ways and flowed under different guises in


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ever-increasing numbers from poor areas to richer or developing areas, often, but not always, in foreign countries. These changes had begun earlier, but were intensified in the last quarter of the century by attempts at globalization, by the growth of the arms and drugs trades, and the ever-rising organized crime, assisted by the Internet and the ease of laundering money. One of the most widespread abuses considered a contemporary form of slavery was debt bondage. This possibly predates slavery itself. It was widespread among the rural population of the Indian subcontinent, but also took root in factories and other industries, and by the end of the century was a worldwide problem. People borrowed money for a variety of reasons—for the use of land, to buy tools, to pay for medical treatment, to pay their fares to get to a promised but nonexistent job— only to find themselves bound by debts they could never repay. In some cases, notably in South Asia and Latin America, the debt was hereditary. In others, it was continually being extended. Thus, Chinese triads smuggled illegal aliens into Great Britain, and then demanded more money from the workers under threat of harming not just the workers, but also their families in China. By the year 2000, victims might find themselves working anywhere in the world on farms and in restaurants, gold mines, garment factories, brick factories, and so on. Some were imported as servants by diplomats and kept locked up, isolated in homes, unable to speak the local language, and with their passports taken from them. Many were the easy victims of brutal treatment. Forced prostitution was another form of contemporary slavery, flourishing at the end of the 20th century. Unknown numbers of girls and some boys were tricked or lured into being trafficked to various countries, or forced to work on the streets or in brothels in their own countries. By the late 1990s, an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 women and children were believed to be trafficked annually to the United States alone, many of them victims of poverty from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The traffic was worldwide, and the propagators of this form of slavery did not hesitate to use force. Victims who resisted faced mutilation or death. All faced the threat of contracting HIV-AIDS or other infections, in which case they might be simply thrown out on the streets. Children in particular were victims of contemporary forms of slavery. Child labor was the subject of special UN reports in the 1980s and 1990s. Children are cheap and defenseless, and hence easily exploited. The problem was worldwide but worse in poorer countries. In Thailand in the 1980s, poverty-stricken parents in the north sold their children to work in sweatshops in Bangkok in appalling conditions. In India, parents in debt bondage sent their children to toil long hours in carpet factories where they were often tied to looms, sometimes to the point of being crippled. Others were deliberately mutilated in order to send them out to beg in the streets. In Pakistan, entire families worked in brick factories. In El Salvador, children were forced by poverty-stricken parents to wade in swamps for 14 hours a

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day searching for mollusks, smoking cigars to keep away the mosquitoes, and taking amphetamines to keep awake. In West Africa, boys in search of jobs ended up as prisoners working as slave labor on cocoa plantations. Most dangerous was the use of children in armed combat. Boys between 12 and 17 were forcibly recruited as soldiers, usually in rebel armies. Others joined as a survival strategy. In some cases, such as Sierra Leone, they were forced to mutilate civilians. Renamo, a Mozambican insurgent group since rechristened as a political party, made them kill their parents and then recruited them to fight. The Lord’s Resistance Army in Sudan kidnapped schoolchildren, forcing the boys to serve as soldiers and the girls as sex slaves. Most pitiable were the children of both sexes, but mainly girls, forced into sexual slavery. In India, thousands were trafficked around the country to meet the growing demand for young virgins. Many were Indian or Nepalese, but some came from China, Russia, or Latin America. Sex tourism involving children was a growing industry in the last decades of the 20th century. Tour agencies advertised sex tours as package deals involving a range of deviant practices. Men fearful of contracting AIDS were demanding younger and younger children. In 1989, Interpol reported to the Working Group that there was a growing demand for child pornography, encouraged by the development of the Internet. In 1988, the Working Group was told by a Thai NGO that some 10,000 babies a year were kidnapped or bought for adoption in Malaysia. Similarly, children were kidnapped or bought in South America and Romania for adoption in Europe or North America. In China, baby girls could be bought from orphanages for $20,000 or more. In the early 1990s, the Anti-Slavery Society, now called Anti-Slavery International, turned its attention to servile marriage—marriage in which women did not have the same rights to property, or to their children, or to divorce as men, and in which men might have more then one wife. In many countries children were betrothed without the right of refusal. In some countries widows were inherited by their husband’s kinsmen. Although in the latter case the intention was to provide the widow with a male protector, it could also condemn her to an unhappy marriage. Some children were also dedicated to a deity, often to expiate the sin of some relative. They became, in effect, the wives or servants of the priest—a hereditary situation from which they could not escape. Forced labor was another form of contemporary slavery reported to the Working Group. Sometimes it was, as in the past, practiced by governments like the government of Myanmar, which forced dissident peoples to work in harsh and often dangerous conditions. China sentenced dissidents to gulags, where many were used to produce goods for export or as cheap labor for agriculture or domestic construction. Some forms of forced labor were to be found in the private sector. In 1999,


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for instance, some 40,000 young Asian women were found on the American island of Saipan, imprisoned in compounds, threatened with violence, and forced to work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, producing goods for well-known U.S. firms. Migrant laborers are particularly vulnerable to forced labor, and some have been found working as virtual prisoners on farms and in garment factories in the United States, and in sweatshops in Europe. It remains here to discuss what steps had been taken by the end of the 20th century to stop these abuses, which were well-known as they were reported to the Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery, and to the ILO, and were exposed by the media. In theory, much had been gained. Reports had been commissioned and conventions negotiated on a whole range of questions, including slavery, forced labor, and debt bondage. There followed conventions for the suppression of the traffic in persons and the exploitation of prostitution, and the convention on consent to marriage, the minimum age for marriage, and the registration of marriages. There was also a declaration on the elimination of discrimination against women. To protect children, a convention was passed on the rights of the child, followed by an ILO convention against the worst forms of child labor. There was also a declaration to protect women and children in emergencies and armed conflict. Added to these were treaties against trafficking and a convention to protect migrant workers and their families. Thus, by the end of the century, a whole range of conventions and agreements were in existence to protect the most vulnerable from abuse. The remnants of chattel slavery were under attack in Mauritania and Niger. Public opinion was being mobilized, not just in the developed world, but also in the areas from which most victims came or where they lived. The Working Group, which had gathered so much information, was still not able to do more than advise on action, but the problems were now becoming known all over the world, and attempts were being made to alert potential victims to the dangers they might face. Moreover, NGOs proliferated and did their best to make abuses known, and often took action themselves to combat them, sometimes at the risk of members’ own lives. However, the basic problem that generated so many vulnerable workers remained untouched—the huge gap between rich and poor countries that drew thousands of potential victims into the hands of international criminal networks. Moreover, the numerous treaties, conventions, and declarations could only be enforced by governments, and many of them were too poor or too corrupt to take the steps needed to end particular abuses. Added to these difficulties was the proliferation of small wars, which dislocated economies and flung thousands of economic refugees on the market. Similarly, the disintegration of the Soviet Union sent unknown numbers of poverty-stricken people into one form or another of contemporary slavery. At

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the heart of the problem was the weakness of the United Nations and the lack of a concerted and determined attempt to carry out its many conventions. Further Readings Bales, Kevin. Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Miers, Suzanne. Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 2003. United Nations. Reports of the Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery.


The concern expressed in popular media such as radio talk shows and television news programs like Lou Dobbs Tonight about illegal immigration can be misleading. It often overlooks the jeopardy that migrants face dealing with smugglers or traffickers who may enslave them. Despite the danger, many undocumented migrants come to look for work or to join their families, hoping to become permanent immigrants. The necessity for migrants who would be denied a visa to enter without legal authorization propagates a host of criminal industries. Human smugglers and traffickers are international criminals, and it is not surprising that as intensified border enforcement increases the stakes for both migrants and smugglers, incidences of coercion and predation have increased. Women and children are trafficked both into the United States and internationally for the purpose of forced prostitution and enslavement. Of necessity, this is a process involving trickery and coercion. The United States has responded by passing legislation and directing efforts toward international cooperation. This legislation may work on paper, but efforts to stop this massive problem are only showing limited results.

A History of Race, Gender, and Global Inequality in Migration The process of globalization has minimized the impact of the distances between communities across the world. While global migration is not new, the speed at which it is occurring and the shifting dynamics are. Why do people migrate? Their reasons may include finding a job, reunifying family, marriage, and the fulfillment of demand for labor by migrants. Nevertheless, in some cases, migrants lose control and are maneuvered into criminal activities or enslavement under conditions of coercion by smugglers or traffickers. Those who are categorized as undocumented immigrants are welcomed as cheap and dispensable labor, but are refused permanent legal resident status. This relegation to a marginalized status makes modern 17

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Coercion and Migration

migrants from countries considered the global South (developing nations), particularly women and children, vulnerable to criminals. In the 20th and 21st centuries, the gender dynamics of global migration have shifted. Since 1970, the migration of women has increased on a global scale in a phenomenon referred to as the feminization of migration. While women have yet to earn equal hourly wages in most countries, including the United States, women now constitute 50 percent of the world’s migrants. Women migrants are impacted by the creation of binary categories that have developed to label migration as either coerced (trafficked) or voluntary (smuggled). Such simple polarizations of migration are insufficient to describe the effect gender experience has on the migration process and the vulnerability of women to human trafficking aimed at producing modern-day slaves. The U.S. West Coast has a deeply embedded migratory relationship with Latin America that generates racialized (raced) perceptions of human trafficking and smuggling. Americans stereotype Mexico and Latin America as regions involved in smuggling and assume the United States has no criminal involvement. Gendered and raced experiences, however, present a complex picture of interlinkage between countries of the global North (industrialized nations) and the global South.

Human Smuggling and the U.S.-Mexico Border Undocumented migrants cross U.S. national borders without a border-crossing identification card. These cards are issued by U.S. consulates to visitors for tourism or business, temporary workers, and refugees. These cards are denied to individuals who cannot establish sufficient financial means or pass a security check required of entrants from countries designated as harboring terrorists. The United States has the largest and most diverse flow of undocumented workers among the developing nations. Undocumented Mexicans, Central Americans, and other Latin American workers are employed in agriculture, manufacturing, and the service sector, including jobs ranging from maids to waiters. This is a historical process that began as early as the 1940s, when the United States implemented the Bracero Program to legally bring migrant workers into the United States. Today, although many foreign born are admitted as legal immigrants, a substantial group enters as undocumented migrants, often assisted by smugglers, who may stay for a period of time and return to the country of origin or remain permanently as unauthorized immigrants. Although a person who is smuggled enters the United States illegally, they face an additional risk of human trafficking. A migrant who may want to enter voluntarily but is coerced for forced prostitution or enslaved labor has been trafficked by organized crime. Since 9/11, the protection of the U.S. border has been the focus of U.S. national security. In 2006, the U.S. government funded $12 million for Operation


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Stonegarden, a continuation of a 2005 pilot program with the goal of increasing the patrol of U.S. borders along Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas. This initiative is reminiscent of those in the 1990s: Operation Hold-the-Line (El Paso, 1993), Operation Gatekeeper (California, 1994), and Operation Safeguard (Arizona, 1995). The goal of the U.S. Border Patrol is to combat human smuggling and human trafficking. However, even as U.S. borders are tightened, immigrants continue to enter the United States from Latin America looking for employment opportunities. In 2006, the number of legal immigrants entering the United States was 1.3 million. This number is estimated to be closer to 1.8 million if those who enter as undocumented are included. All estimates of undocumented entry are problematic, as the undocumented have reasons not to cooperate with U.S. Census and Current Population Survey counts, although many do. U.S immigrants are racially and ethnically diverse, but the mass media focuses attention on antismuggling initiatives aimed toward Latin Americans at the southern U.S. border. In San Diego, California, major crackdowns on human smuggling rings have periodically occurred. San Diego is an important corridor or entry point for human-smuggling networks. The smuggling corridor stretches from Otay Mesa to east of Tessa. News stories on incidents like the San Diego crackdowns will become typical and delineate how the government handles immigrant workers arriving at U.S. borders. Employers in particular labor industries (such as the agriculture and service sectors) cautiously welcome immigrants, but the tightening of U.S. borders and the arrest of migrant laborers and smugglers effectively reject them.

Human Smuggling It is often presumed that those who are smuggled across national boundaries do so freely; they are not coerced, forced, or deceived because they have entered into contracts or have paid for the service. Those who are smuggled are grouped with other voluntary migrants who may migrate to pursue economic opportunities (economic migration), for personal enrichment, or to be reunified with families. Human smuggling is the facilitation, transportation, attempted transportation, or illegal entry of a person(s) across an international border through deception, such as the use of fraudulent documents or simple passage without identification. Definitions of smuggling in U.S. policy suggest that the person being smuggled is cooperating with the smuggler. These definitions do not mention actual or implied coercion, and consider that the illegal entry of one person is being facilitated by another (or more than one). The use of the term “cooperation” in this definition, however, is highly contested when it comes to differentiating smuggling from human trafficking. Although the U.S. public focuses on the smuggling of Mexican and, to a lesser extent, Central American and Latin American undocumented immigrants, this is

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just a partial picture. Smuggling cannot be understood in a vacuum because it is a complex transnational phenomenon. It is not just a U.S. reality, but also rather a global reality. Human smuggling is not limited to the United States despite the United States having the largest number of unauthorized people. Other countries that are major destinations include Western Europe, Germany, Canada, and Australia—industrialized, capitalist nations, otherwise known as the First World or the global North. Human smuggling is the process of bringing in unauthorized entrants, and, according to the U.S. Immigration and Nationalization Act, Section 274(a)(1), (2), it is a felony for the smuggler and a civil offense for a migrant’s first entry. The methods of smuggling include self smuggling, smuggling by professional organizations and networks, and smuggling by independent entrepreneurs known as coyotes in the case of Latin American emigration or snakeheads in the case of Asian emigration. This criminal activity is very profitable. In the first decade of the 21st century, a Chinese migrant might pay from $25,000 to $30,000 to attempt unauthorized entry to the United States. The smuggling fee itself places international migrants into a coercive situation because of the length of time it takes for a person and relatives from a developing country to pay off such a debt. If payment is delayed, relatives in the country of origin may be threatened. Human smuggling involves high risk for both smugglers and migrants. A coyote—also known as a pollero—is a person paid to smuggle a migrant from Mexico, Central America (including the countries El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras), or Latin America across the U.S.-Mexico border. Coyotes are despised by some on both sides of the border for profiting from migrants. As the borders become increasingly militarized, dependency on smugglers increases, and smugglers are able to coerce ever larger payments from undocumented immigrants. Coercion becomes intensified when smugglers connected to drug traffickers ask immigrants to carry in marijuana or other drugs as a part of their fee. Coercion has increased because urban border enforcement by fortification increasingly pushes migrants to cross in areas more remote and oftentimes more dangerous. Environmental factors such as summer heat exposure in the Arizona desert can cause medical problems and even death. In some cases, smugglers abandon medically incapacitated members of a group who can only hope that the U.S. Border Patrol will find them before dehydration, heat stroke, and starvation occur. Undocumented Asian smuggling has historically utilized maritime routes and has received less media attention. Maritime smuggling has been associated with rape of women migrants, malnourishment, and unhealthy conditions of concealment. Snakeheads smuggling Chinese into the United States are reported to have stopped using maritime routes through Seattle, Washington. The new route is by air. One positive, indirect consequence of this change is a reduction of exposure to harm due to the short duration of attempted entry. In 2004, the United Nations


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Convention signed the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Air, and Sea Protocol at its Vienna meeting to control human smuggling, trafficking, and transnational organized crime. Global smuggling networks include a wide variety of source countries and routes, including the often-neglected Canadian border. Cases of human smuggling through Canada from Asia and Eastern Europe were highlighted during a 2006 indictment in Detroit, Michigan, which revealed the fact that undocumented migrants sometimes rode inside or held onto the sides of freight trains traveling through rail tunnels or were smuggled in ferries, car trunks, the cargo trailers of semitrucks, and, in some cases, small boats. The acceptance of such risk is at least partially coerced by prohibiting the voluntary movement of people across borders. Regardless of how much is paid and where migrants are from, the end result is the same: Migrants who are smuggled into a country only reach their destination if they survive the process. In 2000, more than 100 Chinese were found hiding in several ships in U.S. and Canadian ports, including three who arrived dead in a cargo ship called Cape May; they died of malnutrition and dehydration. Migrants contracting with human smugglers must deal with fear, including the risk of death.

Forced Migration Forced migration often involves a degree of coercion, and it refers to refugees and displaced individuals fleeing ethnic cleansing, political conflict, famine, and other traumatic situations. Forced migration is most often a situation of political coercion, but it is sometimes due to traumatic necessity.

Slavery and Forced Migration Historic examples of forced migration include the transatlantic slave trade, the forced movement and confinement or death of Jews during the Holocaust, the exodus of Palestinians when the British divided their Arab territories, and the fleeing of Vietnamese refugees during the fall of Saigon. This population displacement is often characterized as the result of nation-state action, although forced movement can be caused by a failure to accept a change in nation-state government and/or territory. Displaced people around the globe are diverse, but share the characteristic that they have been impacted by economic and political turmoil in their home countries. A displaced person is often a refugee or asylum seeker.

Refugees Refugees are, by definition, coerced individuals who are most often forced by nation-state conflict to flee. This forced migration is especially severe when entire

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groups flee ethnic persecution. The legal concept of a refugee was created in 1951, when a refugee convention formulated by the United Nations Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Status of Refugees and Stateless Persons under the General Assembly Resolution 429 (V) was adopted. Individuals protected under the category of refugee flee their countries because of persecution or conflict. Their primary international oversight organization is the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR), which was developed in conjunction with the UN protocol to protect, assist, and provide monetary support for refugees. In 2005, UNHCR estimated that 8.7 million refugees existed, with the highest concentration of refugees in Asia (40 percent), followed by Africa (32 percent), Europe (20 percent), North America (6 percent), Oceania (1 percent), and Latin America and the Caribbean (0.4 percent). New source countries for mass refugee outflows during 2005 included Togo (39,000), Sudan (34,000), the Democratic Republic of Congo (16,000), Somalia (14,000), the Central African Republic (11,000), and Iraq (11,000). Central American Refugees Mexican, Central American, and Latin American migration has been treated as freely motivated, in contrast to the Asian and African regions. This has created controversy, because the United States was involved in covert warfare during Central American political conflicts of the 1980s and chose to treat displaced individuals and families as economic migrants rather than refugees. Immigrant advocates in the United States took up these migrants’ cause by documenting the existence of death squads and other political persecution during the Central American civil wars and the U.S. efforts to undermine the procommunist government of Nicaragua. As a result, there have been several periods of legalization of Central Americans in the United States after judicial decisions were reached. Currently, Latin America is not considered a major region producing forced migration.

Human Smuggling and Trafficking of Women Human rights advocates are concerned with human-smuggling networks that use trickery, physical coercion, and emotional degradation in order to exploit migrants economically or to force them into slavery. Research on women in coerced migration continues to gain strength and influence. Examining how coerced migration is experienced differently by men and women illustrates the complexity of global trafficking. Human trafficking is an example of gendered coercion because its chief victims are women and girls rather than men. In contrast to human smuggling, where an individual enters into a contract or pays, the traffickers exploit migrants by violating the terms of the travel and job agreement and placing the migrant under a long-term condition of coerced behavior and loss of freedom. One example is


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prostitution of migrant women, a common experience that spans communities and nations. There is a blurry line between human smuggling and human trafficking, as delineated in the Jaime Aguilar-Hernandez case. After being caught in Stockton, California, Jaime Aguilar-Hernandez, a coyote that smuggled people from Mexico to the United States, was convicted of four counts of alien smuggling and sentenced in November 2006 to 36 months of prison time. The case was acquitted to make a more serious charge, after it was discovered that Aguilar-Hernandez forcibly prostituted a woman he smuggled from Guatemala. This particular case was prosecuted based on the collaborative efforts of two dozen Sacramento organizations that formed the Rescue and Restore Victims of Human Trafficking Coalition with the help of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

History of Peonage and Enslavement Law Although U.S. slavery was abolished in 1865 with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, the U.S. Department of Justice has estimated that more than 50,000 people, primarily women and children, are annually trafficked to the United States. Historically, the U.S. abolition movement acted against the enslavement of Africans brought across the Atlantic Ocean. Although slavery was abolished, the problem continued as debt peonage (a situation in which a person, often a freed African slave or a Mexican American or Mexican) worked for subsistence because they could never pay off debts related to crop-land leases or family survival. As a result, antipeonage laws were put into place, and cases of enslavement in the United States can still be tried under these early 20th-century laws. In the early 20th century, trafficking of white women into prostitution became an issue. In 1910, the Mann Act (also referred to as the White Slave Traffic Act) was implemented in order to respond to the increase in trafficking of women from Europe by French procurers into prostitution. It prohibited the interstate and international transportation of women for “immoral purposes.” Ninety years later in 2000, another law was implemented—the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (VTVPA).

Protecting Domestic Violence and Trafficking Survivors Anti-human trafficking initiatives in the United States to protect women and girls are interconnected with the domestic violence movement. The first U.S. policy on domestic violence was developed at the state level during the temperance movement of the mid-19th century. By 1850, 19 states had passed laws allowing women to divorce their husbands on the grounds that they were abusive. These laws were embedded in the temperance movement, which connected alcohol with domestic violence as a dual social problem. Initially created to abolish alcohol use, women

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used the temperance movement to generate legislation for equal rights, economic independence, divorce, and protection against physical abuse. By the 1960s there was a shift in domestic violence initiatives with the formation of groups such as the National Organization for Women. But it was not until 1994 that the United States would pass a comprehensive bill to address violence against women—the Violence against Women Act (VAWA). Perhaps because of its focus on the mistreatment of women, in 2000 the VTVPA was attached to the reauthorization of the 1994 VAWA. This policy is in line with U.S. initiatives to prosecute human traffickers, prevent human trafficking, and protect survivors.

Trafficking for Prostitution and Enslavement The VTVPA defines human trafficking as follows: (1) movement of an individual across international boundaries after which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, including when the person induced to perform such an act is under 18; or (2) the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion, for the purpose of subjecting that person to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery. The theme that exploitation occurs through force, fraud, or coercion is central to the VTVPA definition. U.S. policy automatically considers minors under 18 who are in the sex industry to be sex trafficked, but requires adults to establish a case for sex trafficking. The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that annually 1.2 million people are globally trafficked across and within national borders. The U.S. Department of State estimates that 600,000–800,000 women, men, and children are trafficked across international boundaries each year, and 80 percent of those trafficked are women and girls. In 2004, interviews with 191 U.S. agencies indicated that forced labor is prevalent in five sectors of the U.S. economy: prostitution and sex services (46 percent), domestic service (27 percent), agriculture (10 percent), sweatshop factories (5 percent) and restaurant and hotel work (4 percent). The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that 50,000 people are trafficked into the United States each year. Of those, one-third comes from Latin America. What is important to note in these trends in order to understand the gendered dynamics of human trafficking is that the most trafficking occurs in the sex industry, especially prostitution.

Gender and Human Trafficking To understand human trafficking, knowledge of the conditions that create it is needed. Human trafficking is not limited to women, but it is an experience that differs based on gender. The increasing numbers of women and girls who are sex


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trafficked reflect on the status of women, especially racial-ethnic women, and perceptions of rape and sex abuse in both source and destination countries. For example, both Mexico and the United States have traditionally been patriarchal societies controlled by men. The concept of borrowing patriarchies indicates that the gendered violence of one country is easily exported to a country with a similar tradition. Coerced prostitution is basically serial rape of nonconsenting and traumatized women and girls. Global interlinkages foster sex trafficking, and patriarchal tradition ensures customers for a high-profit business in which the workers are enslaved and, if they become ill, discarded as disposable people. Worldwide, one in three females experience rape. In Mexico, a man that rapes a minor may avoid prosecution if he marries the victim. Furthermore, the Mexican Supreme Court had ruled that violently forcing a spouse to engage in sexual relations was not rape but the “undue exercise of a right.” It was not until 2005 that the Mexican Supreme Court outlawed marital rape and made it subject to punishment. In the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, a woman is raped every two minutes. This does not include child sex abuse. Only 16 percent of rape victims report their rapes to the police, which means an even smaller percentage lead to convictions. Because of the similarities between the two countries and because rape is predominately a crime against women that reflects their history of lower social status, it is a gendered violence that is transferable through patriarchal borrowing. National responses to human trafficking reflect the trend toward recognition of rights for women and girls, but a part of the problem is that law enforcement responses to these gendered crimes are still insufficient. Human smuggling and human trafficking are part of a larger global process of migration that is defined by national/local responses. In order to understand the increase in international crimes against women and girls, one must understand the interdependence that has developed between countries and the widening inequalities between these countries. Women and girls from poor countries are exploited in richer countries. Yet instead of looking at these coercive gendered transactions, the examination of human trafficking and smuggling has led only to a well-funded policy platform to achieve tightened border controls. The relation of smuggling and trafficking to crimes against women and girls remains a distant concern as compared to the outcry to end illegal immigration.

Trafficking and the Sex Industry Sex trafficking is a $32 billion enterprise. The global sex industry is housed in go-go bars, pickup trucks, nightclubs, massage parlors, saunas, truck stops, restaurants, coffee shops, barbershops, straightforward brothels (which provide no other service), escort agencies, and on the street. Simply put, the commercial sex takes

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place whenever a person, most often female but sometimes a young boy or older male, sells their sex in exchange for monetary benefits. The Coalition against Trafficking in Women (CATW) found that the rise in sex trafficking globally and in the United States is due to the following: (1) genderbased social and economic inequality in all areas of the world; (2) male demand for sex and prostitution; (3) macroeconomic policies that lead to a push of certain countries to export laborers (an example given is the Philippines, but this is also inclusive of Latin America, especially since the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994; and (4) the expansion of transnational sex industries connected to the globalization of capital and information technology or armed conflict and military occupation. Transnational sex trafficking networks are controlled by supply and demand. They would not exist without the demand from countries of destination. Recruitment is easy; victims are falsely promised legal jobs. Sex trafficking requires the industry to already exist in the source country and for demand to exceed supply, necessitating coerced substitution of foreign women. The systemic operation of prostitution in the First World service sector exists because of leniency as well as cultural normalization in both sending and receiving countries. To examine the idea of leniency, one needs only to refer to reports in the media of politicians and celebrities who patronize the elite prostitution services.

Combating Sex Trafficking National Antitrafficking Legislation In 2000, the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (VTVPA) established the precedent to prosecute human traffickers and protect survivors. The term survivor is gender neutral, and the legislation covers involuntary servitude, peonage, and slavery. This act demonstrates an international commitment by the United States to end the exploitation of individuals subject to human trafficking. This act has led to the collection of statistics on trafficking and provides a framework for attacking the problem.

International Cooperation The Office to Control and Monitor Trafficking in Persons is an international unit located within the Department of State. The effort to end trafficking is supported in the sending countries, often through public education programs that target at-risk women. International raids within receiving countries have identified traffickers and released survivors. International sex trafficking victims are often repatriated to their home countries, and assistance is given for their reintegration.


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Global Law Enforcement Statistics The 2003 Trafficking Victims Reauthorization Act (TVRA) requires foreign governments to provide the Department of State with the following data: (1) trafficking investigations conducted; (2) number of prosecutions and convictions; and (3) sentences imposed on traffickers. Collection of this data qualifies a country as in compliance with minimum standards for stopping trafficking. This data indicated that in 2003: (1) 24 countries passed new or amended legislation on trafficking; (2) 7,992 prosecutions were undertaken; and (3) 2,815 convictions occurred. In 2004, data indicated: (1) 39 new or amended legislative acts were passed; (2) 6,885 prosecutions were undertaken; and (3) 3,025 convictions occurred. In 2005, there were: (1) 41 new or amended legislative acts; (2) 6,618 prosecutions; and (3) 4,766 convictions. The data indicate a trend toward an increased international conviction rate.

International Cooperation with Mexico This middle-level developing country is a source, a transit zone, and a destination country for trafficking. Source regions include Central America, South America, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia. Within Mexico, women and children from poor rural regions are brought to cities and tourist destinations to be exploited through job-offer fraud or physical violence. Along the U.S. border and in Mexican tourism areas, child sex tourism is a problem. Women are brought into Mexico or trafficked into the United States for prostitution by organized criminal networks. U.S.-Mexico border enforcement officers often treat human smuggling and trafficking similarly and Mexican corruption impedes investigations. In Mexico both prostitution and pimping are legal, but forced prostitution is not. The Mexican government is on the Tier 2 Watch List because it does not comply with minimum standards for eliminating trafficking, including providing data on prosecution, protection, and prevention. The Mexico Senate passed antitrafficking legislation, but the Chamber of Deputies has not yet voted. Lack of traffickingspecific legislation has prevented data collection. A Preventive Federal Police (PFP) unit with 140 agents investigates and collects data. In the first eight months of 2005, Mexico prosecuted 1,336 cases and levied 531 sentences. It is not clear how many of these cases were trafficking related, and only two convictions are known to be for this crime. The Mexican authorities have identified 126 trafficking gangs. Mexico has organized public awareness campaigns, prioritizing cities connected to trafficking. Mexico prohibits slavery, forced prostitution, corruption of minors, and trafficking-related crimes. Mexico and the United States have cooperated in prosecution through both extradition to Mexico and surrender to the United States of trafficking suspects. Mexican law enforcement corruption is a major problem,

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and a journalist was arrested in Puebla in 2005 for investigating traffickers; she was promptly released. There is inadequate victim protection in Mexico, although nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are cooperating in training and building new facilities. The Mexican government social welfare agencies operate shelters for domestic violence and trafficking victims. In 2005, 207 children were rescued and protected. In 2005, 4 trafficking victims were permitted to reside in Mexico in return for cooperating in trafficking investigations. Mexico illustrates the difficulties in combating trafficking of women to the United States, but it also demonstrates that progress has been made on initiatives connected to TVRA. Elimination of trafficking depends on establishing international cooperation.

Bilateral Safety Corridor Coalition (BSCC) The BSCC is an example of an international nongovernmental organization (INGO) formed to combat smuggling and trafficking connected to coerced labor. Human trafficking and smuggling are interconnected because they depend on the same migration networks. The BSCC was formed to address how the same routes used for human smuggling are used by human traffickers. The BSCC formed in 1993 when a case manager, Marisa Ugarte, noticed a trend toward trafficking young Mexican girls into southern California prostitution managed by pimps in Tijuana, Mexico. The BSCC is a coalition of 60 organizations in the United States and Mexico.

Victim Assistance in the United States Individuals testifying against traffickers and associated criminal activities are eligible to apply for visas, benefits, and services under any federal or state agency, similar to having the status of a refugee. The Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Labor, the Legal Services Corporation, and other federal agencies are required to provide benefits and services without regard to the immigration status of victims. Under current U.S. policy, any person who receives financial support from the U.S. government due to her or his standing as a trafficked survivor is funded by Refugee Cash Assistance.

Problems in Antitrafficking Enforcement and Prosecution Despite passage of legislation, ending trafficking is interconnected with ending smuggling. Both are targeted for control by border enforcement, but control of sex trafficking may require a differentiated law-enforcement strategy. For example, tightly organized associations based on a familial hierarchy, like Los Leones, in


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which the father is the head, have developed international trafficking routes from Mexico and other Latin American countries. Case scenarios for the trafficked survivor include being lured in with false promises by a trafficker and then being kidnapped and exploited. Coyotes are aware of the vulnerability of migrants, whose undocumented status will lead families not to report victimization ranging from rape to forced prostitution. This has led to a trend in which coyotes and pimps form trafficking coalitions. For example, women and girls are trafficked from the Mexico-California border to northern San Diego County, where they are placed in apartments controlled by women pimps hired by traffickers. Brothels have been identified in communities as far north as Canada. Trafficked girls are sold to migrant farm workers, U.S. tourists, and U.S. military personnel. Ending this exploitation of women and girls cannot rely only on border enforcement because the sex industry is active in the interior. Traditionally, the United States had devoted more funding to controlling the U.S.-Mexico border than enforcing labor-law violations in the interior. Special law-enforcement task forces are needed to investigate the international connections and trafficking in women in the U.S. sex industry. Statistics are needed on the percentage of prostitution arrests that are connected to enslavement, and an effort is needed to encourage the survivors to testify under the VTVPA.

Invisibility of the Problem The U.S. public’s awareness of human trafficking from Latin America and its networks is made virtually invisible by the media attention given to undocumented migration and U.S.-Mexico border enforcement efforts. The number of social services in California whose mission is to focus specifically on the trafficking of Latinas and Latinos and who provide culturally specific services (Spanish language included) is limited to one agency, the Bilateral Safety Corridor Coalition. Most survivors continue to be routed through domestic-violence agencies such as the San Francisco La Casa De Las Madres, the first agency in the Bay Area of California to provide social services to combat domestic violence.

Aid and Prosecution The U.S. government passed legislation to counter human trafficking, but states have found this policy limited in its outcomes; human trafficking continues to occur in large numbers. Despite the 50,000 people that are annually trafficked into the United States, the government only provides 5,000 T visas for trafficked persons. Three years after the VTVPA was passed, only 23 visas were issued. To date, 32 states have passed state policies to compensate for the limitations in the VTVPA.

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In 2005, California passed a bill, AB 22, that allows for victim restitution, victim-caseworker privilege, the establishment of a task force (California Alliance to Combat Trafficking and Slavery Task Force), and reimbursement for services provided in aiding trafficking survivors. However, similar to its predecessor, the VTVPA, AB 22 lacks implementation; prosecutions for human trafficking in California through the recent policy were nonexistent. A coordinated federal, state, and community effort needs to be developed to aid survivors in return for their testimony. In general, aiding one case of human trafficking requires the collaboration or collective work between 20 different agencies for a successful human-trafficking prosecution. These services include, but are not limited to: victim advocacy and coordination of services; housing; group counseling; case management; investigation of the crime; gynecological care; medical treatment and lab tests; management of funds through the Office of Refugee Resettlement; Health and Human Services; legal work in the home country to assist families, provide them with shelter, and protect them from traffickers; FBI investigations; INS provision of legal documents; legal advisers; case monitoring; psychological evaluation; criminal attorney; immigration attorney; U.S. attorney; services for youth if the survivor is also a youth; and trauma counseling.

Problems in International Law Enforcement Cooperation Despite current U.S. antirape policies that criminalize sex abuse and assault, rape, and violence, international enforcement is another issue. A significant obstacle to stopping transnational organized crime is the lack of communication and cooperation between national law enforcement authorities.

Other Issues Survivors of human trafficking are oftentimes assumed to be smuggled and therefore retrafficked. Current suggestions on how to respond have included an increase in victim protection and services. The ongoing psychological trauma that survivors of human trafficking experience even after the experience ends, suggests the need for continued support even after a case closes.

Conclusion Violence against individuals is often gendered. The abuse of a woman or girl by a smuggler who puts her into coerced prostitution is matched by the development of international sex trafficking organizations. Prostitution is essentially an industry based on primarily male demand for women and girls. Smuggling and trafficking of women and girls for prostitution are steps along a continuum of gendered violence.


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Integral to the debate surrounding human smuggling and trafficking is the question of whether or not these two processes are entirely separate. In reality, they cannot be completely separated. The debate surrounding human smuggling and human trafficking requires a conceptualization of whether or not the illicit and the licit (legal) can be easily disaggregated. Is migration, in general, always coerced? While the connection between forced migration of refugees and state action is clear, what about the economic factors that may lead to coerced migration? In part, such questions are central to understanding smuggling and trafficking. It is clear that global and internal nation-state inequalities fuel the political conflicts that create refugees and that the global North–global South division feeds the one-way smuggling and trafficking of women and girls coerced into prostitution or other forms of enslavement. These issues are further complicated by other intersecting issues of power dynamics due to race, gender, and class difference. Although the migrant who is smuggled is always vulnerable to exploitation due to their status as undocumented and illegal, the difference in gender exacerbates potential for exploitation in specific arenas in which there is a gender and age demand. Twenty-first-century migrants face an experience defined by a continuum of force and consent. Even among consenting migrants, many compromises are made because their human right to cross borders is not recognized. When the United States socially constructs the illegality of foreign nationals, it increases the risk of coercion, which leads to such crimes as sex trafficking. Although the United States and other countries are beginning international cooperation to end such crimes as forced prostitution and trafficking, only the initial groundwork is in place. This international social problem has not been substantially addressed. Further Readings Adamson, Fiona. “Crossing Borders: International Migration and National Security.” International Security 31, no. 1 (2006): 165–199. Associated Press Worldstream. “U.S. and Canada Arrest 17 in Alleged Human Smuggling Ring,” February 15, 2006. http://thestra.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2006/2/15/apwo rld/20060215075131%sec=apworld. Bales, Kevin. Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Berestein, Leslie. “Crackdown on Smuggling Results in 5,000 Arrests,” San Diego UnionTribune, April 25, 2007, Local B5. Bindman, Leslie. “An International Perspective on Slavery in the Sex Industry.” In Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance, and Redefinition, ed. Kamala Kempadoo and Jo Doezema. New York: Routledge, 1998. Chuang, Janie. “Beyond a Snapshot: Preventing Human Trafficking in the Global Economy.” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 13, no. 1 (2006): 137–163.

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Department of Justice. Fact Sheet: “Accomplishments in the Fight to Prevent Trafficking in Persons.” http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2003/February103-crt-110. Gallagher, Anne. “Human Rights and the New UN Protocols on Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling: A Preliminary Analysis.” Human Rights Quarterly 23, no. 4 (2001): 975–1004. George Mason University Sexual Assault Services. “Worldwide Sexual Assault.” http:// www.gmu.edu/facstaff/sexual/brochures/WorldStats2005.pdf. Haynes, Dina Francesca. “Used, Abused, Arrested and Deported: Extending Immigration Benefits to Protect the Victims of Trafficking and to Secure the Prosecution of Traffickers.” Human Rights Quarterly 26, no. 2 (2004): 221–272. Hughes, Donna M. “The Demand for Victims of Sex Trafficking.” University of Rhode Island. http://www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/demand_for_victims.pdf. Kim, Myung Oak. “2 Held in Jeffco in Human Smuggling Case,” Rocky Mountain News, September 26, 2007. “Korean, Malaysian Airlines Are Accused of Human Smuggling.” Filipino Reporter 28, no. 35 (2000): 16. Kyle, David, and Rey Koslowski, eds. Global Human Smuggling: Comparative Perspectives. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. Leyva, Yolanda Chavez. “Militarized Borders Worsen Human Smuggling,” Philadelphia Tribune, January 16, 2004, 7A. Magagnini, Steven. “Coalition Formed to Rescue Victims of Human Trafficking,” Daily News Transcript, June 2, 2007, A006. Martinez, Susana S. “Coyotes, Comadres, y Colegas: Theorizing the Personal in Ruth Behar’s Translated Woman: Crossing the Border with Esperanza’s Story.” Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism 5, no. 2 (2005): 149–175. Moran, Greg. “Human Trafficking Laws Used against Smugglers, Escondido Incident Involved Extortion.” San Diego Union-Tribune, June 26, 2007, B3. Ngai, Mae M. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004. Office to Control and Monitor Trafficking in Persons, U.S. Department of State. Trafficking in Persons Report 2006. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2006. http:// www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/tiprpt/2006/65994.htm. Pais, Arthur J. “Human Smugglers Come Up for Sentencing.” India Abroad (New York edition) 37, no. 21: A10. Polaris Project. “U.S. Policy Alert on Human Trafficking: Summary of U.S. Policy Activity.” Polaris Project. http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:padQKsd26v4J:216.128.14.181/ polarisproject/programs_p3/Policy_Alert_7_13_07.pdf+Polaris+Project+Policy+Alert &hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us. Raymond, Janice G., and Donna M. Hughes. “Sex Trafficking of Women in the United States: International and Domestic Trends.” Coalition against Trafficking in Women. http://new.vawnet.org/category/Documents.php?docid=986&category_id=83. Sassen, Saskia. Globalization and Its Discontents: Essays on the New Mobility of People and Money. New York: New Press, 1998.


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Shigekane, Rachel. “Rehabilitation and Community Integration of Trafficking Survivors in the United States.” Human Rights Quarterly 29, no. 1 (2007): 112–136. Ugarte, Marisa B., Laura Zarate, and Melissa Farley. “Prostitution and Trafficking of Women and Children from Mexico to the United States.” Journal of Trauma Practice 2, nos. 3/4 (2003): 33–74. U.S. Department of Justice. “Fact Sheet: Distinctions between Human Smuggling and Human Trafficking.” Human Smuggling and Trafficking Center. http://www.usdoj.gov/ crt/crim/smuggling_trafficking_facts.pdf. United Nations Information Service. “Landmark United Nations Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants Enters into Force.” Vienna: United Nations Information Service. http://www.unis.unvienna.org/unis/pressrels/2004/uniscp461.html. United Nations Population Fund. “Selling Hope and Stealing Dreams: Trafficking in Women and the Exploitation of Domestic Workers.” State of World Population 2006: A Passage to Hope: Women and International Migration. New York: United Nations Population Fund, 2006. Vedia, Eduardo Molinay. “Mexico: Supreme Court Legitimises Rape of Spouses, Critics Say.” InterPress Third World News Agency, June 16, 1997. Vu, Carol N. “INS Delegation Visits China to Begin Talks about Human Smuggling: ‘Snakeheads’ No Longer Using Maritime Routes.” Northwest Asian Weekly (Seattle) 19, no. 34 (2000): 1.


Human trafficking, or trafficking in persons, has been defined as the new modernday form of slavery and is perhaps one of the most profitable transnational crimes next to the sale of drugs and arms. This transnational crime has been subject to international and national attention. Publicity and human rights advocacy have helped pave the way for the creation of international and national laws to stop the sale and enslavement of persons. However, some controversy exists over the extent of the protection these laws provide, especially the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 (VTVPA), a law drafted and implemented by the United States. Because a significant number of persons who are trafficked become vulnerable victims of this crime due to grim economic circumstances in their native countries, controversy also exists over the extent to which victims contribute to their own victimization and whether the United States should provide any legal protection for these victims. Opposing views focus on the extent to which the law should protect victims (such as prostitutes, sex workers, and agricultural workers) who might have initially consented to being transported across national or international borders in order to find employment and then became enslaved.

What Is Human Trafficking? Trafficking in persons has a broad definition. The Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons (the Palermo Protocol), which is the leading and most recent (2003) international legislation to stop the sale and enslavement of persons, defines human trafficking in persons as The action of: recruiting, transporting, transferring, harboring, or receiving persons By means of: the threat or use of force, coercion, abduction, fraud, deception, abuse of power or vulnerability, or giving payments or benefits to a person in control of the victim 34

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For the purpose of: exploitation, which includes exploiting the prostitution of others, sexual exploitation, forced labor, slavery or similar practices, and the removal of organs. Using the international definition as a foundation, the U.S. Congress adopted the VTVPA, which is the leading U.S. law against trafficking. The law categorizes human trafficking into two primary components: sex trafficking and labor trafficking. Both types of trafficking are defined as involving the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person. Sex trafficking is for the purpose of initiating a commercial sex act by force, fraud, or coercion and the law particularly focuses on when the sex-trafficked individual is under 18 years old, specifying even greater penalties. Labor trafficking concerns using force, fraud, or coercion to subject a person to labor under conditions of involuntary servitude, peonage (debt bondage, often to work off a smuggling fee), or slavery. Human trafficking can also be understood within the context of the methods and/or activities of the trafficker(s)—those who actively engage in the sale and enslavement of persons. The trafficker usually recruits persons, either adults or children, to be sold into slavery. Recruitment generally involves some form of deception or fraud such as lying about finding and/or providing legitimate employment for persons. Recruitment can also involve the abduction of persons. The trafficker then needs to make the transaction or the sale of the person in exchange for money or another service. This usually involves transporting a person to a specific destination. Finally, the receipt or transfer of the person to the paying customer or client must be made. The threat or use of force or any other means of coercion is present throughout the components or phases of the sale. Additionally, once the transfer to the paying customer is made, the trafficked person is further exploited by being forced to work as a prostitute, agricultural worker, domestic servant, or any other work against her or his will. Although the definition of human trafficking does not necessarily need to involve the sale, transportation, or transfer of a person across international borders, victims of this crime are usually sold on an international scale, thus the need to classify human trafficking as a transnational crime.

Background Although the sale of drugs and arms are two of the most profitable transnational crimes since the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, human trafficking has become well known in the first decade of the 21st century. Indeed, the television miniseries Human Trafficking on Lifetime and starring Mira Sorvino has certainly brought attention to this global issue, as has the public fight of singer Ricky Martin to combat this crime. Today, it is estimated that 21 million people are victims of human trafficking. In the United States alone, government estimates indicate that

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between 600,000 and 800,000 individuals are victims of trafficking each year. One of the reasons for the existence of this problem is that the sale of human beings is highly profitable. In fact, it is estimated to be the third most profitable international crime next to the sale of weapons and drugs. The profits of the global human trafficking enterprise are estimated at $7 billion to $10 billion a year. Other reasons for its prevalence may be the belief (of the traffickers) that there is a relatively low risk of being apprehended and punished. Law enforcement preoccupation with stopping the sale of weapons and drugs leaves criminals with the impression that human trafficking laws will not be enforced and that their chances of being arrested and incarcerated are minimal at best. This false sense of security also drives the willingness of traffickers to continue their economic venture. Human trafficking results in a form of slave labor or involuntary servitude. It is a venture that thrives on the exploitation of humans for financial or economic reasons. In fact, one could argue that human trafficking is a more profitable business than other transnational crimes, such as arms trafficking or drug smuggling because humans can be sold over and over again. Thus, unlike drugs and arms, which are usually sold to only one customer for a one-time profit, humans can be resold to different customers and sold numerous times for an exponential amount of profit. Typically, victims of human trafficking are sold and enslaved to perform a variety of jobs, the most common of which involves working in some capacity in the sex industry as prostitutes or exotic entertainers. This is the case for most women and children. Children are often trafficking victims of sex tourism operations. Sex tourism or child-sex tourism occurs when people of one country, usually because of strict enforcement of human trafficking laws, travel to a foreign location for sexual gratification. The travel is undertaken with the knowledge that the government of the visiting county does not have the capability or is unwilling to enforce trafficking laws or prostitution laws. Mexico and Latin America have been locations where child-sex tourism has been thriving. Children are also used as camel jockeys (camel riders in races) in some countries or forced to work as domestic servants or in sweatshops. In most cases, victims of human trafficking are forced to perform a multitude of jobs because the traffickers insist that they must pay an impending debt—money ostensibly used by the trafficker to purchase fraudulent travel documents or pay for any travel expenses. Essentially, the traffickers create a situation of debt bondage where the victims must perform some type of service to earn their freedom. However, freedom is rarely a reality because the trafficker is constantly adding to the debt. Overinflated living expenses, medical expenses, and other expenses, including the trafficker’s commission, keep the victim from earning her or his freedom. There are some who wonder why victims do not attempt to escape their captors and why they choose to remain enslaved. The answer is actually quite simple.

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Victims do not choose to remain enslaved, and they do not attempt to escape for fear of harm to themselves or their families. Victims are continuously warned that if they try to flee or call the authorities, death will be imminent and harm could also come to family members. The psychological abuse of constantly fearing for one’s life or the lives of loved ones is enough to cripple any attempts to escape. Psychological manipulation at the hands of the traffickers is not the only factor that keeps victims from escaping. Most victims fear they will be arrested since most are in a country without legal documents and authorization. What makes matters worse is that travel visas, even if fraudulent, are taken from the victim as soon as they reach their place of destination. Fear of arrest for violating immigration laws keeps victims from contacting authorities. Physical abuse is also a factor that keeps victims from escaping. In addition, constant supervision by their captors makes it virtually impossible to attempt an escape.

Current Efforts to End Human Trafficking The international community has been tackling the problem of human trafficking since the early 1900s, when a 1904 international treaty banned trafficking in white women for prostitution—the so-called white slave trade. In the mid-20th century, further international treaties were created to address this problem. For instance, in 1949 the United Nations, of which the United States is a member, signed an international treaty to suppress the sale of humans. In 2000, 148 countries were signatories to an international treaty to prevent, suppress, and punish those who traffic in persons. This international treaty, known as the Palermo Protocol because it was signed by the various nations in Palermo, Italy, makes it a crime to recruit, transfer, harbor, or purchase a person for the purpose of any type of exploitation. It also makes the sale of human organs a crime. The Palermo Protocol considers a victim’s consent irrelevant, meaning that any person who is abducted, deceived, forced, or suffers other forms of coercion or initially agrees to be transported across borders shall be treated as a victim if she or he suffers any form of exploitation. The victims shall receive help to return to their country or city of origin and shall receive any medical, legal, or psychological assistance needed.

Countries Who Comply with International Law According to the U.S. Department of State, there are numerous countries that have made significant strides in adopting legislation to prevent human trafficking and strides in prosecuting traffickers and protecting victims of this crime. In fact, the Department of State acknowledged the efforts of 26 counties that have taken significant steps to prevent the sale and enslavement of human beings. Some of the most notable countries include Australia, the United Kingdom, and Sweden. Australia

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has adopted important legislation to prevent the sale and enslavement of human beings. It has successfully prosecuted cases of human trafficking and provides a holistic protection package for victims. Together with Child Wise, a nongovernmental organization, it has sponsored regional education campaigns to prevent child-sex tourism. The United Kingdom is another country that has been conscientious about preventing human trafficking. In 2006, the United Kingdom conducted 343 trafficking investigations and prosecuted eight cases of trafficking for sexual exploitation and one case of forced labor. It convicted a total of 22 traffickers and handed out prison sentences ranging from 5 to 21 years. In addition, Sweden investigated, prosecuted, and convicted a comparable number of traffickers. It also instituted training programs for judges and law enforcement officials to help them understand the gravity of human trafficking.

Critique of Current Efforts to End Human Trafficking The Palermo Protocol’s significance cannot be understated. It is, after all, an international agreement to prevent, suppress, and punish those who traffic and enslave human beings. Despite its outward significance, some of the 148 countries have yet to finalize or execute the international law in their respective countries. Mexico, for instance, was a signatory of the Palermo Protocol but has yet to actualize any meaningful steps to prevent, suppress, and punish traffickers. Mexico is not alone; there are other countries that have not fully adhered to their promise to end human trafficking. Arguably, some countries that have been unable to fully comply with the mandates of the international treaty, including Mexico, have been unable to do so because of internal turmoil, such as economic instability in the country. Although the United States was a signatory to the Palermo Protocol, in 2000 it passed its own law against human trafficking. The Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (VTVPA) is a comprehensive law that addresses the problem of human trafficking. It is a federal law that consolidates the protections of the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolishes slavery, and the various immigration and organized crime laws (racketeering laws) that are frequently violated when traffickers, particularly those with organized crime connections, illegally transport victims into the United States. The VTVPA takes a three-level approach to combating trafficking. At the first level, it seeks to prevent the occurrence of the crime by working with the international community to identify those who traffic in persons. This requires the creation of law enforcement task forces, usually composed of FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) agents or ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents as well as agents performing similar tasks abroad, to locate human trafficking rings. More importantly, the United States attempts to prevent human trafficking by educating women, who are especially victimized by sex trafficking, in countries where they

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are most vulnerable to this crime about the dangers of human trafficking and by providing governments facing economic instability monies to help the most vulnerable in society find legitimate employment. Second, the law seeks to punish those who traffic and enslave human beings. Under the Peonage Abolition Act of 1867, it is a crime to force or coerce any person (man, woman, or child) to work as a slave. Today, the VTVPA, adding to its predecessor laws, specifically makes it a crime to provide or obtain a person, whether through deception or threat of harm, for the forced labor of services regardless of whether such work is to be fulfilled in the sex industry, agricultural fields, homes, sweatshops, or another environment. The trafficker and/or the customer could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted. However, if the victim is a child (under the age of 18), or the victim dies, is kidnapped, or endures severe sexual abuse, the trafficker and/or customer could face life imprisonment. The VTVPA also makes it a crime for any U.S. citizen to travel to another country for the purposes of engaging in illicit sexual conduct (sex tourism). For this latter offense, a person could face up to 30 years in prison. The third component of the VTVPA is protection of the victim. If a victim of human trafficking is identified in the United States, she or he is placed in a secure shelter and generally provided with medical, psychological, legal, and employment aid. Victims may also be granted temporary visas to stay in the United States and even permanent-resident visas for themselves and their families. The VTVPA is not without its critics. For instance, with respect to prevention, the United States only provides monies to countries it deems to have made sufficient strides to prevent and suppress human trafficking. Each year, the Department of State publishes a document titled the Trafficking in Persons Report that contains findings on the U.S. government’s investigation of foreign efforts to combat trafficking. Only countries that have previously received and/or are currently receiving financial aid from the United States are subjected to this investigation. Countries that do not receive a passing grade, according to the mandates outlined by the Department of State, will no longer receive aid. Thus, countries that are not doing enough to combat trafficking will not receive assistance from the United States. This can be problematic for such countries, however, especially when their inability to launch a concerted effort to fight trafficking is not intentional but hindered by internal strife or political or economic instability. A failure to provide financial aid to countries that do not receive the so-called passing grade will make it harder to prevent and suppress human trafficking and will possibly make this global crime flourish even more. In terms of prosecuting and punishing those who traffic human beings, the United States has also received criticism. In order to prosecute traffickers, the VTVPA requires victims to prove that they have endured harm at the hand of their captors. Victims must be able to show that they were forced, or coerced, to work as slaves. For those victims who initially agreed to be transported across international borders

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or who agreed to work in the sex industry, the law makes it difficult to prosecute cases in which consent was initially given. Perhaps the most criticized aspect of the VTVPA is its attempt to protect victims of trafficking. As mentioned, victims have the burden of proving that they were actual victims of this crime and that they were forced to perform labor against their will. If the victim is seeking to stay in the United States for fear of retaliation in the country of origin, she or he must (1) agree to fully cooperate with the government in its effort to prosecute the traffickers, and (2) agree to undergo an evaluation to determine if in fact she or he is a victim of severe forms of trafficking. The United States defines severe forms of trafficking as (1) any trafficking in which sex is induced by force, fraud, or coercion or in which the person induced to perform such act is under that age of 18, or (2) any form of service in which the use of force, fraud, or coercion was used for the purpose of subjecting a person to involuntary servitude, debt bondage, or slavery. Force may be induced through physical abuse or psychological manipulation. Thus, in order to stay in the United States, even temporarily, the victim must agree to fully cooperate with federal prosecutors in any criminal case against the perpetrators and must undergo an evaluation, called a certification process, before any temporary visa is issued. The certification is conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services and is meant to ensure that the trafficking was indeed of a severe form. Moreover, benefits for victims, such as medical, legal, employment, housing, and psychological assistance, are dependent on the outcome of the certification process.

History Trafficking in persons is not a new phenomenon, even though much recent attention has helped shed light on this global problem. The enslavement and exploitation of human beings has an extensive history dating to the earliest civilizations. Ancient Greece for example, was heavily dependent on slave labor for a variety of work including domestic tasks within the home. However, the sale of humans became a transnational economic enterprise in the 15th century, when the Portuguese actively engaged in a highly profitable trade that shipped slaves from Africa to Europe. In the Americas, it is estimated that the sale of 300,000 humans to plantation owners occurred in the 15th and 16th centuries. By the 18th century, the trade of human beings for weapons and molasses, the latter of which was one of the most valuable products of the Americas, was an economic enterprise with only minimal opposition. In the 19th century, both sides of the Atlantic tried to eradicate slavery. For example, the United States passed the Thirteenth Amendment to abolish slavery after the Civil War. Despite these efforts, the practice of exploiting others for economic gain continued. Before the 1900s, historical records indicate that women and children were sold across international borders, primarily for sexual exploitation.

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The sale, transfer, and exploitation of humans continued during the early 20th century despite a concerted international effort to end such practices. By 1904, the problem had worsened so much that an international convention was held to address the problem. Countries such as Brazil, Denmark, India, Italy, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland signed one of the first international treaties to suppress the trade of human beings. Although this treaty was one of the first international initiatives to address trafficking in humans, it was only intended to suppress the trade of white women. It was not until 1921 that the League of Nations included initiatives to protect non-white women from being sold into slavery. In the following few decades, other international treaties were passed, but all lacked a definite law enforcement plan to combat human trafficking. Today, trafficking of humans is believed to occur on every continent. Due to the clandestine nature of such enterprises, it is difficult to estimate the total number of victims that fall prey to the deceptive and fraudulent practices of traffickers. However, government and nongovernment experts believe that the majority of victims are women; their average age is 20, and they are trafficked primarily for sexual exploitation. Most of these victims are trafficked from countries such as Belarus, Moldova, the Russian Federation, and Ukraine. The primary source countries for the United States are Thailand, China, Mexico, Russia, the Ukraine, and the Czech Republic. Because human trafficking is a lucrative business requiring an elaborate scheme to deceive not only the victim but also law enforcement and other government authorities, it appears that criminal syndicates, including both small and large operations, sell and trade humans in large numbers.

Factors Giving Rise to Human Trafficking Although lax law enforcement and the high profitability of trafficking persons are certainly factors that contribute to the prevalence of this crime, globalization has also increased the sale and enslavement of human beings. Globalization is generally defined in economic terms. It is described as a process of increased interaction, connectivity, and communication around the world and is achieved mainly through deregulation of trading opportunities. However, advances in communication, such as the Internet, and the ease of travel are also factors that contribute to globalization. Because of globalization, or more specifically the ability to trade goods among varying nations around the world, together with the ability to communicate or travel around the world with more ease, crimes are able to be committed on a larger, international scale. Ironically, just as globalization has made it possible to trade legitimate goods and items across oceans, it has also helped the trade of illicit items such as drugs, weapons, and humans. One other possibility for the increased trade of drugs, weapons, and humans is economic marginalization—an effect of globalization. Economic marginalization

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is created when there are economic differences among countries. For instance, some countries reap the benefits of free markets and free trade while others suffer as a result of free trade. Thus, certain countries get richer while some get poorer. For those who live in countries that suffer as a result of globalization, or more specifically from extreme poverty, criminal activity becomes one of only very few options to make a living. After considering the high profit margin for international criminal ventures, individuals may choose to enter the illegal trade of goods. Extreme poverty also means that some people, particularly women and children, become targets of exploitation and are easily deceived into underground markets such as the sale of humans. Economic marginalization or economic disparity has greatly contributed to what sociologists refer to as the feminization of poverty. The feminization of poverty is the result of the dire economic circumstances that most women face, especially in developing countries, when there are a finite number of jobs available. Thus, women become suitable targets for deceptive employment ventures or, at times, become desperate victims willing to take a chance on such purported job opportunities in order to survive. For example, a woman may be deceived into believing that she will take a job as a “club hostess” and wind up enslaved as a prostitute. Apart from economic disparity, another factor that is said to affect human trafficking is political instability. Although globalization has contributed to the rise of transnational crime, so too has political instability. In the early 1990s, the collapse of the Soviet Union following the end of the Cold War stimulated a rise in regional conflict. Although the conflicts were localized in nature, monies needed to support political ideologies as well as the weapons needed to fight the opposition were obtained through transnational crime. The warfare also diverted government attention away from social protection programs, and many citizens, especially women and children, became easy targets for those wishing to engage in the trade of human beings. The collapse of the Soviet Union together with globalization led to a decline in border enforcement that resulted in increased free trade, including the transportation of trafficked victims. Free-trade agreements between nations, such as NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), also helped the movement of people, including those who fall prey to human trafficking. In some West African countries, such as Nigeria and Togo, culture plays an unfortunate role in human trafficking, particularly the trafficking of children. It is not uncommon in these countries for parents to voluntarily consent to send their children to live in the homes of relatives, family members, or third persons, in order to provide them with an opportunity to attend school and/or learn a trade. Because of economic desperation, parents willingly agree to this cultural and historical practice. In some situations, parents facing extreme economic frustration agree to sell their children for a small amount of money. Unfortunately, some of these children become victims of labor exploitation, especially as domestic servants or slaves.

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Although these global factors are important to understanding human trafficking, they only serve to explain the supply side of the criminal enterprise. Because of globalization, political instability, and economic uncertainty, citizens who inhabit countries that do not benefit from the legitimate opportunities of a free-market society become vulnerable to human trafficking. Indeed, most victims of human trafficking originate in countries that suffer from instability. However, as with any business venture, there must be a customer willing to purchase a commodity. Thus, the demand side of human trafficking creates a quite ironic situation. Countries that profit from globalization have the financial ability to support this transnational crime. It should come as no surprise that the United States ranks very high as a destination country for victims of human trafficking. Thus, there is certainly a demand or steady flow of customers to facilitate this crime in the United States.

Is There a Difference between Human Trafficking and Human Smuggling? Human trafficking and human smuggling are terms that are sometimes confused and used interchangeably. Arguably, both involve the movement of people from one locale to another, and such movement of people is generally guided by the prospect of economic gain or the prospect of legitimate employment. Often, both trafficked and smuggled individuals consent to leave their country of origin and both are at risk of being exploited. However, human trafficking, as opposed to smuggling, is different in terms of the means used to move people from one location to another and with respect to the outcome of such movement. It has been said that human trafficking is the dark side of migration. It is essentially coerced or involuntary migration. Thus, the means used to move people from one place to another usually involve force, deception, coercion, or abduction. Another critical difference between human trafficking and human smuggling is the outcome. Victims of human trafficking are moved across borders to be enslaved and exploited. They could be forced to engage in prostitution or work in a variety of occupations, such as domestic service or garment making in sweatshops, against their will. Essentially, human trafficking is human smuggling plus force, deception, coercion, or abduction. It is not human smuggling per se because of the extreme exploitation and enslavement.

Methods Used by Traffickers There are many methods that traffickers use to either gain the initial willing participation or consent of a victim or to forcibly garner such willingness. For example, preying on a victim’s vulnerability, particularly the need to find legitimate employment, traffickers most often place ads in newspapers detailing opportunities to

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work abroad or in another city as either domestic servants (maids), housekeepers, garment workers, models, or a variety of other types of employment. At first appearance, the ads appear genuine—they convey that help is wanted. Even after a person answers the help-wanted ad, no signs of trouble may be present. In fact, the deception may be so fine-tuned that a person does not know of her or his fate until she or he reaches their destination abroad. Vulnerability is an important determinant of human trafficking. Vulnerability may be brought about through extreme poverty, a desire for a better life, or the need to escape a country suffering from political strife. Regardless of which factor contributes to a victim’s vulnerability, traffickers prey on this feeling of helplessness and use it to gain initial compliance. Initial compliance may also be garnered another way. Traffickers often know their soon-to-be victims because a familial or other relationship may exist. Thus, the trafficker, or at least the recruiter, may be a family member, a friend, or an acquaintance of the victim or victim’s family. Once potential victims have been recruited and the promise for a better life has been accepted by such victims, transportation becomes another important step in the human trafficking operation. The process of convincing victims to travel away from their hometowns often involves illegal behavior on the part of the victim. Because of the dire need to find employment, victims often contribute to the illegal enterprise by lying to government authorities about the true nature of their travel and stay in another country. They may for example, lie to authorities to obtain a business or tourist visa as well as a student, fiancée, or entertainer visa. Victims may even agree to accept fraudulent travel documents or visas in order to obtain employment abroad. Although deception and fraud tend to be the most often used methods to convince victims to leave their hometown for employment, the threat of force, and/or abduction are also methods that are used. The movement of persons to a predetermined destination is an essential component of the human trafficking operation. However, the final component is exploitation and enslavement. This final component is achieved after traffickers confiscate victims’ passports, thus preventing a likely escape when victims are no longer free to leave their traffickers’ sight. It is also achieved when victims are forced to labor against their will.

Should Consent Matter? One of the most debatable points in defining situations of human trafficking is whether or not consent should be a factor in determining who should be labeled a victim as opposed to a willing participant in the migratory scheme to move or transport humans across international borders. There seems to be hesitation to treat those who initially consented to leave their countries of origin, especially those who knowingly and willingly consented to work in the sex industry, as victims. This

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hesitation also intensifies when individuals agree to the falsification of travel documents and when they aid others to help them enter a country illegally. There are those in society who may wrestle with this issue, perhaps because of a moral dilemma over prostitution, and this diffusion of victimization has an extensive history within the law enforcement community. Internationally and nationally, law enforcement officials, including immigration officers, often view and treat trafficked persons as willing accomplices to a migratory scheme. Thus, trafficked victims are apprehended and charged with crimes for violating immigration laws. Even after the passage of international and national laws against human trafficking, law enforcement officials are quick to treat trafficked persons as unauthorized entrants and therefore accomplices in their migratory scheme before treating such persons as victims in need of protection. Prostitution, which is one of the most common forms of trafficking, has been and is considered a victimless crime by many in the law enforcement field although many academicians argue otherwise. It is therefore not surprising that law enforcement officials view trafficked persons, especially those in the sex industry, as willing participants and hesitate to label them as victims. The same diffusion of victimization occurs for agricultural workers, some of whom may agree or consent to pay for their unauthorized yet aided migration into a country in which they are not a permanent resident. The law enforcement community, particularly immigration officials, considers illegal migrants to be violators of immigration law. Because they knowingly and willingly consent to violate immigration laws and even pay a smuggler to help them enter a foreign county, immigration officials consider such migrants as accomplices and not victims. It is only after a lengthy investigation that officials come to realize that even those who may have initially consented to be smuggled into a country illegally can eventually be forced into debt bondage or forced to work against their will. The Palermo Protocol as well as U.S. law make consent irrelevant to whether a person should be considered a victim of human trafficking. Accordingly, if a person consents to be smuggled into a country in which she or he is not a legal or permanent resident and, upon reaching the destination of choice is forced to work or labor against her or his will, the initial consensual decision becomes irrelevant. Any smuggled migrant becomes a victim of human trafficking when she or he is forced into employment against her or his will.

Conclusion Trafficking in humans has become one of the most profitable transnational crimes. Its profitability is highly dependent on a steady flow of vulnerable and exploitable persons and a steady flow of customers willing to purchase this commodity. Similar to other economic ventures, human trafficking thrives from the supply of victims

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and the demand for them. Human trafficking is thus significantly affected by global factors, such as economic and political instability, both of which are effects of globalization. Although globalization has certainly helped make the sale of humans a transnational enterprise, human trafficking has an extensive history. Human trafficking flourished despite early and mid-20th century international treaties and laws to eradicate this problem and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in the United States during the 19th century. Today, trafficking in persons has once again captured the attention of the world and has become a high law enforcement priority for the United States. Perhaps it has been prioritized, since the United States is a prime destination country for victims of trafficking. However, the United States, which has a federal law against trafficking, has received criticism about its protection of victims. There are some who believe that the government revictimizes those who have already suffered from being trafficked by making them undergo a certification process and requiring them to prove their innocence. Further Readings Aronowitz, Alexis. “Smuggling and Trafficking Human Beings: The Phenomenon, the Markets That Drive It and the Organizations That Promote It.” European Journal of Policy and Research 9, no. 2 (2001): 163–195. Bales, Kevin. Understanding Global Slavery. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005. Farr, Kathryn. Sex Trafficking: The Global Market in Women and Children. New York: Worth Publishers, 2005. Kandathil, Rosy. “Global Sex Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000: Legislative Responses to the Problem of Modern Slavery.” Michigan Journal of Gender and Law 12 (2005): 87–129. Shelley, Louise. “Post-Communist Transitions and the Illegal Movement of People: Chinese Smuggling and Russian Trafficking in Women.” Cosmopolitan Crossings: Slavic Contacts and East-West Connections 14, no. 2 (2000): 71–85. Sullivan, Barbara. “Feminism and New International Law.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 5, no. 1 (2003): 67–91.


The extent and nature of immigrant involvement in organized crime in contemporary American society is a point of contention. Experts are concerned that immigrant involvement in organized crime is becoming increasingly transnational due to globalization, information technology, and the increased mobility of people, goods, and services across national borders. Transnational crimes such as international drug smuggling and arms sales, financial fraud, identity theft, human trafficking, smuggling of migrants, global money laundering, Internet crime, and the corruption of multinational corporations have become a serious threat. This has impacted not only the social, economic, political, and cultural development of American society, but also societies worldwide. The traditional underworld activities of domestic organized crime groups are being supplemented by the activities of transnational organized crime groups. As a result, there is an ever-growing need for domestic and international police agencies to cooperate in an effort to control transnational crime groups. At issue is whether traditional methods of law enforcement can successfully prevent and control transnational organized crime, or if radical changes are needed to combat this domestic and global threat.

Background The Concept of Organized Crime Defining and understanding the concept of organized crime is no easy task. There is no consensus among government officials, academic researchers, or the law enforcement community as to what activities or groups constitute organized crime, how it is structured, or its principle attributes or characteristics. Debate also centers on whether organized crime should be described solely by its activities or by the groups that are involved in the activities. Another difficulty lies not in the term crime but in the term organized. Society’s members can easily determine if a crime 47

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has been committed, and there are federal and state criminal codes that define crimes and their punishments. However, there is no consensus by society’s members as to when a criminal group is organized. Regardless, crime commissions, federal law enforcement agencies, and academic researchers investigating or studying organized crime have attempted to define it. The following definition of organized crime is based on a consensus of writers over the course of the past 35 years: “Organized crime is a continuing criminal enterprise that rationally works to profit from illicit activities that are often in great public demand. Its continuing existence is maintained through the use of force, threats, monopoly control, and/or the corruption of public officials” (Albanese 2004, 4). The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) uses the terms criminal enterprise and organized crime synonymously. A criminal enterprise is “a group of individuals with an identified hierarchy, or comparable structure, engaged in significant criminal activity” (FBI, Organized Crime-Glossary). However, various federal criminal statutes specifically define the elements of an enterprise that need to be proven in order to charge individuals or groups of individuals under those statutes. According to the FBI, organized crime is defined as “any group having some manner of a formalized structure whose primary objective is to obtain money through illegal activities. Such groups maintain their position through the use of actual or threatened violence, corrupt public officials, graft, or extortion, and generally have a significant impact on the people in their locales, region, or the country as a whole” (FBI, Organized Crime-Glossary). Traditional arguments about how to define and describe organized crime are becoming increasingly complex in the 21st century. Globalization, information technology, and the declining importance of nation-states and national sovereignty have changed organized crime in significant ways. Definitions and descriptions of organized crime must reflect these changes. There is no agreed upon definition of transnational organized crime. The vast number of transnational organized groups and their variation in size, structure, geographical location, culture, language, and activities makes them extremely difficult to define and understand. In 2000, in an effort to better facilitate the prevention and combating of transnational organized crime, an ad hoc committee of United Nations member states signed a document titled the “United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime.” Convention members agreed upon the following definition of transnational organized crime: “a structured group of three or more persons, existing for a period of time and acting in concert with the aim of committing one or more serious crimes or offences established in accordance with this Convention, in order to obtain, directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit” (United Nations 2000). The document further specifies that an offense is transnational if it fits into one of several categories; it is committed in


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more than one state; it is committed in one state but a substantial part of its preparation, planning, direction or control takes place in another state; it is committed in one state but involves an organized criminal group that engages in criminal activities in more than one state; or, it is committed in one state but has substantial effects in another state.

Early Immigrants and Organized Crime Eighteenth-Century Political Machines The roots of organized crime can be traced to the street gangs that formed in urban areas of the United States during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Irish, Italian, Jewish, and Polish immigrants settled primarily in cities in the East and West, including New York and Chicago. Immigrants that settled in these urban communities were fleeing desperate economic conditions, political conditions, and religious persecution in their native countries, or were recruited for employment in this country. They found employment in the most dangerous and tedious jobs and were poorly paid. They resided in slum areas reserved for their own ethnic groups. Their cultures, customs, and religious beliefs were attacked, and they were discriminated against by native-born Americans. Yet, the one thing that native-born Americans coveted from the immigrants was their vote. Thus, political bosses, who exercised power on behalf of immigrant patrons, developed political machines. Immigrants who arrived in the United States needed jobs, and the center of the New York political machine, Tammany Hall, had municipal jobs to hand out to construction workers, street cleaners, police and firemen, and other service jobs. These jobs were available to immigrants as long as they provided patronage to the Irish political boss. Irish immigrants looked to politics for personal gains obtained through their allegiance to the political boss. The relationship between the Irish political boss and his constituents recently made film history in the box office hit The Gangs of New York (2002). Immigrants in Chicago, like New York, also looked to the political machine for personal gain. In Chicago, organized crime can be traced back to the actions of Michael Cassius McDonald during the 1870s. For example, during the 1873 mayoral election, McDonald brought several criminal interest groups that specialized in gambling, liquor, and brothels together into one political organization. McDonald’s leadership united politicians and criminals to form the first known political machine. This political machine established more organizational connections between criminals, but the expression organized crime did not become a part of contemporary parlance until the 1920s and the Prohibition era. It was during this time that academics and newspaper editors began to use this term as a new label for an old phenomenon.

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Despite the historical fact that the Irish were the first organized criminals in both Chicago and New York, public, government, and media attention has focused predominantly on Italian American organized crime and the Mafia since the late 1800s. This was primarily due to an incident in New Orleans in 1890 and significant events during Prohibition. David C. Hennessy, superintendent of the New Orleans police, was murdered on October 15, 1890. Prior to his murder, he had targeted crime in the Italian community, and because of this, many citizens believed that Hennessy was killed by Sicilians. As a result, hundreds of Italians were arrested for the crime. In the end, only nine Italians actually faced trial, and none of the nine defendants was found guilty of any wrongdoing. The American public was outraged at Police Chief Hennessy’s death, and New Orleans residents exacted their own personal revenge when a mob stormed the prison, grabbed 11 Italian prisoners, and lynched them. After this incident, the name Mafia was used more frequently to identify Italian American criminals.

Prohibition The Eighteenth Amendment and the Prohibition Enforcement Act (Volstead Act) went into effect on January 16, 1920. The passage of the Eighteenth Amendment was the culmination of earlier efforts by the antisaloon and antiliquor forces. The legislation prohibited the manufacture, sale, transportation, and import or export of intoxicating liquors. Along with the abolition and nativism movements, the temperance movement emerged back in the 1840s and 1850s. Reformers, responding to the immigrant, urban poor in their midst, believed that temperance legislation would somehow assert the dominance of native-born American Protestant morality. Immigrants were mainly urban, Catholic, and poor. This contrasted sharply with the reformers who were mainly rural, Protestant, and middle class. For immigrants, Prohibition presented a vast number of opportunities to become involved in the illicit liquor trade. Immigrant youth who resided in the urban slums of major U.S. cities were easily recruited into organized gangsterism. Chicago during the 1920s had several well-established bootlegging gangs that were largely, but not entirely, based on ethnicity. Although the leadership of Chicago’s gangland during the 1920s was primarily Italian, Jewish, and Irish, these chieftains were primarily American born or raised. For example, Alphonse Capone’s gang consisted of Italians, Jews, and Irishmen, and Capone was born in Brooklyn, New York. Capone’s gang emerged as the most feared and deadly organization during the bootlegging wars of the 1920s. In sum, Prohibition allowed organized criminals in New York and Chicago to expand beyond those cities “Little Italy” and become nationalized. The wealth Italians accumulated during Prohibition allowed them to venture out into legal and


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illegal markets during and after Prohibition, and propelled them to positions of power and dominance in the underworlds of Chicago and New York. When Prohibition was repealed in 1933, immigrants, especially Italians, were more widely stereotyped as criminals. In New York, the aftermath of the Castellammarese war of 1931 established the “Commission,” and the five Italian American crime families that are still identified with organized crime today—Gambino, Genovese, Lucchese, Bonanno, and Columbo. The “war” was a struggle for Italian domination of organized crime in New York between the Salvatore Maranzano group (old-timers who fled from Benito Mussolini’s persecution of mafiosi in Italy) and the Joseph Masseria group (more Americanized gangsters). In the end, Maranzano was killed and Lucky Luciano emerged as a leader in the Masseria crime family. From the late 1800s, until approximately the mid-1980s, organized crime was synonymous with Italians in the minds of most Americans. After all, most of the media and government attention that organized crime received during this period was directed at Italian Americans and the Mafia. During the 1980s, however, while governmental prosecutions and convictions weakened the five New York crime families, the government also began to recognize that recent immigrants to the United States—Asians, Russians, Jamaicans, and Colombians—were changing the face of organized crime. In the mid-1980s, former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani was the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, and the chief crusader against Italian American organized crime. As an Italian American, Giuliani was offended by how the Mafia tarnished the image of his fellow law-abiding Italian Americans, and he vowed to bring down the mob. His weapon of choice was the little-used Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO statute) drafted in 1970 by the Notre Dame law professor G. Robert Blakely. According to Giuliani, he was reading the book A Man of Honor, written by then mob boss Joseph Bonanno. Giuliani decided that if Bonanno could write about the Commission, then the government could prosecute it, and they did. As a result of the Commission trial in 1986, it was confirmed that the Mafia exists and has members, and that there is a Commission—in other words, an entity that solves disputes and approves of new members. The trial was also significant because it involved the bosses of the five New York City families. As a result of the trial, many of these bosses and their underlings received lengthy prison sentences. The weakening, but certainly not the eradication, of Mafia groups in the 1980s, coupled with the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, the fall of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and the advent of globalization, have enabled criminal organizations to strengthen their operations and expand them worldwide. Clearly the most important development in organized crime in the 21st century is the occurrence of transnational organized crime.

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Russian and Eurasian Organized Crime The terms “Russian organized crime” and “Eurasian organized crime” are used interchangeably. Russian organized crime is also referred to as the Red Mafia, Mafiya, or Russian Mob. Eurasian organized crime is broader and comprises criminal groups that not only operate in Russia, but also operate or have headquarters in former Soviet bloc countries. Such countries include Poland, Hungary, Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, and the Ukraine. Eurasian organized crime has become prominent in the West since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. The collapse of the Soviet economy caused widespread economic upheaval, and businessmen, including many who aligned themselves with organized criminals, vied for control of their nation’s natural resources. Those who were successful sold these resources, such as oil, overseas and invested their profits in offshore bank accounts. Many of these criminals used their proceeds to purchase real estate and businesses in the United States and other Western countries. Eurasian criminals, despite the level of violence they are willing to use to control schemes and settle grievances, are not thugs. Many are highly educated and hold advanced degrees in law and engineering in their home countries. Many were former KGB operatives and are knowledgeable in black market operations. While traditional organized crime groups are often organized hierarchically, Eurasian organized crime is less structured than traditional groups. The scope and nature of Eurasian organized criminal activity is vast and commercial. It includes extortion (for the most part targeting other Eurasians), money laundering, tax and insurance scams, visa violations, falsification of identification papers, stock swindles, computer crime, contract murder, auto theft, narcotics trafficking, burglary, prostitution, and involuntary servitude. They also collaborate with traditional organized crime groups to perpetuate schemes.

Beyond Our Borders: Transnational Organized Crime Technological advances, globalization, and open borders have enabled multinational corporations to prosper. These same forces have allowed criminal organizations worldwide to prosper as well. Transnational crime groups are not subject to the same domestic and host country laws and regulations that legitimate businesses are, and, therefore, these groups may actually have benefited more from globalization than legitimate businesses. Bruce Ohr, chief of the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section, Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), speaking in Fuchu, Tokyo, Japan, discussed the effects of globalization on transnational organized crime. Ohr noted four reasons for the rise of transnational organized crime: (1) the increasing ease


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of transnational communications, (2) the growth of international commerce and international banking transactions, (3) the fall of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and (4) the international traffic in illegal commodities, principally narcotics and undocumented immigrants, to wealthier nations like the United States. The Internet allows criminals to perpetuate fraudulent business schemes and stock market manipulations, run illegal gambling operations, and dispense child pornography around the globe. The growth in international commerce and banking transactions presents ample opportunity for fraud and theft and allows international money launderers to easily hide their illegal income. The political and economic upheavals in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe has resulted in violent competition for control of resources, spawning new crimes in the area of the former Soviet Union and money laundering and other crimes worldwide. Organized criminals, already proficient at domestic trafficking in drugs and humans, have found it easy to expand their operations globally. Certain countries are more susceptible to transnational organized crime than others. Transnational organized crime tends to develop in nations where governments are weak, police are ineffective, and citizens have limited economic opportunities. For instance, lacking economic opportunities in their home countries, many citizens seek work abroad and fall victim to human smuggling and trafficking rings. In order to earn substantially more money than agriculture provides, farmers turn to drug cultivation, heightening the international drug trade. International regions that are vulnerable to transnational organized crime include, but are not limited to, sub-Saharan Africa, the former Soviet Union, Latin America, and the Caribbean. It is difficult to ascertain the extent and nature of transnational organized crime, because it is concealed. However, the U.S. government does complete an International Crime Threat Assessment that gauges various global criminal activities. Based on an assessment report drafted in 2000 by an interagency working group led by the National Security Council (NSC), and other more recent reports, the largest international crime threats, in terms of their potential impact, are (1) smuggling of nuclear materials and technology, (2) drug trafficking, (3) trafficking in persons for forced prostitution or coerced labor, (4) intellectual property crimes, and (5) money laundering.

Weapons of Mass Destruction It is feared that organized criminals will assist terrorists or nation states in acquiring weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The most threatening possibility is that terrorists will develop and use a nuclear bomb. The security of nuclear material in the former Soviet Union has been criticized as lax. In October 2003, officials in international intelligence and law enforcement discovered that Pakistani nuclear

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scientist A. Q. Khan was selling nuclear technology to North Korea, Libya, and other unknown parties.

Drug Trafficking It is estimated that 17,000 Americans die per year because of drug use. Illicit drugs are estimated to impose about $160 billion in social and economic costs and $67 billion in direct costs to the United States annually. Trafficking in cocaine and heroin are most profitable for transnational groups. Source countries of these drugs are in Latin America, Asia, and Europe. Much of the cocaine and heroin supply in the United States comes from Colombia, and much of the heroin supply worldwide comes from Southwest Asia’s Golden Crescent (Afghanistan and Pakistan) and Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle (Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand).

Narco-terrorism Terrorist organizations are increasingly turning to drugs for financing. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) identifies the following four activities as narco-terrorism when these groups are involved: (1) cultivating plants for production of illegal drugs, (2) manufacturing illegal drugs, (3) distributing controlled substances, and (4) taking and laundering money from illegal drug distribution. In the post–September 11 era, the United States has exerted immense pressure on nations to prevent charities from funding terrorists. In order to replace this revenue and the financial support from nations that are now unable or unwilling to support them, terrorist groups have turned to criminal activities to finance their operations. One of the primary activities that terrorists engage in is international drug trafficking, although they are also involved in numerous other activities in order to earn, move, and store money.

Terrorism-Related Crime Some prominent examples of terrorist groups engaged in drug trafficking include the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC), al-Qaeda, and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. For instance, when al-Qaeda was based out of Afghanistan, it was supported by the Taliban regime, which earned a substantial part of its revenue through taxes on opium production and trafficking. More than 70 percent of the world’s opium supply comes from Afghanistan, and Osama bin Laden reportedly advocated opium production as one way to weaken the West. Activities often depend on regional preferences, but terrorists are involved in such crimes as contraband cigarettes, counterfeiting, fraud, kidnapping, and lowlevel criminality. In some cases, organized crime groups and terrorist groups form


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alliances and engage in criminal activities for mutual profit. Partnerships between organized crime and terrorist groups could intensify threats to U.S. security.

Human Trafficking Trafficking in persons, often would-be immigrants, for sexual exploitation or forced labor is one of organized crime’s biggest moneymakers; the FBI estimates that $9.5 billion in annual revenue is generated from this enterprise. People are trafficked into the United States mainly from Southeast Asia and the former Soviet Union. Human smuggling is distinct from human trafficking. In human smuggling, migrants pay a fee to cross international borders. The fear is that human smugglers will assist terrorists in entering the United States and other countries.

Intellectual Property Crime Copyright violations corrupt international trade and cause legitimate businesses to lose revenue. In 2006, it was estimated that counterfeiting costs U.S. business hundreds of billions of dollars per year. China is estimated to produce massive amounts of pirated goods such as DVDs. Last, one of the easiest ways to hide illegal financial gains from organized criminal activities is by investing profits in legitimate financial institutions, preferably in jurisdictions with lax financial regulations and law enforcement.

Eurasian Organized Crime Schemes Fraudulent health care and immigration schemes are common Eurasian organized crime activities. Medical providers move phony accident victims from specialist to specialist. Each participating medical provider submits fraudulent bills to health care providers. Providers of adult day care centers, drug treatment facilities, and medical diagnostic centers have also participated in these schemes. Another form of fraud is to submit false paperwork to authorities that issue visas claiming business sponsorship. Upon arrival, the sponsored individuals join criminal enterprises instead of legitimate business endeavors. Eurasian organized criminals also dispense vast amounts of child pornography over the Internet. Financial fraud and money laundering schemes that originate in Russia are especially difficult to investigate. They require intelligence sharing and cooperation from Russian authorities and many other countries. It is almost impossible to get a clear understanding of the criminal activities linked to this money because often the only part of the crime that takes place in Western jurisdictions is the movement of millions, sometimes billions, of dollars, through Western bank accounts. Failing to successfully track and investigate money that is moved out of Russia means that

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Eurasian organized crime will spread to other sectors of the economy and political life of Western countries.

Need for Interagency and International Cooperation The very nature of transnational crime demands an interorganizational response from law enforcement. Local law enforcement agencies simply do not have the resources or training to adequately respond to these crimes alone. Transnational crime is especially difficult for state and local law enforcement to identify and respond to due to its diverse, highly mobile, and adaptable nature. Nevertheless, local law enforcement patrols city streets and towns daily, has insight into the native born and immigrant communities they serve, has developed strong and close relationships in those communities, and can offer vital street level intelligence to federal agencies investigating transnational crimes. In short, although local law enforcement is not trained to address transnational organized crime, it is certainly positioned to take on this new function. It is essential for state and local law enforcement agencies to work closely with federal agencies in order to respond to transnational crimes as well as to prevent and deter them. Likewise, it is important for federal agencies to cooperate in targeting transnational crime. Within the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are several agencies that coordinate efforts in order to investigate and prosecute transnational crimes. It is also vital for all levels of law enforcement to utilize the assistance of international agencies and organizations to identify and respond to transnational crimes. To that end, the DOJ and DHS have led several efforts to promote international investigation cooperation. For example, through the FBI’s Legal Attaché Program, FBI agents are stationed in more than 50 countries, and they train foreign law enforcement personnel. In return, they receive foreign cooperation in gathering evidence related to transnational crimes. Perhaps the best example of international law enforcement cooperation is the International Police Organization, Interpol, of which the United States is a member. Interpol investigates transnational crime and promotes cooperation among global law enforcement agencies. In each member country a National Central Bureau acts as a point of contact and coordination with the General Secretariat in Lyon, France. The DOJ and the DHS jointly control the U.S. National Central Bureau, which coordinates federal, state, and local law enforcement efforts. Moreover, governments are unable to deal with transnational crime through an exclusive focus on law enforcement or through traditional methods. Nontraditional agencies and approaches include regulatory policies and programs, financial transaction reporting, taxation policies and programs, civil sanctions, foreign policy approaches, and the use of security intelligence agencies.


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Barriers to Cooperation While interagency and international cooperation are essential to combat transnational crimes, there are several reasons why it does not always occur. Because the United States has traditionally focused their anti-organized crime efforts on the American Mafia, they have been unprepared by the sudden rise in transnational organized crime activities. It has not been a common practice in the United States for organized crime investigators and prosecutors to obtain evidence from other countries and to conduct joint investigations with law enforcement officials in other countries. Also, not enough time has been spent on learning about transnational crime groups—their activities, organizations, and ways of conducting business. Some experts believe that Interpol should be given enforcement power, but it is difficult to effectively share information and enforce laws over such a wide spectrum of countries. Research on Asian transnational organized crime and the United States found that a number of law enforcement officials in Taiwan and China were dissatisfied with Interpol and with cooperation from U.S. law enforcement. Interpol was regarded as ineffective, and, with respect to U.S. cooperation, officials felt that their requests for assistance and information were ignored. They also criticized the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty System as involving too much red tape. The DEA has noted that China is an important player in the Asian drug scene and the key to heroin trafficking. The DEA stated that what is needed is more joint investigative training and exchanges of intelligence information between the United States and China. Some experts are of the opinion that agencies are not giving sufficient attention to international crime, given the recent focus on terrorism post–September 11. A more coordinated crime and terror policy is needed. It has been argued that terrorists would be more hesitant to associate themselves with criminal organizations if they believed that such an association would increase their risk of capture. Perhaps they would commit less serious offenses if they were not allied with criminal organizations. Enhanced cooperation between intelligence and law enforcement agencies at all levels, including state and local police departments is necessary. Unfortunately, state and local police agencies are ill equipped to identify and respond to transnational organized crime. The most pressing problems include lack of resources and training, communication problems, and the problem of ineffective collaborations.

Conclusion Transnational organized crime is a growing social problem, but it is not a modern phenomenon—it has always existed. What is new about transnational organized crime is the breadth and extent of activity, and the increasing impact it is having on

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the United States. Globalization of the economy, information technology, and rises in the number and the range of immigrants have impacted transnational organized crime. These trends are likely to continue. Traditional organized crime groups have been joined by a wide array of violent criminal groups that conduct their business according to their own rules. Reminiscent of Italian criminals residing in immigrant communities in the late 1800s, these newer groups are likely to victimize those with similar linguistic, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds as themselves. In this post–September 11 world, the United States must do what it can to keep its businesses and citizens safe from domestic and international threats. Domestic and international intelligence sharing and cooperation among all levels of law enforcement, as well as assistance from private institutions and organizations, is vital in order to combat organized crime. Institutions like Interpol and the United Nations will likely play a more prominent role in combating transnational organized crime in the future. Globalization and high technology has a dark side, called transnational organized crime. Further Readings Abadinsky, Howard. Organized Crime. Belmont, CA: Thompson Higher Education, 2007. Albanese, Jay S. Organized Crime in Our Times. Cincinnati: Anderson Publishing, 2004. Boyce, Joseph N., Dean Brelis, and Jeanne McDowell. “Hitting the Mafia.” Time, September 29, 1986, 14–22. Caliber Associates. State and Local Enforcement Response to Transnational Crime. Washington, DC: U.S Department of Justice, 2005. http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/ grants/209521.pdf. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Organized Crime-Glossary. http://www.fbi.gov/hq/cid/ orgcrime/glossary.htm. Finckenauer, James O., and Ko-lin Chin. Asian Transnational Organized Crime and Its Impact on the United States. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, 2007. Hardouin, Patrick, and Reiner Weichhardt. “Terrorist Fund Raising through Criminal Activities.” Journal of Money Laundering Control 9, no. 3 (2006): 303–308. Lyman, Michael D., and Gary W. Potter. Organized Crime. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, 2007. Ohr, Bruce G. “Effective Methods to Combat Transnational Organized Crime in Criminal Justice Processes.” UNAFEI, paper presentation, 116th International Training Course, Fuchu, Tokyo, Japan, December 2007. http://www.unafei.or.jp/english/pdf/PDF_rms/ no58/58-05.pdf. Reynolds, Marylee. From Gangs to Gangsters: How American Sociology Organized Crime, 1918–1994. Guilderland, NY: Harrow and Heston, 1995. State of New Jersey Commission of Investigation. The Changing Face of Organized Crime in New Jersey: A Status Report. Trenton, NJ: State of New Jersey Commission of Investigation, 2004. http://www.state.nj.us/sci/pdf/ocreport.pdf.


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United Nations. United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2000. http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/crime_cicp_convention.html. Wagley, John R. Transnational Organized Crime: Principal Threats and U.S. Responses. Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, 2006. http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/ natsec/RL3335.pdf.


Sweatshop labor is a global issue connected to international trade and the subcontracting of business by corporations in the United States. A sweatshop underpays its workers and can expose them to hazardous working conditions, opening and then disappearing to avoid official scrutiny. The United States has experienced a long cycle of exporting labor-intensive work abroad to bring higher profits to multinational corporations. The apparel industry is an example of such a downgraded business. Garments, however, are still being made in the United States, often by immigrant subcontractors who run sweatshops connected to major retailers. As a result of the re-emergence of labor law violations in the United States, the antisweatshop movement developed and has pressed for legislation to regulate work, particularly in the fabrication of apparel and shoes, both here and abroad. A major issue is how much transparency multinational corporations will allow consumers regarding their business practices. It has even been argued that sweatshops are a good thing for the most impoverished countries, and that the antisweatshop movement prevents them from integrating into global markets. Deciding on what is a reasonable wage depends on what is considered a reasonable profit— something that business does not want to debate. In the meantime, U.S. immigrants and workers abroad are bringing back the sweatshop.

Background Definition A sweatshop employs workers at low, even subminimum, wages, with few benefits and no job security. At the work site, there is often limited light, unsanitary conditions, and other hazards. National labor laws make it illegal to pay workers subminimum wages, force them to work past 40 hours without overtime, and

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coerce extremely long workweeks. Employers who do not maintain proper working conditions, including the management of hazards and sanitation, violate occupational safety and health standards.

History There have been two historical periods in which sweatshops have flourished—the late 19th and early 20th century, and the late 20th and early 21st century. During the second wave of immigration (1880–1924), immigrant workers, including children, endured appalling working conditions to receive a substandard wage. Criticism of these sweatshops preceded the infamous 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City, in which 148 garment workers died in the building or jumped to their deaths. Immediate legal reform led to changed working conditions, an end to child labor, and increased unionization. The new business cycle of 1990s sweatshops was due to the closing of factories during economic restructuring. Deindustrialization moved manufacturing to less developed countries with bargain worker rates far below the U.S. minimum wage. In the face of a resurgence of immigration, urban factories did not disappear, but reemerged as sweatshops and so-called industrial homework. Since the 1970s, when deindustrialization began, global cities, the preeminent U.S. centers of commerce, became the command centers for a globalizing economy. Both New York City and Los Angeles emerged as central in the international economy. At the same time, immigrants and native-born businesspeople reorganized certain types of manufacturing in global cities, downgrading labor practices to sweatshop standards that had been made illegal during the second decade of the 20th century. These firms became new immigrant sweatshops and kept alive certain types of assembly work, such as in the garment industry. Nevertheless, this trend was not limited to the United States, and occurred in Europe and Japan as well.

Economic Restructuring and Globalization The United States lost labor-intensive manufacturing during economic restructuring, including the fabrication of apparel, toys, and shoes and electronic assembly. Free-trade policies allowed manufacturers to seek laborers, often female workers, in developing countries. This was accomplished through subcontracting. The globalization of labor competition between developed and developing nations created an incentive to move production abroad. The profits for both the subcontractors and the overseas workers were miniscule, but brand name products realized higher profits than ever for industry owners and stockholders. Despite the potential for wealth accumulation, the specific products of labor-intensive industries were often subject

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to unstable demand. For example, the garment industry is subject to fluctuation in consumer taste due to fashion, and many industries simply reduce production in times of economic downturn.

Garment Industry Despite deindustrialization, the garment industry reverted to sweatshops in New York City and Los Angeles. These cities contained immigrant enclaves, communities of immigrants with shared national origin, and immigrant entrepreneurs organized conationals who were from nations with a much lower wage expectation to work in industries such as apparel. Three specific trends caused apparel factories to revert to illegal practices. First, both cheaper labor overseas and automated factories in the Sunbelt (southern and southwestern states) provided stiff price competition. Second, unionized factories closed due to higher wages and benefits. Third, immigrant women in need of an income began working in sweatshops and doing work at home. Later, even the Sunbelt lost jobs to overseas apparel factories. When there are countries with a minimum wage as low as 50 cents an hour, it is hard to keep this work in the United States. Mechanized factories relocated overseas, while less mechanized and immigrant-operated smaller firms employing women stayed in the United States. It is easy for garment sweatshops to evade labor law, because they can easily move if discovered or to evade detection. The apparel industry is particularly spatially mobile because (1) it requires minimal investment; (2) sewing and associated activities are easily taught to less educated and low-skill workers; and (3) high-skill garment production work can be outsourced. Brand name manufacturers were able to use subcontractors who broke up the production process into component assembly operations—like Henry Ford’s automobile assembly line. Several semiskilled workers can do particular tasks repetitively and compensate for a skilled worker capable of making an entire garment, and they can do it faster and more cheaply. New York City and Los Angeles provided an abundant low-wage immigrant labor supply. The U.S. Department of Labor estimated that, as of the late 1990s, more than half of U.S. apparel factories paid subminimum wages and no overtime pay. Sixty percent of firms in New York City and Los Angeles violated labor law. Subcontracting firms were able to do this because they used the so-called nimble fingers of immigrant women. As in developing countries, women are thought to have greater dexterity and an attention to fine detail, which men do not have. Furthermore, women work for a lower wage than men. Another gender-related factor is that many immigrant women grew up in patriarchal societies and are viewed as secondary earners for households. They accept fluctuating employment because their wages supplement a breadwinner or are pooled in a larger household. These wives and

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mothers face gender discrimination, lack of support for educational advancement, and a status of being economically dependent on their husbands. Apparel work is one of their limited choices. The apparel industry was able to cut loose from unionization, like many industrial firms. In New York City, where the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) survives as the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE), even the membership of more than 20,000 Chinese women garment workers gives little bargaining power to improve their wages. In New York’s Chinatown, immigrant entrepreneurs operate a low-skill job machine. The union representatives are organized from the top to the bottom and the everyday workers have little say in protesting labor law violations. Nevertheless, UNITE did organize protests in 1982 and again in the 1990s to protest nonunion labor.

Consumers and Negative Publicity Americans have been very sensitive to the job loss produced by neoliberal economics and such international policies as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Although attention was paid to loss of heavy manufacturing, such as the auto industry from the Rust Belt, the public became aware of the deterioration of working conditions in labor-intensive apparel manufacturing through a series of highly publicized incidents. A major scandal occurred in 1991, when 72 Thai and Filipino immigrants were discovered working in involuntary servitude at an apartment complex in El Monte, California. They were told that they needed to pay off huge smuggling fees, and that some of their money was being sent as remittances to relatives. They were held in a compound surrounded by barbed wire, in unsanitary conditions. When they were freed, it brought attention to the emerging issue of enslavement. In New York City, Empress Fashion withheld $60,000 from workers who, after waiting five months, approached the ILGWU but received no help. The New York attorney general prosecuted the case and got the business owners to plead guilty without providing the wages. One owner was given a two- to six-month misdemeanor jail sentence, while the other was penalized with 50 hours of community service. Television celebrity Kathy Lee Gifford was one of the first labor law violators to be outed in the media. Although her apparel line was sold at Wal-Mart, it was manufactured in overseas sweatshops. This demonstrated that celebrity names and claims that stores sell U.S.-made goods are not a guarantee that a garment, toy, or other good was not made in an overseas sweatshop. One example of corporate evasion occurred in the 1990s, when clothing was subcontracted to compradors (subcontractors) in the U.S. territory of the Malvinas in the South Pacific. This

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Wal-Mart clothing line was technically eligible to be given the “Made in the USA” label because the clothes were manufactured in a U.S. territory.

Labor Laws In the 1990s, the Fair Labor Association was sponsored by the White House Apparel Industry Partnership to check on labor practices in the multibillion dollar clothing industry, both in the United States and internationally. Nike, Reebok, and L. L. Bean joined in an effort to end worker enslavement, child labor, physical or verbal abuse at work, and to cap the workweek at 60 hours. In New York’s Chinatown, the law now limits work to no more than 40 regular hours plus 8 with overtime pay. Despite this law, Chinese members of UNITE were reported to have worked 60-hour weeks without overtime compensation. Nationally, the U.S. Department of Labor works to enforce labor law with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), formerly a part of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS)). In New York, sociological research has identified three problems with labor law enforcement. First, undocumented immigrant workers are often deported before they can testify about legal violations. Second, fear of deportation keeps immigrant workers quiet, and the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 removed any motive for testifying because it requires deportation. Finally, neither the federal government nor the New York State government hires enough labor inspectors to check for violations. After the creation of the Fair Labor Association, the New York State Apparel Industry Task Force consisted of only five inspectors. When a violation is reported, the employer is often sent to an educational seminar on labor rights rather than being required to pay a fine.

Antisweatshop Movement Increasingly, anticorporate protests have focused on corporate actions abroad. College logo clothing is big business at campus bookstores. The Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) and United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) have protested human rights and labor law violations connected to this billion dollar industry. These consumer groups are found to be more influential than the Fair Labor Association. They are not controlled or influenced by multinational corporations and can freely protest abuse.

Transparency in Business Conduct To maintain ethical business practice under the scrutiny of the state and nation, it is necessary to have a concept of joint moral and legal accountability for both

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subcontractors and corporations. In other words, the corporation should show a legal awareness of the subcontractor’s operating methods. This corporate oversight of subcontracting is known as transparency. It is vital to have legal and moral accountability to end worker exploitation. The antisweatshop movement is comprised of university students, consumers, corporate shareholders, and multinational employees. Specific not-for-profit organizations involved in this movement include USAS, Sweatfree Communities, Playfair2008.org, and the National Mobilization Against Sweatshops. Governor Gray Davis and the California state legislature passed a series of bills in 2000 that authorized $73 million in back pay to workers whose wages were withheld and increased the monitoring and enforcement of U.S. labor laws. Manufacturers, subcontractors, and retailers were given mutual legal responsibility to guarantee that workers are paid at minimum wage or higher with overtime pay under the California Sweatshop Reform Bill. Retailers such as Sears, The Gap, and other clothing stores protested that they should be exempt, and threatened to remove their businesses from California.

Global Antisweatshop Movement The antisweatshop movement in the United States succeeded in at least lowering the profile of companies using sweat methods. As a result, the movement now concentrates on worker exploitation overseas. For example, the Xin Yie Plastics factory in China manufactures Barbie dolls sold in the United States at a 233 percent markup. Its workers are paid 53 cents an hour for 14-hour days. Speedo, another U.S. brand name, is sold at Toys-R-Us. Overseas, Speedo contractors have severe production quotas, shifts longer than 23 hours, and miserable worker living conditions, and are paid below minimum wage. Even Victoria’s Secret lingerie, by outsourcing, utilizes factories in Jordan with guest workers who temporarily come to the country. These workers must sew a bikini in 3.3 minutes for 4 cents, which the store then sells for $14. As a result, the current debate concerns the exploitation of overseas workers and the expansion of the antisweatshop movement to activities abroad. There are business pundits who believe that shifting labor-intensive industries to extremely poor developing countries is a positive form of economic development. They see today’s overseas workers as the seed of a middle class, despite the extremely low wages and in-country profits of sweatshops. Probusiness advocates have spoken out against the antisweatshop movement practice of embarrassing multinational corporations that outsource work to employers that make their employees work in abysmal conditions. They believe that this will cause multinational corporations to avoid investing in the poorest world regions, because these are liable to have the worst labor abuses.

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Africa is desperately in need of foreign investment, but it offers many barriers to investment, including bureaucratic complexity, governmental instability, and corruption. The inexperience of its workers combines with a need for electricity and port expansion. The antisweatshop movement has been criticized for outing multinational corporations subcontracting in countries with abusive labor practices and/or poor production standards. Nike and other companies targeted for using cheap international labor tend not to start labor-intensive factories in the most impoverished countries. Media scrutiny causes U.S.-based companies to contract to mid-level countries like Indonesia and Malaysia rather than extremely poor African countries. In China, which has produced its share of embarrassments, such as prison labor, toxic toys, and dog or cat food that kills pets, the most patronized province is Guangdong, China’s most prosperous. Those who lose out are the world’s most impoverished people. In response to antisweatshop campaigns that call for a “living wage,” it is argued that this will remove the possibility of profit after investment. In addition, in countries with better wages, it is considered that corrupt managers force workers to pay bribes to get the jobs. As a result, it has been suggested that there should be a campaign to bring sweatshops to the poorest countries. USAS promotes the Designated Suppliers Program (DSP) on 28 college campuses to maintain multinationally contracted jobs in Africa and impoverished countries. Union organizing is occurring in Nairobi, Kenya, Bangladesh, and other countries, and USAS wants to prevent multinational corporations from chasing ever-cheaper labor. Continual outsourcing to maximize world labor competition undermines the economic stability needed to generate a middle class. USAS gives the example of BJ&B, a Nike-affiliated factory that unionized and, consequently, lost work to nonunion factories. A DSP at schools selling college logo items is an attempt to stop so-called cut and run. The DSP attempts to make Nike, Adidas, and other multinationals pay a living wage to overseas workers. Workers from impoverished countries want more than jobs—they want a voice, dignity, and reasonable pay that would turn their factories into sustainable workplaces to promote longterm economic growth.

Pending U.S. Legislation In 2007, the Decent Working Conditions and Fair Competition Act (H.R. 1992) was introduced in the House of Representatives by Byron Dorgan (D–North Dakota), Lindsey Graham (R–South Carolina), and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). This act aims to protect U.S. businesses from international competition by revising the Tariff Act of 1930, which prohibited importing goods made by convicts. It would make importing, exporting, trading, advertising, or selling sweatshop goods illegal. Many

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countries produce consumer goods in violation of their own or International Labor Organization (ILO) law. This act names the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) as the enforcement arm for dealing with complaints about foreign factory exploitation of workers. It permits civil actions in U.S. district courts against sellers of sweatshop goods, and prohibits the armed forces and federal agencies from signing contracts for sweatshop goods. Violations would carry a $10,000 civil penalty, and other fines or penalties imposed by the Department of Homeland Security FTC Customs and Border Protection, which would identify goods and enforce penalties. This bill would give U.S. companies the right to sue competitors selling sweatshop goods in U.S. courts.

Conclusion The use of overseas labor for a majority of production in industries such as apparel has depressed wages and working conditions in the remaining U.S. apparel factories and other labor-intensive industries, a situation exploited by contractors utilizing immigrant labor. Since U.S.-based multinational corporations are involved in producing for U.S. consumers, attempts at establishing a subsistence wage and humane working conditions have targeted the inspection of overseas subcontracting firms, as well as trying to enforce U.S. labor law. Consumer boycotts of brand labels known to utilize sweatshop labor is a practice meant to bring positive global change in working conditions both internationally and in the United States. Nevertheless, some argue that any industry, even sweatshops, in the poorest countries is better than nothing. These types of arguments imply disengagement among the world’s workers internationally, both in global impoverished regions and between impoverished and wealthier regions. Americans will have to decide what they are willing to pay for goods in order to stabilize world pricing; this would include taking a look at the extent of multinational profits. Until the ability to follow the money from the elite to the hands of the workers is thoroughly examined, or transparent, businesses will complain and the antisweatshop movement will continue both in the United States and abroad. Further Readings Conacich, E., and R. P. Applebaum. Behind the Label: Inequality in the Los Angeles Garment Industry. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Foo, L. J., and J. A. Su. “Let the Sweatshops Reform Law Work: Garment Workers Have a Right to Minimum Wages and Overtime. Don’t Allow Big Business to Circumvent That.” Los Angeles Times, April 7, 2000, B9. Houghteling, C. “Sweat and Tears.” Harvard International Review 21, no. 4 (1999): 10–12. Howard, A. “Labor, History and Sweatshops in the New Global Economy.” In No Sweat: Fashion, Free Trade and the Rights of Garment Workers, ed. A. Ross. London: Verso, 1997.

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Korfhage, A. “Christmas—A Time to Zap Sweatshops.” Topeka Capital-Journal Online, December 14, 2007. Kristoff, N. D. “Op-Ed: Debating on Sweatshops,” New York Times, June 10, 2006b, http:// kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2006/06/10. Kristoff, N. D. “Op-Ed: In Praise of the Maligned Sweatshop.” New York Times, June 6, 2006a, http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2006/06/6. Kwong, P. Forbidden Workers: Illegal Chinese Immigrants and American Labor. New York: New Press, 1997. LaFeber, W. Michael Jordan and the New Global Capitalism. New York: Norton, 1999. Lee, F. R. “Working Overtime to Vanquish Sweatshops.” New York Times, December 12, 1999, Section 14, CY, 1:1. Lin, J. Reconstructing Chinatown: Ethnic Enclave, Global Change. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998. Ross, A., ed. No Sweat: Fashion, Free Trade and the Rights of Garment Workers. London: Verso, 1997. Sassen, S. The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991. Sassen, S. The Mobility of Labor and Capital: A Study in International Investment and Labor Flow. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Schoenberger, K. Levi’s Children: Coming to Terms with Human Rights in the Global Marketplace. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000. Stein, L. The Triangle Fire. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001. Su, J. “El Monte Thai Garment Workers: Slave Sweatshops.” In No Sweat: Fashion, Free Trade and the Rights of Garment Workers, ed. A. Ross. London: Verso, 1997. 143–149. Waldinger, R. Still the Promised City? African Americans and New Immigrants in PostIndustrial New York. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996. Warner, J. “Sweatshops.” In Immigration in America Today: An Encyclopedia, ed. J. Loucky, J. Armstrong, and L. Estrada. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006. 320–324. Washington Watch. H.R. 1992, The Decent Working Conditions and Fair Competition Act. http://www.washingtonwatch.com/bills/show/200504802.html. White, H. “Disturbing Trends in Global Production.” USA Today 128, no. 2660 (2000): 26–28. Zhou, M. Chinatown: The Socioeconomic Potential of an Urban Enclave. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992.

Entries, A–N

A school, the students decided that they had to do something to honor their fallen friend and do their part to combat child servitude. Since Masih’s father had allegedly received $12 in compensation from the owners of the Pakistani carpet mill where he voluntarily enslaved his own child as a bonded laborer, the students at Broad Meadows Middle School decided that a $12 donation would be a symbolic fitting tribute by those who wanted to honor Iqbal Masih’s memory. Sadly, the fee also represented a dollar for each year of his young life. Although the project started locally in Quincy, news about the fund-raising campaign quickly spread throughout the greater-Boston area and eventually the nation. Television and newspaper articles carried the story about building a school in Iqbal Masih’s memory and donations began to arrive from across the United States. The story of Masih’s experience even inspired the television documentary The Global Sweatshop that aired on public television and educated millions about the plight of enslaved children in the contemporary world. High-powered friends—politicians, Hollywood celebrities, sports figures, and musicians—began to lend their support and their voices to the “A School

“A School For Iqbal” Campaign “A School for Iqbal” was a grassroots campaign organized by middleschool students in Massachusetts to raise $50,000 so that a school could be built in Muridke, Pakistan. The project was designed to honor the memory and the powerful legacy of Iqbal Masih, a 12-year-old child who became an outspoken critic of the system of bonded labor that had stolen half of his life in the carpet mills of Pakistan. Masih was murdered in his village while riding his bicycle on April 16, 1995. Masih had traveled to the United States in December 1994 to accept the Reebok Foundation’s Youth in Action Award and a prize of $25,000 in appreciation of the work that he had done to expose the problems associated with child servitude that persisted at the end of the 20th century. During his visit to Boston, Masih had an opportunity on December 2 to visit the Broad Meadows Middle School in Quincy, Massachusetts, where he spoke to seventh-grade students in Ron Adams’s classroom. The American youth who heard Masih’s story were spellbound by the powerful testimony that he shared with them. When they learned of his death only four months after his visit to their 71

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“A School For Iqbal” Campaign

Iqbal Masih sits against a backdrop of carpets. Iqbal spent his early life as a bonded laborer in a carpet mill in Pakistan. (AP/ Wide World Photos)

for Iqbal” project. In addition, Al Shanker, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, wrote an editorial supporting the fund-raising project and urging schools across the United States to join the effort. Patricia Kluge, the former wife of New York billionaire John Kluge, announced that she would guarantee that the fund-raising goal of the students in Quincy would be met. Building a school was an appropriate action to honor a heroic child who spoke to the world about the horrors of bonded labor. Antislavery advocates agree that education is the most powerful tool available to combat the scourge of child servitude. Educated children have a greater degree of protection, and they can be taught their rights so that

efforts to enslave them would likely be less successful. In addition, special schools and training are needed to help reassimilate the formerly enslaved as they try to readjust to a world of freedom and try to rediscover their stolen childhoods. This is a difficult task, but it is necessary to heal the wounded body and spirit of the victims of child slavery. In less than one year the student-based grassroots project raised $100,000 to construct a school in Pakistan. The students who organized the campaign investigated the best means to pursue their goal in Pakistan. They selected a nongovernmental organization called Sudhaar to ally with them in creating a school in Kasur, Pakistan, where former victims of child servitude are today educated and protected. The success of the campaign demonstrated that people of good will and of financial means could be motivated, once educated, to help eradicate the problem of child servitude from the contemporary world. The creation of one school certainly does not end the peril of bonded labor for many of the world’s children, but this success story does indicate that alternatives to enslaving children can exist if people are moved to action. Junius P. Rodriguez See also: Bonded Labour Liberation Front; Broad Meadows Middle School.

Further Readings “A School for Iqbal.” NEA Today 14, no. 4 (1995): 23.

‘Abd | 73 Fairs, Marcus. “A Bullet Cannot Kill a Dream.” Current Magazine (May/June 1998): 24–25. Nifong, Christina. “Students Honor a Friend’s Memory with a New School.” Christian Science Monitor, June 22, 1995.

‘Abd The Arabic word ‘abd (plural ‘abeed or ‘abid) is an indistinct term meaning slave, serf, bondsman, or servant. It is derived from the root ‘abada, which means, in various forms, to serve, worship, adore, venerate, subjugate, or enslave. It appears in the Arabic name Abdullah (slave of God), and in several other male names that are linked to 1 of the 99 names for God, for example, Abdel Rahman (Slave of the Compassionate), Abdel Rahim (Slave of the Merciful), and Abdel Aziz (Slave of the High). As such, the term represents an expression of parental devotion in Islam. Yet, in some places where the Arab world intersects with sub-Saharan Africa, ‘abd has clear historical and contemporary connotations of forced labor, humiliating abuse, and racial distinction. In Sudan, northern Arabic-speaking Muslims use ‘abeed as a derogatory term to refer to the nonMuslim black Africans who live in the southern region of the country. Since the 1960s, this ethnic and religious division has provoked two extended periods of civil war and numerous human rights violations, including the reemergence of slavery.

In Mauritania, ‘abd has also traditionally been used to denote black slaves by the Arab, Berber-descended Beydanes, also known as the Moors. Although Mauritania has officially but ineffectively abolished slavery several times, successive regimes have tried to convey the impression that slavery has ended and the term ‘abd has been dropped from official use. Instead, approximately one-third of the population is referred to as Haratines or Black Moors. This group remains economically, politically, and culturally tied to its former masters. In urban areas along the Atlantic coast and in southern Mauritania, such euphemisms as pupils, domestics, les Bleus (blues), and les Sudanais (Sudanese—which is derived from the Arabic word aswad, meaning “black”) are used to describe unpaid forced laborers. Beyond the cities, particularly in the east, the use of ‘abd with its traditional racial connotations remains common. Given the broad nature and meaning of the term ‘abd, supporters of successive Sudanese and Mauritanian regimes have argued that slaves in their countries are really servants. Yet, despite these semantic arguments, the United Nations, several governments, and many human rights organizations have condemned both countries for allowing slavery, as defined in international law, to continue. Randall Fegley

See also: Haratine; Mauritania; Sudan and South Sudan.

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Further Readings Cotton, Samuel. Silent Terror: A Journey into Contemporary African Slavery. New York: Harlem River Press, 1998. Cowan, J. M., ed. The Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Arabic. Urbana, IL: Spoken Language Services, 1994. Fluehr-Lobban, Carolyn. “A Critical Anthropological Review of Race in the Nile Valley.” In Race and Identity in the Nile Valley, ed. Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban and Kharyssa Rhodes. Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 2004. Human Rights Watch. Mauritania’s Campaign of Terror. New York: Human Rights Watch, 1994.

Abolition of Slavery Act (1833) Slavery throughout the British Empire was permanently abolished on July 31, 1833, when Parliament enacted the Abolition Act of 1833. The culmination of decades of struggle by British abolitionists and rebellious slaves, passage of the act helped transform the sugar plantation economy in the British Caribbean and was a key step in the abolition of slavery elsewhere in the Americas. In 1831, the newly elected Whig government conceded to abolitionist pressure by freeing slaves who belonged to the Crown, but in April 1831, a motion put forth by Thomas Fowell Buxton, the abolitionist Parliament leader, to consider general emancipation was stymied by governmental indifference. The movement toward emancipation was accelerated by the Jamaican slave

revolt of December 1831, the so-called “Baptist War” or “Christmas Rebellion,” and its bloody suppression by Jamaica’s planter-dominated government. Some Caribbean planters used the revolt as an excuse to press for a halt to the abolitionist campaign, but British antislavery forces responded instead by blaming the revolt on planter exploitation, and pressing for immediate emancipation. The Whigs’ Great Reform Bill of 1832, which made the House of Commons more representative of the middle class and the new industrial towns, also decreased the Parliamentary power of the West Indies planter lobby. In the general election following the bill’s passage, antislavery campaigners vigorously pressed the abolitionist cause, distributing pamphlets and placards, and breaking up proslavery meetings. Newly formed constituency groups required Parliamentary candidates to pledge to oppose slavery. The new Parliament, meeting in 1833, received antislavery petitions that contained more than a million and a half signatures. The Whig government, although viewing emancipation as necessary and desirable, wanted to safeguard the economic interests of the planters as much as possible. The government-written King’s Speech at the opening of Parliament on February 15, 1833, contained no reference to emancipation. Outraged by the omission, Buxton informed Whig leaders that he intended to bring forward another emancipation bill, but the government persuaded him

Abolition of Slavery Act

to withdraw his proposal by promising to bring in its own measure. However, in March 1833, Buxton again threatened to introduce an antislavery motion in order to further prod the government. The new colonial secretary, Edward George Geoffrey Smith Stanley, published a moderate plan for emancipation in the London Times on May 11, 1833. Three days later, Parliament began to debate the question. The government attempted to balance between the popular consensus for abolition and the planters’ demands. They proposed to provide the planters with a loan of £15 million as compensation for their lost property in slaves. According to the government’s proposal, the newly freed slaves would be required to work for their former owners as “apprentices” for 12 years, for three-fourths of their working hours. Slaves under the age of six would be immediately freed. The apprenticeship system, supported by the planters, had two main purposes—to ensure continuing social control over blacks and to keep a steady labor force on the sugar plantations. The plan was unacceptable to most Parliamentary abolitionists, who viewed it as a continuation of slavery under another name. Negotiations produced a compromise. The period of apprenticeship was reduced to four years for domestic slaves and six for fieldworkers, and the apprenticeships were to be overseen by salaried magistrates sent from Britain rather than local justices of the peace, usually drawn from the planter class. In exchange for these

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modifications, compensation for planters was increased to 20 million pounds and was converted from a loan to an outright grant. Although some abolitionists were appalled by apprenticeships and compensation for the planters, the Parliamentary leadership agreed to these provisions and passed the bill. After it received minor amendments in the House of Lords, the bill passed the Commons, July 31, 1833. Actual emancipation would take effect at midnight on July 31, 1834. Although it was still necessary to obtain the consent of local legislatures in those colonies that possessed them, this was secured by making the promised payment of compensation contingent on the local legislature’s passing an emancipation act. Despite the fears of many planters, emancipation itself was effected without violence. Due to the establishment of the apprenticeship system, British Caribbean slaves did not become completely free. In practice, many of the new magistrates assigned to supervise the apprenticeships proved to be more sympathetic to the planters than to the freed slaves. After much pressure by British abolitionists, the remaining apprenticeships were abolished in 1838, and ex-slaves became free laborers. In many areas, they became poor but independent peasants, and were replaced as plantation laborers by people from India who worked under harsh contracts. William Earl Burns See also: Abolitionism, British; Buxton, Thomas Fowell.

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Abolitionism

Further Readings Craton, Michael. Sinews of Empire: A Short History of British Slavery. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1974. Kriegel, Abraham. “A Converging of Ethics: Saints and Whigs in British Antislavery.” Journal of British Studies 26 (1987): 423–450. Newbould, Ian. Whiggery and Reform, 1830–1841: The Politics of Government. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990. Temperley, Howard. British Antislavery, 1833–1870. New York: Longman, 1972.

Abolitionism The intent and effort to eradicate slavery in the transatlantic world first developed during the late 18th and early 19th centuries in both Great Britain and the United States. In 1688, a small Quaker sect in Germantown, Pennsylvania, called to end slavery. They were ignored, as was the Mid-Atlantic States’ petition to the new U.S. Congress in 1794. Prior to the American Revolution, slaves existed in the northern colonies, but before 1827 more than three-quarters of the antislavery societies in the United States were located in the South. Early religious leaders declared that slavery should be abolished, and southerners James G. Birney, Cassius M. Clay, and John Rankin, all proposed gradual abolition. But as the Industrial Revolution created socially, morally, and economically disparate objectives, the southern emancipation effort ebbed. In the North organizing increased in the 1830s,

as men like William Lloyd Garrison, Henry Ward Beecher, and Wendell Phillips, called for immediate cessation to slavery. Ironically, the efforts of early abolitionists to discuss slavery met a palpable political avoidance of slavery. Indeed, violent mobs agitated during meetings and destroyed printing presses; tragically, one murdered an Illinois editor, Elijah Lovejoy. Many reasons existed for such a backlash. Economic issues underpinned the agricultural South, which depended upon slave labor for harvesting its crops and the financial investment of the North. Also, contending with waves of newly arriving immigrants, northerners were wary of the competition for jobs, including a flood of black workers from the South if slavery was abolished. From the beginning, abolitionists like Garrison and Phillips used their presses and their voices to argue against slavery. Inspired, various state antislavery societies and the American Anti-Slavery Society (1833) drew attention to the peculiar problem of slavery and the apparent willingness of the American people to tolerate millions of humans being treated as lesser beings. Fueled by the dual fires of the Industrial Revolution and the evangelism of the Second Great Awakening, the abolition movement gained strength and volume. Religious and temperance leaders and suffragists fused with abolitionists. Although, as the variety of participants indicated, not everyone agreed on the ways in which to abolish slavery. Some, like Garrison, believed

Abolitionism

“moral suasion” could convince the South to end slavery. Others believed that nothing short of bloodshed would change America’s dangerous pact with slaveholders and purveyors. Reflecting this, in 1829, David Walker, a free black in Boston, published his Appeal, which called for slaves to rise up against their owners. Accordingly, in 1831, the fervently religious slave Nat Turner led a failed revolt in Virginia, which resulted in a renewed southern fear that the black population would rise up in violence against them, and strident efforts to contain slaves were undertaken. Southern ministers, politicians, and editors waxed poetic on a slaveholding society. But in the North, evangelical and abolitionist leaders took their case to the public too, through orations, newspapers, and literature. In December 1833, in Philadelphia, 60 male and female delegates, both black and white, formed the American Anti-Slavery Society, calling for an immediate end to slavery through nonviolent means. By 1835, there were hundreds of branches in northern states and high participation by women, including southern aristocrat Angelina Grimké. But violence often checked the advance of the abolitionists. By the mid-1840s, fissures tore at the movement, and black abolitionists, both free and former and/or fugitive slaves, began to rise in prominence. Charles Remond, Henry Highland Garnet, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and Harriet Tubman led the way for reformers and radicals alike to take part in the fight for freedom for the southern

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black population. Unfortunately, black abolitionists were often treated as second class in their own efforts to end slavery. The movement changed the social landscape. While abolitionism splintered Christian churches in the United States, resulting in the emergence of divided communions within the Methodists (1844) and Baptists (1845). Oberlin and Knox colleges began as the first racially integrated schools of higher education. Theories and approaches also fractured the movement. For instance, Douglass and Garrison disagreed as to whether the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution made it a proslavery document. Douglass ultimately decided the Preamble strongly was antislavery. Further, Douglass called for blacks to

The American Anti-Slavery Society convened in 1833 and drew up a manifesto denouncing slavery. (Library of Congress)

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Abolitionism, British

be given the right to vote, and even supported the notion that the violent overthrow of the slave system was tolerable. Northerners and westerners resented federal intrusion inherent in the Fugitive Slave Act (1850), which stated that any slave was to be returned to its owner, and many states refused to assist. The poetry of Quaker John Greenleaf Whittier, the powerful novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, and other publications incited mobs. And the Underground Railroad, a system organized and run primarily by blacks, designed to smuggle slaves northward to Canada, found few southern allies. Abolitionists encouraged Americans to sever their economic ties to the South, to political parties that allowed slavery, to churches that condoned it, and questioned whether the U.S. Constitution needed to be amended. In response, single issue political parties such as the Liberty Party (1840) and the Free Soil Party (1848) argued there should be no slaves in the District of Columbia, and no expansion of slavery into existing states or newly acquired territories. These parties were not rooted in the idea of racial equality, but its members were unwilling to uphold political and economic systems wherein slavery would be allowed to endanger free labor. The Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) further inflamed the passions of the North, and helped lead to the formation of the Republican Party. At the Republican Convention of 1860, the Chicago “bargain” centered its platform

on protection of free laborers and the abolishment of slavery, paving the path to victory for Abraham Lincoln and the inevitable road toward the U.S. Civil War. Many abolition leaders delighted when Lincoln’s inauguration was met by southern secession of slaveholding states. After four long, bloody years of war, abolition of slavery was achieved in 1865 with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. But it would not be until passage of the Fifteenth Amendment (1870) that the abolitionist movement would rest. Sally Hilgendorff See also: Garrison, William Lloyd; Lincoln, Abraham; Underground Railroad.

Further Readings McKivigan, John R. Abolitionism and American Religion. New York: Garland, 1999. Quarles, Benjamin. Black Abolitionists. New York: Oxford University Press, 1969. Taylor, Clare. British and American Abolitionists: An Episode in Transatlantic Understanding. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1974. Stewart, James Brewer. Holy Warriors: The Abolitionists and American Slavery. New York: Hill and Wang, 1996.

Abolitionism, British The role of the United Kingdom in the abolition of both the slave trade and slavery during the 19th century was extensive. From the late 18th century, Britain


progressively turned against slave trading and then against the very practice of slavery itself. A change in opinion by the British people transformed Britain from being the biggest Atlantic slave trader into actively pursuing a multifaceted antislavery policing operation within the Atlantic Basin. This involved a plethora of instruments, including international anti–slave trading treaties, diplomatic pressure, leading by example, and military intervention. By the late 19th century, both the slave trade and the practice of slavery had not only been suppressed in the Atlantic but also banned in all advanced countries. By 1807, the British had already exported approximately 3,120,000 people into bondage. Merchants from the wealthy ports of Liverpool and Bristol operated an extensive chain of slave installations along Africa’s Atlantic coast, where goods were taken and exchanged for slaves, which were then shipped across the notorious Middle Passage to the Americas. The trade was extremely lucrative; for some traders, profits could reach in excess of 100 percent. One of the principal uses for slaves was in the labor-intensive sugar trade—in the Caribbean and in Louisiana in southern North America—that enabled Britain to dominate the sugar trade. By 1805, the nation was accounting for approximately 55 percent of world sugar production, a figure that was still rising. The economic incentives for the continuance of slavery were enormous, but these were further reinforced by various social incentives. As slave trading could generate rapid

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wealth, it was also a path to respectability in the class-ridden society of the late 18th century. However, hostility toward slavery had been growing in Britain within certain humanitarian and religious circles since the mid-18th century. These groups believed the trade corrupted all aspects of social and economic life within the British Empire and beyond. By the 1770s, the antislavery movement had gained momentum and was further reinforced by the decision of Lord Mansfield in the Somerset case of 1772, which decreed that any slave who set foot within the United Kingdom was immediately a free citizen. Real progress commenced, however, when two leading antislavery campaigners, Zachary Macaulay and William Wilberforce, started to mobilize grassroots movements to end the trade in slaves. Along with other abolitionists, such as Granville Sharpe, they came to be known as the Clapham Sect and operated with evangelical fervor. Pressured by their work, the Houses of Parliament passed An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1807. From this moment, slave trading was illegal throughout the British Empire. Nevertheless, the abolitionists were still not content. By 1814, 806 antislavery petitions, signed by 750,000 people, were sent to Parliament. This next thrust formed part of the antislavery movement, and the Anti-Slavery Society was founded in 1823 to campaign for the outlawing of slavery itself. In 1833, this was finally achieved with the passing of the Slavery Abolition Act, although a period

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of apprenticeship was introduced for slaves between 1834 and 1838. Neither the slave trade nor slavery would be eliminated by two mere acts passed by the British government. Those engaged in the trade would need to be actively pursued. As Adam Hochschild has pointed out, “The Atlantic slave trade depended on the fact that most of the societies of Africa— chiefdoms, kingdoms large and small, even groups of nomads—had their own systems of slavery” (p. 16). Further, many European nations and Middle Eastern merchants were engaged in the trade. It was truly systemic, and most of those societies showed few signs of abolishing either the slave trade or the practice of slavery. The abolitionists believed that slavery had to be proactively stopped and wanted to use all the available instruments of the British state to achieve their goal. As Lord Castlereagh, then foreign secretary, wrote of the abolitionist movement in 1814: “The whole nation is bent upon this project. I believe that there is hardly a village which has not met and petitioned upon it. Both houses of Parliament are pledged to press it and ministers must make it the basis of their policy” (Johnson, p. 328). The British had been in pursuit of slave traders since the 1807 act. In order to stamp out the trade, the Royal Navy’s power was used in an attempt to sweep the African and American seas of slave ships. This resulted in the dispatch of the British West Africa Squadron, a pioneer of gunboat diplomacy, to arrest recalcitrant traders

engaging in the slave trade from ports within British territory. This was how the operation started, but the British found it increasingly difficult. At first they used their dominance—especially after the defeat of France in 1815—to entice and pressure other European nations into signing treaties that enabled the mutual searching of suspected slave ships in international waters. Such treaties were not very successful, however, as many nations turned a blind eye to the trade in practice. Some even attempted to cash in on the trade that Britain sought to end. British sugar production had fallen by 25 percent in the 35 years since 1807 and would account for only 15 percent of the world total by 1850 (a drop of 40 percent since 1807), whereas sugar production increased in rival (slave-based) economies by 210 percent. There was now an economic as well as a moral stimulus for the enforcement of the ban. Britain could not allow its economic competitors to benefit from a trade it had itself abandoned. The British, therefore, became considerably more aggressive. The Houses of Parliament authorized the unilateral searching of intransigent nations’ ships, with or without their consent. It was decreed that slave traders were to be treated like pirates, meaning that they could face the death penalty. The slave traders were also to be rooted out at the source. Slave installations in Africa were bombarded and burned and local chiefs were forced into signing treaties that demanded that they prevent, or arrest, traders operating within their kingdoms. In 1850 the prime minister,

Abolitionism and Prostitution

Lord Palmerston, went further still and sent Her Majesty’s gunboats into an undeclared war against Brazil, which eventually forced the Brazilian government into banning the trade altogether. Lord Palmerston then turned his attention toward the similar trade operating between Africa and the Middle East. In all, the British intercepted 1,635 slave ships, liberated more than 150,000 slaves at sea, and had reduced the trade by approximately 80 percent by the middle of the 19th century. The suppressing of the slave trade has been estimated as costing the British almost 2 percent of their economic output over 60 years; furthermore, at the height of the operation, about one-third of the Royal Navy’s military assets were involved. With the Union’s victory in the U.S. Civil War and unrelenting British pressure elsewhere, the slave trade between Africa and the Americas would eventually cease as a sizable organized practice, which would lead to considerable economic restructuring on either side of the Atlantic. Further, the Royal Navy’s mapping and exploration of the African coast during the antislavery operations helped to pave the way for the opening of Africa to European penetration during the New Imperialism in the latter 19th century. James Rogers See also: Abolitionism; Wilberforce, William.

Further Readings Eltis, David. Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

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New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Hochschild, Adam. Bury the Chains: The British Struggle to Abolish Slavery. London: Macmillan, 2005. Hyam, Ronald. Britain’s Imperial Century, 1815–1914. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1993. Johnson, Paul. The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815–1830. London: Phoenix Giant, 1991. Kaufmann, Chaim, and Robert Pape. “Explaining Costly International Moral Action: Britain’s Sixty-year Campaign against the Atlantic Slave Trade.” International Organization 53, no. 4 (1999): 631–668. Morris, Jan. Heaven’s Command: An Imperial Progress. London: Faber and Faber, 1998.

Abolitionism and Prostitution “Abolitionism” is a term that refers to a particular ideological and legal approach to prostitution. The approach has its roots in 19th-century feminism and is still a potent force in contemporary politics around prostitution. Abolitionism was a term borrowed from the campaigns against the slave trade. However, abolitionism, when used in relation to prostitution, did not refer to the abolition of prostitution, but rather to certain laws enacted in England and Wales in the 1860s. These laws were known as the Contagious Diseases Acts. Under these acts, any woman who was suspected of prostitution could be detained by the police and forced to

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undergo an internal examination. The Contagious Diseases Acts were an example of the approach to prostitution known as “regulationism,” a medically inspired system that was intended to control the spread of venereal disease, particularly syphilis, by registering and medically examining prostitutes. Harnessing rational scientific arguments to moral disapproval, regulationists argued that state regulation was the only way to control venereal disease. “Innocent” women and girls needed protection from immorality; however, once fallen, it was society that needed protecting from the immoral woman. The best way to protect society, argued regulationists, was to register and medically control prostitutes. France was the European pioneer of regulationist systems. Thus, abolitionism arose as a movement against the state regulation of prostitution. The leader of the abolitionist movement was Josephine Butler, a passionate public speaker and prolific writer. Butler and other abolitionists argued that men were responsible for prostitution, placing the blame for prostitution squarely on the shoulders of unbridled male lust. No women could be said to truly consent to prostitution. The feminist abolitionist campaigners were able to construct a broad coalition of social groups, including workingmen’s organizations and religious organizations. They were also joined by the burgeoning social purity movement, whose notions of sexual chastity were more repressive and wider than the original Butlerite agenda.

When the Contagious Diseases Acts were repealed in 1886, Butler and her followers turned their attention to the fight against white slavery. In the abolitionist vision, prostitution and white slavery would come to an end if laws targeted those who made money from prostitutes, rather than the prostitute herself. Eventually, the abolitionist campaign was eclipsed by the campaign for social purity, as the emotive issue of white slavery succeeded in whipping up public concern to a fever pitch. In other European countries and the United States as well, feminists initiated or became involved in the drive to abolish prostitution and white slavery. As in England, these campaigns were increasingly dominated by repressive moralists, as alliances were forged with religious and social purity organizations. The purity reformers’ relationship with the prostitute herself was ambiguous: Although professing sympathy for the lost innocents sacrificed by white slavers, they severely judged girls and women whose immodest behavior led them into a life of shame. Most purity reformers espoused an approach to prostitution that has been termed “prohibitionist.” Particularly in the United States, purity reformers had much success with getting prohibitionist systems in place. Prohibitionist systems of regulating prostitution make the act of prostitution itself illegal, and thus prostitutes themselves are subject to arrest. All these approaches to prostitution— regulation, abolition, and prohibition—


are in place in various legal systems today. Most existing systems contain elements of all three approaches. Those legal systems that follow most closely an abolitionist approach aim to end prostitution through penalizing those who are perceived to profit from it, such as brothel owners or those who offer advertising space to prostitution businesses. This list has grown to include sex workers’ clients in countries such as Sweden. Although prostitution itself is not a crime under abolitionist systems, in practice it is sex workers who are often targeted by abolitionist laws. For example, abolitionist laws prevent prostitutes from working together (lest one be arrested for pimping), block prostitutes’ attempts at union-forming (considered as unlawful “promotion of prostitution”), and bar them from legal redress in cases of violations of their labor, civil, and human rights. Abolitionism is still a powerful philosophy among contemporary feminists, both in the West and in the developing world. The strongest advocate for abolitionism internationally is the Coalition against Trafficking in Women (CATW). Like their foremothers, contemporary neoabolitionist feminists deny that prostitution can be considered a true choice or legitimate enaction of the will. Because all prostitution is inherently violence against women, they argue, no true consent is possible. Therefore, for neoabolitionists feminists, all prostitutes are victims. Male prostitution and transgender sex workers do not figure high on the neoabolitionist feminist agenda, as they

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do not fit into the neoabolitionist analysis of prostitution as a system of male sexual violence perpetrated against women. The sex workers’ rights movement of the early 21st century faced intense opposition from neoabolitionist feminists. In particular, neoabolitionist feminists opposed the idea, promoted by sex workers’ rights advocates, of prostitution and other forms of sex work as labor. Neoabolitionist feminists reject the term “sex work,” preferring the term “prostituted women.” Sex workers’ rights groups demand recognition of their human and civil rights, including through application of labor laws to their workplaces. Neoabolitionist feminists argue for the criminalization of third parties, such as brothel owners and clients. They do not support the criminalization of sex workers themselves, but advocate for their rescue and rehabilitation. Confusingly, both of these positions are variously referred to as decriminalization. Like their 19th-century foremothers, contemporary abolitionist feminists have an ambiguous relationship to prostitutes and other sex workers themselves. On the one hand, prostituted women who agree with the feminist abolitionist analysis of their situation are accepted and supported. For example, the group WHISPER (Women Hurt in Systems of Prostitution Engaged in Revolt), composed of former prostitutes who campaign for the eradication of prostitution, has a good working relationship with CATW. On the other, there are the vocal and often politically

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active sex workers around the world who campaign for acceptance of sex work as legitimate work. These male, female, and transgender sex workers present a conundrum for neoabolitionists. The inability to comprehend a selfchosen sex worker identity means that neoabolitionist feminists perceive sex workers’ rights advocates as being in league with pimps and traffickers. Neoabolitionist feminists argue that the notion of sex workers’ rights is simply a front for the big business of the sex industry and have accused prominent sex workers’ rights advocates of being in the pay of sex industry bosses. Like the 19th-century feminist abolitionists, contemporary abolitionist feminists have been able to strengthen their political presence through coalition-building around the renewed international concern with the issue of trafficking in women. Many of these coalition partners are unlikely supporters of feminist causes and include conservative religious groups and antiabortion activists. Through these coalitions, neoabolitionist feminists have been able to influence international law and national government policies. In keeping with the abolitionist legacy, today’s feminist abolitionists campaign against the purchase of sexual services by men, or what they term “demand.” In Sweden, this has resulted in the criminalization of customers of sex workers, a national policy that Swedish sex worker organizations claim forces them to work under clandestine and dangerous conditions.

In response to global concerns around trafficking, feminist abolitionists support practices of forced rescue of sex workers from brothels, particularly in the developing world. These rescues have been vigorously opposed by local sex worker organizations, because the victims are usually arrested, deported, and/or placed in jail-like rehabilitation centers. In the United States in particular, the abolitionist position has had much influence on foreign and domestic policy. For example, the U.S. Leadership against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act of 2003 prohibits the disbursal of U.S. development funding to organizations that support the idea of prostitution as work. International sex worker organizations, such as the Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP), claim that this policy has great potential for harm, as HIV is one of the greatest threats to the health of sex workers in the developing world. Jo Doezema See also: Abolitionism; Abolitionism, British.

Further Readings Barry, Kathleen. The Prostitution of Sexuality: The Global Exploitation of Women. New York: New York University Press, 1995. Coalition against Trafficking in Women (CATW) website: www.catw.org. Crago, Anna Louise. “Unholy Alliance.” www.alternet.org. Ditmore, Melissa. “New U.S. Funding Policies on Trafficking Affect Sex Work and

Aborigines’ Protection Society HIV-Prevention Efforts World Wide.” SIECUS Report 33 (2005): 26–29. Doezema, Jo. “Ouch! Western Feminists’ ‘Wounded Attachment’ to the ThirdWorld Prostitute.” Feminist Review 67 (2001): 16–38. Empower Foundation. Report by Empower Chiang Mai on the human rights violations women are subjected to when “rescued” by antitrafficking groups. Network of Sex Work Projects. www. nswp.org. Shapiro, Nina. “The New Abolitionists.” Seattle Weekly, August 24–31, 2004. Walkowitz, Judith. Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class, and the State. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1980.

Aborigines’ Protection Society The Aborigines’ Protection Society was an abolitionist organization that was established in Great Britain in 1837 after Parliament had enacted the Abolition Act (1833) that emancipated all slaves throughout the British Empire, effective August 1, 1834. The creation of the Society reflects not only the hope that the form of chattel slavery that had persisted in the transatlantic world was effectively abolished but also the lingering anxiety that other forms of nonfree labor persisted in the world. The term “aborigine” was used in the Society’s name much like the term “indigenous” might be used in contemporary language. The Aborigines’ Protection Society was concerned with the plight of peoples worldwide who were still

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victimized by slavelike labor practices in Africa, Asia, the Pacific islands, and elsewhere. British abolitionist Thomas Fowell Buxton urged the creation of the Aborigines’ Protection Society as a needed agent of reform to remedy “the enormous wrongs inflicted on Aborigines by European colonization.” The society maintained a campaign of public advocacy by publishing tracts, pamphlets, and the journal The Aborigines’ Friend, or Colonial Intelligencer. The society counted among its members important politicians, clergy, and businesspeople, most of whom lived in the United Kingdom. In a fashion similar to earlier antislavery campaigns, members of the Aborigines’ Protection Society conducted research into reputed abuses that indigenous peoples worldwide were forced to endure. The society regularly petitioned Parliament in the hope that British diplomatic pressure could be put to bear upon those societies that were reportedly tolerating human rights abuses among colonized peoples. It was hoped that such political action would stimulate the necessary moral suasion in others to remedy the concerns. By the late 19th century, prominent British radical liberals like James Bryce and Herbert Spencer were active members of the Aborigines’ Protection Society, and the group began to take a more activist stance on pressing matters of colonial policy. Members also began to critique in strong terms the actions that other European powers

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Further Readings Bourne, H. R. Fox. The Aborigines’ Protection Society: Chapters in Its History. London: P. S. King & Son, 1899. Grant, Kevin. A Civilized Savagery: Britain and the New Slaveries in Africa, 1884–1926. New York and London: Routledge, 2005. Nworah, Kenneth D. “The Aborigines’ Protection Society, 1889–1909: A Pressure-Group in Colonial Policy.” Canadian Journal of African Studies 5, no. 1 (1971.): 79–91.

Action pour le Changement

British radical and philosopher Herbert Spencer was an active member in the Aborigines’ Protection Society. (Library of Congress)

were taking with respect to indigenous peoples who lived within their colonial possessions. During the 1890s abolitionists in Britain expanded their mission to include advocacy against the ill treatment of indigenous peoples when reports of horrid atrocities in the Belgian Congo began to surface. As a result of this new focus, the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society merged with the Aborigines’ Protection Society in 1909. The Anti-Slavery and Aborigine’s Protection Society published The Anti-Slavery Reporter and Aborigines’ Friend to report on its ongoing abolitionist efforts. Junius P. Rodriguez See also: Leopold II.

The political party Action pour le Changement, or Action for Change, has been a strident voice in Mauritania in opposition to the system of slavery that the party maintains still exists within the African nation. Although international human rights organizations like Amnesty International have looked favorably upon the group and praised its efforts to bring abolitionism to the lands of the western Sahara, the government of Mauritania has consistently viewed the organization as a domestic threat. On January 3, 2002, the government of Mauritania officially banned Action for Change and the party no longer exists today. The leaders of Mauritania cited Action for Change for allegedly inciting racism and violence within Mauritanian society by alleging that slavery persisted and that the government was beholden to protecting the interest of the modern-day slave traders in spite of the nation’s legal prohibition against slavery. Human rights advocates and

Addams, Jane

many former Mauritanians now living in exile maintain that Action for Change was speaking accurately about the problems that persist regarding slavery in Mauritania. Action for Change was a small political party, one of many in the political landscape of Mauritania, but it tried to forge alliances and establish a coalition with other groups by appealing to ethnic solidarity among the nation’s different populations. In particular, the members of Action for Change tried to unite the Black Moors of Mauritania to stand in opposition to the government’s alleged complicity with the perpetuation of slavery. Mauritanian President Maaouya Ould Sid’Ahmed Taya alleged in a speech on January 10, 1997, that those who alleged the practice of slavery in Mauritania were enemies of the state who only wanted to tarnish the nation’s reputation. The government of Mauritania did not want the claims of contemporary slavery to endanger the nation’s effort to acquire billions of dollars in international debt relief, something that was finally acquired in 2002. Many within the government feared that too much emphasis on human rights violations might threaten the success of the significant monetary negotiations that were under way when Action for Change was banned. An official campaign of repression against Action for Change was under way in Mauritania for several years before the party was finally banned. Boubacar Ould Messaoud, the leader of the party, and two associates were arrested at their homes in January 1998

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and imprisoned for 13 months. The human rights advocates were convicted for violating an obscure 1973 law that prohibited action within the county by unauthorized associations. Despite worldwide protests by human rights advocates who charged that Mauritania’s actions contradicted the spirit of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), of which it was a signatory power, the Mauritanian government persisted in its actions and enforced the sentence upon Messaoud and his colleagues. Perhaps emboldened by its success in jailing and harassing the leaders of Action for Change, the government enacted the 2002 ban against the group in the hope that its efforts would finally cease. Junius P. Rodriguez See also: Mauritania; SOS Esclaves (Mauritania).

Further Readings Cotton, Samuel. Silent Terror: A Journey into Contemporary African Slavery. New York: Harlem River Press, 1998. Khatchadourian, Raffi. “Beyond Survival: Freed from Slavery and Terror, Mauritanians Fight for Those Left Behind.” Village Voice, February 20–26, 2002. Ruf, Urs Peter. Ending Slavery: Hierarchy, Dependency and Gender in Central Mauritania. Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript Verlag, 1999.

Addams, Jane (1860–1935) Jane Addams was a noted American social worker and humanitarian. She

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founded the Hull House social welfare center in Chicago, cofounded the American Civil Liberties Union, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931. She became a member of the National Child Labor Committee when it was formed in 1904. After the Beveridge bill failed to gain national support, she was partly responsible for the development of a new strategy in the battle against child labor. Addams was convinced that in order for the regulation of working children to be accepted, the population at large would have to be made aware of the conditions under which children worked. This conviction resulted in the proposal that the Bureau of Labor should be asked to undertake a complete

review of the working conditions of women and children. President Theodore Roosevelt adopted this policy when the Beveridge bill failed, but it was not until 1907 that Congress authorized and made funds available for the study to be carried out. Addams was attacked for her views on child labor by the National Civic Federation, a business-oriented group that had the support of the National Association of Manufacturers. She was labeled a “radical” and linked to socialism. In 1912, Addams was approached to head the United States Children’s Bureau, but she did not accept the position. She remained in the National Child Labour Committee and argued for the view that federal legislation was needed to combat child labor. Sandy Hobbs See also: National Child Labour Committee.

Further Readings Knight, Louise W. Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Knight, Louise W. Jane Addams: Spirit in Action. New York: W. W. Norton, 2010.

Adoption of Children Ordinance Law (1941)

A humanitarian and social worker, Jane Addams cofounded the American Civil Liberties Union and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931 for her efforts. (Library of Congress)

The Adoption of Children Ordinance Law (1941) was adopted in Ceylon (modern-day Sri Lanka) during the final generation of British colonial rule. The ordinance was meant to halt some of the most egregious violations of human rights that had become associated with adoption practices in the island colony.

Adoption of Children Ordinance Law

Like much of the rest of southern Asia, Ceylon had a long history of tolerating the practice of bonded labor, and the custom was well rooted in the island’s tradition and culture. In many cases, child laborers were employed to work off supposedly accumulated debts that a family might owe to a landlord. Since this practice was considered repulsive to British colonial functionaries who had pledged themselves to ending slavery-like practices in the regions where they had administrative oversight, it became necessary for those using bonded laborers to rely on subterfuge and trickery as a means of hiding their real intentions. Bonded laborers were said to be the equivalent of foster children who were taken in by benevolent households that merely expected them to labor as the family’s other children might labor. Various types of false adoptions were performed in which forged papers indicated that bonded laborers were indeed the “children” of the adults for whom they labored. Although bonded labor was the most common type of service expected by the children, they were also often subjected to physical, psychological, and sexual abuse at the hands of their alleged foster parents. The Adoption of Children Ordinance Law was designed to ensure that adoptions were legally monitored and binding agreements that would only be carried out in the best interest of the child. Special provisions were introduced to criminalize false adoption practices and the abuse of the foster child provisions. The measure

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required that colonial officials were expected to conduct regular inspections of those households that had adopted children to make sure that the children were not being forced to labor as slaves. Article Four of the new measure called for the creation of an official record or registry to be kept of all adoptions registered in Ceylon, but this process was never put into effect. Despite the best efforts of reform-minded legislators, there was a weak enforcement mechanism associated with the legislation. The ordinance was further weakened by variations of opinion stemming from the different religious communities that populated Ceylon. Among the island’s Muslim population, the ordinance was not seen as having a binding effect, since civil law was considered to be lesser in importance than Sharia (religious) law that directed all customs and practices of the Muslim community (ummah). The issue suggested the difficulty of writing and adopting legislation that was culturally sensitive and universally acceptable within a multiethnic society. In 1992, some 50 years after the ordinance was promulgated, the government of Sri Lanka revised it. The changes introduced dealt not only with domestic adoptions within the country, but also focused upon the growing threat of human trafficking— especially in children—between and among nations. Junius P. Rodriguez See also: False Adoption.

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Further Readings Askeland, Lori. Children and Youth in Adoption, Orphanages, and Foster Care: A Historical Handbook and Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006. Bainham, Andrew. Children and Their Families: Contact, Rights, and Welfare. Portland, OR: Hart Publishing, 2003. Freundlich, Madelyn. The Role of Race, Culture, and National Origin in Adoption. Washington, DC: Child Welfare League of America, 2000.

Afghanistan The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is a landlocked mountainous country in Central Asia (249,984 square miles/647,500 square kilometers, 2010 est. pop., 28.4 million). Climate is continental, with extremely hot summers and chilly winters. Considerable parts of the country remain dry and desiccated. It is a seismic zone, especially the northeast of Hindu Kush mountain range. The country’s natural resources include precious and semiprecious stones, gold, silver, copper, zinc, and iron ore in southeastern areas, and potentially significant petroleum and natural gas reserves in the north. It also disposes of coal, chromite, talc, barites, sulfur, lead, and salt. As a consequence of enduring civil war, these significant mineral and energy resources remain largely untapped. Ethnoreligiously, culturally, linguistically, and geographically, Afghanistan is closely linked with most of its neighbors—Pakistan (in the south and

east), Iran (west), the former Soviet republics Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan in the north, and China in the east. Its name in the most widely spread language, Pashtun, means simply “the land of the Afghans”. Under the name Avaga-na-, country was first mentioned in the sixth century, and later in the prominent Persian geography book Hudud-al-Alam (AD 982). In the ninth century, following the Arab advance, Islam was firmly established in this region, replacing the Zoroastrism and Buddhism. Emperor Babur of the Mughals (16th century) used the name, referring to the territories south of Kabul, inhabited by Pashtuns (called by him also “Afghans”). In fact, Afghanistan is a complex mixture of various ethnic groups. Beginning from the ancient times, it has ever been a focal point of trade and migration, and thus a subject of many claims from intruders coming from both nearby and far away—from Persian kings, through Alexander the Great, Mongols, Arabs, Ottomans, to the British colonial empire, and most recently, the Soviet Union, the United States, and members of NATO. Demonstrating the dominance of the Afghans/Pashtuns, in the mid-18th century Ahmad Sha-h Durra-ni managed to create a large state under the name of Afghanistan with its capital at Qandaha-r. It proved that once diverse localities with distinctive designations, even mutually lacking any common identity of race or language, can shape a fixed political unit, a country. In general,

Afghanistan

however, until the 19th century, the name was still confined almost exclusively for the traditional lands of the Pashtuns, while the kingdom as a whole was identified as the Kingdom of Kabul, as mentioned in the British official texts of that period. Other parts of the country occasionally emerged as independent kingdoms, such as the Kingdom of Balkh in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. As the name for the entire kingdom, it was mentioned in 1857 and became the official name when the country was recognized by the world community in 1919, following the third AngloAfghan war, and in the nation’s fundamental law in 1923. King Amanulah Khan strived for backing and aid from two foremost revolutionary rulers of that period—Vladimir Lenin in communist Soviet Russia, and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the semisecular republican “young Turkey.” The highest level of stability in Afghanistan was reached between 1933 and 1973, when it was quite calm place under the rule of King Zahir Sha-h. During Sha-h’s absence from the country, his brother-in-law Sardar Daoud Khan instigated a bloodless takeover, which put an end to the fragile balance within and around the country. With an accelerating Soviet influence and presence, five years later Daoud Khan and his entire family were executed when the self-proclaimed communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan took over the government launching the Great Saur Revolution. Years to come converted Afghanistan into a

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combat zone of a vicious civil war and foreign interventions. At Christmas 1979, a Moscow-backed coup d’état, intended to conclude internal quarrels in the ruling party, led to a further escalation of the Soviet troops’ deployment and a large-scale war. A Soviet attempt to impose a Marxist atheist regime generated a massive exodus; more than 5 million Afghans found refuge in camps and shelters in neighboring Pakistan (more than 3 million), Iran (over a million), and in Europe and the United States. Mujahideen resistance gained force as a result of training and supplies by the United States, Pakistan, and other foreign governments, making Afghanistan a dreadful place to live, and completely destroying public life. Confronted with increasing international pressure and internal disapproval with the loss of more than 15,000 Soviet soldiers, the Soviets pulled out in 1989, after 10 years of desperate fighting. The last of the line of dummy presidents, Najibullah, former head of the secret services, endured three years more until being overthrown in 1992 by the radical Islamist Talibans, captured despite hiding in an UN compound, and hanged. The Taliban grew as a politico-religious force, and ultimately captured Kabul in 1996, seizing, by the end of 2000, 95 percent of the country. Their main rival, the Afghan Northern Alliance, kept the northeast corner of Badakhshan Province. The Taliban sought to impose a strict interpretation of Islamic sharia and were later implicated as supporters of terrorists, most notably by giving

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refuge to Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network. During the Taliban’s seven-year rule, drastic constraints on society were forced, and much of the freedoms and basic human rights were curbed. Women were denied access to education, jobs outside of home, and property. The Taliban regime was toppled by U.S. troops, who intervened in 2001 as a part of the antiterrorist Operation Enduring Freedom. In December 2001, the UN Security Council authorized establishment of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), composed of NATO troops. ISAF has been involved in upholding the government of President Hamid Karzai and setting up control across the scattered territory. In 2005, the United States and Afghanistan signed a strategic partnership agreement that committed both countries to a lasting friendship and cooperation. Meanwhile, about $30 billion was provided by the international community for the reconstruction of the country. Stephan E. Nikolov Further Readings Banting, Erinn. Afghanistan. The People. New York: Crabtree Publishing, 2003. Clements, Frank. Conflict in Afghanistan: A Historical Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2003. Hopkins, B. D. The Making of Modern Afghanistan. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Vogelsang, Willem. The Afghans. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2002.

African Network for the Prevention and Protection against Child Abuse and Neglect (ANPPCAN) The African Network for Prevention and Protection against Child Abuse and Neglect (ANPPCAN) is a PanAfrican organization whose main concern is the status of children, especially those in need of protection from various forms of maltreatment. ANPPCAN was established after the First African Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect, a Pan-African assembly held in 1986 in Enugu, Nigeria. Since then, ANPPCAN’s chapters have expanded into 20 African countries. In 1990, the Organization of African Unity (OAU), now the African Union (AU), awarded ANPPCAN observer status. The African Commission on Human and People’s Rights granted similar recognition shortly afterward. Its headquarters are in Nairobi, Kenya, where ANPPCAN is registered as an international nongovernmental organization (NGO). According to ANPPCAN’s Constitution, any African individual or organization dealing with children’s rights and welfare is eligible to become a member of an ANPPCAN chapter in the country of residence. Any non-African individual or organization may become a member of ANPPCAN, pending the approval of the General Council. The current member states are Benin, Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Mauritius, Niger,

African Squadrons

Nigeria, Senegal, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Togo, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. ANPPCAN intends to realize its objectives by: providing a forum for the exchange of scientific information on the problems affecting children in Africa; carrying out advocacy for children’s rights; encouraging and assisting the creation of national organizations in African countries concerned with the promotion and defense of children’s rights; conducting periodic situation analysis on the state and nature of child abuse and neglect in Africa and publishing the results; advising and assisting African governments and the African Union to take action and other means to improve the material and legal conditions of children in Africa; offering advice and assistance to organizations working in the field of child rights and abuse prevention; and generating resources for research and action. ANPPCAN’s main target groups are child laborers, street children, abandoned and neglected children, physically and sexually abused children, children in situations of armed conflicts and war, displaced children (internally and externally), disabled children, children in slum settlements, and orphaned children. To meet the protection needs of these children and all those whose rights are likely to be violated, ANPPCAN provides a wide range of services, including education and training, direct services, research and information, networking, advocacy, and consultancy. It continues to provide the

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same services while upholding its philosophy of empowering communities, including the children, to address the issue of child abuse and neglect. Giulia Pietrangeli Further Reading ANPPCAN website: http://www.anppcan .org.

African Squadrons African Squadrons were naval patrols organized by the British whose main duty was to intercept slave ships. Although the English had been the major slave traders in the 18th century, the British Parliament passed a bill in 1807 by virtue of which the slave trade was considered illegal. This bill had been finally adopted thanks to the efforts of Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce and the support of the British prime minister, Lord Grenville. In the United States, the issue of slavery had already been present at the framing of the Constitution in 1787, but the only measure concerning slavery taken at the time was a section of the document barring Congress from abolishing the African slave trade for a 20-year period. At the end of those 20 years, Congress passed the Slave Importation Act (1807), which, on the one hand, censored the international exportation of slaves, but on the other did not affect the U.S. internal or coastal slave trade. The centrality of cotton production in

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the southern states and the huge demand for Cuban sugar and coffee were partly responsible for the measures adopted by the U.S. Congress in 1807. The British organized squadrons— for example, the British West Africa Squadron—to implement the law and to ensure that there were no British ships trading in slaves along the African coast. Soon these squadrons demanded the right to board and inspect ships of neutral and enemy lands, such as the United States and France. The United States did not want the British to investigate their ships. The Royal Navy practice of impressment, by which it seized U.S. vessels indiscriminately, caused tensions between the two nations. Ships of other slaver nations, such as Portugal and Spain, began throwing the human cargo overboard when chased by the Royal Navy in order to avoid capture, both to lighten the weight of their ships and disguise their purpose. In 1819, the U.S. Congress passed the Slave Trade Act, by which President James Monroe allowed warships to play an active role in detecting and suppressing the trade in human beings. The Slave Trade Act also created Liberia as a West African country in which newly freed slaves could resettle. Monroe required U.S. ships to detect and take into custody any ship with the U.S. flag that was involved in the slave trade. The first five U.S. navy vessels sent to Africa to fulfill their squadron duty were the Cyane, Hornet, John Adams, Alligator, and Shark. The conditions under which the squadrons had to work were terrible in

terms of temperature and sanitary conditions. Surgeons in the ships could only treat the symptoms of many mosquito-induced fevers and illnesses. The two-year period assigned to an African Squadron was a painful test for any member of the crew. The American African Squadron was far less successful than the British squadrons. During the 19th century about 7,750 slaving voyages were attempted, but only 21 percent of the ships were captured by the African Squadrons. In the first 70 years of the 19th century, approximately 200,000 Africans were shipped, of which 10 percent were rescued by these naval patrols. Laura Gimeno-Pahissa See also: Abolitionism, British.

Further Readings Blackburn, Robin. The Making of New World Slavery. New York: Verso, 1997. Eltis, David. The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Kolchin, Peter. American Slavery. New York: Penguin, 1993. Lovejoy, Paul. Transformations in Slavery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Thomas, Hugh. The Slave Trade. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.

Agnivesh, Swami (1939–) Swami Agnivesh, whose original name is Vepa Shyam Rao, was born in an orthodox Hindu family on September 21, 1939. He was the grandson of the diwan

Agnivesh, Swami

(chief minister) of the princely state of Shakti, today located in Chhatisgarh, India. He practiced law for a short period in Calcutta, and in his early twenties he became a successful professor of business and law. In 1968 he became a full-time worker of the Arya Samaj and became Swami Agnivesh, a sanyasi who gave up all worldly possessions. The Arya Sabha, established on the principles of Arya Samaj, was cofounded by him to work for practical order in the world. Vedic Samajbad (Vedic Socialism), a book published in 1974, elaborates on the constitution of Arya Sabha with special emphasis on its call for “social spirituality” and its rejection of the lopsided materialism of both capitalism and communism. During a period of political emergency in the 1970s, Swami Agnivesh was jailed for 14 months, and he subsequently became the education minister in Haryana in 1977, after having been elected to the assembly. In due course, he resigned the political position since he wanted to devote entirely his energy and time to social justice movements. He founded the Bandhu Mukti Morcha (Bonded Labour Liberation Front) in 1981. This organization facilitated the creation of several trade unions such as All India Brick Kiln Workers, the Stone Quarry Workers, and the Construction Workers and released more than 172,000 Indian workers from bonded labor. During this time he became equally concerned with the growing problem of child labor in India. In appreciation of his efforts, Agnivesh has

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thrice been elected chairperson of the United Nations Trust Fund on Contemporary Forms of Slavery. In addition to his work to eradicate contemporary forms of slavery, he has also been involved in many other social justice movements in India. Parliament enacted the Sati Prevention Act following an 18-day padhyatra (march on foot) from Delhi to Deorala in Rajsthan that he led in 1987 to protest against sati (the immolation of widows on their husband’s funeral pyres). In order to secure the entry of untouchables into Hindu temples, he led a movement in 1988–1989 against this discrimination. To protest against and defuse communal violence that had caused the killing of 45 Muslim youths in 1989, he led a multireligious march from Delhi to Meerat with Dr. Asghar Ali Engineer. He was involved in several popular movements such as Narmada Bachao Andolan, women’s movements against alcohol in Andhra Pradesh and Haryana aimed at protecting the environment and also winning total prohibition in the concerned states. Concerned about escalating religious fundamentalism in India, Swami Agnivesh launched a multireligious forum called Religions for Social Justice, which, in 1999, led 55 religious leaders to the place where an Australian Christian missionary had been burned to death with his two sons by Hindu religious fanatics in Orissa. Swami Agnivesh has not only limited his social justice efforts to the Indian subcontinent, but he has taken an active role in contemporary global issues. He launched a people’s movement

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in 1997 against, the Western cultural invasion and the neocolonialism of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and World Bank. Fighting against economic globalization, he led a march in 2001 from Mumbai to Gujrat. Having been deeply disturbed by the massacre in Gujrat in 2002, he organized a group of 72 eminent religious and social leaders who spent five days in the violence-affected areas denouncing the Hindu fundamentalist organizations and other sectors who were responsible for the riot. Patit Paban Mishra See also: Bonded Labour Liberation Front; India; World Bank; World Trade Organization.

Further Reading Agnivesh, Swami. “A Spiritual Vision for the Dialogue of Religion.” Development 46, no. 4 (2003): 35–38.

Ahmad, Muhammad (1844–1885) Muhammad Ahmad was a Muslim religious leader (known as a faqir) in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan in the late 19th century. He declared himself to be the Mahdi in 1881, raised an army for the jihad, and led a successful war of liberation from the Ottoman-Egyptian military occupation and against British colonialism. Muhammad Ahmad was born into an Arabized Nubian family from Dongola. The family had moved to Khartoum to

enjoy better economic prospects and where Muhammad’s brothers, like their father, entered the boat-building business. Not interested in that enterprise, Muhammad instead focused on religious studies gaining influence from his great-grandfather who had been a respected sharif during his lifetime. Muhammad learned the Koran, studied fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) subsequently under the guidance of Sheikh Muhammad Kheir, and became influenced by the Sufi teaching. He built a mosque and started to teach the Koran at Aba Island in Western Sudan after his family moved there from Khartoum in 1871. He gained local repute as an excellent speaker and mystic, and his teaching emphasized the virtues of prayer and simplicity as laid down in the Koran. With a popular following, his religious zeal eventually turned to denunciation of tax collectors as a token of his rebellious attitude against the Ottoman-Egyptian rulers. To avoid possible arrest, Muhammad Ahmad, the Mahdi, made a long march to Kurdufan with his followers, the Ansar. Along the way he gained the support of many tribal leaders and regional slave traders who were seeking an opportunity to return to power. In the process of his adventure, the Mahdi subsequently formed a government in Sudan. The Mahdiyah (Mahdist regime) imposed traditional Islamic laws and stood opposed to accentuated tribalism at the expense of religious unity. The Mahdi modified Islam’s five pillars to support the dogma that loyalty to him was essential to true belief.

Ahmed, Zafaryab

To emphasize this point, he added the declaration “and Muhammad Ahmad is the Mahdi of Allah and the representative of His Prophet” to the daily recitation of the shahada. In addition to this, service in the jihad that he had initiated replaced the hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) as a duty incumbent on the faithful, and the tax paid to the state became the substitute for zakat (almsgiving) that was expected of all Muslims. These reforms were justified by the Mahdi as responses to instructions conveyed to him by Allah in visions. Muhammad Ahmad died of typhus on June 22, 1885, just six months after the capture of Khartoum. After his death the rivalry among three deputies who succeeded him led to a long period of disarray that continued until 1891, when Abdallahi ibn Muhammad emerged as the unchallenged leader. Abdallahi, referred to as the Khalifa (successor), was committed to the Mahdi’s vision of extending the Mahadiyah through jihad, but in 1899 the Khalifa was defeated at the Battle of Umm Diwaykarat and killed. By the time the British once again took control of Sudan, the Mahdiyah had destroyed the Sudanese economy, and about half the population died due to famine, disease, persecution, and warfare. Patit Paban Mishra See also: Sudan and South Sudan.

Further Readings Dunn, John P., and Bruce Vandervort “The Mahdi of the Sudan and the Death of

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General Gordon.” Journal of Military History 70, no. 3 (2006): 848–849. Rees, Simon. “The ‘Mad Mahdi’ Established a Pure Islamic State and Became the Western World’s Original ‘Most Wanted’ Extremist.” Military History 19, no. 2 (2002): 20–22. Trench, C. Chenevix. “Gordon’s Staff Officer.” History Today 25, no. 3 (1975): 153–164. Warburg, Gabriel. “Mahdism and Islamism in Sudan.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 27, no. 2 (1995): 219–237.

Ahmed, Zafaryab (1954–) Zafaryab Ahmed, described by the human rights organization Amnesty International as the “Prisoner of Conscience,” was born in 1954 in Lahore, Pakistan, the capital of the Punjab region. Ahmed is an activist, researcher, and journalist who became well known for his reporting about the social problems of bonded labor in Pakistan and his writing about the plight of enslaved children. In his youth, he participated in Pakistan’s student protest movement during the 1960s and 1970s. He graduated from Punjab University, Lahore, with a bachelor’s degree in political science and later earned a masters degree in international relations and international politics at the same institution. He also studied sociology and earned a second masters degree at the University of Manchester in England. After completing his education, Ahmed returned home to teach at Aitchison College in Lahore and the University of Agriculture in Faisalabad.

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Ahmed began writing articles for a number of publications in Pakistan. During the 1980s, he began a series of reports on the use of child labor in the carpet industry, and soon became an active participant in campaigns against child labor in Pakistan, particularly in the carpet industry. Through these efforts, he became associated with Ehsan Ullah Khan, who had founded the Bonded Labour Liberation Front (BLLF) in 1988, a grassroots organization established to organize and educate bonded laborers throughout Pakistan. Ahmed became a researcher, advocate, and writer for the BLLF in Lahore. In the mid-1990s, he met Iqbal Masih, a 13-year-old former child bonded laborer in the carpet industry who escaped and had become a bonded labor advocate on behalf of the BLLF before he was shot to death in April 1995. At the time of Masih’s murder, Ahmed was in charge of the BLLF’s office when Ehsan Ullah Khan was traveling outside of Pakistan. Ahmed attempted to write a story about child labor in Pakistan in general and about Masih’s life and his murder in particular. He also hoped to develop a movie about the incident, and to that end, he met with the Academy Award-winning Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore, to discuss the possibility of such a project. In addition to this contact, Ahmed also campaigned for an independent investigation of the murder of Iqbal Masih. His unauthorized contact with the film producer and public relations campaigns apparently made him guilty in

the eyes of Pakistani government. In June 1995, the Pakistani government arrested Zafaryab Ahmed and charged him with “destabilizing the state,” and he was further charged with treason and sedition and accused of “exploiting the death of Iqbal Masih.” Accordingly, he was to be imprisoned for two months in Lahore, where he potentially faced death by hanging for his efforts in defending human rights in Pakistan. His alleged crime was to attempt to end the country’s bonded labor system that enslaved children and adult workers in the carpet industry. The Pakistani government perceived these efforts as acts of treason and sedition. After serving six weeks in prison, Ahmed was granted bail and released, although the charges against him remained pending. During this time his passport and personal documents were sequestered since he was forbidden to leave the country, and he remained under a system of parole that required him to visit the courts at least once a month. Having become a key figure in human rights struggles worldwide, Ahmed was awarded the First Oak Institute Fellowship at Colby College in Maine in early 1998. The Pakistani government initially refused to allow him to travel to the United States to accept the international human rights fellowship. After six months of international efforts at negotiating on his behalf, the Pakistani government agreed to give him a 90-day permit to visit and accept the fellowship at Colby College, with the condition that he must return to Pakistan.

Al-Diein Massacre

In 2000, Zafaryab was granted political asylum in the United States, and he became a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at State University of New York at Binghamton. Ahmed describes himself as a person who is wanted in the land of his birth and is viewed as a suspect in his adopted land. Bayram Unal See also: Child Labor; Khan, Ehsan Ullah.

Further Reading Human Rights Watch. Contemporary Forms of Slavery in Pakistan. New York: Human Rights Watch, 1995. Located at http://www.hrw.org/reports/1995/Paki stan.htm.

Al-Diein Massacre (1987) On March 27–28, 1987, more than 1,000 Dinka men, women, and children were murdered in Diein (estimated population 60,000), the principal town in the eastern district of southern Darfur province in Sudan. The majority of Diein’s residents consisted of the Rizeigat ethnic group, with the Dinka numbering nearly 17,000, and the Fur, Zaghawa, and other ethnic minorities comprising the remainder of the population. Connected by rail and road, Diein was a major trading center for grain and cattle in Darfur. As the headquarters of the Eastern District Council, it also served as an important administrative center at the time of the massacre.

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An independent investigation into the massacre was conducted in May 1987 by Dr. Suleyman Ali Baldo and Dr. Ushari Ahmed Mahmud, who found evidence that the actions of the predominantly Arab Rizeigat mob against the Dinka residents were premeditated. The report also noted that Sudan’s governmental policies in the region contributed to the massacre by exacerbating historic interethnic tensions between Rizeigats and Dinkas and by providing both material and logistical support to Rizeigat militias. This allowed the militias to attack Dinka villages with impunity and encouraged the emergence of chattel slavery for political ends. The massacre began after 7:00 p.m. evening prayers at the Christian church on Friday, March 27. An armed mob of about 50 Arab Rizeigat men attacked 32 Dinka Christians with spears, knives, sticks, and a gun. Although no one died from this initial attack, as the Dinkas fled, the mob, increased in size, began to attack and burn neighboring Dinka homes. An area in the southeastern part of town known as Hillat Fog had the largest concentration of Dinka residents, and it became the prime target of the attackers who burned Dinka homes and then obstructed police and firefighters from responding. Five to seven Dinkas were killed, and several Dinka residents fled to the police station while others fled to the multiethnic town of Hillat Sikka Hadid. By the next morning, Saturday, March 28, a decision was made to move the Dinkas from Hillat Sikka Hadid to the police station and then onto rail cars

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for transport to Nyala. The Dinka chiefs were informed of the decision and then agreed with this course of action. The Dinka were moved to eight rail cars. When the rail cars filled to capacity, several hundred more Dinkas took refuge in the police compound while others remained under trees at the railway station. As news spread of the attempt to move the Dinkas from Diein, the mob began attacking Dinkas. More than 200 Dinkas in open wooden rail cars were burned to death by attackers who then lit combustible materials and threw them into the police compound where more than 500 persons had taken refuge. All perished in the ensuing blaze. The massacre had ended by 6:00 p.m. The Sudanese government’s strategy to undermine Dinka support for the Southern People’s Liberation Army by arming the Rizeigat and Misseiriya groups had begun in the mid-1980s. Attacking Dinka villages south of Bahr alArab-Kiir River and stealing cattle and women and children for chattel slavery continued to intensify up to the time of the massacre and afterward. On January 17, 1986, more than 700 women and children had been kidnapped and taken as slaves. A pattern emerged in these attacks on the Dinka as militiamen on horses, camels, and donkeys attacked villages with spears, swords, and Klashnikov rifles. They burnt houses, set fire to grain in the storehouses, stole cattle, murdered, and kidnapped. Following the attacks, the men divided into small groups with their booty of women and children. The women were led away on

foot, tied with a rope around their necks attached to a horse. The investigation found it likely that several hundred women and children had been enslaved as a consequence of the massacre. Investigators found a direct connection between the massacre at al-Diein, the government’s arming of Rizeigat Arab militias, and the emergence of chattel slavery. The government fueled interethnic rivalries by cultivating intense racist attitudes among the majority Rizeigat Arab ethnic group and allowing slavery to dehumanize the Dinka even further. The report also recorded other instances of raids and enslavement of women and children through the period under investigation in 1987. The government’s strategy of using Arab militias for armed attacks and encouraging the practice of chattel slavery indicated the emergence of a policy of genocide. Mahmud and Baldo’s report played an important role in notifying the United Nations, the international press, and nongovernmental organizations about the revival of state-sponsored slavery in Sudan. John Eibner See also: Sudan and South Sudan.

Further Reading Mahmud, Ushari Ahmed, and Suleyman Ali Baldo. Human Rights Violations in the Sudan, 1987: Al Diein Massacre, Slavery in the Sudan. Khartoum: Khartoum University Press, 1987.

Alexander II

Alexander II (1818–1881) Alexander II, who reigned as emperor of Russia (1855–1881), is known as the greatest reforming monarch in Russian history. He abolished serfdom, instituted trial by jury, separated the judiciary from the executive, reformed the military by extending the obligation to serve to all classes, and reorganized local government to incorporate indirect representation. In international affairs, Alexander II’s reign witnessed dramatic Russian territorial expansion in Asia, a significant increase in Russian influence in the Balkans, and a worsening strategic situation— largely because of the unification of Germany—in Europe.

Alexander II was the Emperor of Russia from 1855 to 1881. Among the many reforms he made during his reign, he succeeded in abolishing serfdom. (Library of Congress)

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Alexander II’s father, Nicholas I, was perhaps the most temperamentally and ideologically conservative emperor since Mikhail in the 17th century. The son received a conservative education, but the circumstances of his becoming Russian ruler, specifically the Russian defeat in the Crimean War (1853–1856), militated in favor of significant changes in Nicholas’s pattern of administration. When Alexander announced the end of the Crimean War, he foreshadowed reform of Russian society. Russian intellectuals and statesmen generally agreed that serfdom and the social and economic structures it entailed likely would drag the Russian state and military increasingly far behind the more liberal western European powers. It seems that the serfs, agricultural workers legally bound to the land on which they lived, constituted 80 percent of Russia’s population, about 52 million people, at the time of the Great Reforms. Besides the institution’s economic effects, elimination of serfdom was made more attractive by the tendency of the serfs over several centuries to rise violently against their masters. One historian estimates that there were as many as 550 19th-century peasant risings in Russia. Many different social groups, from Slavophiles to westernizers, favored emancipation. In contrast to the situation regarding slavery in the United States, the Russian institution found virtually no direct defenders on the eve of its abolition. Alexander proclaimed his belief that steps toward abolition should be taken at

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the time of his coronation. Eventually, even landlords agreed that it was desirable. Alexander signed his State Council’s proposal for abolition on March 3, 1861. In the deliberations on the matter, Alexander had repeatedly sided with advocates of the most liberal proposals against entrenched landowner and master interests. It seems that Alexander’s influence explains passage of reform through a hostile State Council. Notably, the imperial family’s peasants were also freed by the reform. This is not to say that former Russian serfs obtained civil equality from the reform. Far from it. They still had to pay a poll tax, stay tied to their communes, and had to submit to customary law. Besides, the reform had markedly different effects on various groups of serfs. Thus, farming serfs received land, while those employed in households did not. Even those serfs who received land were not given the soil, but had to pay the state for the bonds issued to their masters in exchange for it; alternatively, they might take only onefourth of the land to which they would otherwise have been entitled and pay nothing. Land in most of Russia went not to individual peasants, but to local communes that were responsible for allocating the land. In sum, the peasants took far less land from the reform than was left to their few former masters, and they had to pay for it, but since payment proved impracticable, the government abolished the obligation in 1905. The legal reform mirrored changes to English law of the 17th century. Where procedure had formerly been

complicated and secretive, it now became more public, 23 forms of proceeding yielded to 2, and equality before the law became the rule. Courts were standardized, with the Senate as supreme court (with some significant exceptions). Similar reforms marked the ecclesiastical realm, where Uniates in Russia’s Polish provinces were forcibly converted to Orthodoxy. Besides these changes, Alexander II’s reign also saw establishment of a uniform currency, easing of censorship (especially in zemstvos and courts), and publication of an annual government budget. In the long term, these changes helped to reduce the status of Russia’s small noble class and to elevate the peasantry. They also spurred the empire’s economic development as they had been intended to do. Besides these developments, Alexander’s reign also coincided with the flowering of the Golden Age of Russian literature in the form of the work of Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and others. Finally, political radicalism of the most extreme terrorist kind gained numerous adherents in Alexander’s day, and after several failed efforts, they succeeded in assassinating him on March 13, 1881. He was succeeded by his son, Alexander III, whose reign was marked by reaction. Kevin R. C. Gutzman See also: Serfdom.

Further Readings Blum, Jerome. Lord and Peasant in Russia from the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century. New York: Atheneum, 1966.

Alien Tort Claims Act Field, Daniel. The End of Serfdom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976. Hellie, Richard. Enserfment and Military Change in Muscovy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971. Kolchin, Peter. Unfree Labor: American Slavery and Russian Serfdom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.

Alien Tort Claims Act Initially crafted as an obscure clause in Section 9 of the Judiciary Act of 1789, the original congressional measure that established the federal judiciary system for the United States, the so-called Alien Tort Claims Act has been utilized in the late 20th and early 21st centuries to challenge foreign governments and multinational corporations that are accused of violating human rights. Foreign nationals living in the United States have experienced a measure of success in the courts by pursuing litigation under the aegis of the Alien Tort Claims Act since the early-1980s, and as a result, the measure has become an unconventional weapon in the arsenal of human rights advocates who have found little satisfaction in redressing grievances through other means such as international law. The Judiciary Act of 1789 specifically identifies the U.S. federal circuit courts as the appropriate venue for litigation involving “all causes where an alien sues for a tort only in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.” Over the years the

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courts have come to interpret that such cases can be brought by a foreign national (alien) who believes that a tort or crime has been committed against him in a foreign land and that such offense was in direct violation of U.S. law or an international treaty to which the United States was a signatory power. The Alien Tort Claims Act has been used in this fashion to challenge human rights violations that stem from corrupt military dictatorships ranging from Paraguay to the former Yugoslavia. It has also been used to challenge the action of multinational corporations that have been affiliated with a variety of offenses that transgress international compacts like the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). Federal courts first determined in the case of Doe v. Unocal (1997) that corporations, like individuals, could be held accountable under the language of the Alien Tort Claims Act, but in June 2004 the U.S. Supreme Court determined in the case of Sosa v. AlvarezMachain that only the most egregious violations of human rights can be pursued under the act against corporations. The success experienced by some plaintiffs who have found redress through the courts do provide a degree of hope to human rights advocates. Some believe that the stigma of negative publicity that corporations experience because of these cases, along with the costly and time-consuming efforts at continuous litigation of them, may foster a new sense of corporate behavior that is more life-affirming. For foreign governments and their agents, the fear

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All Pakistan Brick Kiln Owners Association (APBKA)

of having assets in the United States frozen and then redistributed to settle judgments is a potent weapon, but it is no guarantee of good behavior that will respect human rights as defined by the laws of nations. Junius P. Rodriguez See also: Doe v. Unocal.

Further Reading Steinhardt, Ralph G., and Anthony D’Amato, eds. The Alien Tort Claims Act: An Analytical Anthology. Ardsley, NY: Transnational Publishers, 1999.

All Pakistan Brick Kiln Owners Association (APBKA) The All Pakistan Bhatta Khisht Association (APBKA), also known as All Pakistan Brick Kiln Owners Association, was formed in the late1950s in Lahore, Punjab. The founder of the APBKA was Mian Muhammad Shafi, a member of the West Pakistan Assembly and a close friend of the president of Pakistan, Field Marshal Ayoub Khan, a dictator and military ruler. The APBKA was established to guard the brick kiln owners’ interests and garner the most benefits from the state’s main priorities. As an association defending the bonded labor system, the APBKA aimed at the following under the cover of business: (1) to get full control of slave laborer’s (bonded laborer’s) lives, and limit their freedom of movement; (2) to make the

debt bondage system (Peshgi) strengthened and unchallengeable; (3) to have a basic right to trade the bonded brickkiln workers from one kiln to another and from one area to another area; also to punish them in a harsh physical way, even in some cases to kill bonded workers who refused to comply to the order of slave masters; (4) to secure the debt bondage (Peshgi) money and to sell one or more members of a family to some other owner in a far-flung area (mostly children and young girls used to be sold in this way); (5) to fix the weekly wages for slave workers and to fix the percentage of deduction from laborers weekly so-called wages as debt repayment; (6) to fix the amount of Peshgi money for slave workers for the future; (7) to fix the number of bricks the slave laborers should make for free for the owners per thousand bricks of production; (8) to set up a minimum wage for production per thousand of bricks; and (9) to fix the percentage of the Jamadari’s (middleman’s) commission from the laborer’s weekly income. APBKA was also an organization dealing with the complaints of owners if someone became too lenient or less cruel with workers. The association ensured that the perchi (receipt) system worked orderly. Every owner used to issue the perchi for payment of Peshgi money on which it used to be mentioned that anyone who paid this bondage money was allowed to keep the laborer at his kiln and used for work. No owner was allowed to keep the slaves without clearing the slavery debts, including

American Anti-Slavery Group (AASG)

enormous fines. In addition, APBKA used to publish two times a year a wall poster for the members containing its decisions and instructions to operate the bondage system smoothly. APBKA also applied pressure upon the concerned sectors to get cheap coal from mine owners, thus impacting another sector where bonded labor was a factor of production. APBKA planned to organize the market to sell bricks at higher prices, perhaps 400 times more than the real cost, thus demonstrating the tremendous profits that brick kilns could generate. APBKA was most commonly a part of the ruling class, and it kept strong links with the bureaucracy, military governments, and political parties. APBKA in 1988 pleaded a slavery case in front of the supreme court, while the Bhatta Mazdor Mahaz (Brickkiln Workers Front) stood against slavery and supported human rights. The supreme court gave its decision in favor of the bonded laborers. APBKA did not accept the supreme court’s decision, and in 1993 they filed a case in High Shariat Court challenging the legality of the Bonded Labour System Abolition Act (1992). In that lawsuit, the organization pleaded that the action of the supreme court was contrary to Islamic ideology. In 2005, the Shariat Court rejected their eight applications and declared that both the Bonded Labour System Abolition Act and the decision of supreme court were in accordance with Islamic ideology. In March 2006, APBKA staged an illegal strike and

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is still trying to keep the slavery and bonded labor system alive. Bayram Unal and Ann-Carin Landström See also: Bhatta Mazdoor Mohaz (BMM); Bonded Labour Liberation Front (BLLF); Peshgi.

Further Readings Anti-Slavery International. Contemporary Forms of Slavery Related to and Generated by Discrimination: Forced and Bonded Labor in India, Nepal and Pakistan. London: Anti-Slavery International, 2003. Anti-Slavery International. This Menace of Bonded Labor: Debt Bondage in Pakistan. London: Anti-Slavery International, 1996. Human Rights Watch. Pakistan: Contemporary Forms of Slavery. New York: Human Rights Watch, 1995. Karim, Farhad. Contemporary Forms of Slavery in Pakistan. New York: Human Rights Watch, 1995.

American Anti-Slavery Group (AASG) The American Anti-Slavery Group (AASG), a human rights organization that publicizes the plight of black slaves in Mauritania and Sudan, was founded on March 20, 1993, in Washington, D.C., by Charles Jacobs, a U.S. management consultant; Mohamed Nacir Athie, an exiled Mauritanian diplomat; and David Chand, a black Christian from southern Sudan. Jacobs first learned about modern-day African

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American Anti-Slavery Group (AASG)

slavery from an acquaintance who informed him that one could purchase a slave in Mauritania for $15. Soon after the AASG was founded, Jacobs contacted several African American civil rights organizations about this grave human rights situation, but his efforts initially elicited little interest. Finally, in 1995, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus strongly condemned the sale of African slaves in Mauritania and the Sudan. The primary focus of the AASG is the plight of black slaves in Africa. According to Jacobs, his organization believes that “freedom in North and West Africa should be valued no less than freedom in South Africa . . . does freedom count for more in Johannesburg than in Nouakchott and Khartoum?” (U.S. House, 1996). The organization has vigorously publicized the issue, and its work has been reported in the New York Times and the Washington Post as well as on the public broadcasting show Tony Brown’s Journal and the NBC television news magazine Dateline. In May 1995, the AASG helped to convene at Columbia University in New York City what was probably the first abolitionist conference in the United States in more than a century. Almost 200 people attended, including members from the southern Sudan, the Committee for Human Rights in Mauritania, and the New York chapter of the National Conference of Black Social Workers. After the conference,

several activists formed other groups in New York, Chicago, Detroit, and other cities. Samuel Cotton, a New York journalist, wrote a series of articles from February 28 to March 19, 1995, about the enslavement of black Africans in Arab-dominated countries for the now-defunct, Brooklyn-based, African American weekly the City Sun. These articles led the African American media to increase its coverage of the topic and thus generate more interest in the work of the AASG. Akbar Muhammad, of the Nation of Islam, soon attacked Cotton and the AASG, claiming the articles sought to demean Arabs and the Nation of Islam’s activities on behalf of the Arab-dominated government of the Sudan. In March 1996, Louis Farrakhan issued a challenge at a news conference in Washington, DC: “Where is the proof of black slaves?” Two journalists, Gregory Kane and Gilbert Lewthwaite, found the proof and wrote a major investigative series for the Baltimore Sun (June 16–18, 1996) about the sale of African children by Arab slave traders in the southern Sudan. The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on International Relations held hearings on slavery in Mauritania and Sudan in March 1996, and representatives of AASG and other organizations testified. The work of organizations like AASG continues as long as reports of contemporary slavery continue to circulate. It is to be hoped that the work of AASG and other similar organizations will hasten the day when

Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society (ASAPS)

nations will be more forthcoming and slavery can be abolished. Donald Altschiller See also: ‘Abd; Sudan and South Sudan.

Further Reading U.S. House of Representatives Committee on International Relations. Slavery in Mauritania and Sudan. Joint Hearings, March 13, 1996. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1996.

Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society (ASAPS) The Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society (ASAPS) formed on June 24, 1909, out of the amalgamation of two groups, the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS) and the Aborigines’ Protection Society (APS). Both groups had been formed in the 19th century in the aftermath of the antislavery movement in Great Britain and had served as watchdog groups for aboriginal peoples and former slaves in the British colonies and foreign territories following the Emancipation Act of 1833. The respective financial weaknesses of both organizations, reinforced by overlapping memberships and a plethora of deaths, led to unification. In keeping with its legacy, the newly formed ASAPS worked to protect and promote the rights of aboriginal peoples in European colonial territories. This meant a focus on two main pillars of the defunct human rights

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organizations: antislavery and trusteeship, or the protection of the rights of indigenous peoples. As a human rights organization, ASAPS maintained an advantageous metropolitan base that offered easy access to Parliament and the national press in England. A strong network of auxiliary organizations strengthened the society’s global contacts. To inform the public more effectively and petition the home government, ASAPS published numerous pamphlets and distributed memorials on certain topics. The old journals of the defunct BFASS, The Anti-Slavery Reporter, and APS, The Aborigines Friend, were amalgamated to become the Anti-Slavery Reporter and Aborigines Friend. Upon consolidation of the two groups, Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton (1837–1915), son of the famous abolitionist and namesake, became the first president of the newly formed ASAPS. His nephew, Travers Buxton, became the society’s first corresponding secretary with Sir John Hobbis Harris (1874–1940) serving as the organizing secretary. The headquarters remained at Denison House on Vauxhall Bridge Road in London. With the amalgamation the society continued with its traditional mandate against slavery and bonded labor. In 1909, it immediately became involved in an emerging scandal over debt bondage in Peru. From the 1920s onward, with John Harris at the helm, the newly formed ASAPS played an important role in terms of lobbying for a number of important international

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conventions against slavery and forced labor. With the end of World War I in 1918, the society saw the newly formed League of Nations as a forum or mechanism for abolishing slavery and forced labor. For example, the lobbying pressure of ASAPS would eventually help push the League of Nations to enact the Anti-Slavery Convention of 1926. By the 1920s, ASAPS had been pressuring the British government for new laws against slavery, but the government would not acquiesce to the society’s demands. This pushed ASAPS to lobby the League of Nations for a more strident judicial statement on the issue of slavery. With the help of several influential league delegates, such as Sir Arthur Steele Maitland of New Zealand, H. A. Grimshaw of the International Labour Office (ILO), and Frederick J. D. Lugard, a member of the Permanent Mandates Commission, the society peppered the league assembly with pamphlets and speeches by sympathetic league delegates. The society also provided documentation about abuses. Eventually, the League of Nations formed the Temporary Slavery Commission in 1924 to look into the question of slavery. Lugard was the British delegate on the commission. By 1926, the Slavery Commission had hammered out the elements of a new Slavery Convention that was signed on September 25, 1926. Although the new Slavery Convention left the process of abolition up to the individual countries and was similarly vague concerning the

definition of slavery, its passage was, in part, a reflection of ASAPS’s efforts. Similarly, by 1925, Harris and ASAPS were also naively pushing for a vague charter on African labor that would encourage upward mobility through their ally Grimshaw of the International Labour Office. By 1926, the ILO had established a committee of six experts, including Lord Lugard, to look into the issue of forced labor, indentures, and the color bar. The committee met in three sessions between 1927 and 1929. In October 1927 the governing body of the ILO decided to put forced labor on the agenda for the upcoming International Labour Conference in June 1929 in Geneva. Out of this came the Forced Labour Convention of 1930. It called for “each member of the International Labour organization . . . to suppress the use of forced or compulsory labor in all its forms within the shortest possible period.” After five years, the convention called for periodic reports on the working of the convention from signatory countries. Although the convention allowed certain exemptions to the use of forced labor, it nonetheless represented another humanitarian success for ASAPS in its campaign against bonded labor. Buoyed by the passage of the Slavery Convention, ASAPS continued its vociferous attack on slavery. In 1933, the society sent a deputation to Ethiopia to press for the abolition of slavery. Although they were received by Emperor Haile Selassie II, the abolition of slavery did not occur there until 1942.

Anti-Slavery Award

The death of John Harris in 1940 marked the beginning of another period of change for ASAPS, as many of the initial members of the amalgamated society from 1909 either died or retired. By 1946, members like C. W. Greenidge and Commander Thomas Fox Pitt would assume leadership roles in the organization. The formation of the United Nations in 1945 spurred the society toward the international arena as it again lobbied for international conventions against slavery and bonded labor. In 1956, the society lobbied for the Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery. In 1975, it pushed the UN for the creation of the Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery. In 1990, the Society changed its name to Anti-Slavery International, sometimes known as Anti-Slavery. Its main areas of work currently include forced and bonded labor, the worst forms of child labor, trafficking of human beings, and traditional or “chattel” slavery. Opolot Okia See also: Aborigines’ Protection Society; Anti-Slavery International; International Labour Organization; League of Nations.

Further Readings Bourne, H. R. Fox. The Aborigines Protection Society: Chapters in Its History. London: P. S. King & Sons, 1899.

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Swaisland, Charles. “Aborigines Protection Society, 1837–1909.” In After Slavery: Emancipation and Its Discontents, ed. Howard Temperley. London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 2000.

Anti-Slavery Award Anti-Slavery International (ASI), a London-based human rights organization, began awarding its prestigious Anti-Slavery Award in the early 1990s to call attention to exemplary organizations and individuals that have made a difference in combating contemporary slavery worldwide. As the world’s oldest human rights organization, ASI believes that the attention drawn by its annual recognition ceremony will help to focus attention on antislavery efforts and encourage others to join the movement. Previous recipients of the Anti-Slavery Award include: 2009—SOS Esclaves (SOS Slaves) was recognized for its fight against slavery in Mauritania for more than 14 years. 2007—Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) was recognized for its struggle against exploitation in U.S. agriculture. 2006—James Aguer, the chair of the Dinka Committee, was recognized for his dedicated work against slavery in Sudan. 2005—Cecilia Flores-Oebanda, the president and executive director of the Visayan Forum Foundation,

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2002—Backward Society Education (BASE) was recognized for its outstanding work against bonded labor in Nepal, where the organization fights against the poverty, bonded labor, and exploitation of western Nepal’s indigenous Tharu minority. 2001—Association for Community Development (ACD) was recognized for its outstanding work against human trafficking in Bangladesh. Farm workers haul buckets of tomatoes in Immokalee, Florida. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers received Anti-Slavery International’s Anti-Slavery Award for its efforts to end the exploitation of farm workers. (AP/ Wide World Photos)

was recognized for her outstanding and innovative work in the Philippines and surrounding region, particularly in the area of child domestic work. 2004—Niger-based organization Timidria was recognized for its pioneering work against slavery in Niger. It spearheaded the antislavery movement in Niger, raising awareness of the issue, and helping former slaves to integrate into society. 2003—Vera Lesko, the founding director of the Hearth of Vlora Women, was recognized for her courageous and dedicated work against the trafficking of women and girls into sexual exploitation in Albania.

2000—George Omona, the project coordinator for the Gulu Support the Children Organization (GUSCO), was recognized for his outstanding work with children affected by armed conflict, especially those abducted by the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda. 1999—Husband and wife team of Vivek and Vidyullata Pandit were recognized for their two decades of service as human rights activists who worked against bonded labor in India’s Maharashtra state. 1998—Professor Cheïkh Saad Bouh Kamara, the founder and head of the Association Mauritanienne des Droits de l’Homme, was recognized for his efforts to protect human rights and fight slavery in Mauritania. 1997—Brazilian activist Pureza Lopes Loiola was recognized for her efforts to fight slavery in Brazil’s rural estates.

Anti-Slavery International

1996—Regional Indigenous Organisation of Atalaya (OIRA) was recognized for its work in freeing thousands of Ashaninka, an indigenous people from Peru’s Amazon basin, from bonded labor. 1995—Harry Wu was recognized for his courageous campaign against the system of forced labor that was used in Chinese prison camps (laogai). 1994—Father Edwin Paraison was recognized for his efforts to highlight the plight of Haitian cane cutters enslaved on the sugar plantations in the Dominican Republic and in freeing Haitian children working there. 1993—End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism (ECPAT) campaign was recognized for its worldwide campaign to halt the rise in the commercial sexual abuse of children. 1992—Father Ricardo Rezende Figueira was recognized for his work with the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) in Brazil. The organization worked to end the abuse of poor, landless Brazilians who had been forced to work as slave laborers on many large estates in the Amazonia region. 1991—Swami Agnivesh accepted the award on behalf of the Bonded Labour Liberation Front (BLLF), an organization that was recognized for its success in freeing and rehabilitating thousands of bonded

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laborers and in helping to raise the profile of this issue both in India and internationally. Junius P. Rodriguez See also: Anti-Slavery International (ASI).

Further Readings Anti-Slavery Award: http://www.antislav ery.org. Bales, Kevin. Disposable People: New Slavery and the Global Economy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.

Anti-Slavery International With a variety of name changes, AntiSlavery International, a British human rights organization, has been involved in efforts to abolish slavery in the British colonies and throughout the world for more than two centuries. Its present mission is stated as the elimination of modern slavery by means of research, dissemination of information, and campaigning. Through its publication of Anti-Slavery Reporter and books about slavery as well as its worldwide media and Internet network, the charitable organization exposes case histories and monitors and challenges all forms of modern slavery, including forced, bonded, and child labor; the trafficking of human beings; and chattel slavery. By reporting on these abuses of human rights, the organization sets in motion public campaigns to pressure governments for change and redress. Anti-Slavery International began its mission in 1787 when the Committee

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for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was formed. Backed by the British Prime Minister William Pitt and led by member of Parliament William Wilberforce, the committee included several prominent Quakers as well as Thomas Clarkson and Granville Sharp, who were committed to abolishing the transatlantic slave trade. In an unprecedented successful public campaign, the committee instigated numerous petitions to Parliament calling for the end to the slave trade; and, for various reasons including this pressure, in 1807 the slave trade was abolished. In that year, the committee became known as the African Institution and accepted the role of semiofficial watchdog to prevent violations of the law. Despite Britain’s attempts to create a consensus among nations with respect to ending the transatlantic slave trade, the condition of existing slaves remained as onerous as ever. In 1823, the African Institution was reformed as the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery (better known as the Anti-Slavery Society). Initially led by Wilberforce, its objective was to abolish the institution of slavery itself, but, in the meantime, pressure was applied to improve the condition of colonial slaves, but parliamentary measures to ameliorate slave conditions made little difference. A radical breakaway group, the Agency Committee, which came into existence in 1831, demanded the immediate and unconditional emancipation of slaves in the British colonies. At this time, there were 1,300 local abolition committees in Britain and more

than 5,000 petitions were submitted to Parliament. On July 31, 1833, the Bill for the Total Abolition of Colonial Slavery was passed, to take effect on August 1, 1834. Although most British colonies grasped the opportunity to force former slaves into apprenticeships for a further four years, children under six years of age were freed at once. After the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, activism to ensure the eradication of slavery elsewhere continued. The Agency Committee became the British and Foreign AntiSlavery Society (BFASS) in 1839, and continued to monitor the exploitation of slave laborers in the Americas. In the 1850s, the organization also began to focus on slavery in East Africa and the Muslim world and on other slavelike practices worldwide. In 1909, the BFASS merged with the Aborigines’ Protection Society to become the AntiSlavery and Aborigines Protection Society, which oversaw some notable successes in preventing the exploitation of indigenous people. The group was a major force in the establishment of the League of Nations, which was dedicated to securing national and international respect for human rights. The Anti-Slavery Society, by different names, has overseen several important international agreements in the 20th century, including the Slavery Convention of 1926 that bound its signatories to criminalize all forms of slavery, which ultimately came to include debt bondage, serfdom, forced marriage, and the exploitation of children. Recently, among many other activities to prohibit

Anti-Slavery Society

human trafficking and abuse, AntiSlavery International has been involved in the campaign to End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism (ECPAT). In addition to running the British branch of ECPAT (established in 1994) from its own offices, Anti-Slavery International has successfully campaigned for a change in British law that permits people to be prosecuted in Britain for the sexual abuse of children overseas. Susan B. Iwanisziw See also: Abolition of Slavery Act (1833); Anti-Slavery Society; Concubines; League of Nations; Servile Marriage; Slavery Convention of 1926; Wilberforce, William.

Further Readings Anker, Christien van den, ed. The Political Economy of New Slavery. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Kaye, Mike. 1807–2007: Over 200 Years of Campaigning against Slavery. London: Anti-Slavery International, 2005. Klingberg, Frank J. The Anti-Slavery Movement in England: A Study in English Humanitarianism. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1968.

Anti-Slavery Society The Anti-Slavery Society was an abolition organization created in 1909 as a result of the merger of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS) and the Aborigines’ Protection Society (APS). One of its first campaigns aimed to end mui tsai, a system under which girls from poor families in Hong Kong and Singapore were sold as servants to

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rich families. Its campaign influenced the passing of the Female Domestic Service Ordinance in 1923, which outlawed the system and also forbade the employment of any children under 10 years old. The society thereafter labored to persuade the League of Nations to hold an inquiry into slavery. This action prompted the league to appoint the Temporary Slavery Commission (TSC) in 1924. Its mandate was to assess the nature and volume of slavery and of the slave trade worldwide, recommend that a treaty be negotiated to abolish slavery in all its forms, including debt bondage, forced marriage, and child labor, and propose ways to facilitate the shift from slave or forced labor to free wage labor or independent production. The TSC’s report led to the Slavery Convention of 1926, the first international treaty against slavery and the slave trade, which bound the signatories to end all forms of slavery mentioned in the TSC’s report. Because of its role in putting slavery firmly on the agenda of the League of Nations, the society’s reputation rose considerably. In 1931, for instance, it was consulted by Emperor Haile Selassie on ways to abolish slavery in Ethiopia, and in 1932 it discussed policy with the British foreign secretary. After World War II, the Anti-Slavery Society embarked on a campaign to encourage the United Nations to set up a permanent advisory committee on slavery. Its efforts led in 1949 to the establishment of an ad hoc committee on slavery, which published its report in 1951. The committee’s

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recommendation that the UN take over the 1926 Slavery Convention was accepted, but not its suggestion that a permanent slavery committee be established. As a result of opposition from the colonial powers and also some former colonies, it took until 1975 before the society had achieved its aim. In that year, the UN set up a slavery committee as a Working Group of the Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and the Protection of Minorities. In the late 1970s, the Anti-Slavery Society focused on protecting indigenous peoples and addressing ongoing problems with debt bondage, the link between human rights and development aid, and child labor. In 1990, it changed its name to Anti-Slavery International, which today is the only charity in the United Kingdom to work exclusively on slavery and related abuses. Henrice Altink See also: Abolitionism, British; Anti-Slavery International.

Further Readings www.antislavery.org Miers, Suzanne. Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 2003.

Antislavery and Labor Movements In both Great Britain and the United States, the attitude of labor reformers

toward the abolition of slavery represented a missed opportunity. It might have seemed natural for those seeking to elevate the condition of white working people to focus on alleviating the degradation of enslaved Africans in both the United States and the Caribbean, on the grounds that eliminating slavery would help to decrease some of the stigma associated with manual labor. In fact, many abolitionists explicitly made this connection, arguing that slaveholders were in league with Northern factory owners to promote the chattelization of white workers. In actuality, because the vast majority of abolitionists had a different interpretation than labor reformers about the value of competition in the labor market, they found themselves on opposite sides of this issue, with labor reformers calling their own condition “white slavery” or “wage slavery” and calling for it, rather than chattel slavery, to be the main focus of reformist attentions. With some notable exceptions, British and American abolitionist leaders were largely drawn from the middle rather than the working classes, and tended to share certain views. Most abolitionists agreed that the meaning of freedom was “self-ownership,” rather than a level economic playing field. They accepted labor-market competition and claimed that poverty spurred workers on to virtues like sobriety and thrift. Moreover, poverty seemed to them an intractable problem that admitted no easy solution, while slavery was clearly a man-made and more easily

Antislavery and Labor Movements

abolished institution, and thus should have priority. While some abolitionists, impelled by Christian humanitarianism, may have felt that Northern employers should pay a reasonable level of wages, their commitment to freedom of contract led them to oppose labor’s central vehicle for achieving higher wages—labor unions. Abolitionist political economy was notoriously underdeveloped. In response, labor reformers on both sides of the Atlantic played the race card in the 19th century by creating an imagined community of whiteness. This imagined community of whiteness was strengthened in the United States by the affiliation of labor reformers with the antebellum Democratic Party, which was proslavery and very comfortable with racial inequality. Labor songs and poetry pointed out the hypocrisy of emancipationists, who focused their largesse on black people while white factory children starved and worked themselves to death. This argument was aided by the coincidence in the early 1830s of the English campaign to extirpate slavery in its West Indian colonies with labor reformers’ battle for a 10-hour day for children working in factories. Thus, in Britain, Tory radical Richard Oastler railed against factory masters who reserved their only compassion for black workers whom they had never seen. Referring to work in factories as “wage slavery” emphasized the additional injustice implicated in ignoring workers in the abolitionists’ own racial community. Later, Chartists broke

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up abolitionist meetings in an attempt to reinforce their belief that real slavery was the exclusion of white working men from the suffrage. In the United States, New England journeyman and labor leader Seth Luther and New York labor legislator Mike Walsh compared the plight of the Northern workingmen unfavorably to that of the slaves; Walsh’s newspaper, The Subterranean, was filled with racial slurs. Catholic writer Orestes Brownson used the analogy between factory work and slavery to damn the entire wage labor system. Some artisans did sign antislavery petitions, but their decision to do so was not supported by the discourse of labor reform. One of the only labor movements in which any credence was given to abolitionism was the land reform movement. Gerrit Smith, a well-known abolitionist, not only supported the movement to gain homesteads for white workers, but also supplied a number of black workers with free homesteads on his own land in upstate New York. George Henry Evans, the leader of the National Reform Association and the editor of the longest-running antebellum labor newspaper, the Working Man’s Advocate, had long been an opponent of slavery, going so far as to support the Haitian Revolution and Nat Turner’s rebellion. Others in the land reform movement, including antirent leader Thomas Devyr and labor unionist John Commerford, were more strident Democrats, but Evans’s role as the editor of the main land-reforming newspaper meant that movement was able to offer some support for an end to slavery.

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The ideological basis of land reform also caused it to harmonize with antislavery. Land reformers promised to alleviate the overcrowding in the labor market. Readily available and affordable land would be a safety valve, alleviating the fear that if the labor market were swamped with freed blacks, the price of labor would plummet. Despite this potential underlying sympathy between abolition and land reform, abolitionists sparred with Evans in their newspapers throughout the late 1840s. Each side tried to convince the other to make its cause a greater priority. The land reform movement was not the only point of contact between the antislavery movement and labor reform. White working men seeking sympathy for their position could also look to abolitionists like John Collins, who combined abolitionism with communitarianism; Nathaniel P. Rogers, editor of the Herald of Freedom, who called for a rethinking of all coercive labor systems; and William Goodell, another antimaterialist abolitionist. By the 1850s and 1860s, even abolitionists like Harriet Beecher Stowe were using the labor movement’s own racial beliefs and arguments to try to engage Northern working men, by pointing out the light skin color of many enslaved blacks, the result of many generations of amalgamation with slaveholders. If wage slavery was wrong because it fell upon white men, then surely chattel slavery was wrong when it fell upon people who were nearly white. Despite these overtures, and the fact that abolitionists and labor reformers were

both seeking to secure for the laborer the value of his labor, abolitionists and labor reformers remained mostly estranged from each other throughout the antebellum period. Jamie Bronstein

Further Readings Bolt, Christine, and Seymour Drescher, eds. Anti-Slavery, Religion, and Reform: Essays in Memory of Roger Anstey. Hamden, CT: Archon Press, 1980. Bronstein, Jamie L. Land Reform and Working-Class Experience in Britain and the United States, 1800–1862. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999. Glickstein, Jonathan. “The Chattelization of Northern Whites: An Evolving Abolitionist Warning.” American NineteenthCentury History 4 (2003): 25–58. Huston, James L. “Abolitionists, Political Economists, and Capitalism.” Journal of the Early Republic 20 (2000): 488–521. Perry, Lewis, and Michael Fellman, eds. Antislavery Reconsidered. Baton Rouge: Louisiana University Press, 1979. Roediger, David. The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class. New York: Verso, 1999.

Arana, Julio César (1864–1952) Julio César Arana was a Peruvian rubber baron and entrepreneur, especially famous for the atrocities committed on the native population of the Putumayo River in Colombia under his management of the Peruvian Amazon Company (PAC).

Arana, Julio César

Arana started at the age of 14 as a Panama-hat maker and dealer, a trade that allowed him to journey all along the frontier of the Department of Loreto in northeastern Peru, just at the very moment when the Amazon rubber boom was gathering momentum. After a frustrated attempt to enlist during the war with Chile, Arana traveled to Cajamarca (in the Andean highlands) to learn business administration and bookkeeping, skills that would become instrumental to his meteoric rise as the wealthiest (and more ruthless) rubber trader of South America in the subsequent two decades. In 1881, Arana settled in Yurimaguas and rapidly became involved in the flowering industry, later moving with his wife to Iquitos (capital of Loreto) in 1899. He started a commercial partnership with Colombians Benjamín Larrañaga and Juan B. Vega, both already known in the region for their infamous methods of extracting native Indian labor. Their procedure centered in a practice regionally known as endeude (indebtedness) in which usually cheap items and manufactured goods would be “advanced” as payment to a group of Indians who would promise to deliver the equivalent price in rubber. Besides pricing these trade goods at sometimes more than 400 percent of their original cost, the measure scales at the local gathering stations where rubber was collected would usually be altered to the advantage of the company. Therefore, the initially willing tribes would soon discover that the original item they had “bought” in advance would cost them the entire produce of

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their life, and that their future and previous forced debts would be carried down to their descendants. Terror would be systematically used by white foremen to secure the necessary production of rubber, thus establishing an economic rationale similar to actual slavery. By improving the same methods and labor practices, Arana quickly ousted his former associates and proceeded to establish in 1903 his own firm under the name of J. C. Arana Hermanos with its main office in Manaos, Brazil, the center of continental rubber transactions. His managerial skills combined with the meticulous use of violence in the region, tripled the Putumayo rubber output from 201 metric tons of latex in 1903 to 627 metric tons in 1907, when he established the Peruvian Amazon Rubber Company (soon to be renamed as PAC) in London. In Peru, Arana was successively nominated as president of the municipal Chamber of Commerce and mayor of Iquitos, but in 1910, the denunciations made by Walter E. Hardenburg on the Putumayo atrocities, followed by the outcome of British consul Roger Casement’s report, led to a progressive downfall in Arana’s international credibility. Arana’s problems coincided with British economic interests in undermining the price of Amazonian rubber on behalf of its own plantations in Asia. After World War I (1914–1918), PAC was closed down on financial grounds, but Arana remained involved in the rubber business until his retirement from public life in 1930. A conservative estimate indicates that at least 60,000 Indians belonging to

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eight ethnic groups died under Arana’s administration, either by labor abuse, deliberate assassination, or sickness contracted under the slavery system. At least 7,000 additional Indians were brutally displaced from their original territory and relocated to the Peruvian rubber country. Although considered a criminal in Colombia, Great Britain, and the United States, Arana is still viewed as a frontier hero by Loretans, a self-made man, a developer, and an illustrious citizen who, paradoxically, is remembered for his proposal of instituting a plan to protect Indian property during his long term as senator in Lima. Carlos Guillermo Páramo Bonilla Further Readings Collier, Richard. The River That God Forgot: The Story of the Amazon Rubber Boom. New York: Dutton, 1968. Stanfield, Michael Edward. Red Rubber, Bleeding Trees: Violence, Slavery, and Empire in Northwest Amazonia, 1850– 1933. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998. Taussig, Michael. Shamanism, Colonialism and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.

Asia Monitor Resource Center (AMRC) The Asia Monitor Resource Center (AMRC) is a Hong Kong-based independent nongovernmental organization that exists to promote the rights

of free laborers across the Asian continent. The work of AMRC is premised upon the notion that the human rights of laborers will be best served if they are stakeholders in recognizing, preserving, and defending those rights. To that end, AMRC works to facilitate the creation of free trade unions that will provide a voice to workers and help them to defend their rights against those who might attempt to exploit them. AMRC works to ensure that the essential rights of laborers that have been agreed upon through international covenants of the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the United Nations should be honored within the nations of Asia. It encourages workers to form labor associations in order to encourage group solidarity among laborers, and it urges Asian governments to recognize such groups so that companies will be obliged to bargain collectively with them, thereby guaranteeing that the most basic rights of workers are ensured. AMRC has achieved success within some Asian labor markets, but its efforts have been constrained within some of the more authoritarian states. Some governments resist efforts by AMRC because they believe that the group’s efforts are a subterfuge for more insidious goals of political and economic liberalization—coded language for regime change. These states view the efforts to promote formation of free trade unions as a policy reminiscent of earlier Cold War campaigns to destabilize communist states by

Asian Migrant Center (AMC)

promoting Western-influenced notions of laborer’s rights. Besides coping with the lack of cooperation from authoritarian states, AMRC must also counter opposition from workers who oppose the collectivization of labor within societies that are culturally attuned toward strict regimentation and a lack of emphasis upon the autonomous liberty of the individual. In addition, cultural variations with respect to the legitimacy of child labor or the definition of what constitutes unfair labor practices often varies greatly between and among nations. To this end, AMRC sponsors educational campaigns to familiarize laborers with the most basic rights that are promised to them through various international covenants and encourages the workers to strive to achieve these rights. AMRC also works directly with corporations to encourage them to adopt company codes of conduct that recognize and honor the rights of laborers. They have achieved some success with multinational corporations in this regard, and it is hoped that such efforts to model good behavior in Asia will encourage local partners, suppliers, and subcontractors to commit themselves to similar benchmark standards. AMRC publishes Asian Labour Update, a quarterly report that provides information about ongoing efforts to support the creation of vigorous independent labor organizations throughout the Asian region. AMRC works as a research and resource institution for other labor and trade unions, nongovernmental organizations, and human

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rights groups that operate in Asia. The center also publishes occasional papers and reports that document particular case studies and other issues of labor policy in Asia. Junius P. Rodriguez See also: Company Codes of Conduct; International Labour Organization (ILO).

Further Readings Porges, J. Codes of Conduct. Hong Kong: Asia Monitor Resource Center, 1998. Yamamoto, Y., and K. G. Ashizawa. Corporate-NGO Partnership in Asia Pacific. Tokyo: Japan Center for International Exchange, 1999. Yimprasert, J., and C. Candland. Can Corporate Codes of Conduct Promote Labor Standards? Evidence from the Thai Footwear and Apparel Industries. Hong Kong: Asia Monitor Resource Center and Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee, 2000.

Asian Migrant Center (AMC) International boundaries have become increasingly porous in the modern age of economic globalization as labor has often streamed—both legally and illegally— into market sectors where need seems to be the greatest. The continent of Asia has experienced dramatic transformation in this regard as economic development has prompted a significant movement of migrant laborers to those regions where labor needs seemingly are in high demand. The Asian Migrant Center (AMC), a Hong Kong-based research and

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advocacy institute, was established in 1989 to monitor the growing trend in transnational labor migration that emerged in the 1980s when the modern global economy began to take shape. Concerned policy analysts began to recognize, almost immediately, that distinct elements of human trafficking networks began to emerge in the wake of expanding markets as desperate laborers sought to find the means by which they might partake in the so-called Asian economic miracle. Many who hoped to find a better life found themselves victimized by an insidious network of traffickers who prey upon the hopes of an impoverished workforce. The AMC annually publishes the Asian Migrant Yearbook to document the changing labor demographics of the Asian workforce and to report upon changes in labor law and enforcement that have been achieved largely through its advocacy efforts. These yearbooks also provide detailed statistical analysis and maps to document the plight of migrants in 16 Asian countries. The AMC works as a resource center and a clearinghouse for many other human rights-based nongovernmental organizations that work to counter the efforts of regional labor traffickers in Asia and facilitate the social reintegration of former migrants who are liberated through such efforts. The AMC has also worked to lessen the necessity of potential migrants to move by working to cultivate economic development within existing sectors of the poor and marginalized so that they can find work locally, thereby enhancing

their economic well being and self dignity. In seeking to find and develop such labor alternatives to migration, the AMC works with groups that serve migrant needs to cultivate potential niche markets and help obtain microfinancing to fund such experimental projects. The goal of these efforts is to provide economic security for individuals at home so that they are not lured into the world of human trafficking where they might be victimized even further. The work of advocacy organizations such as the AMC is made increasingly difficult by the diversity of economic and political interests found upon the Asian continent, ranging from democratic societies to authoritarian regimes. Although international covenants exist that protect the rights and interests of laborers and migrants, universal application of these policies does not exist, and some nations show little regard for protecting the rights of migrant laborers who are exploited within their borders. The AMC’s efforts have also attempted to raise political awareness among migrants about their rights in an effort to enhance human dignity among the often marginalized population. Results of these efforts have been uneven as authoritarian regimes have scoffed at such attempts, but political awareness and activism among some migrant groups has been enhanced through these campaigns. Junius P. Rodriguez

See also: Human Trafficking for Labor Purposes; Migrant Workers; Undocumented Aliens.

Asian-American Free Labor Institute (AAFLI)

Further Readings McCuen, Gary E. Modern Slavery and the Global Economy. Hudson, WI: McCuen Publications, 1998. Townsend, Peter, and David Gordon. World Poverty: New Policies to Defeat an Old Enemy. Bristol: Policy Press, 2002.

Asian-American Free Labor Institute (AAFLI) The Asian-American Free Labor Institute (AAFLI) was founded by the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) in 1968, and closed down in 1995. It first operated in Vietnam. Shortly afterward, the AAFLI extended its location to include the Philippines and other Asian and Pacific countries. By the early 1990s, it was operating in 31 countries in Asia, the Pacific, and the Middle East. Like the other three regional institutes (AALC, AIFLD, FTUI) created by the same labor federation, the AAFLI was a product of the alliance formed by the AFL-CIO, the U.S. government, and the American bourgeoisie against communism and leftwing liberation struggles around the world during the Cold War era. Thus, the AAFLI functioned as a device by which the AFL-CIO vigorously tried to boost U.S. foreign policy and business interests in the Asia-Pacific and Middle East regions. Using funds from the U.S. government, the AAFLI organized education and training programs for the rank and file as well as union leaders, conducted

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development projects, provided technical assistance, and supported visitor exchanges. Assisting allied unions to develop political-action capacities was another focus of the AAFLI. All these activities were designed to generate a compliant labor force and free trade unions whose functions would run parallel to U.S. foreign policy needs. The role of the AAFLI in Turkey in the years following the military coup in September 1980 is an illuminating example in this context. Although the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) suspended the affiliation of the AAFLI-backed Confederation of Trade Unions of Turkey (TURK-IS) because of its eager support for the military government, the AAFLI signed a new technical aid agreement with TURK-IS and continued to educate workers as well as leaders of the allied unions. Morris Paladino, the executive director of the AAFLI at that time (later revealed as the principal CIA agent by CIA operative Philip Agee), visited Turkey and at a press conference on October 28, 1982, commented that, “Turkey is not the only country that imposes restrictions on trade union rights. There are such restrictions in some other Asian countries as well. These restrictions must be tolerated.” There were also AAFLI operations in the Philippines, where it provided massive funding to help the Ferdinand Marcos government in its battle against the forces challenging his dictatorship. Between 1983 and 1989, the AFL-CIO gave the Marcos-created

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Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) nearly $6 million to use against the progressive labor organization Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU). This fund was larger than those given to any other labor movement in the world at that time. With the support of the AAFLI, the TUCP allied itself with the dictatorship, the employers, and even right-wing death squads in order to prevent the rise of a radical left-wing trade union movement. These operations continued through the 1980s. The AAFLI also bribed a TUCP leader serving in the Philippines Senate to get him to vote for retention of U.S. military bases when that issue was before their congress. By the time the Cold War ended, the AAFLI had accomplished its assigned mission. The AFL-CIO’s new leadership closed down the AAFLI and the other three regional institutes, and established the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS) in their place. Fatih Gungor See also: International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU).

Further Readings Gungor, Fatih. TURK-IS’s International Relations [in Turkish]. Unpublished MA thesis. Ankara: Ankara University Social Sciences Graduate School, 1994. Scipes, Kim. “Labor Imperialism Redux?: The AFL-CIO’s Foreign Policy Since 1995.” Monthly Review 57, no. 1 (2005). Shorrock, Tim. “Labor’s Cold War.” The Nation (May 19, 2003): 276.

Asociacion De Trabajadora Autónomas “22 De Junio” de El ORO The Ecuadorian association of sex workers (Asociacion de Trabajadora Autónomas “22 de Junio” de El ORO) is one of the oldest organized groups of sex workers in Latin America, founded on June 22, 1982. The spark to organize was ignited by a physician working in the health department where the women went to receive their mandatory checkups. In this period, it was still novel for women working as prostitutes to have confidence in an organization of this type. “How can a whore lead other whores?” was the way many women thought of the association in the early days. Throughout the years, the association has worked to improve the conditions of the women working in the brothels (and more recently, also with street workers). It has taken actions to improve hygiene by demonstratively throwing away all the dirty mattresses in the brothels after the owners paid no heed to its requests. In 1988, a strike was organized to protest the announced price increases for renting the rooms. The members of the association locked themselves in one of the brothels for a week to reach this goal. The organization grew rapidly because of the economic crisis that Ecuador was experiencing. In 2000, it organized the first general strike, which included a list of demands ranging from better security and improved hygiene to stable rent prices. In the more than 25 years of its existence, the activities of the association have expanded. Not only does it continue

Australia

to provide services for individual sex workers, set up special funds, and give Christmas baskets on the holiday, but also it has grown to be an organization with the objective of changing public opinion and guaranteeing the rights of sex workers as professionals. It has published books, taken to the streets— something that is not extremely common because many sex workers try to protect their anonymity—collaborated on theatrical works, published a magazine, and organized photo exhibitions to reach this goal. It was influential in creating the program La Sala, a drop-in center for sex workers to increase their empowerment and to promote good sexual health. Since the late 1990s, the association has begun to receive financing from international women’s funds such as Mama Cash in the Netherlands and the Global Fund for Women in the United States, both of which have as one of their priorities the support for sex workers’ organizations and their activities. The association is one of the few sex workers’ organizations that is integrated into a local feminist network, working side by side with feminists and mutually supporting each other’s activities. Often feminist and sex worker organizations do not see eye to eye, because they have differing ideological backgrounds. The former are commonly feminist abolitionists claiming sex work to be a form of sexual slavery, and the latter are advocates for sex workers’ rights. This often causes more tensions than collaboration. However, in this case, the organizations in El ORO share a common perspective. One joint initiative in 2003 was a seminar

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organized in Quito. With the upcoming parliamentary debates over a new prostitution law, the seminar sought to change political thought in this regard from a mentality that has been called a-legal—not legal, not illegal, tolerated and controlled—to one that comes from a sex worker/human rights perspective. Lorraine Nencel See also: Prostitution.

Further Readings Asociacion de Trabajadora Autónomas “22 de Junio” de El ORO en Fundación Quimera. “Trabajadoras del sexo. Memorias Vivas.” 2002. Manzo Rodas, R., M. Briones Velasteguí, and T. Cordero Velásquez. “Nosotras, Las Señoras Alegres.” Quito: Abrapalabra Ediciones, 1991.

Australia Prior to the loss of its 13 North American colonies (in what became the United States), the United Kingdom transported many convicts sentenced to penal servitude to North America where, as part of their sentences, they worked for farmers or plantation owners, who paid a fee to the Crown. After the American Revolution (1775– 1783), convicts sentenced to penal servitude were transported to the Australian colonies (except the Province of South Australia). The convicts constituted a servile labor force that was used for public works, but their labor was also assigned to settlers, who were encouraged to employ convicts. After

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completing their sentences, they were freed. On August 1, 1834, the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 took effect throughout the British Empire. Slavery and slavery-like institutions had never been recognized in Australia. Despite this, early white sealers who visited the region captured and kept indigenous women as domestic and sex slaves. After white settlement, the indigenous peoples of Australia were driven off their ancestral lands. Many were herded unto missions or native reservations. Others eked out a meager existence in shanty towns erected on the fringes of rural towns. The remainder lived on cattle or sheep ranches close to their ancestral lands (of which they had been dispossessed), where the younger men worked. They were paid less than white workers, but often they were paid only in rations (flour, tea, and sugar). Some women worked as domestic servants. Indigenous children— particularly female children—worked as domestic servants for white settlers but were rarely paid. Some worked as pearl divers, which was a dangerous occupation. Initially, there were no written contracts, and the pearl divers were often exploited and not paid. Subsequent legislation required written contracts of indenture for the season, but as the pearl divers could rarely read them, they were vulnerable to exploitation. From 1847 to 1904, nearly 58,000 islanders from islands in the South Pacific (mostly from New Hebrides—now Vanuatu—and the Solomon Islands, and later some from New Guinea)

were taken to work on the sugar and cotton plantations, the sheep and cattle stations, pearl diving, and as domestic servants in Queensland and New South Wales—two of the Australian colonies—as well as on the plantations in Fiji and Samoa. The recruitment practices were often brutal. Many were kidnapped by force or deception. This was known “blackbirding” (the term once used by slavers in West Africa) and the victims were known as “kanakas” (meaning “man” or “person”). In theory, they entered into a contract of indenture to work for a term of three years. Although some entered into these contracts willingly, there can be no doubt that others did not freely consent. Employment conditions were exploitative and the laborers were generally abused and reduced to near-slave status. Many worked under the whip in the cotton fields and cane fields of Queensland. Often they were not paid their proper wages or not paid at all. Some recruiters were charged with slave trading, but none was convicted. However, in a notorious incident, a mad Irish doctor succeeded in persuading the crew of a vessel to take control and embark upon blackbirding, marooning white passengers and subsequently killing a number of the kidnapped islanders in the ship’s hold. Several of the crew were convicted of murder. Queensland enacted the Polynesian Labourers Act in 1868 to regulate the treatment of these laborers and the licensing of recruiters. Because the Queensland legislature lacked

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extraterritorial jurisdiction, it could not prevent the activities of kidnappers outside its borders in the South Pacific. To overcome this limit on extraterritorial jurisdiction, British legislation of the 1870s—particularly the Pacific Islanders Protection Act of 1872 and the Pacific Islanders Protection Act of 1875 (the Kidnapping Acts)—provided for agents on British recruiting vessels, stricter licensing procedures, and the patrol of British islands. These measures reduced the incidence of blackbirding by British subjects. Due to the continuing heavy demand for labor in Queensland, however, the practice continued to flourish. The kidnapping of South Pacific islanders died out only in 1904 as a result of the Pacific Island Labourers’ Act of 1901 of the newly created Australian federal legislature (when the Australian colonies came together in a federation), which prohibited recruitment after 1904. It also required the deportation of South Pacific laborers by 1906, other than those who had married in Australia; those who have lived in Australia for a continuous period of 20 years; or those who owned freehold property in Australia. As a consequence, some 3,600 persons were deported. During the earlier part of the 20th century, when girls and young women in England and from central and eastern Europe were trafficked to Australia in the white slave trade—as part of the first modern international wave of trafficking for prostitution—with false promises of working in domestic service, only to end up in brothels. This problem reappeared in the 1990s, with

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instances of young women from eastern Europe and Southeast Asia being trafficked to Australia for prostitution, with some from Southeast Asia being held in bonded labor. From time to time nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) such as the International Council of Women expressed concern that young women and girls in indigenous communities in remote rural areas were being forced into marriages by their families or by tribal elders. In some traditional communities, a girl’s marriage partner was settled by her parents before she had attained puberty and without her consent. Traditional customs in some other communities permitted the inheritance of a widow by her deceased husband’s brother. These NGOs claimed that Australian law was not being enforced against these traditional practices. Paul Bravender-Coyle See also: White Slavery.

Further Readings Elder, Bruce. Blood on the Wattle: Massacres and Maltreatment of Australian Aborigines since 1788. Sydney: New Holland, 1988. Gillen, Mollie. “The Botany Bay Decision, 1786: Convicts, Not Empire.” English Historical Review 97, no. 385 (1982): 740–766. Greenwood, Gordon. Australia: A Social and Political History. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1968. Havemann, Paul, ed. Indigenous People’s Rights in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

B sailed from Khartoum at the head of a personally funded and well-supplied expedition, landing two months later at Gondokoro on the upper Nile. The explorers John Speke and James Grant arrived soon after, claiming to have found the source of the White Nile at Lake Victoria. The Bakers followed up Speke’s reports of another large lake, and in March 1864 claimed discovery of the Luta N’zige, which they renamed Lake Albert. After many hardships, they returned to Britain where Samuel Baker’s narrative of the expedition became a bestseller; knighted in 1866, he was lionized as a preeminent explorer and authority on Africa. Baker’s writings provided evidence of the impact of slaving in the southern Sudan, but he was mistaken about a deeply rooted slave trade integral to the region’s economy. While slavery had a long history in the Sudan, slave labor became central only after the advent of Turko-Egyptian rule from 1821, and particularly after 1839, when successful Egyptian navigation of the swamps of the Sudd opened the south to traders from Khartoum. Pioneering European traders (later supplanted by Turks and Arabized northern Sudanese) sought feathers, beeswax, cattle and especially ivory. Largely a by-product of the ivory trade,

Baker, Samuel White (1821–1893) A celebrated Victorian explorer, hunter, and adventurer, Samuel White Baker led a controversial antislavery expedition to the southern Sudan and Uganda in 1870–1873. Samuel Baker came from a wealthy English family that prospered in the sugar business in the West Indies and Mauritius, former slave colonies. He was an exceptionally strong man with great endurance and formidable skill as a big-game hunter. Baker spent much time in his early years seeking a meaningful purpose to his life; he successfully managed plantations in Sri Lanka but grew bored with business and estate routine. On a shooting trip in the Balkans in 1859 he fell in love with young, beautiful Florence Szasz (later Lady Baker), his companion on all later expeditions and an intrepid adventurer in her own right. Baker allegedly purchased her after a slave auction to save her from a Turkish harem, a notable irony considering his later fame as an anti-slave trade crusader. Inspired by the quest for the sources of the Nile River, the Bakers went to Egypt in March 1861 and spent over a year exploring the Sudan-Ethiopia borderlands. In December 1862 they 127

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Samuel White Baker was an English explorer who lead a violent and controversial mission that liberated slaves in southern Sudan and Uganda. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

slaves remained a secondary commodity for decades though the percentage increased as elephants became scarce. Captive labor helped expand commercial agriculture in the north, and traders sold many others in Egypt and the Ottoman Empire. Sir Samuel Baker returned to Egypt in 1869 for the opening of the Suez Canal. There he met Ismail, khedive (viceroy) of Egypt, nominally an Ottoman province but effectively independent. Ismail had grandiose plans to modernize Egypt and expand its power in Africa; a prime focus of these efforts was the southern Sudan, seen as a potential source of wealth beyond ivory and slaves. Ismail invited Baker to command a major expedition to the south, including an annual salary of £10,000 for four years and an

unlimited expense account. At the time it was the most lavishly equipped expedition ever sent into the African interior, but with over 1,500 armed men, artillery and several river steamers, it was a military operation rather than exploration. The terms of commission empowered Baker to eradicate the slave trade; establish military posts, orderly government, and personal security; and open the region to legitimate commerce (that is, without slave raiding) and economic development. Leaving Khartoum on February 8, 1870, the Bakers’ flotilla failed to pass through the Sudd; a second attempt succeeded later that year, and at Gondokoro they set up a base, named Ismailia in honor of the khedive, in April 1871. While in this region they stopped a number of trading vessels, freeing several hundred slaves but also confiscating ivory, which was a legal commodity. Despite a firman (permit) appointing Baker pasha or governor of Egypt’s new Equatoria province, both officials and traders resented Baker’s mission because it disrupted established commerce. South of Ismailia, Baker’s force, reduced to a few hundred by disease, desertion, and garrisons founded en route, left the White Nile and marched overland into what is now Uganda. Incessant demands for food, water, building materials and especially porters alienated both local peoples and northerners residing in Equatoria. His resort to force to secure supplies and achieve his goals ensured hostile receptions in most villages, and his dwindling but still potent army provoked many attacks on the journey.

Baker, Samuel White

In early 1872, the Bakers reached the major Ugandan kingdom of Bunyoro, which was to be a focus of plans to develop commercial cotton growing and a steamer service on Lake Albert and serve as springboard to control most of Uganda. But Kabarega, the ruler of Bunyoro, was wary of Baker’s firearms and naturally resisted Baker’s “authority” to annex his kingdom and liberate slaves. Diplomatic misunderstandings, conflicts over access to supplies and porters, and eventual open warfare marked their sojourn in Bunyoro. The expedition had to fight its way out, burning Kabarega’s capital Masindi to cover the withdrawal; arriving at Fatiko and then Ismailia, they learned that these garrisons were also in dire straits. Reports of these difficulties and rumors of the Bakers’ demise had reached Egypt and even Britain, so it was quite a surprise when Baker reached Khartoum in June 1873 and telegraphed news to the world that the expedition had achieved all substantive goals. The Bakers again returned home to much acclaim, but this time it was not universal; numerous critics, including members of the AntiSlavery Society, deplored the disorder and violence that accompanied these efforts. It was Samuel and Florence Baker’s last African adventure. It is not easy now to assess Samuel Baker and his expedition’s achievements in central Africa. Was he the acclaimed paragon of Victorian masculinity, whose iron will overcame all obstacles in the service of humanity? Or was he a self-righteous pioneer of imperialism whose efforts left Equatoria and Bunyoro in turmoil and presaged

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the methods of the scramble for Africa? Both views have merit, but perhaps the best perspective is that of the societies affected by the expedition. The Banyoro were pleased that he returned captives taken from them, but less happy that he freed some of those they held in turn, more than 1,000 by Baker’s own account. The Acholi of northern Uganda still retain oral histories praising his assistance in resisting Arab razzias, but the Bari of Gondokoro have bitter memories of his soldiers’ depredations. Certainly the immediate effects of Baker’s expedition were negligible: a few forts and steamers with munitions left for later governors of Equatoria, and perhaps 1,500–2,000 slaves freed. But the destruction, turmoil and ill feeling left in their wake offset these positive results, and surely did not meet the official goal of good governance. The ambiguous nature of his achievements becomes apparent, considering the postemancipation status of the liberated captives, an intrinsic dilemma commonly endured by freedmen and women. Little provision was made for the ex-slaves of Bunyoro, and the fate of the women and children intercepted farther downriver from Gondokoro/Ismailia was still more problematic. Baker described their finding husbands and homes among the soldiers and porters, and asserted that they chose them freely. But armies in 19th-century Africa routinely paid their soldiers with slaves, especially women, as the booty of war. Behind the optimistic account of liberation is a more likely tale of one form of servitude exchanged for another.

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Possibly Baker’s most enduring legacy is one that he would not want to claim for himself. In North America and Western Europe most citizens can assume that their governments guarantee security of life and property. But since independence in 1956, the Khartoum government has been the primary guarantor of insecurity, and indeed since the 1980s has abetted a brutal slave trade, targeting much of the region the Bakers traversed. Despite freeing large numbers of slaves, Samuel Baker did more than anyone to inaugurate the use of violence as an instrument of Sudanese government policy. This pattern continues to blight Sudan’s current and future prospects. Thomas Pyke Johnson See also: Abolitionism; Abolitionism, British.

Further Readings Baker, Samuel W. Ismailia. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1875. Collins, Robert O. “Samuel White Baker: Prospero in Purgatory.” In Africa and Its Explorers, ed. R. Rotberg. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970. Gray, Richard. A History of the Southern Sudan, 1839–1889. London: Oxford University Press, 1961. Shipman, Pat. To the Heart of the Nile. New York: William Morrow, 2004.

Barya In Ethiopia, two terms designating ethnic groups came to be used almost interchangeably with each other and with the word “slave”—Barya and

Shanqilla. These terms also referred to Negroid characteristics among the Amharic and Tigrinya. Although Barya originally referred to a specific ethnic group often used as a source for slaves, appearing in inscriptions from the reign of the Aksumite King Ezana in as early as the fourth century, it later became a generic term for slave, without reference to any particular group. Its usage was so common that in certain historical periods it was used in such glorifying appellations as Yä Sellasé Barya (Slave of the Trinity) and Yä Maryam Barya (Slave of Mary). Alone, however, the term Barya connotes subjugation and racial inferiority with antislavery laws and social taboo granting it the intensity of a curse. The term is juxtaposed against a chewa, which designates a free human being of education and culture. Racial differences between chewa and Barya are culturally highlighted in terms of skin color. The Barya are considered black (t’equr) regardless of their actual color, while non-Barya perceive themselves as red (qey), in a dichotomy fortified by a system of mythological stories that was conceived to perpetuate the Barya’s “otherness.” Most prominent among these are the Noah stories both in the Kebra Nagast (the Ethiopian national epic) and in the Old Testament (Genesis 21–23). Ham, one of Noah’s three sons, witnessed his father’s nakedness when he was drunk and, unlike his brothers Shem and Jephet, did not cover him. According to these mythologies, Noah gave Shem and Jephet his blessing, and cursed Ham with slavery.

Beria, Lavrenty Pavlovich

The black skin color of the Barya signifies their descent from the tribe of Ham, their assumed separate origin fastidiously maintained in the collective memory, while the chewa are identified with the tribe of Shem. Mixed offspring and their progeny continue to be perceived as Barya as long as the collective memory, particularly deep in Ethiopia, can be perpetuated. These genealogical distinctions served over the generations as a divinely approved explanation legitimizing master-slave relations and racial hierarchies. Hagar Salamon See also: ‘Abd.

Further Readings McCann, James. “Children of the House: Slavery and Its Suppression in Lasta, Northern Ethiopia, 1915–1935.” In The End of Slavery in Africa, ed. Susan Miers and Richard Roberts. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988. Pankhurst, Richard. “The History of Bareya, Sanqella and Other Ethiopian Slaves from the Borderlands of the Sudan.” Sudan Notes and Records 58 (1977): 1–43. Salamon, Hagar. “Slavery among the ‘Beta Israel’ in Ethiopia: Religious Dimensions of Inter-group Perceptions.” Slavery and Abolition 15 (1994): 72–88.

Beria, Lavrenty Pavlovich (1899–1953) Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria oversaw the vast system of forced labor camps in the Soviet Union as head of the NKVD

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(Peoples Commissariat of Internal Affairs) from November 1938 to January 1946.The NKVD served as the Soviet Union’s police force for political security. Among its other duties, it ran the gulag (Main Administration of Camps) with its expansive network of corrective labor camps, corrective labor colonies, and special settlements. It also administered a parallel structure of internment camps for prisoners of war and foreign civilian internees that was known as GUPVI (Main Administration for the Affairs of Prisoners of War and Internees). These two camp systems employed millions of forced laborers during Beria’s tenure as head of the NKVD. In particular, Beria oversaw the expansion and transformation of the special settlement regime into a system that would not only socially isolate certain ethnic groups but would also economically integrate them into regions far from their homelands. Beria organized the deportation of over 3 million people to remote locations in the Soviet Union during the 1940s. More than 2 million of these people came from eight nationalities that were deported in their entirety—the Russian Germans, Karachais, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Crimean Tatars, and Meskhetian Turks. Confined to internal exile in Siberia, Kazakhstan, Central Asia, and the Urals, these deportees received the legal status of special settlers. As such, they could not leave their assigned settlements without written permission from special NKVD commandants. They also lacked the

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freedom to choose their employment. The Stalin regime used them as a captive labor force to develop the agriculture, fisheries, industry, mining, and forestry of sparsely inhabited regions of the Soviet Union. During World War II (1939–1945), the Stalin regime mobilized nearly 400,000 of these and earlier deportees belonging to suspect nationalities and placed them into forced labor battalions. This system of forced labor garnered the name labor army (trudarmiia) from the Soviet citizens conscripted into it. Beria’s NKVD sent 220,000 of these men and women to work in gulag camps under conditions similar to those of convicts. The remaining 180,000 worked for civilian commissariats under NKVD supervision and lived in NKVD-guarded barracks. The ethnic composition of these forced laborers consisted of more than 315,000 Russian Germans, 14,000 Russian Koreans, 15,000 Kalmyks, and 5,000 Crimean Tatars, as well as Russian Finns, Russian Greeks, and others. They built factories, erected dams, laid railways, felled timber, mined coal, extracted oil, and manufactured munitions in Siberia, Kazakhstan, and the Urals during the 1940s. The mass induction of Russian Germans and other stigmatized nationalities into forced labor brigades mitigated the loss of labor from the reduction of gulag prisoners during the World War II, due to releases into the Red Army and increased mortality. Labor army conscripts also suffered a high rate of excess mortality during this time due to

malnutrition, disease, exposure, and other causes. More than 100,000 Russian Germans may have perished as a result of their service in the labor army. J. Otto Pohl See also: Central Asia; Gulag.

Further Readings Knight, Amy. Beria: Stalin’s First Lieutenant. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993. Pohl, J. Otto. Ethnic Cleansing in the USSR, 1937–1949. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1999. Pohl, J. Otto. The Stalinist Penal System. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1997. Polian, Pavel. Against Their Will: The History and Geography of Forced Migrations in the USSR. Budapest, Hungary: Central European Press, 2004.

Berlin Conference (1884–1885) An international conference called by its host, the German Prince Otto von Bismarck, convened in Berlin from November 15, 1884, through February 27, 1885. At the European negotiating table, where the African continental prize pieces would be awarded, were delegates from more than a dozen parties, including Germany (the conference host), Britain, France, Portugal—each a major contestant— Russia, Austria-Hungary, Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, Norway, and Holland. Present as well were two morethan-interested onlookers—the United

Berlin Conference

States and Leopold II’s International Association of the Congo. Each representative had particular designs—with respect to both territory and trade—on and for the map of Africa that was to be outlined at the conference. The 36 articles of the resulting General Act of the Conference of Berlin, signed on February 26, 1885, were divided, albeit unequally, into six chapters. Chapter 1 was concerned with “freedom of trade in the Basin of the Congo”; chapter 2, the shortest (article 9), dealt expeditiously with the slave trade; chapter 3 related to the question of neutrality in the region; chapters 4 and 5, by far the longest (articles 13–33), adjudicated questions of navigation rights for the Congo and Niger Rivers; and finally, chapter 6 laid out the conditions to be observed by the signatories for the “new occupations on the coasts of the African continent.” Freedom of trade and navigation thus took primacy of place in the document drafted in Berlin to divide and distribute to European predators Africa’s continental resources, along the lines of the “three Cs” that the early British explorer David Livingstone had identified for European imperial aspirations and ambitions: Christianity, civilization, and commerce. Trade and territory would be well instantiated at the continental corners by business concerns and their designates. The work of the Suez Canal Company at the northeastern tip of the continent, begun by Frenchman Ferdinand de Lesseps but ultimately financed through the shares bought by British Prime Minister Benjamin

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Otto von Bismarck hosted the Berlin Conference from November 15, 1884, through February 27, 1885. At the conference, rival European nations came together to establish trade and territory guidelines in Africa. (PerryCastaneda Library)

Disraeli, had been completed in 1869. On the western coast, Sir George Goldie (1946–1925), a British colonial administrator in West Africa, would soon take advantage of the treaty’s terms, and his Royal Niger Company was chartered by Britain in 1886. Just a few years later, in 1889, mining magnate Cecil John Rhodes (1853–1902) made sure that his British South Africa Company would be granted its own charter. But it was the Belgium King Leopold II’s concessions in the Congo Free State that challenged—and abused—the treaty’s international terms on trade and territory and provoked both commercial

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objections and humanitarian encomiums in the early 20th century. The Berlin Conference brought rival European diplomats to the table to make orderly treaty determinations, but it was occasioned by—and laid the grounds for—what has become known as the rather more disorderly “scramble for Africa.” More than a century later, the lines drawn across Africa at the Berlin Conference remain much the same, defining the territorial boundaries of postcolonial African states, and a new scramble for the resources of a decolonized Africa has been undertaken by international monetary and aid agencies alike. Barbara Harlow See also: Leopold II.

Further Reading Pakenham, Thomas. The Scramble for Africa: White Man’s Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912. New York: Avon Books, 1991.

Bhagwati, P. N. (1921–) Prafullachandra Natwarlal Bhagwati, the former chief justice of the supreme court of India, has devoted his boundless energy to the work of the United Nations and other international human rights bodies that stimulate, criticize, and inspire the champions of human rights around the world. He currently serves as vice-chairman of the United Nations’ Human Rights Committee and is a past chairman of the board of the Center for the Independence

of Judges and Lawyers in Geneva, Switzerland. Affectionately called “Chief ” by many of his colleagues at the national and international levels, Justice Bhagwati has become one of the leading international jurists who has helped to fight against contemporary forms of slavery and other human rights abuses. In 1988, the Principles on the Domestic Application of International Human Rights Norms were formulated at Bangalore, where Bhagwati was instrumental and its impact has been enormous. Through this effort he provided a new and creative way by which the growing body of international human rights jurisprudence could be harmonized with the domestic law of the judges’ own jurisdiction. Most recently, on behalf of Mary Robinson, then UN high commissioner for human rights, he undertook a mission to Australia from May 24 to June 2, 2002. He submitted his report as the regional adviser for Asia and the Pacific of the UN high commissioner for human rights with regard to the treatment of asylum-seekers who were in detention in Australia, with a specific focus on the Woomera Immigration Reception and Processing Center (IRPC) in southern Australia. Bhagwati observed the human rights situation of persons in immigration detention in Australia and considered it a matter of serious concern. Although the Australian government had undertaken many positive efforts to improve the conditions in the detention centers, nevertheless, the approach to illegal migration from a

Bhatta Mazdoor Mohaz (BMM)

human rights perspective was questioned, prescribing the desirability of a more humane approach. Detention of children, including unaccompanied minors was clearly in itself of violation of their rights under the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989). In addition to this, children were deprived of adequate educational opportunities appropriate to their age and were kept in conditions not conducive to their healthy growth. Bhagwati was shocked by what he saw and heard in Woomera IRPC. He met men, women, and children who had been detained for several months, some of them even for one or two years, without committing any offense but due to their only fault, that they had left their native home and sought to find refuge or a better life on the Australian soil. Meeting the detainees, he was depressed with a feeling that he was facing a great human tragedy. Justice Bhagwati’s initiative and effort in directing the Australian government through his report, as well as his personal contact seeking government cooperation for the avoidance of the human tragedy, drew universal appreciation and approbation to him for his commendable job against the abuses of human rights. Bhagwati, a man with sharp intelligence, incisive voice, boundless energy, and intellectual curiosity, deserves international acclamation and is a source of inspiration for young lawyers and judges and for human rights activists. Patit Paban Mishra

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Further Reading Bhagwati, Justice P. N. Court, Constitution, and Human Rights. New Delhi: Universal Book Traders, 1995.

Bhatta Mazdoor Mohaz (BMM) The Bhatta Mazdoor Mohaz (BMM), which is known as the Brick Kiln Worker´s Front today, was formed on September 18, 1967, in Lahore, Pakistan, by Ehsan Ullah Khan and continued up to September 18, 1988. BMM is the first organization founded to raise a voice against the oppression of bonded labor in the brick-kiln industry. It is known for organizing the first protest against bonded labor in South Asia. BMM strives to educate workers and fights for the freedom of laborers to organize in trade associations, supports the rights outlined in International Labour Organization (ILO) conventions, and works to educate children freed from bonded labor. BMM is one of the founding members of the South Asian Coalition against Child Servitude (SACCS) and is recognized by the ILO. The establishment of the BMM was followed by an incident that happened one evening of September 1967. Ehsan Ullah Khan had met with an elderly man standing on roadside in a miserable condition at Shahra-e-Quaid-iAzam, Lahore. The old, Christian man, whose name was Baba Kullan, was a brick kiln worker and had two daughters, One of whom, age 11, had been taken away by the brick kiln owner, Abdul Rehman, and the other daughter,

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age 13, had been abducted by the jamadar (agent of the owner-organizing peshgi system). Kullan was able to escape secretly from the brick kiln located in Lahore. The owner had purchased him from Sindh province for 80,000 rupees ($1.30), which was the amount shown as Peshgi against his name. Ehsan Ullah Khan was highly influenced by Baba Kullan’s story and promised to help him. Then Khan went to his college and got help from other students to organize a march, defending the rights of the old man and his daughters. After their successful organization, the police ordered the abductors to free the girls and that was done immediately. This was the first success in the history of Pakistan to free bonded laborers and the news spread gradually. Then, hundreds of bonded men, women, and children, recognized that they all needed help. Under the influence of their inhuman conditions and bounded work relations, Khan decided to organize people around BMM. The struggle for freedom to all workers and for the right to education continued up to September 18, 1988, when the supreme court of Pakistan delivered its historic decision against the bonded labor system. The main objects of BMM against the practice of bonded labor were based on the following six priorities: (1) annihilation of ethnic, religious, social, sexual, and caste discriminations; (2) full and complete freedom for the bonded laborers, forced laborers, and child laborers; (3) abolition of the bonded labor system and jamadari system (middlemen for peshgi

system); (4) elimination of the peshgi system and writing off the past peshgies; (5) to achieve human rights for all workers; and (6) to struggle against slavery through education To achieve these goals, BMM adopted legal and peaceful means of struggle and avoided any kind of violence throughout its struggle against slavery. BMM filed thousands of habeas corpus writs in high courts. Over the years, more than 30,000 bonded laborers were freed through action of the courts. However, due to lack of legal protection, it was very difficult for the bonded laborers to be protected in all circumstances. The BMM stood for bonded laborers, while the All Pakistan Brick Kiln Owners Association (APBKA) supported the slavery system and pleaded to make the peshgi system legal. The BMM provided the basic groundwork for the struggle against the bonded labor system in Pakistan, and on a global level, fought for the elimination of child labor and the abolition of the bonded labor system, and reached these goals. The Pakistan Supreme Court after long years of struggle accepted the abolishment of the bonded labor system on September 18, 1988. An estimated 20 million bonded laborers benefited from this decision; most of them left the brick kiln industry and migrated to other parts of Pakistan. This was the historic outstanding success of the BMM, which broke all barriers, traditions, and fears among the slaves. The victims got the power, and, as a result, they began to celebrate

Bok, Francis Piol Bol

September 18 every year and raise the slogan “Ham Azad Hain” (“We Are Free”). Bayram Unal and Ann-Carin Landström See also: All Pakistan Brick Kiln Owners Association (APBKA); Bonded Labour Liberation Front; Khan, Ehsan Ullah; Pesghi.


Bok, Francis Piol Bol (1979–) At the beginning of the 21st century, ex-slave Francis Bok drew the Western world’s attention to the exceptionally brutal form of slavery that emerged during the civil war in his native Sudan. A member of the cattle-herding Dinka people, southern Sudan’s largest ethnic group, Bok came from the village of Gourion near the Lol River in the Aweil district of the Bahr el Ghazal

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region of southwestern Sudan. In May 1986, at the age of seven, he was captured by Arab raiders in the market town of Nyamlell, strapped to a donkey, and taken north as a slave. Fed only scraps from his master’s table, he tended goats and cattle and was forced to learn Arabic and adopt Islam. After two failed attempts to flee from captivity, he escaped at age 17 and made his way to the Sudanese capital Khartoum and eventually to Cairo, Egypt, where in September 1998, he successfully applied to enter the United States as a political refugee. In August 1999 he was resettled in Fargo, North Dakota. Eventually, he moved to Iowa and finally to Boston, Massachusetts. Contacted by Charles Jacobs and John Eibner of the Boston-based American Anti-Slavery Group (AASG), Bok became an impassioned advocate for the abolition of slavery. On September 18, 2000, he became the first escaped slave to testify before the Foreign Relations Committee of the U.S. Senate. The most famous of a number of exSudanese slaves who fled to the West, he met with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, and President George W. Bush. An energetic campaigner, Bok has appeared at benefit concerts and was a torchbearer for the 2002 Winter Olympics. As an associate of the AASG, he has spoken on his experiences throughout North America and has been frequently featured in the press and electronic media. The story of his enslavement in Sudan, escape, and resettlement in the United States was

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recorded in his narrative Escape from Slavery (2003). At about the same time, another escaped slave, Mende Nazer, published her account of slavery in the Nuba Mountain region of central Sudan. Such narratives proved that war slavery in Sudan had gone beyond the traditional forms of interethnic hostage-taking that have characterized the region. Appearing in an era when most Americans and Europeans considered slavery to be only a historical issue, Bok and Nazer rank with Olaudah Equiano, Harriet Tubman, and other ex-slave activists of a more distant past who similarly inspired antislavery movements by writing of their experiences. Randall Fegley See also: American Anti-Slavery Group; Sudan and South Sudan; Sudan Peace Act.

Further Readings Bok, Francis. Escape from Slavery. New York: St. Martin’s, 2003. Human Rights Watch. Children of Sudan: Slaves, Street Children and Child Soldiers. New York: Human Rights Watch, 1995. Nazer, Mende. Slave: My True Story. New York: Public Affairs, 2003.

Bonded Labor Capitalism is acknowledged both by its supporters and its detractors to be a system dominated by free wage labor. This latter phrase is used in a number

of senses to distinguish the modern era from previous social structures where labor relations were not free but were structured by political or legal obligations. During the feudal era in Europe, for example, an individual was obliged by political and military pressure to work without pay on a lord’s land at certain periods of the year. In the modern era, the wage laborer is free from such requirements. Wage laborers are free to work for whomever they choose (provided they have jobs available), and can move to another job. Employers are free to hire whomever they choose. Employer and employee enter into a specific labor contract with each other. It may be noted, of course, that the worker’s freedom is limited in practice in many ways, most obviously by the need to have an income in order to survive. Although the dominant social relationship in the modern world is that centered around free wage labor as described above, there still exist examples of bonded or unfree labor. Unfree labor, in contrast to free labor, is work that is forced or structured by political, familial, or legal strictures requiring the worker to labor for a specific employer. The freedom to change employers or conditions of employment has been altered or removed to a significant degree. A number of forms of unfree labor have existed and continue to exist in the present era. The most obvious example of unfree labor is slavery. The transportation, selling, and owning of African

Bonded Labour Liberation Front (BLLF)

men, women, and children was crucial to the early development of the West Indies and southern states of the United States. The income derived from the slave trade was important in the development of capitalist industry in England and a number of other European countries. Yet the formal abolition of slavery in Britain and the United States did not stop this practice. Slavery continues in many parts of the world today, and many children find themselves enslaved and required to work for their “owner.” The children are either forcibly removed from their families or sold by their families to alleviate their poverty. Debt-bonded labor, or tied labor, also has a very long history. Indeed, before the transatlantic slave trade fully took off, the demand for labor for the plantations in the West Indies was fulfilled by debt-bonded indentured workers. This means that people were transported from Britain, for example, to work on the plantations. However, they were expected to pay for their transportation and their initial living costs. As they did not have the necessary capital, they would enter into agreements with the plantation owners. They would be indentured for seven years and would work on the plantation until they had paid back their transportation and living costs. Bonded labor continues across the globe today. Young children are indentured to landowners, factory owners, craftsmen, hotel owners, and others. To pay off a family debt, or to pay for their transportation to the city from

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their rural homes, or to pay for their living expenses, children are tied to employers for a specified number of years, until it is deemed that the debt has been paid off. Very often, especially when the child is young, the employer will claim that the costs of supporting the child are greater than the labor he receives, so the debt becomes greater, reducing the prospect of its being paid off, at least in the near future. Domestic labor, in contrast to the above two examples, is viewed as a much less repressive form of unfree labor. In most families children perform some forms of unpaid domestic labor. In rural and peasant economies such work is clearly arduous and extensive due to families’ poverty-level existence. Sandy Hobbs See also: Bonded Labour Liberation Front (BLLF); Domestic Workers; India.

Further Readings Anti-Slavery International. “This Menace of Bonded Labour”: Debt Bondage in Pakistan. London: Anti-Slavery International, 1996. Rodgers, Gerry, and Standing, Guy. Child Work, Poverty, and Underdevelopment. Geneva: International Labour Office, 1981.

Bonded Labour Liberation Front (BLLF) The Bonded Labour Liberation Front of Pakistan (BLLF) was formed on

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October 21, 1988, by Ehsan Ullah Khan. The BLLF is one of the organizations that contributed to the founding of the South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude (SACCS) and is a coworking organization with the Coalition against Child Labour in Pakistan (CACL). The organization also works together with trade unions and other nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Pakistan. Some 21 years earlier, on September 18, 1967, Ehsan Ullah Khan founded the Bhatta Mazdoor Mahaz Pakistan (Brick Kiln Workers Front, BMM) to raise a voice against the oppression of bonded labor in the brick-kiln industry. It was the first time in South Asia that protests against bonded labor had been organized. At that time, the work of BMM focused on the abolishment of the debt bondage (peshgi system), the presence of middlemen (jamadari system), and the slavery system (thekedari system). The BMM was only associated with the brick-kiln industry. After an application from BMM members to the chief justice of Pakistan’s Supreme Court was ended affirmatively, the existence of the bonded labor system in the brick-kiln industries was recognized officially. News of this verdict spread all over the country, and all workers from different industries took it as a victory against bonded labor. This victory created awareness and zeal among bonded workers from other fields like agricultural workers, carpet workers, shoemakers, fishermen, rag pickers, parents of camel jockeys, and others. In order to struggle against the bonded labor system in wider scope,

BLLF was established as an umbrella organization in 1988. Since then, BLLF has raised its voice against the bonded labor system on both national and international levels and initiated a hectic campaign for the abolition of the system through legislation. Most of BLLF’s works are related to the struggles for freedom and liberation of bonded workers, especially bonded children and women workers. The BLLF is dedicated to providing legal aid to the bonded workers against torture and repression by owners, feudal lords, and industrialists. The legal aid provided by BLLF has created awareness on health and safety issues and provided health care, especially for mothers and their children. Furthermore, fighting against the discrimination in the society against women, minorities, children, and other disadvantaged groups in society is an ongoing effort. Over all, the main objective of BLLF Pakistan is to struggle for human rights, with special emphasis on the rights of children and women and on their educational rights. BLLF started its school, an Apnaschool system, in the 1980s and made it spread all over the country through its program Struggle against Slavery through Education. The issue of slave/ bonded child labor and child labor itself was highlighted through the BLLF’s actions. The first official survey about child labor in Pakistan was conducted in 1996, and a survey about bonded labor was conducted in 2001. Through the years, BLLF has freed thousands


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A young camel jockey crawls from the race track after falling from his camel. The Bonded Labour Liberation Front struggles to keep children out of dangerous arrangements such as camel jockeying. (AP/Wide World Photos)

of children from slavery and educated more than 10,000 children. Due to BLLF-centered pressures, the Pakistani Parliament passed a law against child labor in 1991, and the Bonded Labour System Abolition Act was approved unanimously by the Parliament in 1992. After long years of struggle, the BLLF achieved tremendous success in two provinces—in Punjab and Sindh—where compulsory primary education has been introduced. In Frontier Province, the legislation is under consideration, while the fourth province, Baluchistan, is waiting for a change. The government also stopped the corporal punishment in two provinces, Punjab and Sindh. In addition,

the Sindh government also provided a 100 rupees ($1.70) stipend per year for every child in school. This is an important act in terms of the state’s recognizable approach toward issues. In this way BLLF’s work has given protection, identification, and developed a legal system for the bonded laborers and child laborers. The BLLF has helped in the creation of a positive consciousness among those who were once victims. The BLLF has faced many difficulties and threats from the government and the ruling classes during the years, but the struggle toward progress is proceeding. Its founder is living in exile in Sweden, and the journalist Zafaryab

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Ahmad, who wrote in support of BLLF policies, was living in exile in the United States until his death in 2006. Bayram Unal See also: Bonded Labor; Khan, Ehsan Ullah.

Further Readings Anti-Slavery International. Contemporary Forms of Slavery Related to and Generated by Discrimination: Forced and Bonded Labor in India, Nepal, and Pakistan. London: Anti-Slavery International, 2003. Anti-Slavery International. This Menace of Bonded Labor: Debt Bondage in Pakistan. London: Anti-Slavery International, 1996. Human Rights Watch. Pakistan: Contemporary Forms of Slavery. New York: Human Rights Watch, 1995. Karim, Farhad. Contemporary Forms of Slavery in Pakistan. New York: Human Rights Watch, 1995.

Brazil Whether using the labor of Indians, Africans, or its own citizens today, Brazil has been a major slave society for the greater part of five centuries. Slavery was a core institution in Brazil’s past, fundamental to economic and political development. From colony to nation, abundant natural resources encouraged the generation of wealth by exploiting labor. Brazil is a classic region of plentiful land and scarce population, where shortage of workers prompted the growth of unfree labor relations. European chattel slavery adapted to the tropics, along with markedly hierarchical

and patriarchal social relations, and made Brazil perhaps the world’s premier slave society in total numbers and productivity. Slavery there passed through several stages, perhaps best demarcated by the predominant labor sources: native Brazilians, Africans and their descendants, and now its most impoverished, vulnerable citizens.

Indians Enslaved From the early 16th century, European settlers targeted Brazilian Indians as a source of cheap labor. Indigenous societies practiced some forms of slavery before and after 1500, but it was not a major economic factor. Striking manifestations occurred among Tupinamba Indians adjacent to the coasts, who used war captives in rituals of human sacrifice and cannibalism. Such practices appear memorably in contemporary travelogues and modern cinema (How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman, 1971), but numerous Indians became chattel for the Portuguese. At contact the indigenous population was significant—estimates range from 2 million to 6 million, probably more like 4 million to 5 million. This was a labor force of great potential, but it was not to last. After an initial period of barter for dyes and brazilwood, the Portuguese realized that without precious minerals colonial Brazil’s prime prospects lay in export agriculture, especially sugarcane. Plantations first took root in northeastern Brazil and eventually in much of the country. By the early1600s, Portuguese and Indian allies

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were penetrating the interior in search of gold, silver, feathers, and captives. These expeditions—bandeiras, from the flags of their captains—notably those from Sao Paulo state, extended Portuguese influence deep into South America, ultimately bolstering claims to half the continent. From the late 16th century, the engenhos (literally sugar mills but also sugar plantations generally) of Pernambuco and Bahia in the northeast had made Brazil the world’s leading producer. Much of this productivity relied on enslaved Indians, but the cumulative impact of raiding, harsh labor regimes, social dislocation, religious conversion and particularly epidemic disease devastated indigenous societies. For centuries, their numbers declined despite prolonged and heroic resistance, reaching a likely population nadir of about 100,000 in the 1970s, though there has been partial recovery since then. Portugal’s King Sebastiao outlawed Indian slavery in 1570, but irreparable damage continued. Later abolitions of Indian chattel slavery in 1755 and 1831 clearly signaled ongoing enslavement, and indeed it persists today, with some vulnerable Amazonian Indians still held in servitude.

Africans Enslaved The plantation ( fazenda) complex, a form of industrial agriculture employing capital investment, sophisticated technology and marketing, and large quantities of slaves, developed in the Mediterranean and Portugal’s Atlantic islands. It transferred well to tropical

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Brazil, but catastrophic Indian mortality required other sources of labor. These were found in Africa, where captives were readily available to slavers. This trade was impressive in sheer numbers alone. Over 40 percent of Brazilians have African ancestry, more than in any country outside Africa. From 1525 to 1851, a minimum of 3.5 million (possibly over 5 million) slaves reached Brazil, more than any other country; significant mortality before, during, and after the Atlantic crossing magnified the negative impacts. Slaves numbered 1.93 million in 1817–1818, half the population of 3,818,000. These captives grew sugar and cacao in the northeast; rice, cotton, and rubber in Amazonia; and by the mid-1800s made southern Brazil the world’s leading coffee exporter. They were not mere agricultural laborers; Africans from Upper Guinea contributed crucial expertise in rice growing, healing, and other endeavors. Gold and diamond discoveries in 18th-century Minas Gerais saw slaves working as miners, while servants and artisans proliferated in houses and streets of cities like Salvador and Rio de Janeiro. Slavery shaped all economic and social spheres, the hallmark of a slave society. High manumission rates encouraged by the Catholic Church, and miscegenation resulting in a large mulatto population, promoted a view of Brazilian slavery as milder there than elsewhere. Some scholars, particularly Gilberto Freyre, asserted that without overt prejudice, Brazil is a “racial democracy.” While accurately grasping the influence of the plantation, household,

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and patriarchal family structure, Freyre downplayed the coercion inherent in slavery, especially rape in interracial sexual relations. Strong primary evidence indicates that oppressive work conditions, inadequate food, clothing, and health care, and brutal punishments made Brazil among the harshest of all slave systems. Slaves responded with a multitude of survival strategies. They resisted subtly by reducing output and labor bargaining, and openly by running away and rebelling. Brazil had a large number of quilombos (maroon or runaway settlements, twin siblings of slave societies), most famously Palmares with about 30,000 people, which existed in Pernambuco from 1630 to 1695. Slaves also coped by asserting a measure of cultural autonomy, which incidentally enriched Brazilian religion (Candomble, Umbanda), dance and martial arts (samba, capoiera), foodways and social relations. Following independence in 1822, slavery expanded with the national economy, but structural changes eventually led to its demise. International pressure and successive treaties imposed by Great Britain outlawed Brazil’s Atlantic slave trade by 1831, though one result was a peculiarly Brazilian phenomenon. Leys para ingles ver (“laws for the English to see,” statutes passed for appearance’s sake but not enforced) masked illegal trade until 1851, when African imports were finally suppressed. Cutting off the supply of captives ultimately doomed an institution whose population never reproduced itself naturally. But for four

decades, a substantial domestic trade, with coasting voyages and forced marches overland, transferred 300,000 people southward to booming coffee fazendas in Minas and especially Sao Paulo. The Law of Free Birth signed in 1871 by Princess Isabel (regent for the abolitionist Emperor Pedro II) mandated that children of slaves would be born free. Voluntary manumissions soared in provinces no longer needing slaves, and increasing European (and later Japanese) immigration provided cheaper alternative labor. The final blow came in 1886–1887. Tens of thousands courageously abandoned Sao Paulo fazendas for abolitionistdominated cities, a harrowing exodus similar to mass slave flights during the U.S. Civil War and in 1905–1906 in French West Africa. The self-liberated themselves had effectively abolished slavery when Isabel, regent again, signed the Ley Aurea (“Golden Law”) on May 13, 1888. But no provisions were made for the welfare and education of freedpeople, and their descendants remained mostly poor and disadvantaged.

Citizens Enslaved Brazil has tragically not been free of slavery since formal abolition. Instead of African imports, its poorest citizens (and some aliens such as Bolivian migrants)—of all geographic origins and appearances—are the current victims. Often lured to the remote countryside, notably east-central Amazonia, by promises of work and removed from

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neighborhood and kin protection, they are trapped by distance, debt, and violence in appalling circumstances that are difficult to escape. As in the past, profits associated with economic globalization enable abuses. Ranchers raising beef for Northern Hemisphere markets; charcoal produced to manufacture iron; timber companies destroying rain forest; and the burgeoning biofuel industry—all have incentives to reduce labor costs. Female prostitution and child labor services these industries from nearby towns. Reflecting historic inequalities, powerful landowners whose word is law in their domains still enjoy a culture of impunity despite legal prohibitions. (In this respect Freyre’s insights on patriarchy are quite acute.) Fortunately, the tide may be turning against bondage in Brazil. In the 1990s the government created special commissions and police units for this purpose, though lax enforcement hampered their effectiveness. Successive administrations acknowledged the existence of “conditions analogous to slavery” (a phrase used in absence of legal chattel slavery) including admission before the United Nations Human Rights Commission in 2004—declarations of symbolic as well as practical significance. At least 25,000 people are admittedly held in bondage, though the number is much greater due to underreporting and reprisals against informants. From 2003 to 2011, the Workers’ Party government of President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva made antislavery a priority, with dramatic, well-publicized police

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raids liberating captives. Lula thus became the first Brazilian head of state since Pedro and Isabel to act decisively against unfree labor. Upon her election in 2010, the incoming president, Dilma Rousseff, pledged to continue her predecessor’s policies. Slavery in Brazil is often, as elsewhere, derided as an unprogressive, archaic institution. Throughout the country’s history, however, it has been central to the most dynamic economic sectors: first sugar, then mining, cotton, rice, cacao, coffee, rubber, and now ranching, timber, soybeans, and manufacturing. Extreme labor exploitation remains economically rational, a fact reinforced by enduring social hierarchy and economic inequality. Spurred by world opinion, the current government seems committed to eradicating enslavement. But deeply entrenched structural factors facilitating slavery will require constant vigilance to finally uproot it. A luta continua (“the struggle continues”). Thomas Pyke Johnson Further Readings Burberi, Martina. Contemporary Forms of Enslavement. Slavery in Brazil, 2006. http://www.oitbrasil.org.br/trabalho_for cado_/brasil/documentos/contemporary_ forms_of_enslavement_slavery.pdf Conrad, Robert E., ed. Children of God’s Fire: A Documentary History of Black Slavery in Brazil. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983. Freyre, Gilberto. The Mansions and the Shanties [Sobrados e Mucambos]. Trans. Samuel Putnam. New York: Knopf, 1963.

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Mattoso, Katia M. de Q. To Be a Slave in Brazil. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986.

Bride-Price Bride-price, bride wealth, or dowry, as part of marriage, is a cultural practice that has survived to this day in marriage customs worldwide. The custom consists of paying or offering goods or gifts to the parents and family of the bride during preparations for and after the marriage. In the Old Testament, different terms are used to describe aspects of the practice. For example, there was the mattan, “gifts to the members of the family” (Genesis 24:22, 53 and Genesis 34:12), compared to mohar, “dowry” or bride-price. The custom seems to have evolved from gift-giving to outright wife-purchasing (see Ruth 4:10 and Hosea 3:2), but no one knows when this transformation happened. The dowry, or bride-price, held a prime place in Hebrew marriages. It took several forms and sealed the betrothal made between bride and groom as the groom presented gifts to the bride. The dowry was generally based on the wealth and standing of the bride (see 1 Samuel 18:23–25). It consisted of money, jewelry, or other valuable items, or services rendered, as in the case of Jacob (see Genesis 29:18). Deeds of valor were also acceptable as a dowry (see Joshua 15:16 and Judges 1:12). Occasionally, a bride received a dowry from her father, sometimes in the form of land (Judges 1:15). In later

Jewish history, a written marriage contract definitely arranged for the nature and size of the dowry. Although there was frequently much negotiation and bargaining involved as to size of the dowry, the bride had no voice in these negotiations. In Islam. the Koran sanctions the payment of a dowry or bride-price to the bride. Known as mahr, it is a prerequisite for marriage, and is to be paid by the groom to his bride. Islam also requires that the dowry be equitable, with the husband and wife mutually making any adjustments to the dowry. Specifically in Middle Eastern cultures, the practice of dowry continues to this day in both Muslim and Christian marriages. The man, or his family, must pay a bride-price or mahr to the bride or her family. This price can be extremely high. It is common for a middle-class family to demand of the groom the equivalent of several years’ salary as the price of marriage to their daughter. In Syria, for example, despite recent government intervention, the practice of bride-price has continued in both rural and urban areas. The payment of the bride-price involves considerable expenditures and often requires financial cooperation from a number of kinfolk. Families sometimes agree to postpone payment of the full bride-price until after the wedding, stipulating that the full amount must be paid in the event of divorce, a practice that provides some protection for the bride if the couple is eventually incompatible. According to some reports, brideprice and weddings can cost anywhere

Bride-Price

from $1,000 to $40,000. The exact sum of money and the terms of payment are part of the premarital negotiations. In countries where much of the population is classified as poor, exorbitant bride-prices make it increasingly difficult for people to get married. Usually, there is a direct connection between the bride-price and the economic or financial status of the families involved, but the amount tends to be less if the two families have close blood ties. For these reasons, among others, most rural and urban families often want their children to marry closely related kin, like first or second cousins. In sub-Saharan Africa, bride-price has several names—lobola in the southern parts of the continent; mahari in East Africa, or wine-carrying in West Africa. As a marriage custom, it is widespread. The prospective husband is expected to proffer a certain amount of money and goods, including livestock, before a marriage is approved. Bride-price or dowry once was seen as a symbol of sincerity and good faith that united the families of both bride and groom, but, in an increasingly consumer-based society, the bride-price has come to be seen as a stepping stone to wealth by the family of the bride. This is because the demands of the bride’s family, especially if she is highly educated, become simply too expensive and unaffordable for the groom. In some cases, bride-price is regarded as a means to enrich a bride’s family, or a license to treat a woman as a “purchased” good. According to the United Nations, preteen girls in the Arsi region of Ethiopia are often abducted

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for marriage. An arbitration process that involves local courts and village elders ensues, and the girls’ families are paid off with some kind of dowry—usually about $50, plus some livestock. With annual incomes of only around $100, desperately poor rural families always need money. The bride-price thus becomes a source of income for the girls’ families. Although the legal age for marriage in Ethiopia is 18, clearly the bride-price reduces the woman to a commercial object who is traded for equal material or cash value. For example, among the Zulu the bride was traditionally chosen mostly for her fertility, but also for her dowry and beauty. An infertile woman also commanded a low bride-price because she was considered to be inferior. Marriage practices in Japanese culture offer a somewhat different perspective on the bride-price. Japanese women enjoyed a measure of control over their dowry and bride price. Women from wealthier families sometimes brought land, money, and other valuables into their marriages, and local customs required only small dowries. The brideprice typically consisted of items of clothing wrapped in a bundle—in a larger piece of cloth. Social historian Harald Fuess, in a comprehensive study of five centuries of Japanese gender relations, states that “popular customs of divorce strongly affirmed the right of the divorced wife to receive her dowry back.” This return was designed to be “a facilitator of remarriage” (Fuess, p. 82). Historically, dowry was meant to be the symbolic exchange of money, goods, and/or gifts between the families

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of a nubile woman and her betrothed. Its main purpose was to cement and reinforce the ties of kinship and community between the families of the marrying couple. Over time however, dowry became bride-price. All over the world, especially in non-Western societies, it has become both an entrenched practice and a social institution often justified in the name of tradition. Brideprice is susceptible, and capable, of reducing the entire practice of marriage to a simple commercial transaction in which the woman becomes nothing but a commodity to be exchanged for money, land, and other items of barter. Cast in the context of modern slavery, bride-price becomes a fundamentally unacceptable practice because it consists in treating half of the human race—women—as a commodity and property to be traded like any other. It is discriminatory because, wherever bride-price is practiced or accepted, women are too often being purchased or traded like chattel. ‘BioDun J. Ogundayo See also: Servile Marriage.

Further Readings Adams, Bert N., and Jan Trost, eds. Handbook of World Families. London: SAGE Publications, 2004. Ahmed, Leila. Women and Gender in Islam. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993. Fuess, Harald. Divorce in Japan: Family, Gender, and the State, 1600–2000. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004.

Broad Meadows Middle School Broad Meadows Middle School, located in Quincy, Massachusetts, and its students are the founders of “A School for Iqbal,” a program that established a school in Pakistan for victims of child debt bondage, and of “Operation Day’s Work,” a program by which youth raise money to support organizations that aid at-risk children around the world. Iqbal Masih was only four years old when his father sold him into slavery in a carpet factory in Pakistan for less than $12. Masih worked over 12-hour days, chained to his loom, and was fed very little. His owner beat him more times than he could count. In 1992, after suffering six years of enslavement, Masih learned of a freedom day celebration sponsored by the Bonded Labour Liberation Front (BLLF), which he attended, and at which he was inspired to escape from slavery. He appealed to a lawyer and informed his owner that he would no longer labor for him. Masih, seeking to raise international attention to the problem of child slavery began a speaking tour. As a result of his strong stance and activism against child labor, he was awarded the 1994 Reebok Human Rights Youth in Action Award. On his speaking tour in the United States, Masih visited Broad Meadows Middle School. Shortly after his visit, Masih was murdered in Muritke, Pakistan, on April 16, 1995, at the age of 13. The students at Broad Meadows Middle School were so moved by Masih’s work and death, that they sought

Brussels Act

a way to continue his mission. They began a grassroots campaign, at first calling carpet shops to discourage the purchase of carpets produced by slave labor, and lobbying their local members of Congress. They mobilized the local community and raised funds to support their projects. E-mail messages were sent out to middle schools all over the country, and donations began to arrive quickly. Soon their concerns reached higher authorities, including U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, and celebrities like musicians Michael Stipe and Peter Gabriel, who also donated to their cause. In one year, they had raised $100,000. They established an endowment with the money that funded the establishment of a school. After an intense review process, a student committee decided to give the money to Sudhar, a Pakistani nongovernmental organization, to build the school in Kasur, Pakistan. The school now educates 250 children from ages 4 to 12 who have been victimized by child labor abuse. The fund also provides loans for families so that they can buy their children back from those who have enslaved them in debt bondage. Once the school in Pakistan was funded and running, the Broad Meadows Middle School students continued their mission to eradicate child slavery and to educate those who were victimized by it. During the summer of 2005, students raised money to educate at-risk girls in Vietnam, through a combination of school funding and providing microcredit for their families. This comes as

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part of Broad Meadows’s founding of “Operation Day’s Work,” which challenges students to work for a day, to raise money that can be sent to an organization that the students have chosen to help during the year. Through this program, students in Quincy continue to respond to the global needs of children. Laura Murphy See also: “A School for Iqbal”; Bonded Labor; Bonded Labour Liberation Front (BLLF); Debt Slavery.

Further Readings “A School for Iqbal Fund” Online. http:// www.digitalrag.com/iqbal/help/fund/ fund.html. Accessed October 10, 2005. Fairs, Marcus. “A Bullet Cannot Kill a Dream.” Current Magazine (May/June 1998): 24–25. Terry, John, and Donna Woonteiler. “The Kids Online March against Child Labor.” New Designs for Youth Development Magazine 14, no. 3 (Fall 1998).

Brussels Act (1890) During the 19th century, there were several international initiatives to abolish slavery. After British activists led a long campaign against slavery, the Brussels Act of July 2, 1890, was signed by 18 nations and committed the European powers to prohibit the slave trade and to end the arms trade in their colonies. Previously, England in 1833, the United States in 1865, and Brazil in 1888 had obliged themselves to proceed against slavery and slave trade.

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The Berlin Conference (1884–1885) had primarily concerned itself with establishing a free trade area in Central Africa, but its General Act also contained an article against the slave trade: “Seeing that trading in slaves is forbidden in conformity with the principles of international law, . . . and seeing also that the operations, which, by sea or land, furnish slaves to trade, ought likewise to be regarded as forbidden, the Powers which do or shall exercise sovereign rights or influence in the territories forming the Conventional Basin of the Congo declare that these territories may not serve as a market or means of transit for the trade in slaves“ (General Act, Article IX). Great Britain initiated a second conference at Brussels. With the Brussels Act (1890) the signatory states agreed in the following means for counteracting the slave trade in the interior of Africa: 1. Progressive organization of the administrative, judicial, religious and military services in the African territories placed under the sovereignty or protectorate of civilized nations. 2. The gradual establishment in the interior, by the responsible Power in each territory, of strongly occupied stations, in such a way as to make their protective or repressive action effectively felt in the territories devastated by manhunts. 3. The construction of roads, and, in particular, of railways, connecting the advanced stations with the coast, and permitting easy access to the inland waters, and to the upper reaches of streams and rivers which are broken by rapids and cataracts, so as to substitute economical

and speedy means of transport for the present means of portage by men. 4. Establishment of steamboats on the inland navigable waters and on the lakes, supported by fortified posts established on the banks. 5. Establishment of telegraphic lines assuring the communication of the posts and stations with the coast and with the administrative centres. 6. Organization of expeditions and flying columns to keep up the communication of the stations with each other and with the coast, to support repressive action, and to assure the security of roadways. 7. Restriction of the importation of firearms, at least of modern pattern, and of ammunition, throughout the entire extent of the territories infected by the slave trade” (Article I). For the supervision a rigid supervisory system should be implemented: A strict supervision shall be organized by the local authorities at the ports and in the countries adjacent to the coast, with the view of preventing the sale and shipment of slaves brought from the interior, as well as the formation and departure for the interior of bands of man hunters and slave dealers. (Article XVII)

The Brussels Act (1890) as well as the Berlin Declaration of 1885 formed the foundation for the regulation of slavery by the League of Nations. Jurgen Nautz See also: Berlin Conference (1884–1885).

Further Reading Miers, Suzanne. Britain and the Ending of the Slave Trade. London: Longman, 1975.

Burma

Burma Burma is a country in mainland Southeast Asia that is bordered by Bangladesh and India to the west, China to the northeast, and Laos and Thailand to the east. It has lengthy coastlines along both the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea. It has a total land area of nearly 658,000 square kilometers and a population of approximately 43 million people. The people are poor and becoming poorer, with an estimated annual purchasing power of approximately US$1,700 per capita. The capital city, until the end of 2005, was Rangoon (also known as Yangon), although it now appears to have been moved to the old capital of Pyinmana by the secretive military government, but full governmental or diplomatic functions have yet to be established there. The government refers to the country as the Union of Myanmar (Pyidaungzu Myanma Naingngandaw). Burma had a long history of independence and established powerful states based at cities such as Pagan, Pegu, and Ava. The many ethnic minorities in the country contribute to a diverse population, and some have established powerful states in their own right—most notably, the Tai Shan people. Others, including the Karen and the Kachin, have sought merely an independent space of their own. Successive waves of migration across the territory of Burma, together with forcible relocations in the event of warfare and civil disorder, have led to different ethnic groups having been spread

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across the country, and relations between different groups have not always been harmonious. Burma was colonized by the British during a gradual process of conquest that lasted from 1824 to 1886 and then ruled until its independence was finally gained in 1948. Subsequent democratically elected governments have been supplanted by military coups on the basis that only the military could guarantee civil order. Under General Ne Win, the army governed in the name of the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), which was subsequently replaced by the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC). At the beginning of 2006, the ruler was General Soe Win, although there appeared to be something of a power struggle in the country still unfolding. Democratic elections were permitted in 1990 and led to a crushing victory for the National League of Democracy, led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. The military government rejected the result and, against the background of significant international pressure, including a U.S.-led boycott, held on to power and forced the legitimate prime minister into house arrest, where she remains. The SPDC is one of the most repressive and violent regimes in the world today, and the suffering of the Burmese people, and in particular the ethnic groups who have sought independence, has been great. Slavery has been endemic in many parts of Burma throughout recorded history. The British colonial government was not able to establish control

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over the entire country, and some tribes remained in what was called the “unadministered” area. In many of these areas, both slavery and human sacrifice were practiced. British officials had insufficient interest or power to do anything about the situation, and it was not until 1930 when the League of Nations created a Slavery Commission that the British were required to take measures to curtail these activities. These areas were mostly in Upper Burma, and, although many distinctive tribes lived there, they tended to follow similar patterns of social development. Slavery was one such institution that was developed, although the nature of the treatment that slaves could experience varied greatly. Some were accepted into extended family households and treated with respect, while others were required to undertake hazardous and difficult work under very poor conditions. The majority of slaves were born into the condition, although numbers were supplemented by those unfortunates who were captured during warfare and a system of semivoluntary debt bondage. Some estimated the proportion of slaves in Burmese society to be as high as 40 percent, although most estimates were much lower. Additional slaves were sacrificed in animist religious ceremonies, which were aimed at propitiating spirits to permit generous harvests. This led to additional trade in slaves and some raiding of communities with the aim of capturing sacrificial slaves. British authorities mounted several campaigns to suppress human sacrifice and to liberate slaves, in neighboring Assam as well as Burma since

that region also had similar practices. These campaigns were reasonably successful but it is unlikely that all such activities were stopped—there are reports of Chinese communist cadres at the end of World War II being treated as human sacrifices when they had attempted to recruit Burmese on the border between the two countries. Contemporary slavery has been revived on a large scale under military government. Tatmadaw (Burmese military) officers are given authority and power over Burmese people but are rarely given money or other resources to keep their troops provisioned. In order to maintain discipline, officers order their troops to plunder goods from villagers and require forced labor from others. Officers can raise money by organizing illicit logging operations or mining of precious stones, and they require civilians to undertake the dangerous tasks. Further, campaigns against ethnic minorities require operations in often difficult forested and mountainous terrain, and civilians are forced into providing portage for the military. Many thousands of Burmese cross the border into Thailand as illegal migrants to search for wage labor. A significant proportion of these people are forced into semislave labor, including prostitution. It is likely that Burmese cross or are forced to cross other borders for the same purposes but their activities are unrecorded. John Walsh See also: Burma Peace Foundation; Burma Project/Southeast Asia Initiative.

Burma Project/Southeast Asia Initiative

Further Readings “Drugs and Slavery in Myanmar.” The Economist, June 24, 2000, 47–48. Means, Gordon P. “Human Sacrifice and Slavery in the ‘Unadministered’ Areas of Upper Burma During the Colonial Era.” SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 15, no. 2 (October 2000): 184–222. Myint-U, Thant. The Making of Modern Burma. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. South, Ashley. Mon Nationalism and Civil War in Burma: The Golden Sheldrake. New York: Routledge, 2005.

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annotated and analyzed the material produced by governments, the United Nations system, expatriate Burmese groups, national solidarity groups, academics, think tanks, journalists, and local and international human rights organizations, and since 1990 it has systematically provided that material to the international community. Claudio O. Delang See also: Burma; Burma Project/Southeast Asia Initiative.

Further Reading

Burma Peace Foundation The Burma Peace Foundation (BPF) is an independent organization formed in England in 1987 that works to end the political and ethnic conflicts in Burma. The principal work of the BPF is to supply regularly and update the information that international actors need to end the political and ethnic conflict and improve the human rights situation in Burma, and ensure that this information reaches the people who can use it. From 1991 to 1995 the BPF was based in New York, from 1996 to 2005 in Geneva, and from 2005 it planned to spend six months each in Thailand and Geneva. BPF’s chairman until his death in 2004 was Sayadaw U Rewata Dhamma, a senior Burmese Buddhist monk who was active in the fields of human rights and negotiations. Its secretary since its foundation has been David Arnott. Since 1987, the Burma Peace Foundation has collected, collated, classified,

Online Burma/Myanmar Library website: http://www.burmalibrary.org.

Burma Project/Southeast Asia Initiative The Burma Project was established by the Open Society Institute (OSI) in 1994. Its primary role is that of administering, initiating, and funding programs with the twin aims of aiding Burma’s transition from a closed to an open society, and disseminating information about the country both within and beyond its borders. In particular, within Burma, the project supports education and training programs for the Burmese people with the purpose of enabling them to assume leadership roles in a future democratic Burma. It also promotes initiatives that are committed to capacity-building of individuals and civil-society organizations, and the improvement of the political standing of marginalized ethnic or social groups. The project’s recent activities have

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ranged from funding computer courses in two refugee camps in northern Thailand, to providing support for Burmese refugees who are engaged in developing Internet and technology resources such as CD-ROMs aimed at educating users in Burma about globalization and promoting the transition from authoritarian rule. Outside of Burma, information dissemination is a core activity, as it attempts to draw attention to the living conditions of the Burmese population, encouraging the international community to do its part to push for democratic change in the country. In the late 1990s, prompted by the fall of Indonesia’s President Suharto in 1998 and the events that followed, the Burma Project/Southeast Asia Initiative (as it was renamed) expanded into the rest of Southeast Asia, starting with Indonesia. The work of the Burma Project/Southeast Asia Initiative in Indonesia, like Burma, is dedicated to its democratic transition. The Burma Project/Southeast Asia Initiative’s work in Indonesia is largely concentrated on supporting the Tifa Foundation, a local organization working on developing a more open society through a focus on local government, human rights, media and legal changes, and capacity-building. Examples of programs include the monitoring of presidential elections, the development of anticorruption projects, and aiding Muslim women’s groups to advocate for a change in gender perspectives within Islam. The Tifa Foundation is also working toward a more equitable redistribution of power in the

decentralizing government by encouraging democratic participation at the regional level, in order to guard against local- and state-level officials and elites from monopolizing the power. Beyond the main target countries of Burma and Indonesia, the Burma Project/Southeast Asia Initiative also funds localized efforts that promote human rights and foster civil society and democratic development. To date, the Burma Project/Southeast Asia Initiative has supported programs in Burma, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Indonesia. Claudio O. Delang See also: Burma; Indonesia.

Further Readings Akimoto, Yuki. Opportunities and Pitfalls: Preparing for Burma’s Economic Transition. New York: Open Society Institute, 2000. Troester, Rod. “Using the Internet for Peace in Isolated Burma.” Peace Review 13, no. 3 (2001): 389–394.

Buxton, Thomas Fowell (1786–1845) Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, first baronet, was a member of Parliament for Weymouth between 1818 and 1837 and a prominent social reformer. Born in Castle Hedingham, Essex, England, Buxton attended Trinity College of the University of Dublin in Dublin, Ireland, where he gained notoriety for his elocution at the Historical Society, the


college debating club. He also distinguished himself academically as well as becoming more involved in religion. After leaving the university, Buxton returned to England, married, and began to work at a brewery in London, rising to the position of partner from 1808 to 1816. Despite his professional endeavors, he continued to hone his debating skills at a local oratory club and began to harbor ideas about running for Parliament. During this time period, Buxton also made the acquaintance of several individuals who were already prominent in the Quaker philanthropic circles, like William Allen. As a result of Allen’s friendship and encouragement, Buxton became more involved with charitable causes that affected the poor in his district. In 1813, Buxton was struck down by a serious illness that almost took his life. Afterward, he became more keenly religious and began to support more earnestly philanthropic organizations like the Society for the Reformation of Prison Discipline and the Bible Society. As a result of his growing interest in prison reform, Buxton published An Inquiry Whether Crime Be Produced or Prevented by Our Present System of Prison Discipline (1817). The growing fame attached with the publication o the book buoyed Buxton into politics. In 1818 he stood as a candidate for member of Parliament (MP) for Weymouth. As an MP, Buxton worked for several causes that included prison reform, repeal of capital punishment, and better treatment of the Khoi-San people

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in South Africa. However, his most indelible humanitarian exploit would be his work for the abrogation of slavery in the British territories and the slave trade. With the end of the slave trade in 1807, British humanitarian attention turned to the problematic cause of former slaves in the British West Indies and the aboriginal inhabitants of British dependencies. In the wake of the end of the slave trade, the burden of native protection still fell on the shoulders of the humanitarian lobby, but the impetus was now for gradual abolition of slavery itself. Growing out of the tradition of the older Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, by the 1820s, abolitionist groups in Great Britain began to form around the issue of gradual abolition or at least amelioration of the condition of slaves in British territories. In 1823, Buxton, William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson, Samuel Hoare, and many other luminaries of the anti– slave trade campaigns formed the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery throughout the British Dominions. The main goal of this antislavery society was to work for the protection of slaves from maltreatment and toward the gradual abolition of slavery. The society attempted to meet this goal through petitioning MPs, utilizing the press, and other forms of public pressure. Although Wilberforce was one of the guiding forces in the organization, the leadership mantle eventually passed to Buxton. Initially, the society pressed for amelioration or gradual abolition, but the

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society changed its stance and eventually began to agitate for immediate abolition. In 1831, a new reform-minded Whig government came into power and the pace for abolition quickened. The culmination of the society’s activities was the Emancipation Act of August 29, 1833. Largely the work of Buxton, the decree actually went into effect on August 1, 1834, and did not actually free slaves but established an apprenticeship period of 12 years for the former West Indies slaves. Although the decree freed children under age six automatically, slaves had to remain with their masters and still suffered corporal punishment under the apprenticeship period. Despite these impediments to actual freedom, the decree was the crowning glory of humanitarian efforts against slavery and the slave trade and represented the apogee of the movement. A second decree four years later in 1838 eventually freed the slaves forthwith. Buxton’s involvement with the Anti-Slavery Society meshed with his so-called “New Africa” policy that involved using commerce and Christianity to end slavery in Africa. With this aim in mind, he formed the African Civilization Society and also published The African Slave Trade and Its Remedy (1839) espousing his beliefs. Practically, Buxton proposed using a treaty system with African leaders and establishing British settlements in Africa for the purposes of commerce and cultivation of the land. The fruition of his grand vision was a failed expedition up the Niger River in 1841, ostensibly

to promote “civilization” and gather scientific information. The expedition started off satisfactorily with the acquisition of land for a model farm, but problems soon began when many of the crew began to come down with malaria before arriving at the farm. The deprivations caused by disease eventually led to the demise of the expedition. The failure of the expedition impacted Buxton personally, but he still worked to salvage the scheme by obtaining government approval for another visit to the model farm. By 1842, however, Buxton was in declining health, and he eventually died on February 19, 1845. After his death, as a testimonial to his enduring legacy as a social reformer and abolitionist, a statue of Buxton was erected alongside one of William Wilberforce in Westminster Abbey. Opolot Okia See also: Abolition of Slavery Act (1833); Abolitionism, British; Wilberforce, William.

Further Readings Barclay, Oliver. Thomas Fowell Buxton and the Liberation of Slaves. New York: Sessions, 2001. Davis, David Brion. The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770– 1823. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984. Temperley, Howard. British Antislavery, 1833–1870. London: Longman, 1972. Temperley, Howard. White Dreams, Black Africa. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991.

C owners. If they become pregnant, they are thrown into the street. At maturity, most restavek children are thrown out and have to make a living any way they can—shining shoes, gardening, or as prostitutes. As a restavek, Cadet served the family but was not part of it. He slept under the kitchen table or on the back porch. Though a small child, he received no affection or care from his owner. His sole possessions were a tin cup, an aluminum plate, a spoon, and the rags he was given to wear. In the stress and abuse of his situation, Cadet became a regular bed wetter, which only increased the punishments he was given. Cadet’s only friend, another restavek child named Rene, stole two dollars and bought food that he then shared with Cadet. When he was caught, he was whipped severely and then forced to kneel on hot rocks so that he would confess with whom he shared the food. When he did not implicate Cadet, he was sent to the police station for a beating; he returned terribly injured and then disappeared. Cadet’s salvation was the occasional chances he had to attend a charity school. Showing a native intelligence, he learned to read and write quickly, even in the small amount of time he had managed to keep up with schoolwork.

Cadet, Jean-Robert (1955–) Jean-Robert Cadet was born in Haiti, the son of a wealthy white businessman and a black mother who died when Cadet was only four. His father sent the young Cadet to a former mistress to become a restavek, a child slave. Restavek is a Haitian term that means “staying with,” a term that disguises the reality of slavery. Under his master’s control, Cadet was forced to perform a range of menial tasks; if he made any mistake, he was beaten severely. Unfortunately, this incident of slavery is not unique—there are more than 250,000 restavek child slaves in Haiti. For the most part, these are children of the very poor who are given to well-off families in the hope that they will be given an education and a chance at a better life. Once handed over, most of the children lose all contact with their families and, like the slaves of the past, are sometimes given new names. In many ways, the restavek children are treated worse than the slaves of the past since they cost nothing and their supply is inexhaustible. They receive very little food or food of poor quality. Their health is usually poor and their growth stunted. Girl restaveks are worse off because they are sometimes forced to have sex with the teenage sons of their 157

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His life changed dramatically at the age of 14, when he was taken to the United States to continue serving his owner there. Upon arrival in the United States, his owner discovered that minors had to attend school, so Cadet was sent to junior high even though he spoke no English. Before and after school, he was still a full-time servant and cleaner. By the age of 16, he was required to work at cleaning jobs before and after school. Finally, he was thrown out, but with the help of the school guidance counselor, Cadet attained welfare benefits and was able to finish high school. After graduation, he joined the army, and while he was there he became a U.S. citizen. In the army and afterward, as he pursued a college degree, he had to confront the racism of the United States. When he received his bachelor’s degree, he confronted the woman who had enslaved him, showing her his degree and what he had made of his life. This confrontation was the first of many steps in the recovery of his confidence and self-esteem. With more study, he became a teacher and met the woman he would marry. But the psychological burden of his childhood in slavery still had a damaging impact on his life and relationships. In 1993, he began to write a letter to his newborn son explaining his past. This letter turned into the book Restavec: From Haitian Slave Child to Middle-Class American; the book deeply moved many readers, generating several television reports about slavery in Haiti. In 2000, he left his job as a teacher to

devote himself full-time to the cause of restavek slave children. Kevin Bales See also: Haiti; Restavek.

Further Reading Cadet, Jean-Robert. Restavec: From Haitian Slave Child to Middle-Class American. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998.

Cambodia Cambodia is a country in mainland Southeast Asia. It is largely tropical rain forest, interspersed with mountains and the great lake Tonle Sap. Much of the country is drained by the Mekong River, which passes through the capital of Phnom Penh and then enters Vietnamese territory in the delta region to the south. Cambodia is bordered by Vietnam to the east, Laos to the north, and Thailand to the west. The territory of the country extends to just over 180,000 square kilometers and its population is close to 15 million. Cambodia is a poor country and its people survive on an average annual income of just $320. Early Cambodia was dominated by maritime states involved in international trade with India and the Arab states to the west and China and Japan to the east. Land states were created with the arrival of Mon Khmerspeaking migrants who created the states that eventually built Angkor Wat and its

Cambodia

companion temple complexes. The sophisticated Khmer Empire eventually became depleted of energy and Angkor was sacked and abandoned. Cambodia entered a long period of semi-anarchy in which no king or warlord was able to secure sufficient power to enforce peace. When French colonialists arrived in the 19th century, they did not find it difficult to annex the country. Cambodians participated in the anticolonial war after the end of World War II and attained independence in 1953. A variety of different governments served over the next decade, mostly dominated by members of the royal family and characterized by personal infighting. The Cambodian Communist Party—known as the Khmer Rouge— took control of the country after U.S. forces departed from Vietnam. The Khmer Rouge, under the leadership of Pol Pot, embarked on a program of enormous and disastrous social change that included the deaths of more than a million people through overwork, torture, starvation, or murder. The Khmer Rouge were eventually driven from power in 1979 by a Vietnamese invasion. Cambodia is now controlled by a fragile parliamentary democracy under the firm hand of Hun Sen. The Chinese diplomat Chou Ta-kuan (Zhou Daguan) visited Angkor on a mission during 1296–1297 and described slavery in Khmer society as being limited to “wild people” from the upland regions away from the cultivated and irrigated rice-growing land. A family of high standing might have more than

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100 such slaves and would control every aspect of their lives. Similar to Lao traditions, the upland people were considered as inherently of lower status than lowlander people, and masters must, for example, refrain from sexual relations with the slaves for fear of defilement. Earlier inscriptions describe slaves as also including Thais, Chinese, and other ethnic groups. These would most likely have been people captured as a result of war, either because they were opposing troops or because they lived in villages that were partly the inspiration for warfare. The low density of population throughout mainland Southeast Asia has always been a significant hindrance to economic development, and kings were regularly inspired to warfare with the motivation of capturing more labor. In addition, the Khmer state was sustained by corvée labor that required all men to provide labor for the king or a member of the aristocracy for some weeks or months per year. They would be put to work building the religious monuments that legitimized the reign of the godkings or some other form of civil engineering or military service. Corvée labor had various negative impacts on family lives, although there is very little direct evidence of this from premodern times. After the French seized Cambodia and the remainder of Indochina, from 1877, they made efforts to end the slavery of the Cambodian people. This had the effect not only of placating wary domestic French opinion but also destroyed the traditional Cambodian economy. Since all levels of the elite were supported

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by corvée labor and rice taxation, freeing people from providing labor meant that elites no longer were able to command the resources and power they had become accustomed to deploying. The revolt that the proclamation inspired led to tightening of French control of the country, but the condition of those whose labor was now devoted to building the French empire did not improve very much. Modern-day Cambodia faces several problems with respect to human trafficking, particularly with the abduction and sale of women into the sex industry. Government capacity to end this trade is very limited, and cross-border networks operate seemingly quite freely outside the vicinity of large urban areas. Child labor is also considered to be widespread, and its use has grown together with the growth of sweatshop facilities stimulated by the low level of economic development achieved by the country. The U.S. State Department claims that the Cambodian government has taken insufficient action to try to reduce people trafficking and notes that labor exploitation in Thailand is widespread, involving construction and other dangerous manual work for men and sex work for women and also children. It is not clear to what extent these crossborder networks consist of people who have voluntarily chosen to participate. At the beginning of 2006, there were indications that the Cambodian government was taking steps to silence opposition and suppress dissent. Its actions have not been consistent with

the systematic attempt to end forced labor. John Walsh See also: Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation.

Further Readings Briggs, Lawrence Palmer. The Ancient Khmer Empire. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1951. Chandler, David. A History of Cambodia. Chiang Mai, Thailand: Silkworm Books, 1998. Chou-Ta-Kuan. The Customs of Cambodia. Bangkok: Siam Society, 1993, Mabbett, Ian, and David Chandler. The Khmers. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1995. U.S. State Department. Trafficking in Persons Report. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2005.

Campaign for Migrant Domestic Workers’ Rights Organized in Washington, D.C., in September 1997, the Campaign for Migrant Domestic Workers’ Rights was formed by a coalition of concerned individuals and agencies that recognized the vulnerable position held by many migrant domestic workers in the United States. The campaign has provided direct aid to at-risk migrant domestic workers, and it has also lobbied Congress for policy changes that protect the rights of these easily exploited workers. Since the 18th century much of the domestic work in North America and Europe has been performed by immigrant laborers. Today, migrant


domestic workers are mainly admitted as temporary workers under different visa classes in the United States, under the Live-in Care Giver Program in Canada, and through the various guest worker schemes that exist in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. A number of domestic workers have also entered these countries illegally. More than half of migrant domestic workers employed worldwide are women from poor countries in the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa, and Asia. The status of migrant domestic workers in the receiving states and the nature of their employment make them vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. This includes violation of contractual agreements, rape, sexual harassment, physical abuse, confiscation of travel documents, rigid work schedules, wrongful dismissal, prohibitions on making social contacts or changing employers, and other cases. The deplorable plight of migrant domestic workers, generally unprotected by labor laws in the host countries, has resulted in concerted action from different human rights groups to campaign for their rights in accordance with such international agreements as the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and their Families (1990), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966), and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966). In the United States, the Campaign for Migrant Domestic Workers’ Rights

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was organized in September 1997 in Washington, D.C. by a coalition of more than 25 organizations consisting of activists, including lawyers, union leaders, feminists, and religious, ethnic and human rights organizations united through the Institute for Policy Studies. In addition to providing direct services to migrant domestic workers, the campaign also advocates for policy changes to protect those admitted under special visas (the G-5 and A-3) employed in the private homes of diplomats and officials of international agencies as well as those with B-1 visas who are employed by other foreign nationals and U.S. citizens with permanent residency abroad. Similar campaigns have been organized in other parts of the country such as the Domestic Workers Rights Partnership, Committee against Anti-Asian Violence, Women Worker’s Project, Andolan, Worker’s Awaaz in New York, the Coalition against Slavery and Trafficking, and the Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates in California. In 2003, the Campaign for Migrant Domestic Workers Rights changed its name to Break the Chain Campaign to encompass a larger agenda of trafficking and slavery. A national campaign called Freedom Network (USA) to Empower Enslaved and Trafficked Persons has been instituted to ensure the legal, health, and social rights of migrant workers. In Canada, the Toronto-based domestic worker’s organization, INTERCEDE (International Coalition to End Domestic’s Exploitation) has been working, together with various church,

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immigrant, and women’s groups, to lobby for the protection of rights of migrant domestic workers since the 1970s. The Association for the Defense of the Rights of Domestic Workers advocates for changes in legislation related to domestic service. For more than 15 years, the Philippine Women Centre (PWC) of British Columbia works with Filipino domestic workers through its community-based research and activities. As a member of the broader network of Filipinos, the National Alliance of Philippine Women in Canada, PWC continues to work for changes in the laws and the promotion of the rights and welfare of Filipino caregivers who represent more than 70 percent of domestic workers in Canada today. In other parts of the world, many cause-oriented groups have responded to the plight of migrant domestic workers and rallied governments to secure their rights. In Europe, a network of self-organized migrant domestic workers organizations, trade unionists, scholars from 10 countries (Belgium, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, France, Greece, Ireland, and the United Kingdom) formed RESPECT (Rights, Equality, Solidarity, Power, Europe, Cooperation Today) in 1998. The network members such as Kalayaan (“Freedom”) and the United Worker’s Association (formerly Waling Waling) in London have been at the forefront in the campaign for the rights of migrant domestic workers to their regularization and independent immigration status since the 1980s. These

groups vigorously campaigned for the endorsement of the Charter of Rights for Migrant Domestic Workers. In Asia, where a majority of migrant domestic workers originate, there has been heightened organizing and campaigning to protect and promote their rights at the local, national, and international levels. The Migrant Forum in Asia (MFA) was established in 1994 and now comprises 23 member organizations in the region. MFA was instrumental in achieving a number of policy reforms both in the receiving and sending states. Migrant domestic workers have also organized themselves in their host countries, such as the Filipino Migrant Workers Union, the Indonesian Migrant Workers Union, and the Asian Domestics Workers Union in Hong Kong. The flow of migrant domestic workers to many parts of the world remains unabated with the rise of globalization and the continued demand for their services. As the numbers of migrant domestic workers grow, there is a foreseen need for continued vigilance to protect their rights and welfare wherever they may be. Glenda Tibe Bonifacio See also: Domestic Workers; Freedom Network (USA); Migrant Workers.

Further Readings Alcid, M. L. “The Multilevel Approach to Promoting Asian Migrant Worker’s Rights: The MFA Experience.” International Migration 42, no. 5 (2004): 169–176.

Cane Harvesters Anderson, B. “Different Roots in Common Ground: Transnationalism and Migrant Domestic Workers in London.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 27, no. 4 (2001): 673–683. Bakan, A. B., and D. Stasiulis, eds. Not One of the Family: Foreign Domestic Workers in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997. Barber, M. Immigrant Domestic Servants in Canada. Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association, 1991. Chang, C. Disposable Domestics: Immigrant Women in the Global Economy. Cambridge: South End Press, 2000. Van Raaphorst, D. Union Maids Not Wanted: Organizing Domestic Workers 1870–1940. New York: Praeger, 1988. Zarembka, J. “America’s Dirty Work: Migrant Maids and Modern-Day Slavery.” In Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy, ed. Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2003.

Cane Harvesters In the second half of the 20th century, rural poverty and official prodding convinced many young Haitian males to migrate to foreign countries (mostly the Dominican Republic) where they were employed as cane cutters. Horrendous working conditions on cane plantations and questionable deals between Haitian and Dominican officials, however, have prompted many critics to call life on Dominican plantations (or batey) a thinly disguised form of slavery. Haiti, formerly the French colony of Saint Domingue (1697–1804), was the world’s leading exporter of sugar and

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coffee in the 1780s. Tropical foodstuffs were produced with African slaves, who revolted in 1791 and obtained their emancipation in 1793. Most peasants switched to subsistence agriculture and small-scale coffee production by the 1820s, and Haiti was never again a significant sugar exporter. U.S. sugar companies became very active in the Caribbean region in the early 20th century. Imports of sugar from Cuba and the Dominican Republic, in particular, increased markedly during the U.S. occupations of Cuba (1898–1902, 1906–1909, 1912) and of the Dominican Republic (1916–1924) and during the boom in sugar prices caused by World War I (1914–1918). The resulting labor shortage, acute during the cane harvest (zafra, NovemberJuly) was solved by importing workers from other Caribbean islands, including Haiti. The Haitian community in the Dominican Republic grew to 20,000 (1920), then 100,000 (1930). Dominicans tend to mistrust Haitians, partly due to their darker skin and partly due to past Haitian invasions of the Dominican Republic (1801, 1821, 1849, 1850, 1855). When sugar prices plummeted during the Great Depression, Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo decided to expel the Haitian minority and ordered the massacre of an estimated 25,000 Haitians in 1937. The need for Haitian cane cutters grew acute when the price of sugar recovered during and after World War II. Under a 1952 contract with Trujillo, Haitian President Paul Magloire agreed to send 16,500 Haitians to the

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Dominican Republic. Starting in 1966, Haitian dictator François Duvalier (1957–1971), then his son Jean-Claude (1971–1986), signed contracts to send 15,000 to 20,000 cane cutters annually for payments ranging from $1 million to $2 million. The workers were to be used by the Dominican Sugar Economic Council (CEA), while the Duvaliers pocketed the money in exchange for recruiting the workers. Aside from the fact that the Duvaliers were in effect selling their people, the fate of Haitians on Dominican plantations was eerily similar to that of their slave ancestors. Haitians usually left willingly, but most were illiterate and understood little of the contract under

Haitian dictator François Duvalier, seen here during his inauguration, contracted to send thousands of Haitians to the Dominican Republic to work in the cane fields and pocketed the money. (AP/Wide World Photos)

which they would be exploited. Duvalierist propaganda promised generous wages in the Dominican Republic, which were made even more appealing by the dearth of economic opportunities in Haiti itself. To force Haitians to work until the end of the zafra, Haitians were deprived of their identity papers once they arrived in the Dominican Republic, part of their salary was put aside, and the local police chased runaway workers. Working conditions were uniformly bad, as workers suffered from machete cuts, diseases related to malnutrition, and unsanitary barracks. Because of a widespread belief that cutting cane was beneath Dominicans, 90 percent of the cane cutters, or braseros, were Haitian (Dominicans served as capataz, or foreman, and as technicians and administrators). Cutters imported annually from Haiti were known by the derisive term kongos, while those who had settled permanently in the Dominican Republic were known as viejos. The latter were occasionally rounded up by Dominican police and forced to work when imported labor proved insufficient. The cane cutters received a salary, albeit one barely sufficient to cover their most basic needs. They had to buy their food from a company store (bodega). They were paid based on the tonnage they cut, so unemployment or injury forced them into indebted servitude. The pesador in charge of weighing the cane routinely falsified records to diminish the cutters’ share. Various arbitrary deductions from the cutters’

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paycheck and the need to pay bribes to various officials meant that Haitians rarely brought back more than $40 from a nine-month stay abroad. International awareness of the plight of cutters began with a 1979 report by Anti-Slavery International of London. Internal protests against Bébé Doc’s regime, resulting in his downfall (1986), included riots that disrupted the 1986 recruiting campaign. Calls for boycotting the Dominican sugar and tourism industries continued into the 1990s, particularly as Jean-Bertrand Aristide denounced Dominicans as slave traders during his first tenure as president of Haiti (February-September 1991). Low sugar prices, U.S. protectionist measures, and the competition from alternative sweetening products also sparked an economic crisis in the Dominican sugar industry. Spurred by international criticism and the declining need for foreign labor, Balaguer expelled about 14,000 cane cutters in June 1991. No annual contracts have been signed since Bébé Doc’s departure in 1986, but Haitians continue to be employed on Haitian plantations. The cutters are now either illegal migrants who come an ba fil (literally by “slipping under the wire” at the border) or members of the Haitian minority in the Dominican Republic who are enrolled (willingly or not) for the zafra. Philippe R. Girard See also: Anti-Slavery International; Dominican Republic; Haiti.

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Further Readings Abbott, Elizabeth. Haiti: The Duvaliers and Their Legacy. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991. Diederich, Bernard, and Al Burt. Papa Doc: Haiti and Its Dictator. Maplewood, NJ: Waterfront Press, 1991. Lemoine, Maurice. Bitter Sugar: Slaves Today in the Caribbean. London: Banner Press, 1985. Wucker, Michèle. Why the Cocks Fight: Dominicans, Haitians, and the Struggle for Hispaniola. New York: Hill and Wang, 1999.

Cardoso, Fernando Henrique (1931–) President of the Federative Republic of Brazil for two successive terms (in office from January 1, 1995, to January 1, 2003), winning both elections by an absolute majority. As a sociologist trained at the University of São Paulo, he emerged since the late 1960s as one of the most influential analysts of large-scale social change, international development, dependency, democracy, and state reform. Building on his successful intellectual and academic career, Cardoso became deeply involved in Brazil’s struggle for democracy to overcome the authoritarian military regime that had ruled from 1964 to 1985. Having been exiled from 1964 to 1968, in 1969, when he returned, his political and civil rights were canceled, including a ban on teaching. As a founding member of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB), he was elected senator in 1982, served

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as minister of foreign relations in 1992–1993, and minister of finance in 1993–1994, when he implemented an economic stabilization plan to end decades of chronic hyperinflation in Brazil. His successful efforts led to his becoming the first democratically reelected president in the nation’s history. After his two terms as Brazil’s president, Cardoso was seen as the most public sociologist in the world, a global figure who is currently advising the United Nations on how to incorporate global civil society into international deliberations. In contrast to the elitist tendencies of Brazilian political culture of the past, Cardoso sought to increase the participation of social movements and nongovernmental organizations in policy discussions. Throughout his administration, he created new channels for voices from the environmental, the Indian, the black, the women’s, and the landless people’s movements in national debates. He even invited activists into his presidential office. And as even his critics admit, these voices clearly influenced Cardoso’s policies: During his presidency, Brazil made significant steps in reducing racial inequality, protecting indigenous people’s rights, and distributing land to formerly landless peasants, as well as virtually eliminating child labor, and greatly expanding medical care. As a former professor of political science and later as professor emeritus at the University of São Paulo, he served at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, at the Collège de France and at the University of Paris-Nanterre.

He taught at Cambridge University as Simon Bolivar professor, and at Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley. A member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, he received Honoris Causa degrees from many renown universities in the United States, Germany, Russia, Israel, Great Britain, Venezuela, Chile, Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Slovakia, and Japan. He is also a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences from which he received many honors. More recently, Fernando Henrique Cardoso was chairman of the Club of Madrid and cochairman of the InterAmerican Dialogue, a member of the board of trustees of the Rockefeller Foundation in New York and of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University. He is also professor at large at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and holder of the Cultures of the South chair at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. He presided over the United Nations Panel of Eminent Personalities on the relationship between this organization and civil society and coordinated the working group in charge of reviewing the Ibero-American summitry process. Stephan E. Nikolov See also: Brazil.

Further Readings Amman, Edward, and Werner Baer. “The Illusion of Stability: The Brazilian Economy Under Cardoso.” World

Cariye Development 28 (October 2000): 1805– 1819. Fleischer, David. “The Cardoso Government’s Reform Agenda: A View from the National Congress, 1995–1998.” Journal of Inter-American Studies and World Affairs 40 (1998): 119–136. Goertzel, Ted. Fernando Henrique Cardoso: Reinventing Democracy in Brazil. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1999. Purcell, Susan Kaufman, and Riordan Roett, eds. Brazil Under Cardoso. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1997.

Cariye Cariye is the term used for female slaves in Islamic law that endured in the Ottoman Empire until the end of the 19th century. There has been no distinction made historically between the usage of the term cariye and that of slave in legal or judicial contexts. Generally, the capture of women in war as a treasure, but not as a warrior, was understood as the only possible source of concubinage. Warriors who were captured at the end of a conflict could be traded as slaves. In similar fashion, in order to identify a woman as cariye, she either had to be captured as treasure at the end of a war, or be born the child of a concubine. Being a cariye for a woman was not an automatic process and depended on certain terms and conditions. Not all women captured in war as a treasure became cariye nor could a woman decide to be a cariye by herself. Decisions about one’s concubinage were based upon three required conditions: the existence of a rightful war, the head

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of state’s decision about one’s concubinage, and Mukabele-i bi’l-misl (retaliation, paying back evil with evil). The existence of a rightful war fought only for the purpose of defense gave the winners the chance of acquiring cariye either as treasure or as a commodity. Additionally, any negative or positive decisions by the head of the state regarding the concubinage of any women had to based on certain justifications. Not all captured women were necessarily treated as cariye; some might have been emancipated without any terms and conditions, while others were emancipated through purchase by paying out a fidye (an amount of money to be distributed to the poor as an equivalent of unfinished, or imperfectly done, religious practices, and emancipation of a slave), or they might have been exchanged as a commodity without being given the status of cariye. The process of concubinage was regulated mostly by the rule of Mukabele-i bi’lmisl under the head of state. Cariyes were divided into two major categories: those who possessed wife status and those who held servant status. The cariyes in the first group were bound to their owners’ command and services without having any marriage agreement. The owners of this group of cariyes were allowed to have sexual relations only with their cariyes provided that they obeyed Islamic law. On the contrary, cariyes were only allowed to have sexual relations with their owners. These relations with cariyes, who were not married to either a free or slave man, were only considered legitimate

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in three forms: if the owner emancipated his cariye before marrying her, thus ending her status as a cariye with the right of heritage; if the owner married his cariye without emancipating her she remained a slave with a right of heritage and of having her child emancipated from slavery at birth; or if the owner lived with his cariye without having any marriage agreement she had neither rights of heritage nor of having her child emancipated by birth. Only if a cariye became pregnant by her owner and he died, would she and her child become emancipated without any further dues after her owner’s death. The relationship between cariye and her owner was subject to certain restrictions. For example, the owner could not have sexual relations with cariye before official confirmation of her status as a cariye was determined. Furthermore, the owner could not have sexual relations with two sister-cariyes or with previously emancipated cariyes. Cariyes who held servant status could get married with someone, either free or slave, while serving the owner, but this requires the owner’s permission. If these cariyes married someone else, the owner could not have sexual relations with them under any conditions. These women remained as cariyes and had full responsibilities to their owners since they were bound by business relations. In addition, cariyes with servant status were occasionally used in factories and workshops as temporary laborers (four months maximum). Authorities in the Ottoman Empire occasionally purchased the married cariyes

and emancipated them in order to prevent their families from being separated. The emancipation of cariyes was also a common practice in the Ottoman Empire, provided that the owners voluntarily decided to free them after the end of the seventh year of concubinage. Cariye essentially differed from other women in society with regard to her right of inheritance. She could not have the inheritance rights that a wife held. Since a cariye was not counted as a wife, the number of cariyes the owner had did not affect the number of wives he could have. Furthermore, the duration of iddet (number of days before she could remarry after divorce or death of a spouse) for cariyes was twice as long as that of wives. Lastly, the wearing of veils was not mandatory for cariyes, as it was for other women. Mustafa Ziya Bag˜riaçik See also: Concubines.

Further Reading Erdem, Y. H. Slavery in the Ottoman Empire and Its Demise, 1800–1909. New York: St. Martin’s, 1996.

Casement, Sir Roger (1864–1916) Pioneer of the modern secular human rights advocate, Sir Roger Casement exposed labor atrocities in the rubber industry in the Congo and Peru in the early 20th century. Born near Dublin in 1864, Roger David Casement came from an Anglican family long established in Northern

Casement, Sir Roger

Roger Casement exposed the severe mistreatment of African and South American workers in the rubber industry during the late 1800s and early 1900s. (Library of Congress)

Ireland. He grew up steeped in two differing traditions: the imperialist Anglo-Irish ascendancy that his family exemplified, and the patriotic Irish nationalism of the North’s rebel heritage. After finishing school in 1881, Casement was engaged by a shipping company with regular service to Africa. For three years he worked for Elder Dempster in Liverpool (an English port that flourished during the transatlantic slave trade era). This connection led in 1884 to his initial employment in the Congo Free State, founded by King Leopold II of the Belgians. Over the next few years Casement worked for various employers in the Congo, including briefly at a mission station, always earning high praise for

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his abilities and character. During this period he often witnessed the results of the economic activities sponsored by Leopold. He especially noticed the negative effects of forced labor— slavery in all but name—in the booming rubber-collection industry, which supplied the rising global demand for bicycle and automobile tires, clothing, electrical wiring, and other products. Casement entered British government service in Nigeria in 1892, first as a surveyor and later as a customs official. In 1895, he joined the Foreign Office and served in Mozambique, but returned to the Congo three years later as consul in the Congo Free State. After a short stint in southern Africa during the South African War he returned to the Congo as consul in 1900. In this capacity he traveled frequently in the interior, and was shocked by the severe depopulation and ecological damage resulting from rubber extraction; this destruction contrasted sharply with his memories of the thriving communities he had visited in the 1880s. In 1903, he traveled up the Congo River to investigate reports of atrocities committed against Africans to force them to collect greater quantities of wild rubber. The crimes included kidnapping, murder, rape, food requisitions, burning of villages, and mutilation of workers who failed to meet their rubber quota. Several months were spent in this endeavor, interviewing victims and eyewitnesses and visiting the scenes of abuses. When he published his official report in 1904, it sparked a furious controversy in the

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press, Parliament, and diplomatic circles. King Leopold and his supporters denied any wrongdoing, as they had for nearly a decade, but when a 1905 Belgian government Commission of Inquiry into the Congo reached substantially the same conclusions, Casement’s work was vindicated. For this humanitarian achievement Casement received the honor of Companion of St. Michael and St. George from the British Crown, but nevertheless resigned from consular service in 1905–1906. During this time, his Irish nationalist views became more pronounced, and latent anti-imperialism grew into active anti-British sentiment. He nevertheless rejoined the Foreign Office in 1906 and held a series of consular posts in Brazil. These years saw an Amazonian rubber boom like the Congo’s—including almost identical abuses of Indian workers, as well as British subjects who were labor migrants from Barbados. The target of the most lurid publicity was the Peruvian Amazon Company (PAC), registered on the London Stock Exchange and operating in the Putumayo River region disputed between Peru and Colombia. As accusations of labor atrocities mounted, Casement joined an investigative commission organized by the PAC, whose purpose presumably was to exonerate the company. But in voyages up the Amazon and Putumayo rivers in 1910 and 1911, Casement convincingly documented the full extent of PAC brutality toward both indigenous Indians and Barbadians. The publication of his report caused another

firestorm of controversy, leading to a parliamentary inquiry into the business practices of British members of the PAC board of directors. In June 1911 he was knighted for his humanitarian activism in the Congo and Putumayo. In 1913, Casement retired from the Foreign Office on a pension, but his last years were hardly anticlimactic. By then he was deeply involved in the Irish struggle for home rule, granted in 1912 but postponed when World War I broke out. He secretly traveled to Germany to enlist support for Irish independence, and sought to recruit Irish prisoners of war to fight against England; both these initiatives failed. When Casement returned to Ireland in a futile attempt to stop the Easter Rising of April 1916, he was arrested and taken to England, then tried and convicted of treason. Due to his knighthood and humanitarian achievements, influential Britons and Americans sought clemency for him. To prevent this, the British government circulated copies of his alleged diaries among his sympathizers. These diaries, containing numerous graphic descriptions of homosexual encounters, have never been conclusively proved to be either forged or authentic, but they successfully undermined support for a reprieve, and Casement was hanged in August 1916. Was Sir Roger Casement an effective antislavery activist? Did his interventions reduce suffering, save lives, and improve working conditions? The results unfortunately were mixed. His Congo report, along with the Belgian Commission of Inquiry, led to the

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Congo’s transfer to direct Belgian control in 1908, and reports of abuses declined. The worst excesses were halted, but rubber production was still coerced in the Belgian Congo, through punitive taxation instead of brute force. Significantly, the wild-rubber industry collapsed at about this time, due to overharvesting of vines by collectors and domesticated rubber cultivation, especially on Southeast Asian plantations. The aftermath was similar in the Putumayo region. His work with the Putumayo Commission and further Peruvian investigations caused an international outcry, but the main culprits employed by the Peruvian Amazon Company escaped prosecution. Amazonian rubber profits likewise plummeted due to competition from plantation rubber, though labor exploitation seems to have continued well into the 1930s. But Casement undoubtedly protected some lives on both continents, notably the Barbadians who had been badly treated in the Putumayo and compelled to commit atrocities themselves. Perhaps Casement’s enduring legacy lies in the strategies he employed in his official position to publicize forced labor practices. As a secular antislavery activist, he was not part of humanitarian church networks, and did not have access to the pulpits from which the abolitionists opposed slavery in the previous century. His consular status prohibited him from publicly urging the British government to adopt specific policies. But he was highly effective behind the scenes as part of the Congo Reform Association and later in

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the Putumayo scandal: lobbying ministers, members of Parliament and other opinion makers; raising funds; enlisting influential allies; and disseminating data from his investigations. Just as important, Casement consistently exceeded a consul’s formal responsibility to protect Britons and British interests. He certainly performed this duty in rescuing scores of Barbadians in the Putumayo, but his efforts on behalf of Congolese and Amazonian workers created a new precedent. His impassioned view of Ireland as an occupied nation undoubtedly helped him identify with the oppressed elsewhere. He was in effect a self-appointed consul for humanity, whose compassionate efforts extended to exploited peoples wherever he found them. He was stripped of his knighthood after conviction for treason, but for humanitarians around the world, he forever remains Sir Roger Casement. Thomas Pyke Johnson See also: Morel, Edmund Dene; Peruvian Amazon Company (PAC).

Further Readings Hochschild, Adam. King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. Inglis, Brian. Roger Casement. New York: Harcourt, 1973. Mitchell, Angus. Casement. London: Haus Publishing, 2003. Mitchell, Angus, ed. The Amazon Journal of Roger Casement. London: Anaconda Editions, 1997.

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Sawyer, Roger. Casement, The Flawed Hero. Boston: Routledge, 1984. Stanfield, Michael Edward. Red Rubber, Bleeding Trees: Violence, Slavery, and Empire in Northwest Amazonia, 1850– 1933. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998.

Cash Crops Slavery and other forms of cheap, unfree labor have greatly enhanced the profits derived from past and present production of cash crops. Cash crops are agricultural products grown for the market, though there is some overlap with subsistence crops produced for use by farmers themselves. They may be broadly categorized by their economic function. These include raw materials for industry and manufacturing (cotton, indigo, jute, palm oil, peanuts, rubber, sisal); staple foods (bananas, cassava, maize, millet, potatoes, rice, soybeans, wheat); and luxury foods, additives, or drugs (beets, cannabis, cinnamon, cloves, cocaine, cocoa, coffee, grapes/ wine, kola, nutmeg, opium, khat, palm kernels, sugarcane, tea, tobacco). This list is incomplete and somewhat arbitrary; some crops belong in more than one category, while others have shifted over time due to economic, technological and social changes. Not all of these crops have been produced by slave labor, but many have. While crops can generate cash when cultivated by smallholders (such as cocoa grown by peasant families), as in the rapid growth of cash farming from ca.1850– 1950, economies of scale often ensure

that large holdings devoted primarily to single crops are more profitable for a few landowners. This latifundiary monoculture takes various forms, but is known best as plantation agriculture. Growing, processing, and transporting cash crops is often labor intensive, so profits depend upon an inexpensive and controllable workforce. The link between slavery and cash-cropping is thus economically rational and has existed since antiquity. The grain-producing provinces of ancient Rome (Sicily, Egypt, Morocco) relied on slaves, many of who were captured in Roman frontier wars. Rome itself, the greatest metropolis of its time, depended utterly upon successive provincial breadbaskets for its food supply. In Asia and the pre-Columbian Americas corvée and other unfree labor produced the agricultural surpluses that maintained empires and their burgeoning cities. From about 700 CE an “Islamic exchange” linked the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean trading networks and introduced major cash crops frequently grown by slaves. Muslims introduced sugarcane to Spain. The Crusaders brought new commodities to Europe and established the first European-owned sugar estates, though these latifundia also had many free workers. Plantations spread to the Atlantic Ocean islands during the 15th century, but sugar remained a costly luxury. After 1500, the monumental changes associated with direct trade with Asia and the discovery of the Western Hemisphere created the conditions and global markets for greatly expanded

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cash-cropping. Early Brazilian and Caribbean plantations used Amerindian slaves, but massive population decline forced planters to look elsewhere. Africa seemed to have a surplus of workers from wars and raiding, and its rulers willingly sold them to European merchants. A racially based international slave trade drained the continent of its most productive people; significant numbers crossed the Indian Ocean, Red Sea, and Sahara Desert (an estimated 5,510,000 from 1600 to 1900), but the majority traversed the Atlantic (about 11,313,000 from 1450 to 1900). Europe trafficked in Amerindians and transported indentured servants who were treated like chattel, but by the 18th century Africa was the main source of this human commodity. Many Americans assume that most survivors of the Atlantic crossing came to the southern states, but they were a small minority of enslaved Africans in the Western Hemisphere, though they outnumbered European immigrants to the United States until the mid-19th century. Much larger numbers landed in the Caribbean, Spanish America, and especially Brazil. The image of slaves mainly cultivating cotton in the Old South is likewise misleading; it replaced tobacco as the main southern staple only in the 1800s. It was crucial to the British and U.S. textile industries, but the Civil War’s disruption of exports greatly stimulated other countries’ cotton growing. The primary crop, both for its impact on Africans and their successors and the world economy, has undoubtedly been sugarcane.

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Although partly supplanted by European beet sugar in the 19th century, sugarcane was the first tropical crop to generate massive wealth around the world. Cutting cane is backbreaking work that requires complex industrial organization to maximize profits. As long as replacements were available in Africa, it was sound business practice to work slaves to death and buy others rather than invest in their wellbeing. Cultivation transformed many Caribbean islands and large swaths of northeast Brazil (and later Natal, Queensland, Mauritius, Fiji, and other locales) into vast cane fields with an insatiable appetite for labor. Some canegrowing regions were so monocultural that necessities such as food had to be imported from elsewhere, inducing further specialization and a geographical division of labor. South Carolina and later Burma became major rice exporters feeding cane cutters in British Caribbean and Indian Ocean territories. Sugar linked metropoles and prize colonies: Portugal with Brazil, Spain with Hispaniola and Cuba, and France with St. Domingue until the 1791–1804 Haitian Revolution destroyed slavery there. With the most widespread empire supported by a vast merchant fleet and the Royal Navy, Great Britain probably profited most from sugar. Sugarcane’s role in financing British industry remains controversial, but cash crops played a major role in the Industrial Revolution. Cotton, rubber, and other crops provided raw materials for manufactured goods, and peanuts and palm

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trees supplied essential machine lubricants. Early phases of industrialization caused much misery for workers but eventually contributed to rising populations and incomes that created vast markets for tropical produce. Sugar, coffee, tea, cocoa, tobacco, and other former luxuries thus became staples of modern consumer society. Slave resistance and Euro-American campaigns of the 19th century abolished the international slave trade and ultimately freed millions on several continents. Closing the Atlantic slave trade created a surplus of captives within Africa, whose labor helped make the continent a major cash crop producer. In tapping new sources for cheap labor, especially India and China, new forms of unfree labor replaced chattel slavery. Indentured labor migration helped extend cash farming to new regions, and formal European control in Africa and Southeast Asia also established vast new acreages of plantations relying on both forced and wage labor, though rising yields relied more on peasant smallholders responding to market incentives or tax demands. Harsh travel and work conditions for indentured workers have been called “a new system of slavery,” but overall these new labor regimes offered some improvement over slave status. Legislation and international cooperation have abolished chattel slavery as a labor source for cash crops, but enslavement still exists and even flourishes in regions where enforcement mechanisms are weak. In the late 1980s, some farmers in the U.S. South were convicted

of forcibly holding tobacco and cotton workers. Haitian sugar cutters in the Dominican Republic and Florida may be slaves in all but name, and cocoa growers in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire commonly use child slaves. Around the world deceptive recruiting practices and debt bondage effectively trap poor workers on large estates, toiling for little or no wages with scant prospect of relief. Describing a plantation complex in terms of rise and final fall is premature; terminating the legal status of slavery may merely drive unfree labor underground and prompt employers to devise innovative forms of exploitation. Thomas Pyke Johnson See also: Cane Harvesters; Haiti.

Further Readings Curtin, Philip D. The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1998. Galloway, J. H. The Sugar Cane Industry. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Northrup, David. Indentured Labor in the Age of Imperialism, 1834–1922. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Palcy, Euzhan, dir. Sugar Cane Alley [La Rue Cases-Negres]. New York: New Yorker Video, 1984. Walvin, James. Fruits of Empire. New York: New York University Press. 1997.

Caste Caste has an enduring presence in scholarship, but meanings or interpretations

Caste

of it have not been consensual, uncontroversial, or unified. Different theories—religious/mystical, biological, and sociohistorical—have been proposed to explain the origins and evolution of caste, and some common ground about meanings and origins have emerged. Etymologically, caste is derived from the Latin castus, meaning pure and pious, from which was derived the Portuguese casta, meaning race, pure stock, or lineage. Castes are believed to have originated about 2,500 to 3,000 years ago, and they refer to a particular form of social stratification associated with Hinduism. Caste may have developed from a combination of military, political, and social subordination, occupational specialization, and ethnic strife around rituals and taboos about physical contact. All these factors proved to be convenient for the collection of taxes and tributes and the further elaboration of taboos by a powerful priesthood (Brahman). Although the caste system may have diffuse origins, its retention and reproduction is thought to be based, in the first instance, on noneconomic criteria, like a religious cosmology grounded in beliefs about a hierarchy of ritual purity. It is in and through this hierarchy that economic inequalities are reproduced as the hierarchy is ascribed to different groups. Some commentators have noted, though, that it is not clear whether casta was originally a general term for class, or another category, or whether it was associated with conceptions of purity, but the Latin and Portuguese origins of the terms have retained

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their influence on current definitions. If degrees of purity and cleanliness did underpin its primary meaning and use, its effect on social, political, and economic organization has been pervasive. Throughout many facets of society, the capacity of the caste system as a mechanism of socialization and social control cannot be underestimated. The social organization of the caste system includes endogamous marriage, rules about interpersonal conduct such as personal contact, occupational affiliation, and ritual practices in each caste. Rituals of purification representing the caste system mirror social order while ritual transgressions of the caste system represent symbolic violence to this order. It is an order that does not leave much scope for deviations from caste ascriptions since deviance may incur a range of social and economic sanctions. The original classification of varna or caste groups were Brahmin (priests), Kshatriya (warriors and landlords), Vaishya (farmers and traders), and Sudra (servile peasants). Later, Harijans (untouchables) were added to the bottom rung, symbolic of their outsider, ritually impure, status. Given the social, economic, and political rigidity of the caste system, it has a powerful ideological inertia that is perpetuated through the actions and inactions of individuals who cannot escape from it in any single life span. It is also buttressed by a belief in dharma and karma. Dharma refers to the natural and social order of things, which must not be unsettled by violation of rules. It is only through proper behavior, that merit is received

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and following rebirth that one may be born into a higher caste. For those who violate normative standards, karma, or rebirth into a lower caste, is the consequence. Diligent adherents to dharma are eventually liberated from samsara, and the burden of eternal recurrence of life and death can be ended. The caste system is a classification system that is imbued in morality. Especially for untouchables, it has profound consequences for encouraging speculation about one’s identity in the past and for reconstituting oneself in the present life to realize a higher self in the future. No classification system, including caste, is immutable or exhaustive.

Earlier interpretations of dharma and karma suggested that people could not enter the caste system or attain mobility in any current life. Caste stratification, however, has evolved and differentiated into many regionally based, individual castes and subcastes of about 3,000 jatis (“breeds and species”) that permit variable degrees of collective mobility. These refer to local associations of lineage groups that share many of the same restrictions as the original caste system. Jatis are further subdivided into subcastes and they may exercise control over culture, law, and ritual in a village council ( panchayat). The apparent inflexibility of the caste

Cobbler Suva Lal, a member of the Dalit caste (sometimes called “untouchables”), repairs shoes at his makeshift stand in New Dehli in 1997. The Dalits are the lowest level of the Hindu caste system. (AP/Wide World Photos)

Caste

system is also disproved by changes in patterns of occupational segregation that have adjusted to changing economic requirements. Since India became independent in 1947, caste divisions stopped receiving official state backing, but the civil importance of caste remains highly consequential for those who benefit from it and those who suffer because of it. Scholars have toyed with caste beyond its Hindu origins in terms of its applicability to non-Hindu societies. Comparative analysis, though, is fraught with conceptual and empirical difficulties. No stratification system outside of India matches the Hindu caste system so completely that, for example, racial inequalities in the United States can be deemed to be the same. Similarly, it would be unacceptable to stretch and dilute the concept of Hindu caste so much that it loses all coherence and meaning, but these difficulties have not deterred commentators from working with caste to engender fresh understandings and applications. These include the application of caste and class to understand the relations between black and white people in 1930s southern states of the United States, racial apartheid in South Africa, and consideration of the Prussian Junkers as a caste. Others have argued that class and exploitation are Eurocentric concerns that are not to be found in India. Although commentators have attempted to forge connections between caste and other forms of inequality, the general inclination of most scholars has been to treat caste and class as

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relatively mutually exclusive forms of stratification. This may account, in part, for the relative absence of discussion about similarities and differences between caste and modern slavery, since slavery has been perceived by commentators to be based primarily on economic exploitation. The framing of caste or jati as based on noneconomic criteria (purity and impurity) and slavery as based on economic exploitation (though not all kinds of slavery have been based on economic exploitation) do not lend either to simple comparison, which is also confounded by variations of time and place. Despite these primary differences, there do appear to be superficial similarities between secondary features of caste and slavery. The untouchable caste is sustained and reproduced through occupational degradation, economic marginalization, and dependency. Many kinds of slavery, too, have entailed restrictions on personal liberty and debt bondage. Like slaves, untouchables have been subjected to violence and threats of violence, few birth rights, and little honor. Whatever similarities and differences exist between caste/jatis and modern slavery, both have been supported by moral imputations of inferiority and racist ideologies. Rampaul Chamba See also: Jim Crow Laws.

Further Readings Dollard, John. Caste and Class in a Southern Town. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

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Dumont, Louis. Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1970. Gupta, Dipankar, ed. Social Stratification. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Manning, Patrick. Slavery and African Life: Occidental, Oriental, and African Slave Trades. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Meillaissoux, Claude. “Are There Castes in India?” Economy and Society 2, no. 1 (1973): 89–111.

Central Asia The territory of Central Asia refers to the five former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan. These nations received their current borders as administrative territories of the Soviet Union in October 1924, and from 1936 to 1991 they held the status of Soviet Socialist Republics. The area came under Russian rule during the course of the 19th century and became incorporated into the new Bolshevik-led state in the early 1920s. Bordering China, Russia, Iran, and Afghanistan, the region is slightly less than half the size of the continental United States or around 1.5 million square miles. By the time Russia conquered Central Asia’s largest city, Tashkent, in 1865, chattel slavery had already effectively ended in the region. Both the czarist and later Soviet governments, however, would continue the Central Asian practice of using forced labor to build irrigation canals. The czarist government oversaw the construction

of the Emperor Nikolai I Canal in 1898 and the Romanovskii Canal in 1913 using unpaid labor conscripted from the local population. The Soviet government built a series of canals in 1939 and 1940 in this manner, the largest of which was the Great Ferghana Canal in 1939. More than 180,000 Uzbeks and Tajiks worked for 45 days to dig this 168-mile canal. The use of forced labor by the state in Central Asia thus continued into the 20th century despite regime changes. The Soviet Union also introduced new forms of forced labor into Central Asia. Most notably, it constructed systems of punitive labor for prisoners and internal exiles. In the early 1930s the Soviet regime established two main complexes of corrective labor camps (ITLs) in Central Asia under gulag (Main Administration of Camps) authority. These camps housed both criminals and political prisoners from the entire Soviet Union. In Karaganda, Kazakhstan, the Karlag system included agricultural camps and coal mining camps, while the Sazlag system in Chirchik, Uzbekistan, operated cotton plantations. In October 1934, Karlag had 24,800 prisoners and Sazlag 20,100. During and after World War II, the use of prison labor in Kazakhstan expanded considerably. By 1942, the gulag camps in Kazakhstan housed more than 60,000 prisoners. In the postwar years, the Karaganda complex became a major destination for political prisoners. In December 1953, the Karaganda camps contained 56,423 prisoners convicted of violating Article

Central Asia

58 (counterrevolutionary crimes). This figure represents over 14 percent of all Article 58 prisoners in the entire Soviet Union at the time. The vast majority of these prisoners came from outside Central Asia. Starting in 1930, the Joseph Stalin regime began to deport people to restricted areas of internal exile under gulag administration known as special settlements. The Soviet security organs had responsibility for their labor arrangements, and the exiles had no choice in work assignments. By January 1932 there were 180,708 special settlers in Kazakhstan and 10,471 in other parts of Central Asia. Most of them worked in agriculture, but the security organs leased many out to work in Kazakh coal mines and heavy industry. These laborers occupied a legal and socioeconomic position similar to that of state serfs under the pre-1861 czarist regime. During World War II, the Stalin regime deported nearly 1.2 million people to special settlements in Central Asia. In the fall of 1941, they deported 385,785 Russian Germans from the Volga and elsewhere to Kazakhstan. During the year between November 1943 and November 1944, the Soviet government deported more than 800,000 Karachais, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Crimean Tatars, Meskhetian Turks, and others to Central Asia. The regime employed most of these deportees in agriculture growing grain and raising livestock. Others grew sugar beets, cotton, or vegetables. As time progressed, the regime employed

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a significant minority in enterprises such as mining, construction and manufacturing. From 1954 to 1956, the Soviet government abolished the special settlement regime and allowed the exiles to choose their residency and occupation within Central Asia. In 1957, it allowed all but the Russian Germans, Crimean Tatars, and Meskhetian Turks to return to their homelands. Since the 1960s the most widespread use of forced labor in Central Asia has been the compulsory mobilization of schoolchildren to assist with the cotton harvest. This practice continues on a large scale, despite pronouncements from the governments of the region outlawing the practice. There is currently no effective enforcement of these bans, and economic and political pressures continue to provide strong incentives for local authorities to violate them flagrantly. In recent years, Central Asian governments have come under increased international criticism for their lax implementation of child labor laws. J. Otto Pohl See also: Gulag; Ukraine.

Further Readings Allworth, Edward, ed. Central Asia: 130 Years of Russian Dominance, A Historical Overview. Durham, NC: Duke University Press 1994. Pohl, J. Otto. Ethnic Cleansing in the USSR, 1937–1949. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1999. Pohl, J. Otto. The Stalinist Penal System. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1997.

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Polian, Pavel. Against Their Will: The History and Geography of Forced Migrations in the USSR. Budapest, Hungary: Central European Press, 2004.

Charcoal The making of charcoal is one of the most basic proto-industrial labors that takes place in many parts of the developing world. Quite often the practice is most commonly found in those areas where tropical rain forest vegetation is being cleared as new lands are brought under cultivation. The practice has long been associated with swidden (slash and burn) cultivation practices, but the expanding pace of economic globalization has exacerbated the need for charcoal in those regions where it can be readily produced. For some impoverished persons, charcoal making is one of the few extractive labors that they can perform that provides them with some type of income. The questions of who owns the resources and who is entitled to the profits of the land are some of the issues that have helped introduce slavery into the business of charcoal making. As timber and brush are cleared and burned, landowners try to extract as much profit as they can eke from their holdings by producing and selling charcoal from the vast burn piles that dot the deforested landscape. In many cases, the laborers who are forced to perform this difficult task, commonly in an arduous work environment, are indigenous populations of tribal peoples who become the effective slaves of the landowners.

Far beyond the reach of the law and the courts, rich landowners often became emboldened by their ability to do as they please with the indigenous workers they force to work in the charcoal industry. By the nature of the business, charcoal production is quite difficult. The oppressive heat of the tropics is made even more burdensome by the constant burning of additional brush piles. Hard labor of this type is further complicated by the necessity of commonly having to perform it with smoke-filled lungs. It was not uncommon to find children forced to work in such conditions. In addition to this, those who extracted the charcoal from the burn piles were often expected to carry heavy loads across great distances. Having to perform these tasks round the clock, without pay, and under the threat of physical harm from armed landowners made the task especially onerous. Some landowners also employed varieties of contract slavery in order to find a sufficient workforce to labor in the charcoal pits. Occasionally, labor recruiters (gatos) in Brazil would visit slum neighborhoods in Minas Gerais to find workers who were willing to travel to the interior to labor in the charcoal industry. Once the unsuspecting laborers were taken far from their homes, they were subjected to much abuse and forced to work without pay. The recognition that modern slavery was being used in the manufacture of charcoal first surfaced in Brazil in the late1980s as the depletion of vast portions of the Amazonian rain forest and

Chattel Slavery

the subsequent production of charcoal resulted in the forced labor of many of the region’s indigenous people. Local human rights organizations such as the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) and the Indianist Missionary Council (CIMI) began to conduct investigations to determine the accuracy of reports of slavery and measure the extent to which the practice was occurring in Brazil. In a report titled Conflicts in Rural Areas—Brazil 1994, the CPT verified the extent to which enslavement had been imposed upon indigenous people in the Amazon basin and called upon the Brazilian government to take positive action to remedy the situation. In many respects, the reliance upon slave labor in the Amazon was a reaction to the powerful economic forces of a globalized economy. The slavemade charcoal from the Amazon region was being used extensively within the steel mills found in Brazil’s industrial cities like São Paulo. The Brazilian steel mills were known worldwide for producing rolled steel—a highly sought industrial resource that was used extensively by auto manufacturers worldwide. Although it was an indirect association, automobiles that were rolling off the assembly lines in Detroit and other manufacturing centers were produced in some part due to the presence of slave labor at the most basic level of the manufacturing process. Faced with incontrovertible evidence that contemporary slavery was practiced within its borders and recognizing the severe economic impact that

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boycotts against Brazilian steel might bring, the government of Brazil took action to combat the use of slave labor in the nation’s charcoal production. New legislation was enacted and Brazilian authorities vigorously utilized the laws and the courts to end the practice. By the end of the 1990s it could be said that Brazil had eliminated the practice of using slave labor in its charcoal production areas. Junius P. Rodriguez See also: Brazil; Pastoral Land Commission (CPT).

Further Reading Sutton, Alison. Slavery in Brazil: A Link in the Chain of Modernization. London: Anti-Slavery International. 1994.

Chattel Slavery Chattel slavery is the owning of human beings as personal property. It is the most extreme form of unfree labor and is commonly known simply as slavery. The owner of a chattel slave not only controls the slave’s labor, but owns the laborer as well. Other types of unfree labor include convict labor, debt bondage, serfdom, wage slavery, white slavery (involuntary prostitution), and state slavery. Yet while many of these other forms of compulsory labor continue to thrive, chattel slavery as a legal form of human bondage gradually disappeared over the 19th and 20th centuries. “Chattel” is a legal term that refers to any article of personal movable property

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(chattel personal) or immovable property (chattel real) apart from a freehold. The word “chattel” is from Middle English chatel or movable property. The origin of the word is Latin capitale, meaning principal, property, or goods. By 1500, one form of the word, catel, developed a separate meaning that referred directly to livestock and during the 17th century acquired its modern spelling, cattle. The term “chattel slavery” is derived from chattelism, a 19thcentury word usually used in reference to American slavery. Chattel slavery transcended civilizations and emerged in ancient times when victorious states or soldiers sold captives or prisoners of war into personal servitude either by private sale or through public markets. Such persons were deracinated in that their ties to family and culture were broken and they became (theoretically at least) extensions of a master’s will. Typically, under chattel slavery children inherited their mothers’ servile status. Chattel slaves performed all types of service, including in mines, on plantations, as domestics, as concubines, and as administrators. As human chattel and unlike inanimate objects or livestock, slaves could withhold their cooperation in order to negotiate concessions from masters, for example, time off from work. Such action might provoke violence or concessions, but either way demonstrated resistance that exposed the fiction that a slaveholder controlled human beings as any other form of property. Over time, conflict and negotiation could lead to

cultural creations by the enslaved, for example in music, religious practice, and storytelling. Where accommodation between masters and slaves collapsed, violence often ensued in the form of individual assaults (commonly by masters, occasionally by slaves) or slave revolts. Chattel slavery usually required legislation to guarantee the validity of sales, inheritance rights, and near absolute authority of owners. Enforcement mechanisms included enabling legal authorities to apprehend and return runaways. Often slaveholding communities used identifiers, such as branding, clothing, and tattoos, to mark servile status as usually the physical appearance of slaves differed little if at all from the rest of the population. Racial slavery, determined largely by the skin color of those enslaved in and transported out of sub-Saharan Africa, reduced the difficulty of identification. The legal authority of a slaveholder was rarely if ever absolute. Even in the strictest slave societies some limitations existed, especially regarding the application of fatal punishment. While death that occurred accidentally from corporal punishment was typically conceded as legitimate, the execution of a slave usually required judicial acknowledgment that a capital crime occurred. Laws often restricted a slaveholder’s right to manumit slaves for fear that too many freedmen might inspire opposition to and undermine institutional slavery. Law or custom often allowed slaves opportunities to purchase their own

Child Labor

freedom by earning money when not working directly for their owners. Chattel slaves might also obtain their freedom through manumission for faithful service, revolution, or abolition. Chattel slavery declined globally with the emergence of abolitionist and revolutionary movements in the 18th and 19th centuries. The Haitian revolution, Great Britain’s ban on the African slave trade and its abolition of colonial slavery, successful independence movements against Spanish rule in Latin America, and the U.S. Civil War, helped end chattel slavery in the Americas. European colonialism and pressure in Africa and Asia gradually reduced chattel slavery on those continents, though often replaced it with other forms of compulsory labor. Today, chattel slavery as a legal institution virtually no longer exists. The practice of such slavery reemerged in Sudan with the civil wars that followed independence (1956) and the enslavement of some southern nonIslamic black Sudanese by some northern Islamic Arabs. In Mauritania, the enslavement of some blacks by members of its Arab-Berber population has persisted for over a millennium, beginning with the trans-Saharan slave trade through French colonial rule and independence (1960) to the present. The governments of both nations allow chattel slavery to survive customarily by not enforcing laws abolishing the practice. Dan R. Frost See also: Serfdom.

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Further Readings Davis, David Brion. Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Finley, Moses I. Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology: Expanded Edition. Ed. Brent D. Shaw. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener, 1998. Lewis, Bernard. Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Wiedemann, Thomas. Greek and Roman Slavery. London and New York: Routledge, 1981, 1997.

Child Labor Child labor is an elusive problem in the international human rights arena, because despite the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the term “child labor” does not have a clear definition upon which all nations can agree. Even if it was the case that all child labor defined as illegal by individual countries was eliminated, each country still would have its own minimum age requirement for work, which vary anywhere from 10 to 16 years old. No international standard would be achieved. There is no feasible and permanent solution to the problem of child labor readily apparent due to the complexity of its causes. It is difficult to say with absolute conviction, for example, that child labor should simply be abolished immediately, when the children’s consequent unemployment would probably result in hundreds of thousands of deaths from starvation, at a conservative

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estimate. There are various factors that play important roles in the promotion and perpetuation of this social issue. The consensus among most international organizations is that schooling is one of the main factors, and that promotion of education requires a greater emphasis if child labor is to be eradicated. The argument is that as long as poor children are free not to attend school, they will continue to enter the workforce; therefore free and mandatory elementary schooling is seen as a top priority by many groups. Unfortunately, the poverty that drives children to work does not disappear when they are forced to attend school, and so educational reforms also need to be accompanied by economic reforms so

that there will exist greater support systems for families and adequate wages for workers. It is generally agreed that labor markets all over the world exploit children for reasons that include, among others, the following: children are more easily controlled and less demanding than adults, they have very few legal rights, and they can normally be hired, fired, and abused without consequence. Some children work merely to survive their poverty-stricken circumstances, others find themselves working in order to pay off their parents’ debts (that is, bonded labor), while still others are kidnapped and forced to work. The types of jobs often assigned to children include cleaning and packing

A young girl works at a brick kiln at Liuwu Village in Yuncheng in China’s Shanxi province in 2007. Many of the jobs assigned to children can be hazardous to their health and safety. (AP/Wide World Photos)

Child Labor Coalition

food, weaving carpets, sewing and embroidering garments, assembling shoes, carrying molten glass, curing leather, polishing gems, processing sisal, selling and trading food on the streets, washing cars, working at kiosks, fetching water, serving as domestic helpers, and mining gold, diamonds, chrome, emeralds, coal, cassiterite (tin ore), iron, and silver, to name only some of the jobs. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), children are the worst paid of all laborers and they work the longest hours. To address the issue of child labor properly, the ILO argues that countries first need to develop their own national policies to counter the exploitation of children. This is the point at which the reforms must begin if efforts to improve living and working conditions are to be successful on a large and meaningful scale. There is a division among children’s rights advocates over the best strategy for eliminating child labor. Some believe in outright abolition, and argue that most (if not all) offending nations have the financial resources to improve their educational and economic situation, but simply lack the political will to effect these changes. Others argue that the problem cannot be fixed overnight and needs to be approached in a more gradual and sensitive manner so as not to affect the children adversely and so that the solution will be long-lasting. Michael McGowan See also: Bonded Labor; Children; Convention against the Worst Forms of Child Labour (1999).

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Further Readings Allsebrook, Annie, and Anthony Swift. Broken Promise. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1989. Alston, Philip, ed. The Best Interests of the Child: Reconciling Culture and Human Rights. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Anti-Slavery International. Child Domestic Workers: A Handbook for Research and Action. London: Anti-Slavery Society, 1997. Black, Maggie. In the Twilight Zone: Child Workers in the Hotel, Tourism, and Catering Industry. Geneva: International Labour Office, 1995. Cholewinski, Ryszard I. Migrant Workers in International Human Rights Law: Their Protection in Countries of Employment. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Fyfe, Alec. All Work and No Play: Child Labor Today. London: Trade Unions Congress, 1985. Holland, Patricia. What Is a Child?: Popular Images of Childhood. London: Virago, 1992.

Child Labor Coalition The Child Labor Coalition (CLC) is an association of North American human rights activists and member organizations that hope to eradicate the problem of child labor in the modern world by educating consumers about the products that they buy through telling them how they are produced. The CLC is headquartered in Washington, D.C., and is an affiliate organization of the National Consumer’s League. The work of the CLC has been ongoing since 1989 through public policy

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advocacy, research, and educational outreach activities. U.S. consumers were shocked to discover in the 1980s that many of the products that they purchased were produced by the hands of child laborers. Sensational stories by investigative reporters revealed that popular brands of tennis shoes, soccer balls, and certain lines of brand-name clothing were produced in so-called sweatshops in various parts of the developing world. Children working in these locations often received little or no compensation for their labor, and the conditions found within the sweatshops seldom met the health and safety standards that were considered tolerable. Many American consumers felt a sense of revulsion that they were inadvertently supporting the perpetuation of child labor in such sweatshops through their purchases. The CLC came together as various human rights organizations and nongovernmental organizations began to launch antisweatshop boycotts aimed at discouraging American consumers from purchasing products made by child laborers. Although boycotts and petitions might seem to be effective tactics, they did not always affect the root causes that made child labor a viable option for the sweatshop operators. Coalition members became concerned that attention should be focused upon the associated social ills of child labor when public sector policy decisions were determined. Accordingly, the CLC began to research what needed to be done in terms of promoting educational opportunity, health, safety,

and personal well-being for the children who had been exploited within the sweatshop sector. The CLC also serves as a clearinghouse for information and current findings on child labor abuses worldwide. Coalition members include a network of organizations and agencies that combat various forms of labor exploitation and work to achieve the rehabilitation of children, many of whom had their childhood stolen at the hands of sweatshop operators. Publications in the form of pamphlets and newsletters appear irregularly, and the CLC maintains a website that provides valuable suggestions as to how consumers can help to battle the exploitation associated with the use of child labor. In recent years the CLC has also focused its attention on the appearance of sweatshop operations within the United States that exploit children. Lurid details, like those associated with the infamous El Monte, California, sweatshop operation that was discovered in 1995, have made many Americans realize that child labor exploitation is not simply an isolated occurrence that happens in the developing world, but it is a practice that can often go virtually undetected within the United States. Junius P. Rodriguez See also: Child Labor.

Further Readings Bales, Kevin. New Slavery: A Reference Handbook. Santa Barbara, CA: ABCCLIO, 2000.

Child Prostitution Bigelow, Bill. “The Human Lives Behind the Labels: The Global Sweatshop, Nike, and the Race to the Bottom.” Phi Delta Kappan 79, no. 2 (1997): 112–119. Hobbs, Sandy, Jim McKechnie, and Michael Lavalette. Child Labor: A World History Companion. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1999.

Child Prostitution Child prostitution generally refers to youth under the age of 18 exchanging sex for money or other financial advantage. The focus in recent years has largely been on children in Asia, particularly Thailand and the Philippines, and especially on those who sell sex to Western sex tourists. However, child prostitution has also been a prominent social issue in other social and historical contexts, for example, in Victorian England in the 1880s, where it was linked to fears over white slavery and trafficking. Although there is debate over the definition, extent, and nature of the issue of child prostitution, the dangers to children who work as prostitutes are many. The body of a child is often too small to have intercourse with an adult man, and early sexual activity can be physically damaging. The risks of sexually transmitted diseases are high, and children’s relative powerlessness means negotiating condom use is difficult. There are few long-term studies on the effects on mental health of working as a child prostitute, but certainly in the West, child prostitutes are often extremely vulnerable and have already been sexually abused.

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The term “child prostitution” itself is much debated, with some commentators claiming that when a child is under age, there can be no consent or agency. Some campaigning groups, therefore, prefer terms such as “the commercial sexual exploitation of children” or “prostituted children.” Others use “child sex worker” or “child prostitute” to suggest that children are not simply the passive victims that other terms imply. There is also some debate about defining child prostitution by age. Many groups take the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child as their starting point and claim that all people under 18 are children and that all prostitutes under 18 are child prostitutes. This is problematic, however, in cases where national age of consent legislation is lower, and, in some instances, child prostitution might be better defined as that involving young people under the age of 15 or 16. Another pertinent distinction is sometimes made between pubertal and postpubertal children. However, all these definitions are problematic, and it is impossible to talk about child prostitution in general without an adequate discussion of the social and cultural constructions of ideas surrounding childhood, of sexuality, and of attitudes toward paid sex, in the specific context under discussion. Recent focus on child prostitution has linked it to concerns over child trafficking and sex tourism, so that child prostitution is sometimes seen only as an issue of Western men buying sex from children in poorer countries. Yet

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Child Prostitution

there are many manifestations of the problem and these should be analyzed differently. First, there is that which involves trafficked children, kidnapped against their will, and taken forcibly into brothels. There is some evidence of Burmese and Chinese girls in Thailand, Nepalese girls in India, Vietnamese girls in Cambodia, and Eastern European girls being trafficked into Western Europe entering into prostitution this way. Second, there is a form of prostitution that involves children sold or debt-bonded by their parents. In this scenario, children are procured by middlemen or women who offer their parents cash advances for their children’s services, and the children are set to work in brothels where the money they receive from customers is set off against their advance wages, and they have to work until they have paid back the money owed on them. Although parents are usually said to be tricked into allowing their children to go away and told that they will be working in restaurants and hotels, some families know what their children will be doing. A third category involves children who live with their parents and work on a part-time basis. In the context of the developing world, these children often have foreign clients and earn considerably more than their local counterparts. There is evidence of this happening in Thailand and in Sri Lanka. There is also another group of children who live or work on the streets and who exchange sex for food, shelter, or money, which is often referred to as “survival sex.” In the case of most Western countries,

young prostitutes (usually referred to as juvenile rather than child prostitutes) belong in this category. Many have a history of abuse and have run away from home or care homes and are living on the street. Finally, there are also other instances of religiously sanctioned child prostitution, such as the devadasi cults of India, where young women are ritually married to a deity and are expected to have sex with higher-caste members of the community. To what extent this involves children is debatable, and some deny that this is a form of prostitution at all, with girls learning to sing and dance, not to exchange sex. The variety of children’s experiences means that it is difficult to generalize about child prostitutes or privileging one model over others. The causes of child prostitution are very different, depending on cultural context, and, as noted, ideas about a child, sexuality, and what constitutes prostitution are heavily contested. One characteristic, however, that does seem to divide child prostitutes in the nonindustrialized world with those in the West is the relationship between the children and their families. Most of the evidence on juvenile prostitution in the West points to family breakdown and an abusive relationship as factors in prostitution and the limited, and usually nonexistent, contact between children working as prostitutes and their parents or caregivers. In Asia, however, many more prostitutes are working as a way of supporting their families, and they send money home regularly. They tend

Child Prostitution

to remain in much closer contact with their families, often returning to their home villages when they have paid off the debt in their brothel or when they have earned enough money to support themselves in later life. Not all child prostitutes are girls. Outside the West, there is very little information on boy child prostitutes, other than in Sri Lanka, where boys work as prostitutes rather than their sisters because parents protect their daughters’ sexual purity but do not see a boy’s worth in terms of sexual experience. It is also sometimes assumed that because child sex is such a taboo in the West, it must be the most expensive and forbidden form of prostitution. This is not necessarily the case, however, and children may also be at the bottom end of the market, unsure of the price of their sexuality, and, especially those children who are engaged in survival sex, may sell themselves cheaply for their next meal or cigarette. Furthermore, in some instances, child prostitution is a by-product of more generalized trafficking in women (in the case of underage women from Eastern Europe brought into the West, or from Burma into Thailand), and in other cases, it is children per se who are targeted. The links between adult and child prostitution are not clearly understood, although there is a premium within prostitution on youth and attractiveness, and, therefore, there is an inevitable overlap between the lower end of “adult” prostitution and the “higher” age range of child prostitution. The most helpful way to analyze child

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prostitution is to see child prostitutes as caught up in multiple sets of power relations—in hierarchies of age, gender, ethnicity, and social status. Almost inevitably, child prostitutes, in whatever context, will have clients who have more social status than they do, and the children will be at a disadvantage. This powerlessness renders them most susceptible to harm and exploitation. Child prostitution is explicitly forbidden by international law. Article 34 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states categorically that “the State shall protect children from sexual exploitation and abuse, including prostitution and involvement in pornography.” Obtaining detailed information about the children who work as prostitutes, their clients, their lifestyles, or their earning patterns is extremely difficult. Much of the information that is available is based on conjecture or extrapolation from small samples, so there are no definitive numbers. It is unknown how many child prostitutes there are in the world (estimates for one single country range from 20,000 to 1 million in Thailand and between 3,000 and 100,000 in the Philippines). There is limited information on working conditions or how long they stay in prostitution. It is also difficult to know how many children work with local clients in the indigenous market and how many work primarily with Westerners. Much of the information on child prostitutes comes from media reports and campaigning groups, which tend to focus on the most sensational and extreme side of the market—the

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Child Prostitution

kidnapping and trafficking of very young children and the involvement of Westerners. The most significant of the campaigning groups against child prostitution, and the one that forced the issue into media prominence in the 1990s, is ECPAT (End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism). It was formed in 1992 in response to the problem of Western men coming to Southeast Asia and exploiting children, particularly in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Taiwan, and the Philippines. ECPAT has been extremely successful in raising the profile of the problem of child prostitution in Asia and now campaigns against commercial child sexual exploitation throughout the world, a change reflected in its new name, End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography, and Trafficking in Children for Sexual Purposes. Its work has led to changes in national and international law, particularly in the area of extraterritoriality, whereby men from a Western nation can be prosecuted in their home countries for sexual crimes against children abroad (previously they had to be extradited back to the country where the crimes took place). Led by Australia, which has passed a law allowing the imprisonment of its citizens for up to 17 years if they are found guilty of sexual offenses, Norway, Germany, France, Belgium, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Sweden (among others) have passed similar laws, and a handful of men have been prosecuted under this legislation. If little is known about child prostitutes, even less is known about their

clients, although some authors have distinguished between situational and preferential abusers. Preferential abusers are habitual pedophiles; they have an interest in either boys or girls of a specific age and/or size, and, whether they are in their home countries or abroad, will be sexually attracted to children of that age. Situational abusers are a more complex category. They may well not have a sexual preference for underage prostitutes but will have sex with a child in specific circumstances, believing, for example, that sexual attitudes are different abroad or that it is impossible to tell the relative ages of young women in other countries. Many studies on tourist behavior show that tourists act in ways abroad that they never would in their home countries, and those who have looked specifically at sexual behavior have shown that men who have sex with a child are more likely to do it away from home. Another much-repeated claim is that demand for child prostitutes is increasing because children are seen as less likely to be infected with HIV/AIDS. Another variation on this claim is that men from certain cultural backgrounds believe that having sex with a virgin will cure them of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. It has been variously claimed that Chinese men will go to Thailand to have sex with a virgin for this purpose and that both Arabs and men in South Africa believe that sex with a virgin will cure them of AIDS. Such a belief is found both in Victorian England and in modern

Child Rights Information Network (CRIN)

accounts of child prostitution. Such claims are difficult to evaluate, as research on actual sexual behavior is notoriously unreliable, and there are very few ethnographic studies of men’s use of child prostitutes. Heather Montgomery See also: Prostitution.

Further Readings Ennew, Judith. The Sexual Exploitation of Children. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986. Ennew, Judith, Kusum Gopal, Janet Heeran, and Heather Montgomery. Children and Prostitution: How Can We Measure and Monitor the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children? Literature Review and Annotated Bibliography. Oslo: Childwatch International, 1996. http://child-abuse.com/ childhouse/childwatch/cwi/projects/ indicators/prostitution/. O’Connell-Davidson, Julia. Children in the Global Sex Trade. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press, 2005.

Child Rights Information Network (CRIN) The Child Rights Information Network (CRIN) was established in 1995 through the efforts of experts from child rights organizations around the world. The coordinating unit of CRIN is based in London. Some of its influential member organizations, including Defense for Children International; International Secretariat; International Center for Childhood and the Family; International Save the Children Alliance;

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NGO Group for the Convention on the Rights of the Child; Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights; Save the Children Sweden; Save the Children UK; UNICEF; Innocent Research Center; UNICEF Geneva Regional Office; and UNICEF New York Office, first decided to organize a meeting for the possibility of having a network to accumulate and distribute the information gathered through the reporting process of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1991. This group became known as the Facilitating Group. From 1991 to 1995, an informal secretariat conducted work on behalf of a “child rights information network.” Save the Children Sweden and Defense for Children International (DCI) formed the secretariat and DCI in Geneva hosted the secretariat. These two organizations have been highly influential moving CRIN from concept to reality. These organizations worked hard in all preparations, fund-raising, and administration, as well securing the support from key actors. These efforts helped establish CRIN in July 1995. In January 1995, the Facilitating Group, consisting of 60 participants, met in an organization undertaken by Save the Children UK and appointed a coordinator, Becky Purbrick, to develop a network proposal. CRIN is working as a global information network, mostly disseminating information about the Convention on the Rights of the Child and child rights among nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), UN agencies, intergovernmental organizations (IGOs),

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educational institutions, and other child rights experts. CRIN is supported by and receives funding mostly from Save the Children Sweden, Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, World Vision, Save the Children UK, UNICEF, Plan International, and the International Save the Children Alliance. CRIN is one of the largest information networks working with more than 1,400 organizations in over 130 countries. Approximately 85 percent of these members are NGOs. Most of them, almost 70 percent, are located in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In addition to these members worldwide, CRIN has the mission of providing information to 2,500 organizations and individuals throughout its e-mail list. The organization defines its goals as highly strategic for the establishment of a global child rights community. For that goal, CRIN is involved with key NGOs and different audiences worldwide. The first objective is to service the information needs of organizations and individuals working for children’s rights. The second is to support and promote the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989). Lastly, CRIN is a well-organized network in gathering, handling, producing, and disseminating child rights information through training, capacity building, and the development of electronic and nonelectronic networking tools. In its short history, CRIN conducted work on behalf of a “child rights information network” in 1991, published a

directory of research on the convention, and developed a full text database on information on the convention in 1995, and launched a working paper series with the publication of The United Nations Special Session on Children: Time for Action (2002) and many newsletters worldwide. Bayram Unal See also: United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF).

Further Reading Child Rights Information Network: http:// www.crin.org.

Child Soldiers The practice of forcefully conscripting children to serve as soldiers is one of the most nefarious forms of slavery in the contemporary world. The custom has been used in various world settings throughout history, but in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, it was an all too common occurrence in conflicts in Iran, Burma, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Uganda. Due to the combination of changing demographics resulting from HIV/AIDS, recurring civil strife, and a burgeoning population of youth, human rights activists recognize that the use of child soldiers in East Africa is on the rise and its incidence there will likely increase. Conscripted children perform a variety of tasks within the military units with which they serve. On one of the

Child Soldiers

most basic levels, the children can serve as human shields who provide special protection or leverage for rebel forces who believe that rivals will not attack their positions because of the fear of collateral damage to the children. Although some of the enslaved children are employed as personal servants who cook and clean and do odd tasks for officers or for the entire unit, most of the children are trained in the art of warfare and made to carry out missions of special savagery. Young girls are not spared from the danger of enslavement by marauding forces as many are taken and forced into prostitution to satisfy the whims of soldiers. For these unfortunate girls, the likelihood of pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and alienation from their families marginalizes them even further within their community and often marks them as social outcasts. The type of enslavement that is used in fashioning soldiers out of children often involves the use of psychological and social trauma in order to desensitize the child into an amoral automaton who will carry out the bidding of overlords, even if it involves atrocious action. In order to facilitate this transformation, child soldiers are sometimes forced to rape or kill relatives or fellow members of their tribe in order to prove their manhood. In addition to this, the mere presence of children, most of whom still have a formative conscience, in horrific scenes of battle and bloodshed can do immeasurable harm. Yet beyond the trauma associated with exposure to

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warfare and all of its savagery rests the grim reality that many of the child soldiers are terribly maimed and many are killed. Although the practice seems abhorrent, its use is more frequent than most would care to admit. During the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, Iranian forces were running short on military hardware so they turned to children to remedy the problem. In that conflict it was not uncommon for waves of school-aged children to be pressed into service to walk across contested ground as human minesweepers before the Iranian military and its muchvalued vehicles would cross the area. In the extended bloodletting that was Sierra Leone’s civil war in the 1990s, child soldiers sometimes carried out the most brazen attacks against their ethnic rivals. In modern Uganda, forces of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) regularly force children into service as soldiers in a decade-long guerilla war. An estimated 8,000 children, some as young as six years of age have been forced into service as soldiers and forced to fight and kill in the name of the LRA. Experiences such as these make it extremely difficult for the rehabilitation and social reintegration of enslaved child soldiers to occur. Seething resentment within kin, tribal, or sectarian communities often makes it virtually impossible for these children to become reassociated and reacquainted within their natal villages, and church and nongovernmental organizations have established

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Children

specialized transitional centers in some theaters of conflict where the enslavement of children is a regular practice. The use of child soldiers is recognized internationally as an egregious violation of the rights of the child, and nations have laws in place prohibiting the use of young children in a military capacity, but these laws are commonly violated by rebel forces that show little regard for the force of law or for human rights in general. The practice also violates some of the most basic tenets enunciated within the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child (1959) and Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989). Junius P. Rodriguez See also: Convention of the Rights of the Child (1989); Declaration on the Rights of the Child (1959); Omona, George.

Further Readings Briggs, Jimmie. Innocents Lost: When Child Soldiers Go to War. New York: Basic Books, 2005. Cohn, Ilene, and Guy S. Goodwin-Gill. Child Soldiers: The Role of Children in Armed Conflict. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Fleischman, Janet, and Lois Whitman. Easy Prey: Child Soldiers in Liberia. New York: Human Rights Watch, 1994. Rone, Jemera. Children in Sudan: Slaves, Street Children, and Child Soldiers. New York: Human Rights Watch, 1995. Rosen, David M. Armies of the Young: Child Soldiers in War and Terrorism. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005.

Wessells, Michael G. Child Soldiers: From Violence to Protection. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.

Children Children, along with women, migrants, and indigenous peoples, constitute the vast majority of the estimated 27 million persons who are victims of modern slavery in the early 21st century. Although it is impossible to cite precise figures, children may comprise as much as twothirds of the population associated with various forms of unfree labor in the modern world. As the world’s population continues to rise beyond the 6 billion mark, sadly the number of child slaves will likely rise as well. Some parents who are the victims of hereditary debt have chosen to loan or pawn their own children as laborers in order to work off some of their accumulated arrears. These unfortunate children—often considered bonded laborers—constitute the bulk of modern-day unfree laborers and constitute a significant portion of the labor force in several nations. Although the parents claim that this is a legitimate power that stems from parental rights, the international human rights community looks upon this practice as a form of slavery. Distinguishing the often fine demarcation between child labor and child slavery is not always easy. Many children work at the urging of their parents or guardians in order to enhance the economic welfare of the family. In many cases where a family’s sustainability

Children

is in question, the small pittance that might be gained from the employment of a child is highly valued. It is unfortunate that in many circumstances the legitimate use of child labor often transitions into a system of bonded labor or even outright slavery. As some of the most easily marginalized individuals in society, and lacking a real agency in their own affairs, children are often an easy mark for those who seek to profit from modern-day slavery. The ability to use fear, intimidation, and psychological terror rather effectively on children makes it relatively easy for the purveyors of the modern flesh trade to ply upon children and keep their deeds hidden among the shadows of contemporary life. In some settings, contemporary slave traders and their recruiters have resorted to utilizing false adoptions as a means of hiding the true nature of their efforts. The vast number of children in many of the world’s developing nations in which they sometimes constitute 45 to 50 percent of a nation’s population often puts them at risk to those who hope to acquire workers for nefarious purposes. In addition, the presence of large numbers of orphans and street children in many societies—often the result of HIV/AIDS, war, famine, or genocide—creates an even greater atrisk population of children who may be taken or absorbed into the hands of human traffickers. The use of child soldiers who have been forcefully conscripted by warring militias is another of the tragic consequences that often befall children in the modern world.

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Children who have escaped from bondage as slave laborers have reported harsh conditions that were part of their daily regimen. Beatings and malnutrition are commonly reported as well as the physical constraints associated with working excessively long hours in workplaces that are poorly ventilated and cramped. When 10-year-old Iqbal Masih escaped from a carpet factory in Pakistan in 1992, he claimed that he and the other children enslaved there had been chained to the looms at which they labored. In many parts of the world, children are ensnared and enslaved in the sex trade, often being employed as prostitutes or exploited in the pornography industry. This type of degradation can often break an individual in body and in spirit, but the associated risks of acquiring sexually transmitted diseases or becoming addicted to narcotics are other tragic consequences that are all too familiar to many of the children who fall victim to the sex trade. The United Nations and other transnational organizations have long made the protection of children one of their highest priorities. Articles 25 and 26 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) speak to the rights of children, and the United Nations later adopted its Declaration on the Rights of the Child (1959) and Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) to clarify its position even further. In addition, many international aid organizations and nongovernmental organizations work exclusively to protect the rights of the world’s children.

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Education has proven to be the most effective means of protecting children by alerting them of their rights and making them aware of agencies and organizations that exist to protect them. In addition, special schools have been established to aid former child slaves in their efforts to reassimilate into society after having been liberated from the bondage associated with contemporary slavery and human trafficking. Junius P. Rodriguez See also: Child Labor; Child Prostitution; Child Soldiers; False Adoption.

Further Readings Black, Maggie. Child Domestic Workers: A Handbook for Research and Action. London: Anti-Slavery International, 1997. Hobbs, Sandy, Jim McKechnie, and Michael Lavalette. Child Labor: A World History Companion. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1999. Kuklin, Susan. Iqbal Masih and the Crusaders against Child Slavery. New York: Henry Holt, 1998. Lee-Wright, Peter. Child Slaves. London: Earthscan Publications, 1990.

the formation of various patron-client or superior-subordinate relationships that existed at all levels of society. In the first Thai kingdom, Sukhothai, society resembled a large family under the paternal rule of its king. Until the 20th century, Thai kingdoms were patrimonial states in which the king possessed all land and controlled manpower. The control of manpower was operated through the Sakdina (dignity marks) system, which was firstly established in Ayutthaya in the 15th century and codified in the Three Seals Code under King Rama I (1782–1809). Every member of the society was assigned a number of Sakdina ranging from 5 for a slave to 100,000 for the second highest official. Only the king stood outside the system, because his

Chulalongkorn (Rama V), King (1853–1910) From early times until the late 19th century, Thai social and political institutions consistently dealt with a prominent demographic variable—the shortage of manpower. The peculiar circumstances of a small population scattered over a large territory led to

Chulalongkorn, also know as Rama V, is credited with founding the modern Thai state. (Library of Congress)


power was believed to be divine and therefore unlimited and unmeasurable. A crucial distinction was made between those with 400 or more Sakdina and those with less who were subject to corvée (forced labor obligations). Officials with high Sakdina number and members of the nobility were called nai. Freemen were called phrai, but if their Sakdina number was below 400 they still owed corvée. Generally, phrai were registered with a nai in some form of patron-client relationship. Slaves were called that. Chulalongkorn (Rama V), who reigned from 1868 to 1910, has often been credited with the founding of the modern Thai state. When Thailand was seriously threatened by Western colonial powers, his diplomatic policies averted colonial domination and his domestic reforms brought about the modernization of his kingdom. Chulalongkorn had received a thorough education from European tutors. During the regency that preceded his coming of age, the young king visited Java and India, where he was able to witness European colonial administration. At his coronation in 1873, he announced the abolition of the ancient practice of prostrating oneself before the monarch, which he regarded as unsuitable for a modern nation. Key contributions of Chulalongkorn’s reforms included education, the religious order, the legal system, state finances, politics and administration, and the expansion of the communication system. In 1878, a modern secular school was set up in the palace as an

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example of the kind of education the king wanted. In fact, Chulalongkorn opened the country for Western education, although at his time it still had a strong elitist character. The Buddhist Sangha, which made a main contribution to the realization of compulsory education, was restructured with a modern administrative system by the Sangha Act in 1902. Freedom of the press and religion were guaranteed by law to encourage the development of periodicals and book printing. In 1897, Chulalongkorn began to overhaul the entire legal code to satisfy Western ideas of justice, which the West demanded before the old unequal treaties could be renegotiated. King Chulalongkorn wanted to make the people less subservient, thus the institution of slavery, which had previously held up to one-third of the population in bondage, was gradually phased out (1895–1905). Slavery, as part of the Sakdina system, had many faces. European observers had remarked that it seldom meant the mistreating of slaves. There were many reasons to become a slave, if someone was not born into slavery. People sold themselves to pay back their debts or fines for offenses against traditional law. Others, who were phrai under a nai who mistreated them, sometimes escaped by selling themselves as that to another nai. To be a slave also could mean social security. Therefore, many slaves were afraid to be left entirely on their own and to have to earn their own living after slavery was abolished.

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On advice of his European legal advisers Robert J. Kirkpatrick and Émile Jottrand, King Chulalongkorn in 1898 had adopted two important measures to abolish slavery gradually. The first was that all subjects who had been born in the years after his ascent to the throne in 1868 could no longer be slaves. The second was that the work of slaves had to be paid for in repayment of the capital of their debts. The Slave Act R.E. 124, which was implemented by King Chulalongkorn in 1905, marked the official end of slavery. The slave trade was considered to be a crime. The abolition of slavery, through which the nobility had been able to control vast resources of manpower, helped to weaken the political power of the nobility and to reform the administrational system. The Sakdina system gradually was replaced with a governmentregulated system of taxation and a military draft. The introduction of salaries for public officials further eliminated the need for the Sakdina. Jana Igunma See also: Thailand.

Further Readings Engel, David M. Law and Kingship in Thailand during the Reign of King Chulalongkorn. Michigan Papers on South and Southeast Asia No. 9. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1975. Riggs, F. W. Thailand: The Modernization of a Bureaucratic Polity. Honolulu: East-West Center Press, 1966. Terwiel, Barend Jan. A History of Modern Thailand, 1767–1942. St. Lucia/

London: University of Queensland Press, 1983. Tips, Walter E. J. Gustave Rolin-Jaequemyns and the Making of Modern Siam. Bangkok/Cheney: White Lotus, 1996. Wyatt, David Kent. Thailand: A Short History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003.

Coalition against Trafficking In Women (CATW) In 1988, a grassroots movement of New York City feminist activists against pornography and prostitution, funded by Laura Lederer, organized what was probably the first international conference on the sex trafficking of women. Leading activists in the fight against the sexual exploitation of women participated and spoke, including Kathleen Barry and Diana Russell from the United States, Yayori Matsui from Japan, Jyotsna Chatterji from India, Agnete Strom from Norway, Aurora Javate de Dios from the Philippines, Rosa Dominga-Trapasso from Peru, Sheila Jeffries from the United Kingdom, Rudo Gaidzanwa, Zimbabwe’s leading women’s rights scholar, and numerous survivors. CATW’s philosophy from the beginning was that trafficking encompasses any activity involving the buying and selling of female bodies, including pornography. CATW is organized as an umbrella structure for the networking of regional nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), human rights groups, and individuals. In 1989, it was granted category II consultative status with the United Nations Economic and


Social Council, which allows CATW to contribute significantly to the work of the UN by offering its views at sessions of commissions, committees, and working groups both orally and in writing. In addition, CATW research, documents, and expert testimony are used frequently by national congresses and parliaments when considering pending legislation. CATW members also actively participate in international and national treaty negotiations. They work to educate the public and change laws. CATW’s philosophy is that all prostitution constitutes exploitation, regardless whether it is consensual or not, and that pornography is sexual exploitation. It includes as forms of prostitution escort agencies, sex tourism, and mailorder brides. CATW takes a human rights perspective on the issue by arguing that prostitution and pornography deny women dignity, equality, and autonomy. These forms of sexual exploitation diminish their victims’ physical and mental well-being. CATW identifies six main reasons of how prostitution and pornography exploit women. First, women and children often must sell their bodies because they are victims of poverty and failed government development policies; many are displaced as refugees or forced to immigrate; and some are often prepared to be receptive to prostitution as a solution to their problems because of childhood sexual abuse. Second, prostitution negatively impacts the lives of all women because of the projected image that women exist solely for the sexual pleasure of men.

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Third, sexual exploitation, hidden as eroticism, damages efforts to achieve gender equality. Fourth, prostitution and pornography are part of the system of institutional racism as most sexually exploited women are minorities or from developing countries. Fifth, globally, the average age of females entering prostitution is 14, therefore when the prostitute turns 18, one cannot say that she willingly chooses to become one. Sixth, the sex industry deliberately and systematically exploits women into pornography and prostitution, thereby trampling on their human rights. CATW supports the position that prostitution should be decriminalized for the prostitute and criminalized for those people who are responsible for the prostitution and who buy the prostitutes. CATW also promotes the necessity to improve the lives of women and children through education and employment as the most effective means of preventing women and children from entering prostitution. Since the early 1990s, CATW has vigorously fought the sex industry and the pro-prostitution NGOs worldwide. One sample project supported by the organization is the provision of shelters and economic and medical assistance for Nigerian and Albanian prostitutes in Italy. The global nature of the problem is evident as CATW has led the fight against the trafficking of Malian girls as brides to Saudi Arabia, while also targeting sex tourism in Mexico and the recruitment of child prostitutes. Similarly, the organization is educating the public in the Republic of Georgia about

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the dangers of women migrating for employment as they often find themselves caught in a prostitution ring. CATW has worked with legislators to fight the creeping normalization of prostitution and has provided education programs for journalists and legislators explaining the link between prostitution and trafficking. To this end, the organization helps draft reports, laws, and treaties. It also trains NGOs how to document cases properly, so that they can be used to prove human rights violations. With a small army of committed activists who speak at conferences, write articles, testify at hearings and forums, lead seminars, and monitor the implementation of laws, CATW continues its mission to educate. It has also developed pedagogical tools specifically designed to educate men and boys in the reality of the lives of prostitutes and the causes of prostitution. CATW also operates a long-established e-mail distribution list that links activists around the world. Globally, CATW also promotes the Swedish legislative model in terms of how to grapple with prostitution. This legal model interdicts the buying of sexual services by treating prostitution as male violence against women. Loni Bramson See also: Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation; Prostitution.

Further Readings Cwikel, Julie, and Elizabeth Hoban. “Contentious Issues in Research on Trafficked Women Working in the Sex

Industry: Study Design, Ethics, and Methodology.” Journal of Sex Research 42, no. 4 (2005): 306–316. Feingold, David A. “Human Trafficking.” Foreign Policy 150 (2005): 26–32. Pickup, Francine. “More Words but No Action? Forced Migration and Trafficking of Women.” Gender & Development 6, no. 1 (1998): 44–51. Raymond, Janice J. “The New U.N. Trafficking Protocol.” Women’s Studies International Forum 25, no. 5 (2002): 491–503. Wolfe, Leslie R. “Fighting the War on Trafficking of Women and Girls: The Role of State Legislatures.” Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law 6, no. 2 (2005): 179–192.

Company Codes of Conduct Company codes of conduct are standards created in part or in full by corporations to regulate, monitor, and redirect their business behavior to ensure that basic labor and human rights are not violated. Company codes of conduct represent a growing trend in ethical business initiatives among corporations setting standards for corporate responsibility. A company code of conduct is a voluntary instrument binding business partners of or suppliers to companies to specific standards of behavior. The content of company codes of conduct differs in terms of scope, coverage, and implementation. Codes commonly refer to a commitment to a reasonable working environment, and compliance to local labor laws. Some codes of conduct include more than


minimal, locally relevant standards such as wages, working hours, and discrimination or harassment. Transnational retail companies or brands of clothing, toys, sporting goods, and, more recently, food and beverages, have mentioned prohibiting suppliers from using illegal child labor and forced labor, involuntary servitude, or other contemporary forms of slavery. Company codes of conduct appeared first in the 1970s as developing countries receiving foreign direct investment became increasingly critical of the activities of transnational corporations (TNCs). The first comprehensive international effort to establish company codes of conduct was the 1974 United Nations Draft Code of Conduct on Transnational Corporations. Since the early 1990s, there has been rapid growth of voluntary company codes of conduct. This has occurred in the historical shift of governments retreating from regulating TNCs and rising corporate self-regulation of labor, human rights, and environmental issues. Company codes of conduct have become in recent years the focus of intense public scrutiny and debate. By most accounts, companies adopt codes of conduct largely in response to bad publicity as a result of practices in their supply chains. Most notable were the responses to public awareness in the 1990s of U.S.-based clothing, toy, and sport accessories companies using sweatshops and child labor in developing countries. Levi Strauss was one of the first companies to establish a code of conduct, in 1992 after its contractors

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in developing countries were accused of treating their workers as indentured slaves. Later, clothing brands The Gap in 1995 and talk show host Kathie Lee Gifford in 1996 were the targets of high-profile campaigns exposing company use of sweatshops and child labor. The main conflicts surrounding codes of conduct are their inconsistency in standards and the lack of compliance and monitoring of those standards. Codes lack consistency because different company codes have varying standards for similar terms. The broad variance between codes is a cause for much debate about the ability to monitor and implement standards. Most available research findings on company codes of conduct indicate that codes are honored more frequently in the breach than in compliance (Jenkins et al., 2002, p. 4). Companies are generally resistant to outside monitoring and seek to conduct their own methods of “independent” labor standards monitoring. Yet, the largest companies or best-known brands are reputed to implement their own codes only when public pressure becomes too intense to ignore (Sethi, 2003, p. 83). Another notable area of criticism has been about the actual standards of worker rights set by company codes of conduct. Codes are criticized for the exclusion of workers as stakeholders from both the drafting of company codes of conduct and from the process of monitoring compliance and making the process accountable and transparent. Codes are also criticized for being a substitute for workers’ organizations

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and the right to collective bargaining, and may be implemented with efforts to prevent workers from joining trade unions. Furthermore, critics point to the failure of company codes of conduct to address the specific human rights protections of women and female workers who make up a majority of the workforce in the lowest levels of global production (Jenkins et al., 2002). Some critics see company codes of conduct as a mere public relations tactic to avoid or curb genuine accountability for corporate behavior (Jenkinset al., 2002). Accordingly, critics argue that voluntary company codes of conduct should be used in conjunction with a wider, multilevel corporate social responsibility plan from international development assistance, changes in legal jurisdiction, new rules of company disclosure, and action by independent nongovernmental organizations (Jenkins et al., 2002). There are, however, examples of company codes of conduct that raise the standards for transparency and public accountability to ensure human rights of workers in supply chains. Mattel, the world’s largest toy maker, agreed to a code of conduct in 1997 that covers forced labor and other human rights standards. At the time, it was the only company in the world to make a commitment to have its code compliance monitored by an independent outside group with complete authority to select plants for monitoring and to make full reports of findings to the public without prior censorship by the company (Sethi, 2003, p. 239).

Most recently, a U.S. farm workers’ rights organization, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers set a precedent in codes of conduct for U.S. food companies. In 2005 the CIW persuaded Taco Bell and parent company Yum! Brands, the largest restaurant company in the world, to institute a supplemental policy statement for Florida tomato growers after the CIW highlighted forced labor among other forms of worker exploitation in the supplies of Florida tomatoes that went into food products primarily sold in Taco Bell restaurants. The code creates transparency in the supply chain of tomatoes to Taco Bell. This code of conduct raises standards in that the tomato workers themselves negotiated the terms and are the monitoring agents through the CIW. The code also legally binds Taco Bell to terminate business relations with any noncompliant tomato suppliers, whereas most company codes of conduct are not legally enforceable. The code therefore creates a market incentive for tomato growers to comply with labor laws and corporate standards where previously there were no market consequences for the growers who profited illegally from enslaved workers. Steven Lize See also: Child Labor, Sweatshop Watch.

Further Readings Jenkins, Rhys, et al. Corporate Responsibility and Labour Rights: Codes of Conduct in the Global Economy. London: Earthscan, 2002.

Concubines Sethi, S. Prakash. Setting Global Standards: Guidelines for Creating Codes of Conduct in Multinational Corporations. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2003.

Concubines Concubines are women who are maintained, without the benefit of legal marriage, as the sexual and domestic partners of relatively rich or powerful men. In many Eastern cultures concubinage has been a traditional and socially acceptable adjunct to marriage, and in Western cultures it has usually been covert, used when men could not marry legally or their lawful wives proved infertile or uncongenial. A woman’s induction into concubinage rather than into marriage usually stems from her inferior social condition, and the relationship frequently crosses social, religious, or racial lines, especially in slave cultures. Practiced worldwide in patriarchal cultures throughout history, concubinage, which persists to a far more limited extent in modern times, adheres to three basic cultural patterns: Asian, Islamic, and European colonial. In cultures of the Far East, including China, concubinage was widespread until the 20th century. The status of concubines was recognized in official government documents that set down women’s rights and obligations. Although generally socially inferior to wives, some concubines were freeborn: For example, the emperor of the Chinese Qing Dynasty was provided with Manchu concubines from prominent families. For Asian men of lesser rank,

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concubines may have been freeborn or slave, but were usually of Chinese descent. Female slaves could be acquired by deeds of sale, and resold perhaps several times, before their ultimate disposition as concubines, prostitutes, or common slaves. A concubine’s experience could range from being a miserable servant to pampered favorite, and history is replete with examples of concubines who managed, by their wit and will, to usurp the privileges of legitimate wives and install their own children as heirs to patriarchal fortunes. In Islamic cultures, which legally permit the marriage of a man to four wives, concubinage was openly acknowledged, but generally restricted exclusively to powerful or royal men, who hid both their wives and concubines from public view in seraglios (or harems). Western literature is laden with pejorative descriptions of Islamic sexual excess; indeed, certain African and Ottoman rulers maintained hundreds if not thousands of concubines. In such cases, these women may well have served important domestic and political functions within the palace. Since the conditions governing concubinage varied from culture to culture, the women involved might have been slave or free, low or high ranking, or culturally/racially different from or similar to the men. Female prisoners of war were frequently made concubines to African and Ottoman rulers, while ambitious free families and palace slave families often donated daughters as concubines, and Circassian and Georgian women were traditionally trafficked

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along established trade routes specifically to fill eastern seraglios, a custom that lapsed only in the 1890s. A major difference of Islamic concubinage with respect to Asian or European colonial concubinage was the potential of sons born of concubines to inherit kingship and power from their fathers. In monogamous, Western Christian cultures, keeping concubines was akin to keeping mistresses. Even long-term affairs were conducted covertly because they were considered immoral and, moreover, they deprived the children born of such circumstances of any inheritance rights. Same-race concubinage, especially that which crossed class lines, was commonplace. A more pernicious form lay in the cross-racial concubinage that arose in European colonies, especially in the New World, partly in response to the shortage of European women available for marriage. At least two unconcealed forms of concubinage existed in the colonial era. In the northern fur country, French trappers and traders often took freeborn or enslaved Native American women as their sexual and domestic partners in unions that became known as “country marriages”; in Dutch Suriname, European colonials and sojourners often took slave women as their partners in the “Surinam marriage,” which sometimes brought material and social benefits, including manumission, to these women and their mixed-race children. Most slaves in the Americas, even after baptism, were not permitted to marry. This custom, coupled with

antimiscegenation statutes to punish the marriage or sexual union of whites with Africans or Native Americans, which first arose in the 17th-century English colonies of Virginia and Maryland (and later spread through much of the United States), made sure that interracial sexuality remained socially unacceptable. When the women involved in New World concubinage were slaves, the relationships forged were frequently exploitative, providing little or no benefit to the women and few avenues of escape. Female resistance to concubinage had always been limited to persuasion, suicide, or flight until recent antislavery and domestic ordinances began to provide legal shelter from sexual oppression. Insofar as slavery has been legally abolished throughout the world since the 1970s, and ancient patriarchal traditions have lapsed under pressure from modern governmental or social reforms, enforced concubinage has fallen into disrepute. Concubinage continues to exist in certain regions: in Kano, Nigeria, the emir retains a few slave concubines according to tradition, and, in South Africa, Maputo women from Mozambique are known to have been sold as concubines to local miners. Young women now trafficked in Europe, Africa, and the Far East are earmarked for prostitution rather than concubinage, but, while many governments and organizations investigate, track, and condemn resurgences of contemporary slavery, many modern female victims

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are as lost to domestic/sexual bondage as concubines who lived many centuries before them. Susan B. Iwanisziw See also: Anti-Slavery International; Cariye; International Agreement for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic (1904); International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children (1921); International Convention of the Traffic in Women of Full Age (1933); Servile Marriage.

Further Readings Iwanisziw, Susan B. “American SlaveConcubines and the Labor of Assimilation: The Examples of John Gabriel Stedman’s Joanna and Toussaint Charbonneau’s Sacagawea.” TOPIC: The Washington and Jefferson College Review 55 (November 2007): 37–54. Jaschok, Maria. Concubines and Bondservants: The Social History of a Chinese Custom. London: Zed Books, 1988. Nast, Heidi J. Concubines and Power: Five Hundred Years in a Northern Nigerian Palace. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. Rothman, Joshua D. Notorious in the Neighborhood: Sex and Families Across the Color Line in Virginia 1787–1861. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.

Convention against the Worst Forms Of Child Labour (1999) The Convention against the Worst Forms of Child Labour (1999), passed

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by the International Labour Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, and ratified by 156 countries, prohibits trafficking, enslavement, debt bondage, or compulsory labor of any kind for people under the age of 18. It also seeks to criminalize all forms of child prostitution and pornography, employment of children in organized crime or drug trafficking, and all other work that might harm the health, well-being, or morality of a child. The document suggests that all offenders be prosecuted according to local law. Each member state that ratified the convention is called upon to monitor violations and to implement strategies and laws to eradicate these forms of labor in their own countries. The convention recognized that child labor is a symptom of larger problems of poverty and lack of education that persist in the modern world. To address these issues, the convention requires that states provide for awareness education programs to help prevent children, especially girls, from becoming victims. Further, the document calls upon nations to provide free rehabilitation, including basic education and even vocational training, for child survivors of labor abuse. It also suggests that governments provide universal education, training for at-risk populations, jobs and vocational training programs for parents of working children, and poverty alleviation programs. The convention was unanimously adopted by the 182 delegates at the conference and ratified more quickly than

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any other convention in the history of the International Labour Organization, indicating widespread agreement with the tenets of the document. U.S. President Bill Clinton was applauded by some nongovernment organizations for ratifying such a policy and for making progress on child labor issues a condition of certain U.S. international trade relationships. The convention clearly was focused on the very worst forms of child labor. As a result, it does not address the international concern over child labor in general, and it fails to seek its complete abolition. Critics of the convention claim that it is actually a step backward from previous policies (including ILO C138) that called for the elimination of all forms of child labor. They also argue that the convention only prohibits the kinds of child labor that have already been criminalized in most of the signatory countries, thereby avoiding any significant steps toward the abolition of child labor in all its forms. Laura Murphy See also: Child Labor; International Labour Organization (ILO).

Further Readings Basu, Kaushik. “Child Labor: Cause, Consequence, and Cure, with Remarks on International Labor Standards.” Journal of Economic Literature 37 (September 1999): 1083–1119. U.S. Department of Labor. “Advancing the Campaign against Child Labor: Addressing the Worst Forms of Child Labor.” Washington DC: U.S. Department of

Labor Bureau of International Labor Affairs, 2002. “Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention.” (C182) Convention Concerning the Prohibition and Immediate Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour. Geneva: International Labour Organization, 1999.

Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Women and Children (1949) The Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Women and Children, UN Resolution 317 (IV), declared the trafficking of humans a violation of dignity and human rights. The convention was approved by the United Nations General Assembly on December 2, 1949, and was signed by 14 countries in July 1951, with 74 countries eventually acceding over the next 50 years. Its purpose was to expand on the international policies that had been written in the first half of the 20th century regarding the trafficking of women and children, and in particular, those policies prohibiting white slavery, or the trafficking of women for purposes of prostitution. The first article of the convention punishes those who procure, entice, or lead away any other person for purposes of prostitution, even if that person consents. It prohibits the establishment of

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brothels and punishes those people who manage or finance them or rent space for that purpose. Provisions permit violators to be extradited for prosecution for these offenses. Further, the convention required signing nations to create educational programs that aim to prevent prostitution as well as programs for the rehabilitation and maintenance of victims of human trafficking. Persons convicted of prostitution who have been trafficked across international borders are to be questioned as to their identity, according to the convention, and as to how and by whom they were transported. Officials are required to report this information to the victims’ countries of origin so that they can seek out the traffickers. Nations are also required to repatriate any victims who wish to return to their home country, provided they do not have a spouse or family member able to afford the transportation costs. Under this convention the concern with trafficking in persons was tied inextricably to prostitution, and, as a result, the two concerns were generally addressed together in international policy making. This limitation in the definition of human trafficking made it difficult to regulate interstate trafficking that did not involve some aspect of the sex trade. Critics of the convention argued that the policies focused on eliminating prostitution rather than on eliminating forced trafficking. The language indicating that prostitution was to be punished—even in the case of consenting participants—criminalized the sale

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of sex by women who chose it as their profession. Thus, critics argued, the convention denied women the right to their bodies and further marginalized women who participated in the sex trade whether through their own will or against it. Modifications to the definition of human trafficking that allowed for a more complete description of the modern day slave trade and focused more precisely on sex trafficking rather than prostitution were made in the Trafficking Protocol of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime in November 2000. December 2 of each year marks the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery, which memorializes the date of the ratification of the 1949 convention. Laura Murphy See also: Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation; International Day for the Abolition of Slavery; Prostitution; United Nations Trafficking Protocol; White Slavery.

Further Readings Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others, Approved by General Assembly, Resolution 317 (IV), 1949. In United Nations, Treaty Series 96 (December 1949): 271. Saunders, Penelope. “Working on the Inside: Migration, Sex Work and Trafficking in Persons.” Legal Link 11, no. 2 (2000): 44–49. Weissbrodt, David, and Anti-Slavery International. “Abolishing Slavery and its Contemporary Forms.” New York and Geneva: Office of the United Nations

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Convention of Saint Germain-en-Laye High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2002.

Convention of Saint Germain-en-Laye (1919) The Convention of Saint Germain-enLaye revised the Brussels Act (1890) and reaffirmed the European commitment to end slavery and the slave trade. Upon adoption of the Convention of Saint-Germain (1919), the signatory states promised to secure the complete suppression of slavery in all its forms, including forced labor, pseudoadoption, forced concubinage, debt slavery, and all forms of slave trade. The preamble to the convention states: “Whereas the General Act of the African Conference, signed . . . on 26 February 1885, was primarily intended to demonstrate the agreement of the Powers with regard to the general principles which should guide their commercial and civilizing action . . .; and whereas by the Brussels Declaration of . . . 1890, it was found necessary to modify for a provisional period of fifteen years the system of free imports established for twenty years by Article 4 of the said Act, and since that date no agreement has been entered into, notwithstanding the provisions of the said Act and Declaration; . . . wishing to ensure by arrangements suitable to modern requirements the application of the general principles of civilization established by the Acts of Berlin and Brussels.” The signatory states “undertake to maintain between their respective nationals and those of States, Members of the League

of Nations, which may adhere to the present Convention a complete commercial equality in the territories under their authority within the area defined by Article I of the General Act of Berlin of 26 February 1885” (Article 1). Jurgen Nautz See also: Brussels Act (1890); League of Nations.

Further Readings Convention of Saint Germain-en-Laye (full text) in Charles I. Bevens, ed. Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States of America (Washington DC: Department of State Publication, 1969), II, 261–268. Hamilton, Keith and Patrick Salmon, eds. Slavery, Diplomacy and Empire: Britain and the Suppression of the Slave Trade, 1807–1975 (Portland OR: Sussex Academic Press, 2009)

Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) was adopted in 1979 by the United Nations General Assembly. It is often described as the international bill of rights for women. Consisting of a preamble and 30 articles, it defines what constitutes discrimination against women and sets up an agenda for national action to end such discrimination. The text of CEDAW was prepared by working groups within the Commission

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on the Status of Women (CSW) in 1976 and extensive deliberations by a working group of the Third Committee of the General Assembly from 1977 to 1979. The work within the commission was encouraged by the World Plan of Action for the Implementation of the Objectives of the International Women’s Year, adopted by the World Conference of the International Women’s Year held in Mexico City in 1975, which called for a convention on the elimination of discrimination against women, with effective procedures for its implementation. Work was also encouraged by the General Assembly, which had urged the Commission on the Status of Women to finish its work by 1976, so that the convention would be completed in time for the 1980 Copenhagen mid-decade review conference (World Conference on the United Nations Decade for Women: Equality, Development, and Peace). Although suggestions were made to delay completion of the text for another year, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women was adopted by the General Assembly in 1979 by a unanimous vote of 130 to none, with 10 abstentions. In Resolution 180 (XXXIV), in which the General Assembly adopted the convention, the General Assembly expressed the hope that the convention would come into force at an early date and requested the secretary general to present the text of the convention to the middecade World Conference of the United Nations Decade for Women. At the special ceremony that took place at the Copenhagen Conference

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on July 17, 1980, 64 states signed the convention and 2 states submitted their instruments of ratification. On September 3, 1981, 30 days after the twentieth member state had ratified it, the convention entered into force—faster than any previous human rights convention had done—thus bringing to a climax Un efforts to codify comprehensively international legal standards for women. As of March 18, 2005, 180 countries—over 90 percent of the members of the United Nations—were party to the convention. The convention defines discrimination against women as “any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by women, irrespective of their marital status, on a basis of equality of men and women, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field.” By accepting the convention, states commit themselves to undertake a series of measures to end discrimination against women in all forms, including to incorporate the principle of equality of men and women in their legal system, abolish all discriminatory laws and adopt appropriate ones prohibiting discrimination against women, to establish tribunals and other public institutions to ensure the effective protection of women against discrimination, and to ensure elimination of all acts of discrimination against women by persons, organizations or enterprises.

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The convention provides the basis for realizing equality between women and men through ensuring women’s equal access to, and equal opportunities in, political and public life— including the right to vote and to stand for election—as well as education, health, and employment. States parties agree to take all appropriate measures, including legislation and temporary special measures, so that women can enjoy all their human rights and fundamental freedoms. The convention is the only human rights treaty that affirms the reproductive rights of women and targets culture and tradition as influential forces shaping gender roles and family relations. It affirms women’s rights to acquire, change, or retain their nationality and the nationality of their children. States parties also agree to take appropriate measures against all forms of traffic in women and exploitation of women. Countries that have ratified or acceded to the convention are legally bound to put its provisions into practice. They are also committed to submit national reports, at least every four years, on measures they have taken to comply with their treaty obligations. Giulia Pietrangeli

Further Reading Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW): http://www.un.org/ womenwatch/daw/cedaw/.

Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) The Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) is the first legally binding international instrument to incorporate the full range of human rights—civil, cultural, economic, political, and social rights. In 1989, world leaders decided that children needed a special convention just for them, because people under 18 years often need special care and protection that adults do not. The leaders also wanted to make sure that the world recognized that children also have human rights. Built on a variety of legal systems and cultural traditions, the convention is a universally agreed set of nonnegotiable standards and obligations. These basic standards set minimum entitlements and freedoms that should be respected by governments. They are founded on the respect for the dignity and worth of each individual, regardless of race, color, gender, language, religion, opinions, origins, wealth, birth status, or ability, and therefore apply to every human being everywhere. With these rights comes the obligation on both governments and individuals not to infringe on the parallel rights of others. These standards are both interdependent and indivisible; we cannot ensure some rights without—or at the expense of—other rights. The convention sets out these rights in 54 articles and 2 optional protocols. It spells out the basic human rights that children everywhere have: the right to

Convention on the Rights of the Child

survival; to develop to the fullest; to protection from harmful influences, abuse, and exploitation; and to participate fully in family, cultural, and social life. The four core principles of the convention are nondiscrimination; devotion to the best interests of the child; the right to life, survival, and development; and respect for the views of the child. Every right spelled out in the convention is inherent to the human dignity and harmonious development of every child. The convention protects children’s rights by setting standards in health care; education; and legal, civil, and social services. In addition to laying the foundational principles from which all rights must be achieved, the convention calls for the provision of specific resources, skills, and contributions necessary to ensure the survival and development of children to their maximum capability. The articles also require the creation of means to protect children from neglect, exploitation, and abuse. The convention stresses that all children have the same rights. All rights are interconnected and of equal importance. It also refers to the responsibility of children to respect the rights of others, especially their parents. On the same token, the convention expressly recognizes that parents have the most important role in the bringing up children. The text encourages parents to deal with rights issues with their children “in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child” (Article 5).

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The two optional protocols were adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2000 to increase the protection of children from involvement in armed conflicts and from sexual exploitation. The optional protocol on the involvement of children in armed conflict establishes 18 as the minimum age for compulsory recruitment and requires states to do everything they can to prevent individuals under the age of 18 from taking a direct part in hostilities. The optional protocol on the sale of children, child prostitution, and child pornography draws special attention to the criminalization of these serious violations of children’s rights and emphasizes the importance of fostering increased public awareness and international cooperation in efforts to combat them. The optional protocols must always be interpreted in light of the original treaty as a whole, in this case guided by the principles of nondiscrimination, best interests of the child, and child participation. These protocols are “optional” because they are not automatically binding on states that have already ratified the original treaty. The obligations in the protocol are additional and may be more demanding than those in the original convention, and so states must independently choose whether or not to be bound by a protocol. Accordingly, an optional protocol has its own ratification mechanism independent of the treaty it complements. Generally, only states that have already agreed to be bound by an original treaty may ratify

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its optional protocols. The optional protocols to the Convention on the Rights of the Child do however permit non-states parties to ratify or accede to them. For example, the United States, which has signed but not ratified the convention, has ratified both of the optional protocols. States must ratify each of the protocols following the same procedure required when ratifying the convention. In ratifying the convention or an optional protocol, a state accepts an obligation to respect, protect, promote, and fulfill the enumerated rights— including by adopting or changing laws and policies that implement the provisions of the convention or protocol. Governments that ratify the convention or one of its optional protocols are obliged to develop and undertake all actions and policies in the light of the best interests of the child. They must also report to the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the body of experts charged with monitoring states’ implementation of the convention and optional protocols. These reports outline the situation of children in the country and explain the measures taken by the state to realize their rights. In its reviews of states’ reports, the committee urges all levels of government to use the convention as a guide in policy making and implementation. By agreeing to undertake the obligations of the convention (by ratifying or acceding to it), national governments commit themselves to protecting and ensuring children’s rights, and they have agreed to hold themselves accountable for this commitment before the international community.

Currently, the convention counts 140 signatories and 193 parties (the list of parties is available at http://www2. ohchr.org/english/law/crc.htm. Giulia Pietrangeli See also: Child Labor; Child Soldiers; Children; Pornography and Children; Prostitution.

Further Reading Lee-Wright, Peter. Child Slaves. London: Earthscan Publications, 1990.

Convict Leasing The convict lease system was a dominant form of legal punishment and racial control in the U.S. South from the last quarter of the 19th century to the early 20th century. Along with sharecropping, convict leasing fortified white domination by resurrecting the spirit of chattel slavery to generate capital for southern governments struggling to rebuild after the Civil War. State and county governments forced black convicts to work under deplorable conditions for private individuals and corporations during their incarceration without receiving compensation. In turn, these private entities paid money to the state for the use of their inmates. Although white convicts were incarcerated and at times leased out, inmate populations in the South were overwhelmingly African American. In 1875, North Carolina had 569 African Americans and 78 whites sentenced to prisons; in 1879, the State Prison of

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Nashville, Tennessee, had 372 whites and 781 African Americans; in 1888, the prison at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, held 221 African Americans and 85 whites. A staggering 90 percent of the 13,000 inmates who passed through Florida’s state prisons from the time the convict system started in the late 1880s until it ended in the early 19th century were African American. This was perfectly legal under the Thirteenth Amendment, which outlawed “involuntary servitude,” except as punishment for a crime. In effect, the amendment said only criminals could be enslaved and southern states began the process of regaining their former slaves by turning them into criminals. The system’s exploitation of black labor was essential to a web of legal, political, and economic strategies devised to keep African Americans impoverished and subordinated to whites after the U.S. Civil War. In the 1870s, southern states passed laws to build up the pool of convicts to be leased out. Misdemeanors such as vagrancy, loitering, disturbing the peace, hog stealing, and petty theft were reclassified as felonies to empower white judges and juries to impose excessive sentences on convicted African Americans. The exponential growth in the population in southern prisons witnesses the effectiveness of these laws in expanding the supply of convicts. Between 1874 and 1877, Mississippi’s prisoner population increased from 272 to 1,072; in the same period, Georgia’s inmates increased from 500 to 1,500. In Alabama, prison populations went from 374 in

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1869 to 1,878 in 1903 and to 2,453 by 1919. The high rate of African Americans incarcerated was validated for white citizens by a rhetoric that devised a cause-and-effect relationship between their “criminality” and their innate character. White ideologues and those with a vested interest in sustaining the system justified its perceived excesses by resurrecting well-worn proslavery arguments that blacks were inherently degenerates who were prone to stealing and unwilling to work unless compelled. Such discourses assuaged the general public’s distaste for the horrific treatment of prisoners documented in exposés written in the 1880s and 1890s by painting African American freedmen as a drain on the economy and a menace to the community. Despite reports of the abhorrent conditions in southern prisons, states imposed few restrictions on the number of hours and the kind of labor convicts were forced to perform. Planters, railroad and timber companies, coal mines, and foundries hired convicts from state and county governments for a cheap fee and kept their overhead costs down by providing convicts the bare minimum of food, medical treatment, clothing, and shelter. Harsh living and working conditions resulted in outbreaks of deadly diseases such as malaria, pneumonia, typhoid, and syphilis among convicts. In addition to starvation and illness, convicts endured brutal forms of corporal punishment that included sweating in wooden boxes, watering, and stringing

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prisoners up by their thumbs with strong cords attached to wooden crosspieces and nailed to uprights posts. In some respects the leasing system was worse than slavery; as chains and shackles were used on slaves only for discipline, they were standard equipment for black convicts. Harsh punishments kept prisoners in line, but they also cowed free African Americans who might challenge white authority in an effort to assert their postslavery rights. Over the life of the practice, convict leasing changed in response to dynamic political and economic conditions. While the early years were characterized by a drive for profit and efficiency at all costs, later years saw the introduction of work incentives to prisoners such as free Sundays, commutations, and parole and probation systems. The incentives only partially placated reformers agitating vigorously for rehabilitation programs and better living and working conditions for convicts. Convict leasing was eventually abandoned in the second decade of the 20th century. Earlier studies of convict leasing attribute its demise to the effort of reformers, whose charges of inhumane treatment prompted an upsurge in public indignation over the cruelties of the system. More recent studies also attribute the system’s downfall to economic market pressures that increased the price of lease contracts, making the profit margin lower for the practice. Nevertheless, for most of the 20th century, southern penal systems continued

forced convict labor in the form of chain gangs and prison farms in southern penal systems. Cynthia King See also: Sharecropping.

Further Readings Cohen, William. At Freedom Edge: Black Mobility and the Southern White Quest for Racial Control, 1865–1915. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991. Lichtenstein, Alex. Twice the Work of Free Labor: Political Economy of Convict Labor in the New South. New York: Verso, 1996. Mancini, Matthew J. One Dies, Get Another: Convict Leasing in the American South, 1866–1928. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996. Miller, Vivien, M. L. “Reinventing the Penitentiary: Punishment in Florida, 1868–1923.” American Nineteenth Century History 1 (Spring 2000): 82–86. Novak, Daniel A. The Wheel of Servitude: Black Forced Labor After Slavery. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1978. Shelden, Randall G. Controlling the Dangerous Classes: A Critical Introduction to the History of Criminal Justice. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2001. Wharton, Vernon L. The Negro in Mississippi, 1865–1890. New York: Harper and Row, 1965.

Côte d’Ivoire The so-called chocolate slavery debate was sparked by media revelations of child trafficking and the use of West African slave labor on Ivorian

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farms producing commodities (especially cocoa) for export. At its height, the debate involved multinational corporations, investigative journalists, consumer organizations, advocacy groups, and politicians both in Africa and the United States. It focused fairly narrowly on two key issues, namely, extent (the magnitude of enslavement on Ivorian farms in terms of both actual numbers and the percentage of slave labor) and responsibility (corporate and political as well as moral and legal). The debate’s most tangible outcome remains the Harkin-Engel Protocol of 2001, an industry-led agreement to help eliminate the worst forms of child labor in the growing and processing of cocoa beans via a formal system of monitoring, reporting, public certification, and partnership. This helps to redirect scholarly attention to related questions of enduring significance since the conceptual or definitional question, first of all, is inseparable from the magnitude issue. What exactly is modern slavery, and how do we know it when we see it? The answer depends on how slavery is conceived and not simply on numerical evidence of abuse. For some, such as former Ivorian Agriculture Minister Alfonse Douaty, the term slavery “conjures up images of chains and whips,” but a wide range of academic sources suggest taking chains (as a signifier of forced removal) out of the equation and defining slavery per se as unpaid forced labor. The constituent element of modern slavery is control without legal ownership. The global illegality of slavery, the feature that underpins its modern

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version, ensures that numbers will always be contested, however comprehensive the investigations since slavery can be redefined as something else, such as indentured servitude. It can also be hidden behind fraudulent labor contracts or false claims to kinship relations between adults and child laborers, but this means that even if figures for Côte d’Ivoire are less than exact, they are as likely to be underestimated as overestimated. Conventional wisdom, in other words, is probably highly conservative. It is in references to trafficked children from Mali that something akin to conventional wisdom exists. Several government and media sources place at 15,000 the number of such children forced to work without payment on Ivorian farms. Other reports by academics, human rights activists, and investigative journalists offer further examples of migrant children in Côte d’Ivoire being overworked, unpaid, prevented from leaving, and beaten after attempts to escape. Illegality brings other actors into the master-slave relationship. Secrecy and denial in the face of human rights investigations are one obvious manifestation of this. The other side of the coin, however, is liberation and repatriation of slaves by government officials. Law enforcement is important to state actors wishing to send a strong political message that slavery will not be tolerated. Its added value is in providing an additional source of evidence that modern slavery exists. The oral testimonies of emancipated child slaves illustrate the variety

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of means by which West African children have been kept in conditions of slavery. They are geographically lost and financially destitute in a condition where permission to leave is withheld by adults and fraudulent labor contracts have been signed. Additionally, escape has been precluded by means ranging from nocturnal incarceration to physical threats, grievous bodily harm, and actual death. Such obvious human rights abuses have understandably raised questions about effective elimination. Moral condemnation is only complimented, however, by analytical questions about cause. If modern slavery exists as a political problem long after its formal abolition then why does it exist, not just globally, but in Côte d’Ivoire in particular? The roots of that question lie in peripheral capitalism, in the historic development of the Ivorian economy and the country’s insertion within a global capitalist market. The answer, essentially, is cocoa prices within a wider context of uneven development and unequal exchange. Agricultural production in colonial Côte d’Ivoire was rooted in the development of indigenous plantations. Continuities in postindependence development inhere in the country’s continued dependence on foreign labor, on the one hand, and growth based on exports of such primary commodities as coffee, cocoa, bananas, and wood, on the other. Discontinuities are due to a combination of state-led development policy and International Monetary

Fund–led economic liberalization. Postindependence price incentives to encourage cultivation served to boost cocoa output from hundreds of thousands of small remote holdings, thereby increasing the dependence of these farms’ livelihoods on cocoa. Studies suggest that the economic liberalization strategies of the 1990s (especially measures such as price decontrol and trade reform) have not only exacerbated national poverty; they have also disadvantaged those same small farmers while profiting larger producers and those closer to cities. Rural livelihoods depend on both the quantity and the price of their produce. In the first decade of the 21st century, high retail prices of tropical commodities (such as coffee and cocoa) and low farm-gate prices for those same commodities were opposite sides of the same uneven development coin. In this context, studies suggest that Ivorian farmers turned to two main methods of lowering their labor costs, namely increased reliance on unpaid family labor and/or increased reliance on slaves. When prices have risen, as they have done since the record low of 2000, the use of slave labor has apparently declined. Media coverage of the child slavery issue in Côte d’Ivoire has refocused attention on questions of magnitude and collective responsibility. Even as exact numbers remain contested and the longterm effects of concrete measures (such as the Harkin-Engel Protocol) remain to be seen, larger questions are begged

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by this case about the ongoing relationship between unfree labor and capitalist development. Kate Manzo See also: Child Labor.

Further Readings Amin, S. Neo-Colonialism in West Africa. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973. Bales, Kevin. Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Bass, L. E. Child Labor in Sub-Saharan Africa. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2004. Frenkiel, O. “Children of the Etireno” The Guardian, section G2 (October 4, 2001): 6–7. Manzo, Kate. “Modern Slavery, Global Capitalism and Deproletarianisation in West Africa.” Review of African Political Economy 32, no. 4 (2005): 521–534. Naiman, R., and N. Watkins. “A Survey of the Impacts of IMF Structural Adjustment in Africa: Growth, Social Spending, and Debt Relief.” Preamble Centre (April 1999): 1–21. Tiffen, P. “A Chocolate-Coated Case for Alternative International Business Models.” Development in Practice 12, nos. 3 and 4 (2002): 383–397.

Cotton, Samuel L. (1947–2003) Samuel Leslie Cotton became an antislavery activist in the mid-1990s when he was asked by the editor of the African-American newspaper, the City Sun,

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to investigate allegations of modern-day slavery in West Africa. Earlier, in their 1994 New York Times article “Bought and Sold,” Dr. Charles Jacobs and Mohamed Athie of the Anti-American Slavery Group (AASG) claimed that thousands of blacks were still held captive as chattel slaves by Beydanes (Arab Berbers) in Mauritania. After some research, Cotton wrote a set of four articles in 1995, starting with “Arab Masters–Black Slaves,” which introduced his readers to the contemporary slave trade in Africa. He continued to provide additional information in “Demographics and the ModernDay Slave Trade,” and in “Sorrow and Shame,” he questioned the lack of concern and tried to understand how it continued to persist in Mauritania despite a presidential decree that abolished slavery in 1981. As an African American, he was particularly critical in his last article, “The Slavery Issue,” about the black leadership and their failure to address this issue. While he was still a doctoral student at Columbia University, Cotton traveled to West Africa to conduct additional research at the end of 1995. He spent three weeks in refugee camps in Senegal and Mauritania and returned to the United States with footage he would later use for a documentary film on the Arab slave trade in Mauritania. His experience moved him to create the Coalition against Slavery in Mauritania and Sudan (CASMAS), where he actively worked with other associations in the United States and Africa

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to campaign against slavery, promote human rights in Africa, and educate the public. Cotton took every opportunity to discuss slavery in Mauritania and Sudan. He appeared on several TV programs such as the Tony Brown’s Journal and NBC’s Dateline. His articles were published in numerous magazines and newspapers around the country from Vibe to the New York Times. As a result, Cotton’s research attracted a great deal of attention. He was harshly criticized by such groups as the Nation of Islam (NOI), which accused him of attacking Islam and Muslim countries. U.S. legislators dealing with Africa and human rights issues also took notice, and Cotton was asked to testify before Congress in March 1996. He used personal slave testimonies, with the hope of persuading the United States to work harder to combat modern day slavery in Mauritania and hold them accountable for enforcing antislavery legislation in the country. Other human rights activists and the academic community recognized Cotton’s work in the contemporary abolitionist movement, and he received two prestigious honors. In 1997, the Petra Foundation awarded him with a human rights fellowship, and Columbia University’s School of Social Work presented him with the first Wilma and Albert Musher International Fellowship for his efforts in promoting international social welfare. Cotton began teaching U.S. social welfare policy at Columbia University in 1998. His seminal book, Silent Terror: a Journey into Contemporary

African Slavery, was published in the same year and chronicled his expedition to Mauritania and Senegal. He provided detailed accounts of slavery in the region and passionately called for others to join the antislavery movement. In his epilogue, he made a special appeal to other “New World Africans” and to the black leadership in the United States to stand up and fight against the slavery of their brothers and sisters in Africa. His powerful accounts even inspired the artist Sekou Sundiata and musician Craig Harris to join forces to create the play Udu, about a modern day slave in Mauritania. After the publication of his book, Cotton participated in the Call for Freedom National Abolitionist Conference hosted by the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the American Anti-Slavery Group. The Middle East Forum also invited him to discuss slavery in the Middle East. A few years later in 2002, Cotton received his doctorate from Columbia University’s School of Social Work. He was often invited to lecture on modern day slavery and recent events such as the crisis in Sudan at universities around the country. He continued to do so until a few months before his untimely death, when, tragically, Dr. Samuel Cotton died from a brain tumor in December 2003. To honor his life’s work, his daughter, Denise, and the American Anti-Slavery Group organized the Sudan Mobilization Conference in October 2005 at Columbia Law School. The American Anti-Slavery Group later established the Samuel Cotton Memorial Fund to inspire future

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activists to continue his work to abolish slavery. Leslie Fadiga-Stewart See also: American Anti-Slavery Group (AASG); Mauritania; Sudan and South Sudan.

Further Readings Cotton, Samuel. Silent Terror: A Journey into Contemporary African Slavery. New York: Harlem River Press, 1998. Jacobs, Charles, and Mohamed Athie. “Bought and sold.” New York Times, Op-Ed, July 13, 1994. Jok, Jok Madut. War and Slavery in Sudan. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. U.S. State Department, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices (Mauritania).” 2006. http://www.state.gov/ g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2006.

Cox, Caroline (1937–) Baroness Caroline Cox achieved prominence in the modern antislavery movement as a member of Christian Solidarity International’s (CSI) campaign against slavery in Sudan. She traveled with CSI to northern Bahr El Ghazal, Sudan, in the spring of 1995, when the Swiss-based organization began its investigation into the revival of Sudanese slavery. Until late 1997, Baroness Cox traveled repeatedly with CSI to Sudan for fact-finding and slave redemption purposes. During these years, media appearances, interventions in the British Parliament and

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at the United Nations, and testimony before U.S. congressional committees gave her high visibility. Baroness Cox’s unequivocal condemnation of the government of Sudan’s ideological and material support for the revival of slave raids against black African communities provoked the wrath of Khartoum’s Islamist ruling elite. Her celebrity status grew as a result of Khartoum’s personalized public relations campaign against her. In the United States, the Lyndon LaRouche– linked Schiller Institute played a leading role in the attempt to vilify her, while the London-based lobbyist David Hoile and his European Sudanese Public Affairs Council (ESPAC) fulfilled a similar function in Europe. In September 1997, Cox, together with CSI’s UK affiliate, left CSI to set up a rival international network of Christian human rights organizations, operating under the name Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW). After her separation from CSI, Cox made several independent slave redemption visits to Sudan. In January 2001, following the making of a BBC documentary The Dangerous Adventures of Baroness Cox, her spokesperson in London announced she would no longer travel to southern Sudan, citing unspecified threats to her security. Caroline Cox’s professional life began as a nurse. Following her marriage and the birth of three children, Cox studied sociology and economics part-time at the University of London. In 1971, she began lecturing at the turbulent Marxist-dominated Polytechnic

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of North London. As a moderate member of the Labour Party, Cox found herself victimized by hard-line Marxist students and staff members. Teaming up with like-minded staff members John Marks and Keith Jacka, Cox coauthored The Rape of Reason: The Corruption of the Polytechnic of North London (1975). Publication of the book thrust Cox into the center of a national ideological debate on the future of Great Britain on the eve of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership. While embroiled in controversy at the Polytechnic, Cox came to the attention of the insurance magnate and confidant of Thatcher, Malcolm Pearson (since 1990, Lord Pearson of Rannoch). Pearson became Cox’s principal patron, paving the way for her entry into Britain’s Thatcherite intellectual elite. In 1983, she received a life peerage, and took the Conservative whip. She served for five months in 1985 as a junior minister before returning to the backbenches. In 2004, she lost the Conservative whip after she and Lord Pearson openly urged voters to support the anti–European Union United Kingdom Independence Party. Baroness Cox’s active interest in human rights issues are rooted in communist Eastern Europe. In 1983, she was invited to serve as a patron of the Medical Aid for Poland Fund. Through her medical deliveries to Poland, she became personally familiar with a totalitarian system and with the popular resistance to it. Her sympathies were decidedly on the side of the democratic opponents of communism. She assisted

in the establishment of the Jagiellonian Trust, which provided support to civil society groups concerned with the promotion of freedom of thought, expression, and religion. At the end of the 1980s, Baroness Cox traveled to Moscow with Lord Pearson—a friend of the dissident novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn—to give encouragement to dissident groups. As the Soviet Union collapsed, Cox focused her human rights interests on the plight of psychiatrically abused Russian orphans and on the besieged Armenian community of Nagorno Karabakh. Two major reports emerged from this phase of her human right work: Trajectories of Despair: Misdiagnosis and Maltreatment of Soviet Orphans (1991), and Ethnic Cleansing in Progress: War in Nagorno Karabakh (1993) coauthored with John Eibner. In the 1990s, Baroness Cox also began a sustained campaign on behalf of the oppressed Karen minority of Burma. In September 2004, Baroness Cox and Lord Pearson launched a new charity in London called Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust (HART), the aim of which is to provide aid to victims in “forgotten” countries. Meanwhile, she continues to pursue her longstanding interest in educational standards as codirector of the Educational Research Trust. An official biography, Baroness Cox: A Voice for the Voiceless by Andrew Boyd, was published in 1998. John Eibner See also: Sudan and South Sudan.

COYOTE

Further Readings Boyd, Andrew. Baroness Cox: A Voice for the Voiceless. London: Lion Publishing, 1998. Cox, Caroline. “The Baroness Cox of Queensbury.” Nursing Ethics 10, no. 4 (2003): 441–445. Zoba, Wendy Murray. “Through Bombs and Bullets: Baroness Caroline Cox Offers Aid and Advocacy to Persecuted Christians.” Christianity Today 4, no. 10 (1997): 50–52.

COYOTE COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics) was founded by Margo St. James in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1973. In the past 30 years, COYOTE’s main goal has been to decriminalize

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prostitution. It has worked toward this goal by demystifying prostitution, including placing sex work in the context of legitimate work, amenable to labor and occupational safety and health standards. It is COYOTE’s position that the decision to do sex work is an economic decision, like other employment decisions, and to deny individuals the right to do sex work is to deny them their civil and economic rights. When AIDS entered the discussion, COYOTE approached the issue as one of occupational safety and health and working conditions. Since its inception, COYOTE has provided a myriad of services for sex workers. These services include, but are not limited to, crisis counseling,

Margo St. James (center), pictured here with Jane Fonda (left) and Dr. Jennifer James (right), while serving as panelists at the 2nd Annual Hookers Convention in San Francisco on June 22, 1975. St. James founded COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics) in 1973. (AP/Wide World Photos)

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peer support, support groups, legal and social service referrals, and harm-reduction trainings. Additionally, many COYOTE members have provided training to agencies that interact with sex workers, testified at hearings, and served on committees that influence the ways in which local governments treat and interact with sex workers, locally, nationally, and internationally. Over the years, COYOTE has been affiliated with and/or helped create such organizations as the National Task Force on Prostitution in 1979, the International Committee for Prostitutes’ Rights in 1985, the World Whores’ Congress in 1985 and 1986, the California Prostitutes Education Project in 1987, the St. James Infirmary in 1999, and the U.S. chapter of the Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP-USA) in 2004. COYOTE now has two chapters, one in San Francisco and the other in Los Angeles. Alexandra Lutnick See also: Prostitution; Sexual Abuse.

Further Reading Delacoste, Frederique, and Priscilla Alexander, eds. Sex Work: Writings by Women in the Sex Industry. San Francisco: Cleis Press, 1998.

Czech Republic The Czech Republic is located in Central Europe, bordering Germany, Austria, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia, with which once they formed the single

country, Czechoslovakia. It is simultaneously a source, transit, and destination country for women trafficked for sexual exploitation from the former Soviet Union (in particular, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova), the Balkans, and Asia into the Czech Republic and onward to Western Europe, and to a lesser extent, the United States, Japan, and Mexico. Small numbers of Czech men are trafficked to the United States and small numbers of men from the former Soviet Union are trafficked to the Czech Republic for forced labor. Foreign and Czech women, especially Roma (Gypsy), are also trafficked within the country. Despite its efforts, the Czech Republic has failed to comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking. In 2003, the government approved the National Strategy of Combating Trafficking in Human Beings for the Purpose of Sexual Exploitation. Convictions and sentences increased. Still, existing trafficking legislation might be further enforced to give stronger penalties to convicted traffickers. Additionally, the government should also expand the victim assistance and provide the necessary funds. The government of the Czech Republic specifically criminalizes the trafficking of individuals for the purpose of sexual exploitation, and the cabinet has recently approved for submission to Parliament criminal code amendments to criminalize other forms of trafficking, such as trafficking for forced labor, with the harshest sentence being 12 years. Currently, Czech authorities

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prosecute forced labor cases under human-smuggling provisions. According to a Czech police official, the majority of prostitutes in the Czech Republic are foreign nationals. That is why the Czech government cooperates extensively with other Central and Eastern European governments in investigating and prosecuting trafficking cases. For example, Czech experts participated in seven cooperative international investigations in 2003, and efforts with Austria, Germany, and Spain resulted in trafficking convictions. The government provided funding to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to help victims find shelter and health-care assistance. These NGOs provided shelter and care to 30 victims and counseling to 350 victims in 2003. The pilot program for the victim assistance is currently funded by the United Nations, but following the trial period, the Czech government plans to fund it. The Foreign Ministry issued an instructional manual on trafficking and trained consular officers in cooperation with NGOs. The Czech Republic helped sponsor traffickingrelated projects in such countries as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, and Moldova. It approved in 2003 its National Strategy of Combating Trafficking in Human Beings for the Purpose of Sexual Exploitation, and in January 2004 signed a bilateral agreement with the neighbor Slovak Republic on joint border control that allows for greater

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exchange of information on cross-border crime, including trafficking. Many Slovak young women, often of Roma background, come to the western part of the Czech Republic to work as prostitutes. They often become pregnant, deliver babies, and leave them in maternity hospitals. The Czech Republic has also instituted a new visa foil with increased security features. The problem with trafficking in human beings and the sex trade is surely something that the Czech Republic will be battling in the future as well. Stephan E. Nikolov See also: Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation.

Further Readings Altink, Sietske. Stolen Lives: Trading Women into Sex and Slavery. New York: Harrington Park Press, 1995. Ferber, Marianne A., and Phyllis Hutton Raabe. “Women in the Czech Republic: Feminism, Czech Style.” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 16, no. 3 (2003): 407–430. Williams, Phil, ed. Illegal Immigration and Commercial Sex. Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1888. Wolchik, Sharon L. 1994. “Women’s Issues in Czechoslovakia in the Communist and Post-Communist Periods.” In Women and Politics Worldwide, ed. Barbara J. Nelson and Najma Chowdhury. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994.

D and Western conceptions of slavery is that the client’s bonds of obligation to his patron are considered to be property with a definite monetary value and, as such, are transferable between men. Since debts are rarely paid, these bonds of obligation usually fall to a son, and in the case of the patron, are inherited. Prior to the early modern era, debt bondage relations were the dominant political and economic system throughout much of the world, finding its various forms in the feudal and serfdom systems in Europe, the caste system and feudal agricultural relationships on the Indian sub-continent, and the wet rice agriculture and trade-oriented kingdoms (and later the colonial plantation systems) of Southeast Asia. With the expansion of European colonialism, traditional systems of debt bondage intensified, usually coexisting with new harsher forms of chattel or true slavery, often stimulated by European colonialism and the demand for plantation labor. Following the abolition of slavery in the 19th century, more subtle forms of debt bondage were used as a method of colonial labor recruitment for plantations in Africa, the Caribbean, and in Southeast Asia. Today, debt bondage relations are presently expanding in more covert forms through a combination of

Debt Slavery One of the most common forms of slavery found throughout the world in both ancient and modern times is debt slavery, also commonly referred to as debt bondage or patron-client relationships. Although the context of debt bondage varies considerably from society to society, debt slaves are normally peasants or commoners who had become indebted to a wealthy aristocrat or financial backer either by borrowing money in advance, failure to repay a debt, or through an alleged offense. The client and usually his immediate family (wife and children) are usually bound or obliged to provide labor to the patron until the debt is repaid. Debt slavery is often considered as a milder version of chattel slavery, because in theory, one’s freedom can always be redeemed through repayment of the debt. How easy it is to obtain freedom is another story, since these relationships usually have ingrained rules that favor the patron and often serve to perpetuate the system. As is often the case throughout Southeast Asia, while work is continuously demanded from a client, the labor might not always qualify toward repayment of the debt. The most obvious overlap between debt slavery

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mass migration from poverty and the global demand for sources of cheap, expendable domestic labor and forced prostitution. Although always based on elements of power, hierarchy, and subordination, each case of debt bondage must always be examined in the particular context in which it occurs, and should not always be attributed the negative connotations ascribed to Western chattel slavery. For example, among the interior Malay communities in Jambi Sumatra, the interior economy is still dominated by traditional relations of debt bondage. In each village, there are usually one or two financial backer/traders who will advance capital or supplies to the common villager until a field or plantation is harvested, forest products are obtained, rubber is tapped, or logs are taken from the forest. The time expected for repayment (in full) is never an issue, but in order to maintain the longevity of the relationship, as well as maintain a constant flow of trade in the future, the patron will always allow a portion of the debt to remain unpaid. Although the relationship is businessoriented and involves certain aspects of power and subordination, it is also intimate and paternal. If the client ever falls short of necessary supplies, he can always ask his patron for help, rebinding himself to the patron once again and continuing the relationship. A variant of this form of debt bondage is also found between specific Malay patrons (waris/jenang) and the Orang Rimba, animist hunter-gatherers

who live in the surrounding rain forests, and who have traditionally been the main suppliers of nonwood forest products in the region. The Orang Rimba are born into a relationship with a waris, which permanently obliges them to exchange their forest products at very low rates, for village goods such as salt, sugar, metal tools, and cloth. Along the Makekal River of Bukit Duabelas, these relationships are reinforced by elaborate mythologies of common ancestry, bounded by ancient oaths, and are believed to be reinforced by supernatural sanctions and the curse of the ancestors. The Orang Rimba believe that if they were to exchange their forest products with anyone else, then great misfortune and harm would fall upon them. Although the relationship may seem unfair and exploitative, it has allowed the Orang Rimba a safe avenue to include themselves in a rather dangerous outside political economy, maintain a constant supply of outside goods (salt, sugar, metal tools, and cloth), and obtain status and titles that influence their own internal politics. In addition, the system has provided the Orang Rimba the protection of their waris from the rampant slave raids that are conducted upon interior animist communities, a by-product of European colonialism and its growing need for cheap plantation labor. With the transformation of the regional economy from the trade in forest products to logging, which conflicts with their traditional subsistence pursuits, these relations, and their associated ideologies, while still in use,


are increasingly being put under much stress. Steven Sager Further Readings Endicott, Kirk. “The Effects of Slave Raiding on the Aborigines of the Malay Peninsula.” In Slavery, Bondage and Dependency in Southeast Asia, ed. Anthony Reid. London: University of Queensland Press, 1983. Nieboer, Herman J. Slavery as an Industrial System: Ethnological Researches. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1910. Reid, Anthony. “Introduction: Slavery and Bondage in Southeast Asian History.” In Slavery, Bondage and Dependency in Southeast Asia, ed. Anthony Reid. London: University of Queensland Press, 1983. Watson, James L. Asian and African Systems of Slavery. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.

Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (1967) The Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2263 (XXII) on November 7, 1967. It can be considered as one of the early documents to address women’s rights within the UN system. The preamble of the Declaration refers to basic documents and instruments, including the UN Universal Declaration on Human Rights (1948)

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and other specialized agencies through which the General Assembly accentuates such different principles as equal rights of women and men; the principle of nondiscrimination; elimination of all forms of discrimination; promotion of equal rights for men and women; the importance of women for family and society; the contribution of women to social, political, and cultural life; as well as the requirement of participation of women “in all fields” for “development of a country, the welfare of world, and the cause of peace.” Beside these, the declaration condemns trafficking of women, which could be considered one of the most concrete forms of discriminatory practices and an important threat to women’s freedom. The declaration contains 11 articles. Article 1 states that discrimination against women and nonequal treatment is “fundamentally unjust and constitutes an offence against human dignity.” In Article 2 it is declared that certain measurements shall be taken to provide legal protection for equal rights and to abolish discriminatory legal regulations as well as customs and practices. This declaration like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) is not a treaty and was adopted as a resolution having no force of law (Buergenthal, 1988). However, it urges states to take necessary measures that provide the principle of equality of rights to be embodied in their constitutions or to be guaranteed by the laws. Also, the General Assembly declares that “[t]he international instruments of the United

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Nations and the specialized agencies relating to the elimination of discrimination against women shall be ratified or acceded to and fully implemented as soon as practicable.” In addition to this, regarding sociological variables affecting the position of women in a society, the declaration requires that customary and other practices based on the idea of the inferiority of women shall be abolished and the public shall be educated by taking all appropriate measures. The declaration lists and describes political, economic, social, and cultural rights: the right to vote in all elections and in all public referenda; the right to be eligible to all publicly elected bodies; the right to hold public office and to exercise all public functions; the right of women to education at all levels, including education in universities, vocational, technical, and professional schools as well as programs of continuing education; the right to work, to have free choice of profession and employment and to professional and vocational advancement; the right to equal remuneration with men; and the right to have family allowances on equal terms with men. In relation to the position of women in such cases like marriage or maternity, some positive measures shall be taken to ensure women’s effective right to work, like the guarantee of returning to former employment, paid maternity leave, and the necessary social services, including child care services. The declaration does not employ the term “positive discrimination,” but it has some articles that can be interpreted in this way. In

Article 10, it is stated that some peculiar measures shall be taken “to protect women in certain types of work, for reasons inherent in their physical nature.” The declaration also aims to regulate the position of women in the field of civil law as well as in marriage. In relation to acquiring, changing, or retaining nationality, women have equal rights with men, including changes related with marriage. Stressing the importance of family for society, the declaration deals with women’s right to property, including property acquired during marriage; the right to equal legal capacity with men; the same rights as men with respect to the law on the movement of individuals; equal right with men before, during, and after the marriage, like free choice of a spouse; entering into marriage with free and full consent; and equal rights and duties as parents in the matters related to their children. The declaration urges states to prohibit child marriage and the betrothal before puberty and to specify a minimum wage for marriage and also to make official marriage compulsory. Trafficking of women and the exploitation and prostitution of women shall be combated by taking necessary measures at all levels. Concerning penal codes, all discriminatory provisions against women shall be repealed. At the end, the declaration reminds us of the principle of equality of rights of women and men and urges governments, nongovernmental organizations, and individuals to promote the


implementation of the principles specified in the declaration. Tugba Asrak Hasdemir See also: Prostitution; Servile Marriage.

Further Readings Buergenthal, Thomas. International Human Rights. St. Paul, MN: West Publishing, 1988. United Nations. Human Rights Questions and Answers. New York: United Nations Department of Public Information, 1987. United Nations General Assembly. The Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. New York: United Nations Department of Public Information, 1967.

Declaration on the Rights of the Child (1959) The special rights of the child were first enunciated in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), which provided in Article 25(2) that “Motherhood and Childhood are entitled to special care and assistance.” The Declaration on the Rights of the Child intended to expand and amplify that theme. The document is a nonbinding resolution of the UN General Assembly. It should not be confused with the International Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) that was adopted by the UN General Assembly on the 30th anniversary of this declaration, on November 20, 1989. The declaration is divided into 10 principles and is introduced by a

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preamble. It set a certain number of rights for the children, no matter their race, color sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, where they were born. or to whom they were born. It established the right to grow up and to develop physically and spiritually in a healthy and normal way, free and with dignity; the right to have a name and to be a member of a country; the right to receive special care and protection, good food, housing and medical services; the right to receive special care if handicapped in any way; the right to love and understanding, preferably from parents and family, but also from the government where these cannot help; the right to go to school for free, to play, and to have an equal chance to develop and learn; the right to be the first ones to receive protection and relief; the right to be protected against cruel acts or exploitation (they shall not be obliged to do work that hinders their development both physically and mentally); and the right of not working before a minimum age and never when that would hinder their health and their moral and physical development. The declaration also set special responsibilities for the parents for children’s education and guidance. Giulia Pietrangeli See also: Child Labor; Child Soldiers; Children; Pornography and Children; Prostitution.

Further Reading Lee-Wright, Peter. Child Slaves. London: Earthscan Publications, 1990.

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Decree Respecting Domestic Slavery in German East Africa (1901) Colonial officials in German East Africa issued the Decree Respecting Domestic Slavery in German East Africa (1901) in order to placate concerns among the indigenous population of the region. This measure indicated that although the European colonial powers wished to end the type of chattel slavery that existed in Africa, they were not willing to change the indigenous beliefs of the region that supported the existence of domestic slavery. The measure was not an ideal solution, but it was the best possible solution that colonial administrators believed they could achieve at the time. The decree, which was issued by the Imperial Chancellor, Count Bernhard von Bulow, stipulated specific guidelines by which indigenous tribes would be permitted to maintain the practice of domestic slavery in spite of European efforts to introduce abolitionism to the African continent. Article II of the decree specified that, “Every domestic slave is empowered to bring about a termination of his slavery by paying a ransom.” The inclusion of this principle may have been the best effort that colonial administrators believed they could muster in restricting a practice that had long cultural antecedents among the peoples of East Africa. Those persons violating terms of the decree could be punished by a fine of up to 500 rupees or incarceration of up to three months.

Critics of the decree charged that it provided an opportunity for chattel slavery to persist in German East Africa since that type of slavery could be camouflaged under the protective security of domestic slavery, which was effectively being legalized and regulated by colonial administrators. To the critics, it was clear that slavery was simply slavery, and any efforts to parse the semantics of what was legal and what was illegal would only confuse matters and protect the interests of slave traders and slaveholders. The government of Germany, along with most other European powers, had participated in the Berlin West Africa Conference (1884–1885) and signed the Berlin Act (1885) at the conclusion of that diplomatic gathering. Although the European powers did not adopt a unified plan to abolish slavery in colonial Africa, each of the signatory powers pledged to work toward the end of the slave trade in the respective colonial spheres where they had direct influence. In spite of colonial administrators’ arguments to the contrary, it appeared that the Decree Respecting Domestic Slavery in German East Africa either abrogated—or certainly weakened—the pledge that Germany had made in the Berlin Act. As a result of the decree, the custom of domestic slavery in German East Africa persisted into the 20th century. Although the German colonial possessions were distributed as mandates to other European powers in the years following World War I (1914–1918), vestiges of the practice of domestic slavery

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still existed during the era of decolonization when Tanzania became an independent republic. Junius P. Rodriguez See also: Domestic Workers.

Further Readings Alpers, E. A. Ivory and Slaves in East Central Africa. London: Heinemann, 1975. Beachey, R. W. The Slave Trade of Eastern Africa. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1976. Beachey, R. W., ed. A Collection of Documents on the Slave Trade of East Africa. London: Rex Collings, 1976. Manning, Patrick. Slavery and African Life: Occidental, Oriental, and African

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Slave Trades. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Devadasi The word devadasi means “a female slave of God” in Sanskrit and continues to be used unchanged in many of the vernacular languages of the India. Devadasis are temple prostitutes married off to the god in the temple. This complex institution of temple or sacred prostitution occurs predominantly in south India, more specifically in the Telugu- and Kannada-speaking regions. Dedicated at birth or when quite young, the more talented among the devadasis have been selected for the

Two young sisters sit together on a road near Saundatti, India in 1997. The girls are to be initiated as devadasis. (AP/Wide World Photos)

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rigorous training of the Bharata Natyam dance that originated as a temple dance, or classical music, both performed as a form of worship. Some of the best dancers to this day are descendants of devadasi families. These women “served” the god through their dance, music, or other temple services that included “serving” the temple patrons and as such enjoyed a certain degree of freedom denied to ordinary women and a position of importance within the temple hierarchy. But the system was abused, and, gradually over the years, the devadasis degenerated into exploited prostitutes, their earnings confiscated by the temple authorities. It is claimed that this institution existed in ancient India, but there are no clear early sources, so it must be assumed that there were rare cases until the Middle Ages. The increasing references to temple prostitutes coincide with the rise in temple building from the eighth century onward all over India. The temple was the center of economic and social life at the time. If donated by the king, it would exist in the capital and be intimately connected to the court; if built with money donated by the guilds, it would be associated with the wealthy section of a city. The temples in rural areas would naturally be connected to powerful landowners. Temples attracted donations and contributions of gold, land, and devadasis, as these donations assured merit to the donor in the afterlife. There exist many inscriptions and charters of the medieval south commemorating donations to temples that refer specially

to devadasis. For instance, a general of Vikramaditya VI Chalukya, named Mahadeva, is recorded as founding a temple in memory of his late mother, with quarters for the most beautiful temple prostitutes in the country. Devadasis even until the colonial period were integral to the Hindu religious and cultural life. Singing and dancing in the temple were important parts of worship, and these women were thus seen as performing a significant religious and social function. Devadasis were also perceived to be auspicious, as they were conceived to be nityasumangalis, eternally married women who could never be widowed, and as such, they were a necessary presence at all domestic festive celebrations. This role of the devadasis has to be seen in conjunction with the Hindu perception of the widow as the harbinger of inauspiciousness. Over the years, temple prostitution, as with most things in India, was deeply enmeshed in the caste system. There are some reports of upper-caste women being dedicated to the temple during the medieval and colonial periods, but such cases are now rare, and it is increasingly women from the artisan lower-caste groups or women from the untouchable castes who are dedicated to temple prostitution. This controlling of the sexuality of the lower-caste women has been seen as a powerful means of structuring the lives of the laboring communities. Paradoxically, while the caste Hindus consider any physical contact with the untouchables polluting, touching the devadasi is beyond this restriction because she has

Devadasi

been dedicated to the god, and the upper-caste men are free to enjoy her. The devadasis are known by many names, such as sule, sani, matthamma, basavi, jogati, jogini, and kalavant. These names are also indicative of the region the practice stems from and the deity they are dedicated to, as perhaps the caste of the devadasis. Girls are dedicated quite young, even before puberty, to the deity. The deities are several in number, from male gods to female goddesses. The initiation rites vary from the simple to elaborate; each category of devadasis has its own kind of initiation ceremony. One involves just the tying of a necklace of beads in the temple. In another kind of ceremony, the head is anointed with the oil from the lamp burning in front of the god. A third kind of ceremony is an elaborate marriage to the god in the manner of the caste Hindus. Traditionally, not all devadasis were trained in the arts. Most of them were expected to clean the temple precincts and assist the priest in the rituals. The devadasi system is a complex and intricate web of caste, region, and practice. The kalavants, for instance, hail from the Goa region of India. They are primarily temple artists, both dancers and singers. The kalavants fled to the neighboring Mumbai during the last century, where a few became students of great music masters to perfect their art. A few fell into prostitution and others became mistresses of the rich. But through a reform movement in this region, most of the erstwhile kalavants are today well educated and well placed,

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although they complain about the upper castes. Not all categories of devadasis are in this happy position, however. Women belonging to the socially underprivileged classes continue to face sexual exploitation under the devadasi system, according to a National Human Rights Commission report published in 2004. The report found that the system is still alive in many parts of the country. The devadasi system was first made punishable under the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowment Act, 1927, of Mysore, a princely state then. This was followed by a blanket ban on the system by the British raj in the 1930s. The Karnataka government promulgated the Karnataka Devadasi Prohibition Act of 1982 to tackle the system, which is rife in this region. Activists, however, declare that the movement has only gone underground after it was declared illegal. Priests continue to convince mothers to marry their daughters to the temple deities covertly. Activists also claim to have evidence that several girls are sold off to the brothels after a few years of living as devadasis. Rohini Mokashi-Punekar See also: Forced Prostitution; Prostitution.

Further Reading Basham, A. L. The Wonder That Was India. 3rd ed. Calcutta: Rupa & Co., 1981. Kersenboom-Story, Saskia. Nityasumangali: Devadasi Tradition in South India. New Delhi: Motilal Banarisidass, 1987. Vijaisri, Priyadarshini. Recasting the Devadasi: Patterns of Sacred Prostitution in Colonial

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South India. New Delhi: Kanishka Publishers, 2004. Zelliot, Eleanor, and Rohini MokashiPunekar. Untouchable Saints: An Indian Phenomenon. New Delhi: Manohar, 2005.

Doe v. Unocal The First Congress of the United States adopted the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) in 1789. The statute asserts that, “[t]he district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien [non-U.S. citizen] for a tort [a harm or wrong] only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.” ATCA is not a human rights law per se, but it allows civil suits to be brought forward for violations of the law of nations. The law of nations is the law of international relations, embracing nations and individuals, such as those who invoke their human rights or commit war crimes. Although it was used in the 18th and early 19th century to deal primarily with piracy on international waters, the statute has been invoked since 1980 to hold accountable rogue agents of states, or private individuals (for example, Radnovan Karadzic for war crimes during civil war in the former Yugoslavia) for violations of international law committed outside the United States. In 1997, 12 peasants from Burma sued the California-based energy corporation Unocal for its alleged complicity in human rights abuses committed by

the Burmese military, Unocal’s partner in a natural gas pipeline joint venture. The plaintiffs alleged that the Burmese military had supplied the venture with slave labor, and that the slaves were often subjected to abuses such as rape and even murder. What was novel about this suit was that the U.S. federal court concluded that corporations (as opposed to individuals) could be held legally responsible under ATCA for violations of international human rights norms that the corporations or their partners commit outside the United States. It held that U.S. courts have jurisdiction over such claims. This suit brought together ATCA, a law that is almost as old as the Republic, with more modern conceptions of corporate personhood, as well as the recent influence of international law on the U.S. courts. In the summer of 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court held in another ATCA case, Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, that only a human rights violation of the highest and most agreed upon magnitude, known as jus cogens violations, qualify for consideration under ATCA. Jus cogens norms are the highest class among human rights principles recognized by the international community of states as a whole as norms from which no derogation is permitted, such as slavery, torture, genocide, and war crimes. This institutionalization of jus cogens presupposes that some laws are inherent and inalienable, reflecting that there are ultimately fundamental moral choices.

Domestic Workers

In March 2005, after several failed attempts to have the case dismissed, and facing evidence that jus cogens violations may have occurred in the building of the pipeline, Unocal settled Doe v. Unocal and agreed to pay damages of $32 million. The judicial struggle of the Doe v. Unocal case represents a stunning achievement for not only the Burmese peasants subjected to human rights abuses, but also the broader Free Burma movement activists who conceived this struggle to hold corporations accountable for their actions outside the United States. The case, and others like it, poses a threat to the reputation of corporations that seek to profit directly from slavery, and forces corporations to build into their calculus the costs of litigation and liability for violating certain human rights. Since Doe v. Unocal was first filed, victims working with lawyers and social movement organizations (including human, environmental, labor, women’s, and indigenous rights movements) have filed more than a dozen similar suits under ATCA against major U.S. corporations. As these cases work their way through the federal courts, it is becoming apparent that the courts will provide a venue for Alien Tort Claims against corporations based on only jus cogens human rights abuses. Thus, only plaintiffs who can prove the most egregious abuses will prevail in these suits. John G. Dale See also: Alien Tort Claims Act; Burma.

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Further Readings Dale, John G. Transnational Legal Action: Global Business, Human Rights, and the Free Burma Movement. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006. Steinhardt, Ralph G., and Anthony D’Amato, eds. The Alien Tort Claims Act: An Analytical Anthology. Ardsley, NY: Transnational Publishers, 1999.

Domestic Workers It is difficult to find a commonly accepted general definition of the term “domestic work.” In general, it is considered an extension of women’s reproductive work and involves one or more of the following tasks simultaneously: managing, undertaking, and servicing processes. These groups of house-related labors include: cleaning and cooking, as essential to the house maintenance; caring for infants and the elderly, as indispensable to the reproduction of human life; and serving the various members of the household. Domestic workers are the employees who are hired by individuals or families to provide these essential services in an employer’s home. The majority of domestic workers today are women and they constitute a large portion of the migrant worker population. In an age of economic globalization, their numbers have significantly increased as more middle-class women are now employed in work outside the home and new consumption patterns have evolved that have created more leisure time. Domestic work has historically been associated with industrial societies, but

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there have always been regional differences. Generally the growth of domestic work in a society has been one of the consequences that industrialization has produced. This results from two simultaneous forces as industrialization produces a growing middle class that increasingly employs domestic servants while also producing a surplus of unskilled female laborers. At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the first domestic workers tended to be middle-aged servants and this practice continued until the second half of the 19th century. Statistics from the early industrial era indicate that 6.5 percent of the population of France consisted of servants, while the comparable figures were 11.5 percent for Belgium, 1.4 percent for Spain, and 2.2 percent for Italy. But by the late 19th century, the number of domestic workers dramatically increased due to the mechanization of agriculture and other technological innovations. In Great Britain, an estimated 2 million domestic servants were working in the homes of new middleclass families, and 40 percent of all women employed in Britain were identified as being domestic workers. The servant-type form of domestic work remained in force until the late 19th century in Europe and the Americas, and until the 20th century in Asia. It became less common to find livein domestic servants working in most middle-class households. The modern era has witnessed an increase in the use of domestic workers, especially in households where both spouses are employed outside the home. As many

nations have reduced their support of public social services, many families have had to look for private hiring for their housework, especially to cope with child care and elderly care. In this new modern family dynamic, a hired substitute for taking over the wife’s domestic role is often required even though the wife remains in charge of all house-related responsibilities. Thus, domestic work turns out to be a relationship among the same gender. In other words, patriarchal gendered relationships between men and women are transferred to the relations between female employers and female domestic workers. The burden on the middleclass working mothers is reduced at the expense of increasing the burdens placed upon the domestic workers. By the beginning of the 21st century, domestic work became more of a racially defined occupation in many parts of the world. In an age of globalization, due to a shortage of real economic opportunities outside the home for many women, many have chosen to migrate to the Persian Gulf countries and the Middle East, Europe, Canada, the United States, and Australia, where they seek work as a modern domestic servant. Once again, the live-in form of domestic work has reappeared, since it provides a place to live free of charge for domestic workers, especially for migrant domestic workers. However, this form of work has become fraught with many abuses. Domestic work is structurally linked to slavery since domestic workers are not treated as people independent of

Dominican Republic

their employers. In addition, houserelated work is often designed so that the physically hardest tasks are given to the domestic workers and these jobs demand an almost unlimited number of working hours. Many domestic workers, especially migrant workers, have been refused permission to communicate with their families or have time to spend with their relatives, even on their days off. There is also a basic power dynamic that exists in the relationship between the migrant domestic worker and her employer, in terms of the legal status of the domestic workers. The illegal presence of many of the domestic workers makes them even more vulnerable to mistreatment. Domestic workers, regardless of their legal status, generally face long and unregulated working hours. They are usually paid less than minimum wage, and, in some cases, they are not paid any wages. Many of them are forced to work overtime and are refused days off. Some employers are likely to reduce the salary or sometimes refuse to pay their full payments at the end of the work agreement. Furthermore, many domestic workers all over the world today face poor living conditions and a lack of food and privacy. These practices resemble the forms of slavery because they restrict the personal liberty of individuals by forcing them to labor for individuals who often expect to exercise total control of the domestic worker. Bayram Unal See also: Child Labor; Migrant Workers.

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Further Readings Anderson, Bridget. Doing the Dirty Work? The Global Politics of Domestic Labour. London: Zed Books, 2000. Bakan, A. B., and D. K. Stasiulis. “Making the Match: Domestic Placement Agencies and the Racialization of Women’s Household Work.” Signs 20 (1995): 303–335.

Dominican Republic The Dominican Republic is located in the Caribbean on the eastern two-thirds of Hispaniola, an island that was colonized by the Spanish in 1492. During the Spanish colonial period, the Dominican Republic was known as Santo Domingo. Colonial slavery ended in 1822 during the Haitian occupation (1822–1844). Santo Domingo gained independence from Spain in 1865. Unfree labor in the Dominican Republic was rooted in the rapid expansion of sugar production during the U.S. occupation (1916–1924) and continues into the present. Unfree labor within the Dominican Republic is largely relegated to the forced labor of Haitian workers on sugar estates. Sugar became a significant agricultural product in the 1870s and centralized sugar mills were established. Sugar production was drastically expanded by U.S. investors during the U.S. occupation, which resulted in a large demand for a cheap labor force. Haitians best met this demand because of proximity and the dire economic situation of the Haitian peasantry. U.S. occupation of Haiti

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(1915–1934) facilitated the migration process. Gradually the number of Haitians entering the Dominican Republic increased each year, reaching 50,000 by 1935 (Gavigan, 1999). General Rafael Trujillo, Dominican dictator from 1930 to 1961, took over most of the Dominican sugar industry in the 1950s, which continues to be largely state-owned today. In 1952, Trujillo initiated a contract system with Haiti that paid the Haitian government a fee for every seasonal worker provided to Dominican sugar factories. Similar contracts were in place for most of the period 1952–1964. The state established contracts with Haiti for laborers from 1966 to 1986. Since then, the council has recruited laborers directly. Approximately 30,000 Haitians cross the border legally and illegally to work each harvest season. Around 500,000 additional undocumented Haitian workers reside permanently in the Dominican Republic (OAS, 1999). Force plays a key role in recruitment and treatment of Haitian cane workers. Some Haitians go to the Dominican Republic aware of the deplorable work circumstances, out of economic necessity. Some workers are deceived about benefits and rights by Dominican recruiters; others are kidnapped or arrested and forcibly brought to the sugar factories by military and police who are often paid fees by the factories. Recruits are transported to the factories under military guard. Once at the factories, the workers are housed in bateyes (worker housing), which are usually in abysmal condition. Most bateyes are

overcrowded and lack electricity, sewage, and access to medical treatment. Human rights investigators have found consistent patterns of labor and human rights abuses among Haitians employed seasonally and year-round at Dominican sugar estates. The factories employ their own police forces to prevent Haitians from leaving the plantations. Workers are frequently forced to work on stipulated days off, and beyond standard work hours, even when ill. Open repression is frequent. Payment of wages is typically sporadic and sometimes made in vouchers, causing the workers to rely on the exploitive credit system of company stores. A multifaceted system of arbitrary pay reductions and corruption further reduces wages. Cane cutters are paid a fee per ton of cut sugar. The weighing system is often exploited to the detriment of the worker. Extortion and physical abuse are common. Racism and antiHaitianism are central to these continual abuses. Haitian agricultural, service, and construction workers are subject to arbitrary arrest, detention, and individual and mass deportations. Workers are often detained on paydays and frequently deported before they are paid. Deportees are not allowed to inform their families of their situation, they are not allowed to collect their possessions, they are often beaten, and they receive minimal or no food while they await deportation in grossly overpopulated detention centers. Detainees’ personal belongings, including identification documents, are often confiscated.

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Approximately 90 percent of Haitian seasonal migrants are men, but there are also many women and children under 15 years of age. The latter have no customary or legal rights. Nearly 5 percent of Haitian cane cutters are women. Women also engage in other forms of informal work such as laundry, cooking, and prostitution. Forced child labor is widespread on sugar estates, although it has declined measurably since 1995. In an attempt to regulate the work relationships between agricultural estate managers and agricultural workers, the Dominican Republic mandated the use of labor contracts by presidential decree in 1990. This has done little to affect the situation because it fails to include Haitian permanent residents and because Haitian workers do not have effective means to enforce the contracts. Cane cutter labor unions were legalized in 1992, but organizers are not permitted to meet with large groups of workers and protests are often suppressed by the military and police. Protesters are imprisoned and sometimes killed. Recent immigration legislation codifies improvements to the conditions of seasonal Haitian cane workers, specifically transportation to and from the sugar estates; payment in cash; housing for workers and their families; access to benefits of the Dominican social security system for the duration of employment; and compliance with Dominican labor standards. However, the bill fails to require individual contracts; provides no penalties for failure of employers to comply with the regulations;

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and entails no mechanism for supervision or enforcement. Further, it fails to address the situation of Haitian permanent residents in the Dominican Republic and the growing number of Haitian migrant workers who work on coffee, corn, and rice farms and in construction. Therefore, the bill provides no real protection or leverage for Haitian workers. The small improvements that have been made in the living conditions of Haitian workers are largely the results of endeavors of nongovernmental organizations and labor unions, not the Dominican government. Lori Lee See also: Cane Harvesters; Haiti; Restavek.

Further Readings Gavigan, Patrick. Beyond the Bateyes. New York: National Coalition for Haitian Rights, 1999. Martinez, Samuel. Peripheral Migrants: Haitians and Dominican Republic Sugar Plantations. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1995. Organization of American States. Report on the Situation of Human Rights in the Dominican Republic. Washington, D.C.: Organization of American States, 1999. Plant, Robert. Sugar and Modern Slavery. London: Zed Books, 1987.

Douglass, Frederick (1817–1895) Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born a slave in February 1817 on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

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Douglass’ father likely was the white master, Aaron Anthony. His maternal grandfather, Isaac Bailey was a free man. The fourth of seven children, Frederick’s mother had to relinquish him to his grandmother while his mother worked 12 miles away. When Frederick was six or seven, he moved to the Lloyds’ great house at Wye Plantation. Although life was hard, he shared a friendship with Lloyd’s son, Daniel, and Anthony’s daughter, Lucretia, who was married to Thomas Auld. At age eight, Frederick began living with Auld’s brother. Hugh, and his family in Baltimore, Maryland. Believing slavery to be a crime, Hugh’s wife, Sophia Auld, taught Frederick to read. Early on, Frederick realized that if a slave reading was a threat, he needed to learn how to read and write. He worked hard both for the Aulds and in Auld Shipyard, carefully seeking ways to increase his reading and his knowledge. Though he mistrusted religion, he befriended a preacher, from whom he borrowed books. He also saved money to buy The Columbian Orator, memorized it, and learned about abolitionism by reading the Baltimore American. At age 15, he was sent to St. Michaels, Maryland, where he briefly taught at a Sabbath school for slaves; but a furious Thomas Auld hired him out to tenant farmer Edward Covey, who nearly broke Frederick’s spirit. Finally, Frederick decided to resist and Covey never abused him again. In 1836, a botched attempt to escape landed him in jail for two days, after which Frederick was

returned to Baltimore, where he resumed working at a shipyard. Further, he began teaching blacks to read at the East Baltimore Mental Improvement Society. There he met Anna Murray. Although he was 19 and she was free and 24, they decided to smuggle Frederick northward and to marry. On September 3, 1838, disguised as a sailor with borrowed papers, Frederick left work, took trains and a ferry to New York City, arriving early the next day. With help from David Ruggles, secretary of the antislavery New York Vigilance Committee, on September 15, 1838, “Frederick Johnson” married Anna. They moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he changed his surname to Douglass. It was not long before he met abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips. Relocating to Lynn, Massachusetts, Frederick became more active in antislavery issues. Increasingly on speaking tours away from his wife and growing family, Frederick experienced firsthand the juxtaposition between the beliefs and actual condescending behavior of white abolitionists. Adding injury to insult, he suffered a beating while in Indiana and realized that all northerners would not be as receptive to the abolitionist cause. In May 1845 he published Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Having named his slaveholder, concerns for his safety led him to Great Britain. In 1846, his British friends paid $700 to purchase his freedom. Abolitionists argued the controversial decision, many believing that buying his freedom

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condoned the buying and selling of a human as property. Nevertheless, Douglass freely returned to Massachusetts in April 1847, eager to edit a weekly newspaper. Instead, Garrison and Phillips convinced him to write a weekly column in the Standard and to resume the lecture circuit. Ironically, new acquaintances in the abolitionist and suffrage movements would cultivate a philosophy opposed to Garrison’s camp. By November 1847, Douglass moved his family to Rochester, New York, a significant stop on the Underground Railroad. Advocating that African Americans must be their own leaders, he began editing his own newspaper, The North Star. Then, in July 1848, Douglass attended the Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York. Increasingly believing the preamble to the U.S. Constitution made it an antislavery document, he took up the cause of the Liberty Party and Gerritt Smith. In 1851 he began editing the pro-Liberty Frederick Douglass’ Paper and delivered his famous “What Is the Slave to the Fourth of July?” address in Rochester. By December 1852, Douglass was completely estranged from the Garrisonians, who believed the U.S. Constitution to be a proslavery document. Publishing continued with his novella The Heroic Slave (1853) and My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) and his Douglass’ Monthly (1858). After John Brown’s 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, ended tragically, Douglass felt compelled to leave the country, as

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he had met many times with and likely had raised money for John Brown. Briefly in Canada and Great Britain, Douglass returned home in April 1860. When the U.S. Civil War erupted, Douglass aided in recruiting black troops; in 1863, he pressured Abraham Lincoln to allow them to fight in combat for the Union. After the war, he served as vice president of the Equal Rights Association. In 1870, Douglass moved to Washington, D.C. As editor of the weekly New National Era, Douglass agitated for black civil rights. His notoriety led to many federal appointments, as secretary of a U.S. commission to the Dominican Republic (1871), president of the Freedman’s Savings Bank (1874), and U.S. marshal of the District of Columbia (1877). In 1872, Douglass was listed as a candidate for vice president with Victoria Woodhull on the National Radical Reformer’s Party’s presidential ticket, a nomination he never accepted. In 1881, Douglass became recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia and published the Life and Times of Frederick Douglass; in August, his wife, died. In January 1884, he caused quite a scandal when he married Helen Pitts, a much younger white woman. While touring Europe and Africa with Helen, Douglass accepted appointment as U.S. ambassador to Haiti (1887). Two years later, he resigned when the United States tried to annex a Haitian port to establish a naval base. Throughout, he supported both civil and women’s rights movements. On February 20, 1895, Douglass died at

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the age of seventy-eight at his home in Washington, D.C. Sally Hilgendorff See also: Garrison, William Lloyd; Underground Railroad.

Further Readings Blight, David W. Frederick Douglass’ Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989. Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Written by Himself, ed. John W. Blassingame, John R. McKivigan, and Peter P. Hinks. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001. Originally published 1845. Foner, Philip S. Frederick Douglass: A Biography. New York: Citadel, 1964. Quarles, Benjamin. Frederick Douglass. New York: Atheneum Books, 1968.

Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) was a significant case in the history of slavery in the United States that helped hasten the Civil War. Coming as it did in the wake of President James Buchanan’s inauguration in March 1857, it was seen by some as a partisan attempt by a Democratic U.S. Supreme Court to foreclose the most likely political solution to the problem of slavery’s extension into the territory acquired by the United States in the Mexican War. In declaring that slavery could not constitutionally be barred from any U.S. territory and that

no black person could constitutionally become a citizen of the United States, Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney and his Court hoped to demolish the new Republican Party; instead, they hastened the attempted dissolution of the Union. Dred Scott was a Missouri slave whose master had taken him into free territory. His claim was that having lived into free territory, he had ceased to be a slave. In his opinion for the Court, Chief Justice Taney said that Congress had no power to exclude slavery from any territory of the United States; until a territory became a state, slave owners from the South had to be allowed to take slavery there just as any other citizen could take any other kind of property. Turning to the question of Scott’s right to bring his suit in federal court (which, arguably, should have been the first—and only—question the Court decided), Taney said that he did not. Irrespective of the question whether Scott had been freed by his sojourn in free territory, he was a black man. According to Taney, when the Constitution was framed, the prevailing belief of white Americans was that blacks had no rights that a white person need respect, so they had been excluded from the community created by the adoption of the U.S. Constitution. Taney, who had freed his own slaves, disavowed any hostility to blacks, but he insisted that his function as a judge was to implement the law as understood at the time of its adoption; if the founders had intended to exclude blacks from


Dred Scott, a slave brought by his master to free territory, took his case to the Supreme Court and fueled the debate over slavery. (Library of Congress)

their community, they must always be excluded. Whatever Scott’s theoretical status in free territory, the Court said, he lived in Missouri at the time he availed himself of the courts’ process. Since Missouri law held him a slave, the U.S. Supreme Court would consider him a slave. Dissenting justices noted some of the flaws in Taney’s reading of history. For example, black people had been state citizens at the time of ratification, so it was hard to infer that the ratifiers of the Constitution had intended to keep them outside the community of citizens. Yet, the dissenters were only two. Critics of the Court noted that it seemed the Democrats who dominated that institution were using the Court to further

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their partisan goal of declaring the Republican Party’s central organizing principle—exclusion of slavery from the federal territories—to be unconstitutional. Buchanan’s narrow victory over his Republican rival, John C. Frémont, in 1856, conspiracy theorists said at the time, was not to be repeated. We now know that both Taney and Buchanan had indeed been endeavoring mightily to construct a Democratic majority in Dred Scott precisely for these party purposes; the president-elect and the chief justice may have salved their consciences with the argument that maintenance of a national Democratic Party majority was the best way of ensuring that the United States did not dissolve into two or more regional confederacies. It did not work. Rather, the Dred Scott decision, intensified the national debate over slavery and served to hasten Republican victory in 1860 and the Civil War that followed. Kevin R. C. Gutzman See also: Abolitionism.

Further Readings Finkelman, Paul. “The Dred Scott Case, Slavery and the Politics of Law.” Hamline Law Review 20 (Fall 1996): 1–42. Mendelson, Wallace. “Dred Scott’s Case— Reconsidered.” Minnesota Law Review 38 (1953): 16–28. Schwartz, Harold. “The Controversial Dred Scott Decision.” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 54 (April 1960): 262–273.

E Economic globalization is a contested concept that scholars analyze and theorize from a variety of perspectives. There are three dominant perspectives: classical-market, liberal, and worldsystems or critical (Marxist). The classical-market perspective on economic globalization represents the view of traditional economists, business strategists, and entrepreneurs. This approach views globalizing capitalism as the result of market forces. Businesses must expand in pursuit of profit and trade must be more efficient to maximize profit. This perspective is optimistic and portrays economic globalization as a positive process, despite such underlying paradoxes as market discontinuities and social disparities. The liberal perspective is more critical of economic globalization, although it maintains many of the assumptions of the classical-market perspective about market relations and the global expansion capitalism. Scholars of the liberal perspective analyze the impact of global restructuring and transnational dispersion of production, trade and international financial investments on social organization and political relations, not just the market. The liberal perspective considers the power relations among and between the various actors, including corporations, governments,

Economic Globalization Economic globalization refers to the processes through which economic activities and markets around the world are rapidly reorganizing into a single capitalist economy that spans the world and transcends national borders. Several processes constitute economic globalization. The production of goods and services are reorganizing across national borders in increasingly complex ways. Transnational corporations (TNCs) coordinate worldwide production chains and multinational trade and investment. At the same time, the nation-state plays a less meaningful role as a central economic organizing point with declining regulative power over production, trade, and capital accumulation. The explosive growth in computer technology, electronic communications, and rapid transportation facilitate transnational production and rapid exchange of information and capital. Furthermore, the rapidly accelerating international exchange of capital and transnational reorganization of production occur alongside the dispersion of capitalist cultural practices that propel consumer patterns that are increasingly similar throughout the world, allowing TNCs to expand into new markets. 245

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civil society, workers, and others social groups. Proponents of world-systems theory argue that a capitalist world-economy began in the 16th century in Western Europe, which today operates across the entire globe. World-systems theory draws from Karl Marx’s theory of capitalism to argue that the capitalist world economy operates via the unequal social relationships between owners of production mechanisms (capital) and the direct producers (labor) of goods. The sale of goods or services for higher than their production costs creates surplus value for capitalist entrepreneurs. Surplus value in the form of goods, services, information, and raw capital, is distributed globally through the exchange process of the world market. The capitalist structure of the world economy permits an unequal exchange of goods and services to maximize the profits of capitalist entrepreneurs in the most capital-rich and technologically developed centers of the world. These centers are called core zones, and conversely, the less-developed, least wealthy regions are called periphery zones, where most production tends to occur. The regions in between are considered semiperiphery zones (Wallerstein, 1979). A similar critical approach to understanding economic globalization, the global systems theory, posits that economic, political, and culturalideological practices across state borders transform the world according to global capitalism. The drive for profit is the central imperative of capitalism. The pursuit of

profit drives enterprises to seek out new sources of cheap labor, land, natural resources, and markets. According to the critical perspective, which draws on Marxist economic theory, profit (surplus value) derives from the exploitation of human labor by a class of people who own property, the production systems, and retain wealth. Global capitalist expansion transforms human labor and natural resources into commodities that produce surplus value. The critical perspective further argues that capitalism expanded through European colonialism and imperialism, which subjugated peoples of Latin America, Africa, and Asia. All perspectives generally agree that transnational corporations are the driving force of economic globalization. A transnational corporation is “a firm which has the power to co-ordinate and control operations in more than one country, even if it does not own them” (Dicken, 1998, 177). The largest TNCs are based in the United States, Western Europe, and Japan. Since the 1970s, corporations have expanded their international trade and foreign investment, growing in financial size and geographic reach to operate beyond domestic and international boundaries as a result of failing to find adequately profitable investment sources in their home countries. Increasingly, the incomes of the largest TNCs come from countries outside of their national base. The largest TNCs have annual sales far greater than the gross national product of most national governments. Consequently, the largest global companies


have more economic power at their disposal than the majority of the countries in the world. International investment intensified with the development of computer technology and sophisticated communication systems, while multinational trade accelerated with continuously improving transportation systems. The ease with which corporations can do business on a worldwide scale has accelerated global capital mobility. This has in turn allowed for the decentralization of the global production system away from national economies and the concentration of transnational corporate ownership and control of global production and distribution chains. Economic globalization also entails a fundamental change in the relations between governments (or nation-states) and TNCs. Governments and the states they govern have declining power over TNCs. Governments are relinquishing their authority to regulate TNCs in their home countries and internationally. Global firms strive to maximize profitability and reduce long-term production costs by seeking the least expensive sources of production and eliminating barriers to capital accumulation. Flexibility, outsourcing, and subcontracting characterize the global production system. TNCs increasingly control the global production system while owning less of the means of production. Corporations reduce their risks and costs by subcontracting or outsourcing manufacturing and services. Accordingly, global production entails

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maximizing the use of low-wage, disenfranchised labor. The social change brought by economic globalization has been disruptive for peoples in many societies, especially those in developing countries. The restructuring of subsistence farming to cash-crop agribusiness has forced small-land owning peasants off their land and into the wage workforce. Similarly, artisans and small-scale industrialists lose their livelihoods and must find paid work in the factories subcontracted to transnational corporations. Factory closings in capital rich countries and transfers of production jobs to lower-wage domestic or foreign locations are also an effect of the global restructuring of production. Transnational migration accelerates as the unemployed and dispossessed assimilate into the transnational wage workforce supplying flexible, costefficient labor for global production system. Modern slavery (as human trafficking, debt bondage, contract peonage, and such) is a result of the global production system. Slavery adds surplus value through indirect cost savings passed through production chains. Contemporary slaves are exploited in the least-regulated points of production, typically where raw labor is employed at the bottom of a chain of subcontracted services. Such sectors lack monitoring and law enforcement, or official corruption permits hyperexploitation. Contemporary slave labor is found predominantly in agriculture (such as cotton, cocoa, and sugar),

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manufacturing (such as garments, carpets, and bricks), mining, construction, domestic work, and the sex industry. Steven Lize See also: Domestic Servants; Human Trafficking for Labor Purposes; Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation; Sharecropping; World Trade Organization.

Further Readings Bales, Kevin. Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Dicken, Peter. Global Shift: Transforming the World Economy, 3rd ed. New York: Guilford Press, 1998. Dunning, John H. Global Capitalism at Bay? New York: Routledge, 2001. Sassen, Saskia. The Global City, 2nd ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001. Sklair, Leslie. Globalization and Its Alternatives, 3rd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Wallerstein, Immanuel. The Capitalist World Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.

ECPAT ECPAT is an international network of organizations and individuals working together to eliminate the commercial sexual exploitation of children. It is the main global umbrella organization focusing on that particular form of modern slavery. The acronym initially meant “End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism”; it now stands for “End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography,

and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes.” The organization was set up in 1991 in Bangkok, Thailand, where the secretariat of ECPAT International is still located. ECPAT now has a global span: it is represented in more than 60 countries in both the developed and the developing world. Each national branch has its own scope and structure; for example, ECPAT UK, a registered charity since 2004, started as a coalition of nine UK organizations working on children’s issues (Anti-Slavery International, Barnardo’s, Jubilee Campaign, NSPCC, Save the Children UK, The Body Shop Foundation, The Children’s Society, UNICEF UK, and World Vision UK), whereas ECPAT Thailand is coordinated around a prevention project consisting of six implementing partners working at the community level in north Thailand. Two key dates in ECPAT history are 1996, when the First World Congress against the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children took place in Stockholm, Sweden, and 2001, with the Second World Congress in Yokohama, Japan. An Agenda for Action has now been adopted by 161 countries whose national governments have committed to act in order to safeguard children against commercial sexual exploitation, especially in tourism contexts. The agenda covers five areas: coordination and cooperation (not only at local/national levels, but also internationally), prevention (especially through education and communication), protection (especially through


the implementation of laws to criminalize the acts of the nationals of the countries of origin), child participation (involving children in the programs and the decision making processes), as well as recovery and reintegration (to adopt a nonpunitive approach to the children victims of commercial sexual exploitation, and also to provide them with social, medical, and psychological support). Overall, national governments seem to have taken their commitment seriously, especially with regard to legislation. Mediatized cases of sexual exploitation of children (child prostitution, child pornography) have contributed to public support for the cause. On its website, ECPAT International describes its mission as “to encourage the world community to ensure that children everywhere enjoy their fundamental rights free from all forms of commercial sexual exploitation.” Concretely, ECPAT works toward that aim in several ways: advocacy, campaigning, and awareness raising; training; networking; capacity building; research and dissemination of information through international monitoring and sharing good practices. ECPAT complements the work of many other organizations it liaises with, from UNICEF (United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund) to the World Tourism Organization. In 1998 ECPAT was awarded the Rafto Prize from the Rafto Foundation for Human Rights. Loykie Loïc Lominé

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See also: Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Women and Children; Convention on the Rights of the Child; United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund.

Further Readings Code of Conduct for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation in Travel and Tourism, available from http:// www.thecode.org. ECPAT International: http://www.ecpat .net.

El Monte, California, Sweatshop Case The El Monte, California, sweatshop raid of August 2, 1995, awakened the American public to the existence of modern day slavery in the United States. On that day, federal, state, and local law enforcement officials freed 72 workers who had been subject to forced labor. Although sporadic examples of slavery had continued throughout the 20th century, this case was the largest single example of industrial slave labor in modern America. Publicity surrounding the case brought attention to the continued existence of slavery in the United States and the minimal criminal penalties imposed upon those who were convicted. The illegal sewing operation was located in a seven-unit apartment complex in El Monte, a suburb of Los Angeles. This large contract sewing shop was a family-owned business run by the matriarch Suni Manasurangkun.

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The business, which she had begun as early as 1988, was a sophisticated operation that produced clothing under contract for major labels and nationally prominent retailers. The operators ran two front shops in the Los Angeles garment district to provide a theoretical source of production when representatives from retailers and manufacturers had come to inspect facilities and their merchandise. The Manasurangkun family solicited experienced garment workers for their operation in Thailand. Recruiters lured mostly young female workers to El Monte with promises of clean factory work for high wages. Workers signed indenture agreements committing them to repay 120,000 baht (about $5,000 in 1997 dollars) to cover transportation costs. The workers understood that they had made a commitment for a three-year stint and would be returned to Thailand at the end of the term. They were brought through Los Angeles International Airport using fraudulent passports. On arrival in Los Angeles, the sweatshop operators confiscated the doctored passports and put them to work. The Thai workers were held captive in a two-story apartment building that was enclosed by a security gate, razor wire, and guards. The workers slept up to nine in a room. The fear and disorientation of being held in a strange land, the guard force, and threats of physical harm to them and their families in Thailand, discouraged the workers from escaping. The workers usually sewed 16 hours a day, seven days a week. They sewed

on modern machines in what had previously been the garages, dining rooms, and living rooms of the apartments. A typical schedule was: wake at 6:00 a.m., begin work at 7:00 a.m., lunch around noon, dinner around 6:00 p.m., and end the day’s work around midnight. The workers received wages averaging 69 cents an hour. From these meager earnings. the sweatshop operators deducted money to repay the contracted debt. Workers also had to buy, at inflated prices, food and personal supplies from a company store located in one of the units. In 1995 state investigators from the California Department of Industrial Relations, acting on a tip from the boyfriend of an escaped worker, staked out the apartment complex and gathered enough information to obtain a search warrant for illegal work within the home. In a coordinated multiagency raid, the authorities arrested eight of the clandestine garment shop operators and took the 72 Thai workers into Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) custody. After nine days in detention, the INS released the workers and granted them temporary permission to remain in the United States as material witnesses in the case against the sweatshop operators. Later, they were allowed to apply for permanent residency. In February 1996, the eight operators of the El Monte sweatshop pled guilty in federal court to conspiracy, involuntary servitude (slavery), and smuggling and harboring of illegal immigrants. The sentences ranged from


two to seven years and a $250,000 fine. During the raid, officers seized documents that showed that a number of manufacturers and retailers were directly contracting with the El Monte sweatshop. By 1999, 11 companies— Mervyn’s, Montgomery Ward, Tomato, Bum International, L. F. Sportswear, Millers Outpost, Balmara, Beniko, F-40 California, Ms. Tops, and Topson Downs—agreed to pay more than $3.7 million dollars in back wages to the 150 workers who had labored in the El Monte sweatshop and its front operation. These companies made no admission of wrongdoing. The El Monte shop was one of the most egregious examples of sweatshop labor in the 20th century. However, many of its practices, such as indenturing workers, using undocumented labor, threats of violence, and violating wage and hour laws are not uncommon practices. Outrage over the meager sentences in the El Monte case led to the passage of the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000, which increased the sentences for slavery and made prosecution easier. Harry R. Rubenstein and Peter Liebhold See also: Sweatshop Watch.

Further Readings Bender, Daniel, and Richard Greenwald, eds. Sweatshop USA: The American Sweatshop in Historical and Global Perspective. New York: Routledge, 2003.

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Liebhold, Peter, and Harry R. Rubenstein. Between a Rock and a Hard Place: A History of American Sweatshops, 1820– Present. Los Angeles: UCLA Asian American Studies Center and Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance, 1999. Ross, Robert J. S. Slaves to Fashion: Poverty and Abuse in the New Sweatshops. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004. Schoenberger, Karl. Levi’s Children: Coming to Terms with Human Rights in the Global Market Place. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000.

Emancipation Proclamation (1863) The Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, declared free all slaves in territory still controlled by the Confederate States of America. Its political effect was to transform the Union’s war to subjugate the Confederacy into a war to free the slaves. The identification of the war effort with the antislavery cause ultimately led to the end of slavery throughout the United States. When Abraham Lincoln was elected president in November 1860, he insisted that his intentions in no way extended to the elimination of slavery from the states where it already existed. Careful observers knew that Lincoln had drawn a connection in 1858 between keeping slavery out of the western territories— the Republican Party’s stated aim— and the ultimate extinction of slavery in the rest of the country, but Lincoln’s point was that he did not mean to take

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any measures directly against slavery in the southern states. By the time Lincoln was inaugurated president in March 1861, seven states had already seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. Soon, the Confederate forces’ firing on Fort Sumter in the harbor at Charleston, South Carolina, started the military conflict. Although some abolitionists wanted to let the South go in peace, others urged Lincoln to announce that he would free the slaves. Lincoln hedged. He said that he would be happy to have the seceded states return to the Union on whatever terms regarding slavery; his aim was simply to restore Union authority in the Confederate states. Meanwhile, many black people in the Confederacy took matters into their own hands. Where they had the chance, they fled to Union lines, and some attempted to join Union armies. They made clear that so far as they were concerned, the Union effort was an antislavery effort. In the end, Lincoln decided that slavery lay at the root of the Confederate war effort and that the contributions of black fighting men were essential to Union victory. Shortly after the Union victory in the Battle of Antietam, he issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862. Seceding states, he said, had 100 days to submit to Union authority, or else their slaves would be forever freed. Lincoln followed up with his January 1, 1863, Emancipation Proclamation. First, he claimed to be acting “by

virtue of the power vested in [him] as Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion . . . and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion.” Lincoln believed the reference to the war was legally necessary to justify the measure, because his proposal certainly did not fall within the president’s quotidian powers. Nowhere in the U.S. Constitution was the president given power to abolish types of property of which he disapproved or thought dangerous; only the special circumstances of the Civil War justified him in abolishing it. Calling attention to the context of his action was also politically necessary. After all, Lincoln was the first Republican president, and political opponents of his party had long claimed that the Republican Party was a “black” party and that it was intent on abolition. Here, characteristically, Lincoln shifted responsibility: This is southerners’ fault, he said implicitly; if they had not declared and fought to defend their independence, he would not have faced an imperative to free their slaves. The Emancipation Proclamation enumerated the states and regions of states to which it applied: those still controlled by the Confederate authorities. Again, this portion of the document seemed constitutionally necessary to Lincoln because he only claimed authority to free slaves under the mantle of military necessity; where the rebellion had been defeated, the necessity had ceased to exist. Ironically, that meant that slavery still remained legal

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in slave areas already under Union control. Thus, no one was freed instantly by the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln called upon slaves not to use violence except in self-defense and to work for “reasonable wages” where given the opportunity. He further stated that people freed by the proclamation would be accepted into Union military service, which resulted in the use of more than 180,000 African American troops before the end of the Civil War. In the document’s conclusion, Lincoln called down “the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God,” as he wanted both domestic and foreign opinion, so essential to the Union’s successful prosecution of the war, to endorse his action. Kevin R. C. Gutzman See also: Lincoln, Abraham.

Further Readings Franklin, John Hope. The Emancipation Proclamation. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1963. Guelzo, Allen C. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004.

The Enlightenment The Enlightenment, an 18th-century European and American intellectual and cultural movement toward greater secularism and empiricism, produced both supporters and opponents of slavery. Its principal impact on the debate

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may have been to promote humanitarian antislavery arguments and secular, nonbiblical proslavery arguments. Like their 18th-century contemporaries, the thinkers and proponents of Enlightenment beliefs—the philosophes—employed a broader definition of slavery than that of chattel slavery. It was routine to refer to all who lived under despotic regimes as slaves. Slavery in this general sense was the condition of most people, both in the 18th century and throughout history, and most philosophes believed that it would continue to be so. Most philosophes expressed at least a verbal opposition to chattel slavery. Attacks on the misery of slaves and the hypocrisy and cruelty of those who exploited them or defended the practice of slavery were common in Enlightenment rhetoric at least from the Persian Letters (1721) of the French lawyer and philosophe Montesquieu. Philosophes combined denunciation of slavery’s cruelty with the assertion that it violated the natural and inalienable rights that slaves, like all people, possessed the same rights that would be asserted in classic Enlightenment-influenced political documents, such as the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man. However, the philosophes of Europe never campaigned against slavery as vigorously as they did against evils that struck them as closer to home, such as religious intolerance or judicial torture. The American philosophe Benjamin Franklin, toward the end of his life, was an exception.

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Although philosophes frequently attacked the treatment of Africans in the Atlantic slave trade, denunciation of slavery was not always correlated with egalitarian ideas about race. The leading Enlightenment philosopher David Hume, while opposing slavery, held extreme views on black intellectual inferiority, comparing blacks who had acquired proficiency in European intellectual disciplines to trained parrots. Enlightenment thinkers did avoid biblical justifications for slavery or belief in black inferiority in favor of “scientific racism.” Despite his proclaimed dislike of the institution of slavery, the slave owner Thomas Jefferson’s assertion of black racial inferiority in Notes on Virginia (1785) rested wholly on secular, scientific arguments of the Enlightenment rather than appeals to biblical authority. Hume and other late 18th-century philosophes (particularly in Scotland) also laid greater emphasis on the pragmatic argument against slavery, claim-

ing that it was economically harmful and that slave societies would not be as wealthy or productive as ones based on free labor. Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations (1776), considered the founding text of classical economics, argued that slavery was a bad bargain for masters, as free labor was ultimately cheaper since it required less supervision. William Earl Burns See also: Abolitionism.

Further Readings Gay, Peter. The Enlightenment: An Interpretation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969. Griswold, Charles L. Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Hannaford, Ivan. Race: The History of an Idea in the West. Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1996. Schiebinger, Londa. Nature’s Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science. Boston: Beacon Press, 1993.

F Children trafficked by falsified adoption are commonly bought, hired, kidnapped, or deceived by traffickers, most often with the consent of family or neighbors. Trends have shown that individuals are commonly smuggled from developing nations into rich countries and then dispersed or disposed as needed. Young women are typically promised high-paying or secure jobs as waitresses, dancers, and assistants for the elderly. Children might be guaranteed a place at a school to further their education. Adoptees are often given false certificates and travel papers in order to accompany a trafficker and other trafficking victims across borders. Upon arrival at final destination, individuals are commonly beaten, raped, or isolated in order to fashion a subservient worker. The commercial sex trade has been reported to be the third largest industry in the world, and many young girls and boys are fictively adopted for sexual exploitation every year. Working in strip clubs, massage parlors, brothels, private homes, or as street prostitutes, these individuals are generally forced to work off a “debt,” or the money the traffickers paid for purchase and travel expenses, as well as paying for shelter and food. False adoption to provide domestic laborers can follow a similar path with

False Adoption False adoption is the use of a legal adoption process or falsified adoption papers to smuggle women and children from country to country, most commonly for the purposes of sex slavery, drug trafficking, domestic labor, or organ transplantation. There are no official numbers of how many people are involved every year, yet it is currently known that false adoption is highly gendered, among which young girls are the primary targets of trafficking rings. False adoption has been recognized as a violation of human rights as early as 1924, although various forms of “liminal” adoption, in which the “adoptee” was attached to a free family with something less than the full rights and protections, had been a permanent fixture of global slavery in the ancient, medieval, and early modern worlds. The League of Nations Temporary Slavery Commission of 1924 listed “adoption of children, of either sex, with a view to their virtual enslavement, or the ultimate disposal of their persons” as one of many extant forms of modern slavery. Over recent decades, slave trafficking rings using an increasing variety of methods of false adoption have grown with the expansion and ease of mobility among countries. 255

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the enslaved individual usually working in private homes. In many cases, couples have traveled abroad, promising parents a better life for a child and extensive education in order to attain rights of adoption. In this manner, children are uprooted from families and brought to a foreign country, where they are subject to regular beatings, seclusion, or rape in order for their overseer to maintain dominance over them. In recent decades, there have been increasing accounts of young children, typically infants, abducted or bought from their mothers and sold to eager adoptive parents in Western nations. Trends have revealed that adoptive parents are most commonly seeking blonde-haired, blue-eyed babies, and will pay upward of $30,000 to obtain one of these children. These traffickers might provide fake passport and birth certificate documents for the adopting couples, who are most likely to be from the United States, Israel, or Great Britain. Although there are many international adoption agencies set up to provide help for these types of adoptions, the process can take anywhere from 2 to 10 years, therefore pushing couples who are desperate for a child to take actions into their own hands. Numerous international adoptions, both legal and illegal, have also been used for the purposes of transplant surgery. Unusual increases in the number of couples adopting disabled and physically defective children, have alerted agencies worldwide to the problem of selling organs and other body parts to a specific family or on black markets.

As a result of these horrifying findings, some countries around the world have succeeded in tightening policies for foreign adoptions and created a series of interview systems in order to ensure the safety of future adopted children. Although there are inadequate records of false adoption, it is believed that many of these women and children are easily victimized because of the lack of birth records or other documentation of their existence. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child has recently been discussing new protocol and protections for children worldwide, augmenting the rights and safeguards endorsed in the treaty of 1989. Stephanie Lasalle and William H. Foster See also: Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation.

Further Reading Bales, Kevin. Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.

Fanon, Frantz (1925–1961) Frantz Fanon was born in Fortde-France, the capital of Martinique, in 1925 to a relatively prosperous, middleclass black family. In a normal French colonial pattern, Fanon grew up speaking and thinking of himself as French. He did, however, take classes in secondary school from the négritude poet Aimé Césaire, who called on Antillians

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to rediscover their African roots. Disillusioned with the racism and repression of the pro-Nazi Vichy regime in Martinique, the 17-year-old Fanon left his homeland in early 1943 with the intention of joining the forces of the Free French, whose liberation he considered inextricably bound up with his own and that of Martinique. With the sudden end of the Vichy regime in Martinique a short time later, Fanon was repatriated but later left for Europe to participate in the effort to liberate the “motherland,” toward which he felt a deep loyalty at the time. He arrived in the Moroccan port of Casablanca for basic training in 1944. While stationed in North Africa and subsequently in France, where he would be decorated for distinguished conduct, Fanon made the depressing discovery that the French army, which he had hoped would save Europe and the world from fascism and racism, was itself hierarchically structured along racial and ethnic lines, privileging Europeans above North Africans. After Germany’s capitulation in 1945, the 20-year-old Fanon returned to Martinique, where he finished his secondary school education and, after some discussion with local authorities, was ultimately awarded a grant available to war veterans for the pursuit of higher education. The following year, Fanon began his medical studies in Lyon, France. It is likely that his growing awareness of racism in France influenced his decision to specialize in psychiatry. In 1952, he published his first book, Peau noire, masques blancs (trans. 1967,

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Ideologist of the anticolonial and Black Power movements, Frantz Fanon used his education in psychiatry to reveal the lasting impact of racism on the psyche. (Algerian Ministry of Information)

Black Skin, White Masks), in which he drew from his psychiatric training to demonstrate the impact of racism and colonialism on the black psyche. In Peau noire, masques blancs, Fanon argues that color and race are not essences, but rather it is the “white gaze” that he encounters on the streets Having completed his psychiatric training, Fanon decided to move in 1953 to the Algerian town of Blida, where his expertise was more urgently needed. A year later, the Algerian Revolution began. This war, which would become the most brutal war of decolonization in France’s history, became the driving force of Fanon’s life and

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writing. Although Fanon considered joining the armed struggle in the mountains, he decided that he would be more useful to the Front de Liberación Nationale (FLN) at the psychiatric hospital in Blida, where he could safely harbor wounded fighters and treat their psychological ailments. Upon being discovered by the French police, Fanon went into exile in Tunis at the end of 1956 and emerged as the national spokesman for the FLN. He was an ongoing contributor to El Moudjahid, the FLN newspaper that sought to secure the support of the international left. After the establishment of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Algeria (GPRA), based in Tunis, Fanon became part of its diplomatic corps. In 1957, he became the GPRA’s ambassador to Ghana and began promoting the cause of Algerian independence in such other black African countries as Guinea, Ivory Coast, Congo, and Mali. In 1959, Fanon published L’An, V de la Révolution algérienne (trans. 1965, A Dying Colonialism), a collection of essays on topics related to the revolution. This work was seized by the police three months after its publication. In 1960, Fanon was diagnosed with leukemia. During a brief period of remission in 1961, he was able to complete his greatest work, Les Damnés de la terre (trans. 1965, The Wretched of the Earth), which would be a central text of the Black Power movements in the United States and the Caribbean. Fanon died of leukemia in 1961, when he was only 36 years old. A

number of his essays were posthumously collected and published in 1964 as Pour la révolution Africaine (trans. 1976, Toward the African Revolution). Fanon’s ideas inspired the Black Power movement in the United States and have left a lasting impression on important African and Caribbean anticolonial writers, novelists, and activists. Maria de Jesus Cordero Further Readings Bulhan, Hussein Abdilahi. Frantz Fanon and the Psychology of Oppression. New York: Plenum Press, 1985. Geismar, Peter. Fanon. New York: Dial Press, 1971. Gordon, Lewis R., Denean Sharpley-Whiting, and Renee White. Fanon: A Critical Reader. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1996. Macey, David. Frantz Fanon: A Life. New York: Picador, 2001. Onwuanibe, Richard C. A Critique of Revolutionary Humanism: Frantz Fanon. St. Louis: W. H. Green, 1983.

Female Genital Mutilation Female genital mutilation or clitoridectomy refers to the partial or full removal of the clitoris. While it sometimes goes by the name of female circumcision, this is a misnomer, and technically refers to the practice of removing the clitoral hood. While clitoridectomies were performed by doctors during the late 19th and early 20th centuries to control masturbation and other signs of “excessive” sexuality in women, the practice


is most associated with Arab, Muslim, and North African countries. Today, clitoridectomies and infibulation, in which the clitoris and labia minora are removed and the labia majora is sewn together, are commonly performed on young girls around the world. West Africa, North Africa, East Africa, and the Arab Peninsula are the areas in which it is most commonly practiced, although it is also found in any country with large immigrant populations from these areas, such as France and the United States. Among the Muslim populations in Somalia, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Mali, as many as 95 percent of all women are reported to have undergone the procedure, and in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Iraq, it is also common. It is more commonly practiced in Sunni Muslim cultures than in Shia communities; Shia Muslims often remove instead a piece of the clitoral hood. In total, the World Health Organization estimates that 100 million women have undergone genital mutilation procedures, while Amnesty International estimates that 130 million women have been operated on, more than 2 million each year. Girls are typically operated on during their early childhoods, and always prior to the onset of puberty. By removing the clitoris, the mothers and grandmothers who typically perform the surgeries ensure that their daughters can experience no sexual pleasure; this is done to ensure that they will be virgins upon marriage and will remain

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faithful to their husbands after marriage. A girl who has had her clitoris removed is considered to be a good candidate for marriage, whereas one who has not is often considered unmarriageable, or at the very least, she will not fetch a very high bride-price. In many Arab and Muslim cultures, women are said to be sexually dangerous, and female genital mutilation is a way to control their sexuality. Because a woman’s behavior can bring shame or honor on her family and her husband’s family, by ensuring that she does not stray there is no danger of her shaming her family. In addition, a woman who does not stray in marriage will only bear children who are legitimate heirs to her husband’s lineage, which is also critical in the patrilineal societies in which clitoridectomy is practiced. Finally, the clitoris is seen as a masculine organ in some cultures so a girl with a clitoris is seen as masculine, not to mention dirty. In Africa, the practice is often associated with traditional initiation rites, and sometimes occurs at the same time that boys’ circumcision rituals do, and in some non-Muslim cultures, such as among the Masai, it is not intended to control female sexuality, but simply to mark a girl as a woman, although the result is the same. The surgery itself is performed typically outside of a hospital and by women who are not medical practitioners. Tools include scissors, knives, or pieces of glass, and sterilization is not practiced, nor is anesthesia used. Because of the conditions, the practice,

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which is quite painful, commonly results in infections, excessive bleeding, scarring, and sometimes death, and long-term problems include urinary and reproductive difficulties, including, ironically, sterility. The most common result, however, is the intended one, which is the elimination of a woman’s main organ of sexual pleasure, and thus is opposed by feminists as a human rights violation. While Western and non-Western feminists as well as health and human rights organizations are opposed to female genital mutilation, women continue to perform the procedure on their daughters and granddaughters. For them, there are a great many benefits. When women’s only opportunity in life, for example, is tied to getting married, then a procedure that ensures marriageability and increases the odds of finding a higher status husband will certainly be a powerful force. Also, in countries where adultery by a woman is punishable by death, or, at the very least, where a woman who strays from her marriage is ostracized forever, then ensuring chastity by any means is certainly an important concern. A promiscuous girl in these cultures is often a girl who is risking her life. In African countries without as great a focus on a girl’s sexuality, clitoridectomies are performed as part of a rite of passage that makes a girl a woman, raising her status and demonstrating her maturity, submissiveness, and ability to withstand pain (which will be needed in childbirth). It is also often seen as an important community ritual in which

the girl receives moral instruction from her elders and is bonded to the generations before her who have undergone the procedure. Advocates also note that girls who undergo the procedure will have a stronger bond with their husbands since there will be no risk of her cheating on him, that he will treat her better knowing that she will not stray, and that she will love him even more because her love will not be based on sexual passion. Female genital mutilation is prohibited throughout the West, and some African countries prohibit it as well, such as the Central African Republic, the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Guinea, Senegal, Tanzania, and many countries, such as Indonesia and Egypt, have been attempting to eradicate it through education. Others are trying to ensure that the procedure is only done in a hospital. Thanks to outreach work by health officials and to the United Nations’ condemnation of the practice, many countries have seen a drop in the practice. In 2006, the United States saw its first criminal case against female genital mutilation go to court, when an Ethiopian immigrant was charged and convicted with cutting off his 5-yearold daughter’s clitoris with a pair of scissors. There are well over 100,000 girls living in the United States whose parents come from countries that practice female genital mutilation, so this will no doubt not be the last case. Some African and Arab feminists who oppose female genital mutilation also oppose Western attempts to abolish it, and instead are working to


educate women and to create alternative initiation rituals for girls. Women’s health organizations in Kenya, for example, have come up with a ritual called Ntanira Na Mugambo, which means circumcision by words, as a replacement for traditional rituals. Another issue that would need to be addressed is to change the economic circumstances that only allow a woman economic and social mobility through marriage. In the West, a small number of modern body modification practitioners choose to have their clitorises removed in order to negate their sexuality. Some women elect to have their clitorises removed, and others remove the clitoral hood and often the labia as well, resulting in just a vaginal and urethral opening. Margo DeMello Further Reading Adams, K. E. “What’s ‘Normal’: Female Genital Mutilation, Psychology, and Body Image.” Journal of the American Medical Women’s Association 59 (2004): 168–170. Althaus, Frances A. “Female Circumcision: Rite of Passage or Violation of Rights?” International Family Planning Perspectives 23, no. 3 (1997): 130–133. Salecl, Renata. “Cut in the Body: From Clitoridectomy to Body Art.” In S. Ahmed and J. Stacey, eds. Thinking through the Skin. New York: Routledge, 2001.

Fernando Pó, São Tomé, and Príncipe Located in the Atlantic Ocean off equatorial Africa, the islands of Fernando

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Pó, São Tomé, and Príncipe have had associations with slavery and slave trading for five centuries. In the 1470s, Portuguese seafarers sailing around Africa discovered four islands in the Gulf of Guinea. Tiny and uninhabited, the southernmost, Annobón, served as a foothold. Two larger, also uninhabited, islands, São Tomé and Príncipe, were located to the northeast. Finally, a still larger island lay north of these. Forested and populated by the Bubi people, it was dubbed “Formosa” (“Beautiful”), later officially named Fernando Pó. These islands form the southern half of a volcanic chain that includes Mount Cameroon and the Adamawa Range. Although their rich soils and sloping mountains allow remarkably varied cultivation, they have a disease-prone climate with oppressive humidity and frequent rains. Quick to note the islands’ economic and strategic potential, the Portuguese introduced coffee to Fernando Pó, sugar to São Tomé, and slaving throughout the region. Lisbon’s attention focused on São Tomé, from which the Portuguese dispatched 4,000 to 5,000 slaves per year throughout the 16th century. However, the 17th and 18th centuries were years of decline, when São Tomé served little purpose beyond provisioning slave ships that were bound for Brazil. The Treaty of San Ildefonso (1777) gave Fernando Pó, Annobón, and a section of west African coast to Spain in return for an extension of Portuguese Brazil’s boundaries. Madrid took little interest in Africa since Spain’s slaving operations were

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tiny. After the abolition of slave trading north of the equator in 1817, few saw a purpose for Fernando Pó. The Spanish leased it to Great Britain as a naval base for antislavery patrols, and the headquarters of the Mixed Commission for the Suppression of the Slave Traffic was transferred from Freetown, Sierra Leone, to Fernando Pó in 1827. Slaves rescued by the Royal Navy were settled on the island. They were joined by freed Angolan slaves from São Tomé, Crioulos (Portuguese African mulattos), and immigrants from Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria. Collectively, these peoples became the Fernandinos, a tightly knit entrepreneurial group that eventually formed much of the island’s elite. Noting similarities between Fernando Pó’s climate and soil and that of the West Indies, ex-slave William Pratt sent off to the Caribbean for cacao seeds that proved highly successful. Soon Fernando Pó, and later São Tomé and Príncipe, became latifundiary monocultures based on cacao. Refusing to sell Fernando Pó to Britain, which used the island to establish control over Nigeria, the Spanish government reasserted its control in the mid-19th century. At the Berlin West Africa Conference (1884–1885), Madrid claimed 800,000 square kilometers of the coast, but gained only the 26,000 square-kilometer enclave of Río Muni. Dramatic increases in world cocoa demand in the late-19th century brought Catalan planters to Fernando Pó, reputedly to produce the world’s best cacao. Spanish plantation companies amalgamated small farms into

some 50 plantations totaling 50,000 hectares by paying the Bubi to shift to less favorable land. However, labor was a limiting factor. Even if the status of the Bubis and Fernandinos had not eliminated them from the labor pool, their numbers were insufficient to run the plantations. Furthermore, the Fang people who dominated Río Muni proved difficult to assimilate. The Spanish and, to a lesser extent, the Portuguese, who had faced similar problems, began recruiting Kru laborers from Liberia. On São Tomé and Príncipe, the Portuguese preferred using imported labor from their colonies, particularly Cape Verde, but also Angola, Mozambique, and even Macao. Reports of exploitative practices on São Tomé had already resulted in a British-inspired cocoa boycott at the beginning of the 20th century. New malpractices soon emerged as Liberian recruiters took commissions for each man hired, often stealing wages that were held in trust. A 1923 Liberian law banning such practices was overturned after legislators were bribed. Following Liberia’s 1927 presidential election, the defeated candidate, Thomas J. Faulkner, fled to the United States and accused his government of election irregularities and of condoning the forcible recruitment of laborers. He claimed that work on the islands was tantamount to slavery. Liberian President C. B. D. King denied the accusations and asked the League of Nations to send an investigative commission, which consisted of a former Liberian president, an African American, and a


Scot. Their report in 1930 stated that, “a large proportion of the contract laborers . . . have been recruited under conditions of criminal compulsion scarcely distinguishable from slave raiding and slave trading.” King resigned and Liberian labor recruitment ended. The Spanish turned to British-ruled Nigeria, whose crowded Eastern Region had manpower that was accustomed to migration. Anglo-Spanish labor agreements proved better initially, but wages and living conditions were hardly improved over the next 35 years. Nevertheless, Nigerian contract workers soon outnumbered all others on Fernando Pó. With Spain’s admission to the United Nations in 1955, respectability became necessary, if Madrid was to live down its fascist past and retrieve Gibraltar from Britain. Following a brief campaign of repression against mainly Fang activists, Spain’s Franco regime granted independence to Equatorial Guinea, a federation of Fernando Pó, Annobón, and Río Muni, in late 1968. Paradoxically, Fernando Pó, one of the first places in Africa to see European penetration, was paired with Río Muni, the continent’s last area to be fully mapped. The economies and societies of the islands and mainland differed profoundly. The Fang outnumbered all other groups combined. A hastily promoted Fang civil servant, Francisco Macías Nguema was elected president, but in March 1969, Macías seized dictatorial powers and liquidated most of his opponents. The Spaniards left the new country en masse and the cacao plantations fell idle. After

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Macías stopped paying the wages of the Nigerian laborers, the Nigerian government refused to renew labor agreements with Equatorial Guinea and its military evacuated some 40,000 contract laborers. This endangered the cacao crops that were due to be picked early that summer. Ultimately, Macías’ solution was slavery. His Compulsory Labor Act (1972) required young men to do a year’s unpaid work. Later, 60,000 “national workers,” including all unmarried women, were to be recruited. After only about 700 people volunteered, he decreed that all citizens over age 15 were to render compulsory manual labor. Over 2,000 people from each of Río Muni’s 10 districts were arrested and transported to Fernando Pó as unpaid laborers. Penalties for bad work and laziness included beatings, rape, withholding rations, and execution. Macías’ paranoia became allembracing. Intellectuals, businessmen, and the Catholic Church were all victimized. Tens of thousands were murdered and approximately one-third of the population fled into exile. After having some of his own relatives executed, Macías was overthrown by his nephew, Lt. Col. Teodoro Obiang Nguema M’ba N’Zogo, on August 3, 1979. With the subsequent discovery of offshore oil, cocoa ceased to be significant. Though less murderous, Obiang’s regime had a 26-year record of corruption, torture, and election fraud. Throughout a half century of dictatorial rule, first under António de Oliveira Salazar, then Marcello Caetano, Portugal had refused to free its colonies.

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In April 1974, Portuguese colonialism ended suddenly when the Caetano government was overthrown. Led by Manuel Pinto da Costa, the Movimento de Libertação de São Tomé e Príncipe (MLSTP) led the former Portuguese islands on a pro-Soviet, Marxist path. With the demise of the Soviet bloc, São Tomé and Príncipe have sought to establish a diversified capitalist economy. Randall Fegley See also: Francisco.

Liberia;

Macías

Nguema,

Further Readings Fegley, Randall. Equatorial Guinea: An African Tragedy. Bern: Peter Lang, 1989. Hodges, Tony, and M. D. D. Newitt. São Tomé and Príncipe: From Plantation Colony to Microstate. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1988. Liniger-Goumaz, Max. Small Is Not Always Beautiful: The Story of Equatorial Guinea. London: Hurst, 1988. Sundiata, I. K. From Slaving to Neoslavery. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996.

Fishing Platforms One of the most notorious child labor practices in the contemporary world that has been equated with a form of slavery is the exploitation of children as laborers on fishing platforms off the islands of Sumatra and Java in the nation of Indonesia. Estimates suggest that anywhere from 2,000 to 19,000 children may be forced to labor for long hours in an extremely hazardous environment.

Human rights groups from around the world have condemned the practice and called upon the government of Indonesia to take positive action to outlaw the practice and prosecute employers who take advantage of children in such a callous fashion. There are perhaps as many as 1,500 fishing platforms, called jermals, that are located in the coastal waters off Sumatra and Java. These rickety platforms, which are constructed of wooden planks with bamboo supports, dot the coastal landscape; some of them are small, but others are as large as to contain 30,000 square feet of work area. On average, an estimated 10 children per platform are employed to operate the nets and generate huge profits for the lucrative Indonesian commercial fishing industry. Although the children do receive wages—estimated to be about 30 cents per day—the harsh conditions, long hours, and virtual kidnapping that are involved make the labor of children on the fishing platforms a contemporary slavelike practice. Children from interior villages are generally lured by recruiters to work on the jermals, and poor parents often encourage their own children to accept the offers as a means of earning a meager income and to help keep the family from destitution. Sometimes the recruiters simply round up homeless street children and take them to the platforms where they are put to work. Once the children are delivered to the platforms where they must labor, they are held as virtual hostages, often forced to work 10 to 12 hours per day in order

Forced Prostitution

to operate the nets incessantly as they harvest the profits from the sea. There are tremendous dangers that are inherent in these labors as children working on the unstable platforms sometimes find themselves ensnared in ropes and nets, resulting in their falling into the sea. In addition, the nets sometimes ensnare dangerous sea snakes that are poisonous, and without adult supervision or access to rudimentary medical care, many of the child workers die painful deaths as toxins take their lives. The children are also exposed to the elements, and the risks of typhoons or possible tsunamis make their labor and their survival quite precarious. Although Indonesian law bans the use of child laborers under the age of 18, there is ample anecdotal evidence to suggest that these laws are not enforced with respect to the fishing platforms. An investigation conducted by the international human rights organization Anti-Slavery International documented the use of young children in this dangerous activity, and childrights activists have called upon political leaders in Indonesia to end the practice. Junius P. Rodriguez See also: Anti-Slavery International; Child Labor; Indonesia.

Further Readings Bangun, Tantyo, and Jonathan Sprague. “Indonesia’s Child Laborers.” World Press Review 46, no. 10 (1999): 40. Higgs, David. “Indonesia.” Life 21, no. 13 (1998): 28–29.

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Sofian A. “Gone Fishing.” Inside Indonesia 52 (October–December 1997). http:// www.insideindonesia.org/edition-52/ gone-fishing-3009841.

Forced Prostitution The distinction between “free” and “forced” prostitution, developed in feminist literature, has significantly influenced the “othering” of the prostitute in the developing world and, especially, the Asian prostitute. This distinction is a futile and unjustifiable one, yet these categories have influenced local and national legislation and attitudes, including prostitutes’ own constructions of self and identity. Stereotypes of Asian prostitutes are received as “truth” through repetition, a lack of serious research, and the negation of Asian workers’ own voices. The distorted realities created by the imposition of stereotypes and labels serve only to disempower Asian prostitutes, despite the rhetoric of feminists and AIDS programs, which ranges from the need to save these victims to the need for peer education and community development. Although there is considerable debate about prostitution within feminism, the work discussed here comes from the abolitionist end of the spectrum, influenced by such authors as Andrea Dworkin (1987), Catharine MacKinnon (1987), and Kathleen Barry (1979). MacKinnon’s thesis is that all sex is prostitution, and all prostitution and pornography is a violation of women’s human rights, since female

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sexuality is entirely constructed as the object of male desire. A. Jolin (1994, p. 70) summarizes the effect of the sexual double standard as the “desire of men to ensure promiscuity for themselves and chastity for women,” which requires “setting aside” a group of women as prostitutes. The prostitute herself is not considered as a speaking subject, and the argument would fail if she were (the existence of male and transgender sex workers, and female clients, is ignored). The feminist abolitionist position can be traced back to 1875 and Josephine Butler’s International Abolitionist Association. Feminists theorize the patriarchal organization of society as meaning that clients must be men, an assumption that can be seen to be fundamentally flawed. Although it is evident that men are generally economically dominant, inequalities between countries and classes and increasing mobility sometimes place women in a position where they can afford to pay for sex, and in these situations, they often do. An example is the phenomenon of gigolos or tour guides in Indonesia. Young men are moving to tourist destinations, originally Bali’s Kuta Beach but now many other places as well, to pick up Western and Japanese women. The work is casually arranged but the men receive at least boarding and lodging, and at most, marriage and emigration. They form close-knit and hierarchical groups, monitoring the access of newcomers. If there is no inherent gender element to prostitution, then the argument that eliminating patriarchy would stop prostitution cannot hold.

As feminist arguments intend to demonstrate that patriarchy and male power are oppressing all women, they would be weakened if female prostitutes were constructed as deviant, manipulative, and self-motivated. Preferably, they are constructed as passive (silent) victims, a construction that is easier to maintain if the prostitute is “othered” by nationality or class. The prostitutes’ own voices must be negated: Those who insist that they choose the profession are coerced, either by evil (but shadowy) figures such as traffickers, or, in the absence of any other excuse, by poverty. For instance, according to Images Asia (1995, p. 4), the choice of Burmese prostitutes in Thailand is “not truly voluntary” because of their poor backgrounds. The organization WHISPER (Women Hurt in Systems of Prostitution Engaged in Revolt) also sees women’s choices as illusory. The concept that workers are forced by poverty is seen as untenable, because it could be applied to anyone who works for money to pay their way and/ or support dependents. No other workers are expected to justify their occupation or to feel so guilty about it: “If you leave out slavery at one end and being a film star at the other, most of us don’t choose our occupation. Work is a necessity” (Overs, 1994, p. 120). If there is forced prostitution, it is a form of aggravated assault; however, in conditions of urban poverty, prostitution is often vital to community survival strategies. This does not mean that it is predominantly an occupation of the poorest of the poor, or that the

Forced Prostitution

poorest women are all prostitutes, but in general, there is a class-driven imperative whereby occupational choices tend to increase with economic status and privilege. The argument of some prostitute activists, “A blow job is better than no job” (St. James, 1987, p. 21) can be dangerous. It can support the concept of poverty as force, with further implications that, for instance, prostitutes will practice unsafe sex for more money, prostitution is more acceptable for lower-class women than middle-class women, and that prostitutes would have to give up their own sexuality. It can be argued that most prostitutes make an informed decision, weighing a larger income against the local context of values, stigma, and so on (Murray, 1991, p. 125). Sukanya Hantrakul has argued that in Thailand “the evidence of widespread involuntary forced prostitution in the country and abroad is slim. More and more prostitutes . . . have shown their strong determination in stepping into the profession” (Manderson, 1992, p. 467). D. Porter has shown that poverty is not the crucial factor for Burmese migrants, because “most travelers, and especially those who cross the Thai border, do not come from the poorest ethnic groups but from Shan, lowland villages” (1997, p. 13). Most of the border crossers are men: the reality of any bus, pickup truck, or motorcycle load is that men occupy most seats, and while some women do sex work, they are highly mobile. Studies in the West have found sex workers to come from

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all classes, including a high proportion of students (Perkins, 1991; Fysh, 1995), often moving in and out of the profession; most establishments have a high turnover of workers. Both in the West and in Asia, workers enter the industry through relatives and friends (such as a village returnee with many new possessions) and may then save to become owners and recruiters themselves. The sex workers’ stake in the industry and its reproduction disproves the victimization argument. Many Westerners supported the feminist lobby and understood the free/ forced dichotomy as meaning that the lobby was not abolitionist or antiprostitution per se, which is problematic because the blurred definitions of force (including poverty) are used to override workers’ choices. If forced prostitution is understood to include all workers needing money, then it is not clear who is left in the “free” category. The free/forced prostitution dualism (linked to structure/agency and empowerment/ victimization) can be seen to disguise unsupportable and reactionary moral prejudices, including racism. The same criteria are not applied to Western prostitutes, and neither are East European workers usually constructed as eroticized, passive victims, even though they are currently traveling to various parts of the world to work, often illegally under apparently unfavorable conditions. Western prostitutes have become increasingly vocal and have even invaded academia on its own terms to challenge the antiporn lobby, while lower-class

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Asian women are still imagined (and eroticized) as passive and subservient. Having lost ground at home, the antiporn movement found a new lease of life with Asian prostitute victims, and in the absence of more accurate information, Western sex worker activists were also inclined to see Asian workers as victims. Abolitionists have blatantly exploited a stereotype of sex tourism, child prostitution, and trafficking to encourage popular outrage about the supposed wholesale exploitation of Asian prostitutes and from there to mount an attack on all prostitution. The idea of Asian sex workers as silent victims of Western patriarchy is being challenged. Recent research has focused on the local client base, and Asian sex workers themselves are becoming more involved in research, AIDS projects, and the international sex worker rights movement. However, there is a danger that Asian workers remain alienated even within the sex industry as a whole because of a prevailing view that they are being forced. With greater acceptance of a range of sexual practices, and more outspoken prostitutes, the whore/madonna dichotomy is losing its relevance in the West, but the boundaries of social acceptability have moved rather than disappeared. Alison Murray See also Abolitionism; Prostitution.

Further Readings Alexander, Priscilla. “Prostitution: Still a Difficult Issue for Feminists.” In Sex Work: Writings by Women in the Sex

Industry, ed. Frederique Delacoste and Priscilla Alexander. San Francisco: Cleis Press, 1987. Barry, Kathleen. Female Sexual Slavery. New York: New York University Press, 1979. Bell, Shannon. Reading, Writing and Rewriting the Prostitute Body. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. Doezema, Jo. “Forced to Choose: Beyond the Voluntary v. Forced Prostitution Dichotomy.” In Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance, and Redefinition, ed. Kamala Kempadoo and Jo Doezema, 34–50. New York: Routledge, 1998. Dworkin, Andrea. Intercourse. New York: Free Press, 1987. Fysh, Geoffrey. “Sex Work, HIV and Money.” MA thesis, Nepean University, Western Sydney, Australia, 1995. Hicks, R. “Women in Tourism: A Case Study of Bukit Lawang.” Honors thesis, Murdoch University, Perth, Australia, 1994. Images Asia. “Burmese Women Sex Workers in Thailand.” Oral Presentation for NGO Forum on Women, Beijing, China, August 30–September 8, 1995. Chiang Mai, Thailand: Images Asia, 1995. Jennaway M. “Strangers, Sex and the State in Paradise: The Engineering of Balinese Tourism and Its Economy of Pleasure.” Oral presentation for the State, Sexuality and Reproduction in Asia and the Pacific Conference, Australian National University, Canberra, July 1993. Jolin, A. “On the Backs of Working Prostitutes: Feminist Theory and Prostitution Policy.” Crime & Delinquency 40, no. 1 (January 1994): 69–83. MacKinnon, Catherine. Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.

Foreign Aid Manderson, L. “Public Sex Performances in Patpong and Explorations of the Edges of Imagination.” Journal of Sex Research 29, no. 4 (1992): 451–476. Murray, Alison. “Debt Bondage and Trafficking: Don’t Believe the Hype.” In Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance, and Redefinition, ed. Kamala Kempadoo and Jo Doezema, 51–64. New York: Routledge, 1998. Murray, Alison. No Money No Honey: A Study of Street Traders and Prostitutes in Jakarta. Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1991. Murray, Alison. Pink Fits: Sex, Subcultures and Discourses in the Asia-Pacific. Clayton, Australia: Monash Asia Institute, Monash University Press, 2001. Overs, Cheryl. “Sex Work, HIV and the State: An Interview with Nel Druce.” Feminist Review 48 (1994): 114–121. Perkins, Roberta, ed. Sex Work and Sex Workers in Australia. Sydney, Australia: University of New South Wales Press, 1991, 133–139. Porter, D. “A Plague on the Borders: HIV, Development and Traveling Identities in the Golden Triangle.” In Sites of Desire, Economies of Pleasure: Sexualities in Asia and the Pacific, ed. L. Manderson and M. Jolly. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Sloan, L. “Golden Handcuffs: Voices of Women Who Work in the Sex Trade Industry.” Oral Presentation at Representing Sexualities Conference, Sydney University, Sydney, Australia, December 8–10, 1995. St. James, Margo. “The Reclamation of Whores.” In Good Girls/Bad Girls: Feminists and Sex Trade Workers Face to Face, ed. Laurie Bell. Seattle: Seal Press, 1987.

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Foreign Aid Foreign aid has historically been associated with economic transfers that take place between and among nations, most commonly in the form of loans, debt forgiveness, or other special considerations. These arrangements generally take place between governments that sign memoranda of understanding to seal their agreements, but in the post– World War II era, other transnational agencies like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have also been quite influential in providing economic assistance to nations in the developing world. Although foreign aid can represent an economic transfer between any nations, most commonly the phrase applies to exchanges between Western industrial nations (the creditor nations) and the poorer states of the developing world (the debtor nations) that increasingly become beholden to wealth that can be procured through foreign aid. The creditor nations have historically maintained that there are no strings attached to their distribution of aid, but such declarations seem to belie custom, tradition, and practice. Critics of foreign aid have maintained that the system represents a form of neocolonialism in which creditor nations can maintain rigid economic control over debtor states without having to cope with the messy appearances of the old colonialism. A modern school of thought in international affairs has arisen from this perspective as some maintain that a type of dependency

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theory emerges from the tacit understanding and special relationships that emerge from the complex network of economic aid between and among nation-states. Perhaps the first effort to tie economic aid to antislavery efforts was promulgated by the government of Great Britain in the early 19th century as it sought to encourage other European powers to outlaw the transatlantic slave trade and deem slave trading a form of piracy. British efforts to sway European opinion often included the promise of economic benefits and most-favored-nation trading status to those countries that acceded to the antislavery demands. Still, in spite of such promises, nations such as Portugal and Spain resisted the steady persuasion by British diplomats for many years. Notwithstanding the accusation of neocolonialism, foreign aid during the first half of the 20th century seemed somewhat benign with no clear quid pro quo exchanges associated with the promise of economic assistance. This policy changed rather dramatically in the post–World War II era as the exigencies of the Cold War created a bipolar arrangement between the Western powers and the Soviet Union and its allies. For the Western powers, a pledge of anticommunism was necessary from nations that sought favorable economic promises of assistance. For a brief moment in the 1970s there was a change in policy regarding the most appropriate means of distributing financial assistance. Upon the adoption of the Helsinki Accords (1975), many of the world’s creditor nations began to

consider the human rights record of nations being considered for foreign aid. Although many anticommunist regimes had previously garnered substantial aid without having to maintain a sterling record on human rights, the new openness ushered in at Helsinki made it increasingly difficult for these states to remain in good standing in the eyes of Western powers and financial institutions. The human rights record of a nation faded from importance among key lenders in the 1980s. Instead, a new sense of missionary zeal for spreading democracy and free-market capitalism emerged as the chief motives of international economic aid. In addition, the belief emerged that most of the world’s debtor nations had not been careful stewards of the assistance that they had received in the past. Creditor nations formulated a series of Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs), the adoption of which was made requisite to those nations seeking additional foreign aid. The SAPs were designed with financial austerity in mind so that debtor nations would show real progress in funding their debts. In an effort to maintain the high percentage of gross domestic product that was required to fund interest on outstanding debt, most nations who unwillingly adopted SAPs found themselves having to trim funding from other parts of their national budgets. In most case it was funding for social services that was cut as nations invested less in education, health care, and environmental concerns in order to meet the demands of fiscal austerity that were being imposed by the creditor nations.

France

Contemporary forms of slavery flourish most in those settings where the social service sector of the national government is either weak or nonexistent. It is not coincidental that a tremendous increase in the volume of modern-day slavery occurred simultaneous to the abrogation on the part of many governments in the developing world to providing basic social services to their people. Women and children, always the most marginalized in society, suffered as a result, and many fell victim to new manifestations of slave trading that emerged in recent decades. A trend began to emerge in the late1990s and in the early years of the 21st century to encourage creditor nations to offer debt forgiveness to many of the world’s leading debtor states of the developing world. This proposal met with substantial resistance, but it attracted international grassroots support from many who believed that this might be the last best hope of eradicating poverty and all of its associated evils in the developing world. The Irish rock-star Bono of the band U-2 emerged as one of the leading spokespersons for this new campaign of debt forgiveness, and he used his celebrity to attract world leaders to the cause. In 2005 the leaders of the G-8 nations, meeting at their annual summit, agreed to adopt debt forgiveness as a new strategy of economic aid. Junius P. Rodriguez See also: World Bank.

Further Reading Goldman, Michael. Imperial Nature: The World Bank and Struggles for Social

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Justice in the Age of Globalization. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005.

France France first abolished slavery during the French Revolution by decree on February 4, 1794. Napoleon Bonaparte reinstated slavery in French colonies in 1802. It was again outlawed by Victor Schoelcher’s Decree of Abolition on April 27, 1848. The removal of slavery from French juridical codes created a paradoxical situation in which, because slavery no longer legally existed, no legal provisions addressed its practice. Unfortunately, the vectors of globalization continue to make coerced labor more prevalent, profitable, and practical. A “new slavery” has emerged to take advantage of economic opportunities, relative immiseration, corrupt governments, and callous democracies. More than 3,000 domestic slaves currently work in France. Speaking at the French National Assembly on January 24, 2002, Lionel Lucaq regretted the need to “speak of slavery in a country such as ours at the beginning of the third millennium.” Although illegal (New Penal Code, article 2212–1) and a violation of numerous international conventions, no specific French penal law(s) address its violation by citizens or residents on French territory. The TaubiraDelannon Law of February 18, 2001, introduced language into France’s new penal code making slavery is “crime against humanity” but failing to address infractions—a necessary prerequisite

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for addressing individual instances of slavery in the French legal system. The French National Assembly passed additional legislation, proposed by Christine Lazerches, outlawing all forms of slavery and establishing judicial remedies on January 24, 2002. Docked as the Law against Contemporary Slavery, it addresses “all situations designed for placing persons in a vulnerable condition through physical and/or moral constraint, notably through the confiscation of official documents, with the intention of extracting labor services not freely contracted and under circumstances contrary to human dignity.” This legislation has not, however, been passed by the Senate. Related legislation passed on March 18, 2003 (Law #2003–239) addressed slavery insofar as it relates to prostitution. Pending the Senate’s passage of the Law against Contemporary Slavery, the French legal system does not currently address the complexity of modern slavery. Not only has modern slavery become largely covert, but the very efforts to understand it often obscure it. One tendency has been to locate the phenomenon in someone else’s backyard. The evidence, however, conclusively shows that the abuse of domestic service is widely distributed across a broad spectrum of socioeconomic, educational, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds. Little then has changed since Ousmane Sembene’s film La Noire de . . . (Black Girl) won the 1967 Prix at the Cannes Film Festival for its depiction of the despair, abuse, neglect, and final suicide a young Senegalese

house servant/nanny in France. Until recently, most slaves worked as domestic servants. This is currently challenged by the dramatic influx of central European and Chinese prostitutes. Ninety-eight percent of domestic slaves in France are female: 70 percent women and 30 percent girls. They come from more than 40 different developing nations experiencing severe economic, religious, and economic difficulties. In West Africa, for example, traffickers make the rounds of remote villages to buy or kidnap children and recruit young women from unsuspecting families. Hopeful parents sometimes entrust their children to intermediaries who then transfer them to “host families.” The majority of domestic slaves in France arrive while legal minors—around the average age of 12 (all of the Committee against Modern Slavery’s victims came between the ages of 7 and 15). Employers select young, tractable, defenseless girls who pass through French immigration listed as a relative and, being too young to work, do not need a carte de séjour (work papers). They are “let go” when they reach the age of legal adulthood in their respective countries (usually at 21). A second, older group of women (between the ages of 20 and 60, and averaging around 29) come voluntarily but through the manipulations of false labor contracts that are frequently signed under duress. Lured by deceit and broken promises, they abandon their homes in the hopes of securing education, professional training, decent salaries, and a better lives.

France

Held as virtual prisoners, domestic slaves work relentlessly—as much as 18 hours a day, seven days a week, without vacation time. Compensation is either nonexistent or derisory. Their labor is sometimes farmed out and they may also be bartered or sold off. The confiscation of their passports and identification cards make them dependent on their employers. Contact with members of their families and the outside world is forbidden; they may be severely beaten if they are caught trying. Victims are partially or completely sequestered. Their mail, if any, is discarded. Those allowed to venture outside can only do so with permission and for specific purposes. The victims of domestic slavery suffer outrageous physical abuse. They report being bitten, stabbed, punched, and dragged by their hair. Slaves are frequently denied food; refrigerators are locked and food is accounted for. They are often forced to eat table scraps. Sleep deprivation is sometimes used to make the victims more docile and tractable. One woman was forced to sleep with a bell around her neck. They typically do not enjoy private living quarters. Many report having to sleep on the floor without bedding. One out of four is raped. Appropriate sanitary conditions are often withheld. The most basic medical care is routinely withheld. There have been cases in which only toilet water was provided for personal hygiene. Some have lost teeth as a result of malnutrition and the evident lack of dental care. Psychological abuse and deprivation cause the deepest and most enduring

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scars. Victims are verbally abused, repeatedly insulted, and threatened with continued violence. Psychological disorders frequently persist after their “liberation.” Suffering from post-traumatic stress disorders and low self-esteem, victims do not know who to trust and remain shut in on themselves. Because released slaves cannot legally work immediately upon their release, they experience great difficulties adjusting to forced inactivity. France remains one of the few European Union nations without positive legislation to coordinate the legal, administrative, and welfare assistance for the victims of modern slavery. The work of helping the victims is, by default, primarily left to benevolent humanitarian organizations. The Committee against Modern Slavery (CCEM); Slavery Tolerance Zero (ETZ); and an umbrella association consisting of 23 leading humanitarian agencies called First Article (Article Premier) compete for assistance from a variety of ministerial bodies, governmental agencies, and private donations. These agencies ensure that victims receive protection from further physical harm; emergency shelter and long-term housing; medical and mental health care; economic assistance, pro bono legal services; literacy, vocational training, and job placement; temporary resident status clearance; and, if desired, transportation to their country of origin. Given the inadequacy of legal remedies, agencies that assist victims of domestic slavery often employ labor laws to secure police intervention and press illegal labor charges: unlawful sequestration (NCP article 224–1);

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nonremuneration for labor services (NCP article 225–13); infractions of human dignity in housing and the workplace (NCP article 225–14); and illegal/ undocumented labor practices (NCP article 324–9). Upon registering a formal complaint, victims are now provided temporary visas designed to allow them to remain in the country long enough to participate in the legal process (Article 76 of the Law Concerning Internal Security of March 18, 2003). This arrangement makes the adoption of national policies difficult, limits the amount and flow of funding, makes enforcement unpredictable, and provides uneven treatment for victims. The period between 1999 and 2001 witnessed the hypermediatization of slavery in contemporary France. There was perhaps no better example than the highly publicized and debated case of Henriette Akofa. Bright and photogenic, she authored a best-selling account of her four years as a domestic slave—A Modern Slave (Une Esclave moderne). This case riveted national attention in such a way as to allow the French—with Akofa’s complicity—to believe that they had adequately and righteously addressed the problem. Ironically, Akofa’s story became emblematic of humanitarian rescue operations and the successful assimilation of a young African woman into French society. Philip Whalen Further Readings Akofa, Henriette. Une Esclave moderne. Paris: Editions Michel Lafon, ICFTU, 2000.

Ashagrie, K. “Statistics on Child Labor: A Brief Report.” International Labour Organization, Geneva. Bulletin des statistiques du travail 3 (1993). Beziat, Marc. “Mission d’Enquette au Bénin du 9 septembre au 5 octobre 1999.” Paris: General Secretary of CCEM. 1999. Cabral, Georgina Vaz. “Action national comparée de lutte contre l’esclavage moderne: la cas particulier de l’esclavage domestique.” Daphné Initiative JAH/98/ DAF/215 (1998). Colombe, Léa. “Pendant cinq ans, j’ai été esclave à Paris.” Femme Actuelle 791 (November): 22–28. Connor, M. “Esclavage domestique.” Commission sur l’égalité des chances pour les femmes et les hommes, Assemblée Parlemantaire, Conseil de l’Europe. AS/ Ega 2 (2001): 4. Cottin, Myriam, ed. “Décret d’abolition.” Reprinted in D’une abolition, l’autre. Marseille: Agone, 1998. Diène, Doudou. “Traite des Nègres: l’aveau,” Jeune Afrique Economique 3 (May 16, 1999). Gazier, Michèle. Bonne à tout dire. Télérama 40 (February 1999). “Slavery in the Year 2000.” Trade Union World (Brussels) 11 (2000). Stalker, Peter. Workers without Frontiers. Geneva: International Labour Organization, 2000.

Free the Slaves Free the Slaves is the main U.S. organization working to end slavery around the globe. Founded in 2000, Free the Slaves collaborates with other antislavery organizations through funding and networking, raises public

Freedom Network

awareness of contemporary slavery, promotes slave-free trade, aids policy makers in enforcing and drafting new legislation to prevent slavery, and continues research to understand forms of slavery and devise ways to eliminate it. The strategy this organization uses to target slavery is based upon the idea that adequate access to basic needs reduces vulnerability of poor people to enslavement. Also employing more direct methods, Free the Slaves operates according to the principles that:

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enslaved children and workers as well as helps freed slaves to begin their lives outside of slavery. Kevin Bales See also: Anti-Slavery International; Freedom Network (USA).

Further Reading Free the Slaves: http://www.freetheslaves .net.

Freedom Network (USA) •

All people have the right to be free from any form of slavery, and to assert that right.

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All people who are or have been enslaved should have the opportunity to realize their full potential and seeking to:

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Create an inclusive and diverse movement, respecting the dignity and views of all people involved in eradicating slavery

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Base all our strategies on accurate research

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Support sustainable solutions, preventing adverse repercussions for those we aim to assist

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Attain guidance and ideas from agencies around the world that are carrying out local and regional antislavery programs.

Working in the firm belief that slavery can be eradicated in this lifetime, Free the Slaves supports other organizations that investigate slavery and carry out rescue missions to free

Freedom Network (USA) came together as a coalition shortly after the U.S. Congress passed the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 (VTVPA). The network has grown into a national coalition of 25 organizations whose mission is to work for full access to justice for persons trafficked in the United States, including the right to compensation and restitution from the traffickers. The trafficking work of Freedom Network (USA) members predates the enactment of VTVPA. Its members served trafficked persons for several years and also worked closely with congressional members and testified at congressional hearings in order to bring about the passage of the new legislation in 2000. Since enactment of the act, Freedom Network (USA) members have closely monitored implementation of the VTVPA and submitted comments to the U.S. Department of Justice on proposed implementing regulations.

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Freedom Network (USA) works to provide victims with access to linguistically-appropriate and culturally sensitive, victim-centered services including mental health, medical, legal, educational, vocational, and other social services. Member organizations provide direct services; engage in policy and advocacy work; develop task forces and networks between domestic and international nongovernmental organizations, law enforcement and other governmental agencies; coordinate with law enforcement and Department of Justice officials to prosecute traffickers, including corporations and subcontractors; conduct research; and provide public education on trafficking issues. Collectively, Freedom Network (USA) member organizations have served over 500 victims trafficked to the United States from nearly 60 different countries. Members assists persons who have been recruited, transported, and/or harbored for forced labor, slavery, debt bondage, or servitude in agricultural work, child labor, child pornography, domestic work, entertainment, garment manufacturing, prostitution, food service industries, other factory work, and servile marriages. Its clients have ranged from toddlers to workers of advanced age. Member organizations provide services in more than 40 languages and dialects. Case management services include rescue and removal from situations of slavery, assistance in finding housing, jobs, education, obtaining refugee benefits, medical care, mental health care

and counseling, trauma counseling, life skills training, transportation, and support groups for trafficking victims. All members support the self-empowerment of trafficked persons, and some members organize former victims to engage in public speaking and educating others about trafficking. Members work on a daily basis with government agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), Department of Justice, Office of Refugee Resettlement, Health and Human Services Department’s Office for Victims of Crime, State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, local U.S. attorneys’ offices, victim-witness coordinators, police and sheriffs’ departments, and federal and state labor authorities. Members also work with foreign embassies and consulates and have developed task forces with law enforcement on trafficking in persons in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco. Members directly serve trafficked persons in the United States, but Freedom Network (USA) is part of a larger global struggle for the human rights of trafficked persons. Many members are engaged in international advocacy, training, and victim assistance. Nongovernmental organizations and government agencies in other countries frequently contact members for information and assistance. Freedom Network (USA) members have a significant record of participation in training other nongovernmental organizations and law enforcement and

Freedom Network

government agencies on trafficking in persons. Topics have included providing victims with assistance, T and U visas, cultural and linguistic issues in victim assistance, and working with victims of sex trafficking and domestic violence. Members also have a significant record of primary research for academic journals, consultation on research for government publications, and public education publications. Members have also spoken at the United Nations Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery, the Asian Regional Initiative against Trafficking, and, most recently, at the Vatican’s conference in Rome on 21st century Slavery. Members have also written training guides such as “A Guide to Benefits for Asylees and Victims of Trafficking,” “The Annotated

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Guide to the Complete U.S. Trafficking Protocol,” “Training Manual for the Prevention of Adolescent Trafficking,” and “Sex Trafficking in the U.S.: International and Domestic Trends.” Freedom Network (USA) member organizations have been featured as experts on trafficking in major media such as NBC Dateline, National Public Radio Marketplace, Lehrer Newshour, Time Magazine, USA Today, New Yorker Magazine, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, and BBC World News. Julu Thukral See also: Free the Slaves.

Further Reading Freedom Network (USA) website: http:// www.freedomnetworkusa.org.

G through several middlemen en route to the coast; most were exported in exchange for textiles, firearms and other manufactured goods, but owners retained some for domestic use. From the mid-1700s, Cape Lopez and the Gabon Estuary became more important in exporting slaves. Gabon ranked as a minor source of slaves because ivory, timber, and other forest products dominated regional trade, but slaving still had a profound impact on Gabonese communities. Statistics for slave exports are estimates, incomplete or even misleading, but they indicate the general scope of the trade. The Loango coast exported nearly 1 million slaves from 1660 to 1793, with an average annual peak of 6,000 from 1755 to 1793. From ca.1800, the main export zone was the Gabon Estuary (exporting 2,000–3,000 annually around 1850), mostly in Spanish, Portuguese, and Brazilian ships. Some exports continued even after French officials and missionaries established an antislavery presence from the 1840s. In the 1850s and 1860s, the French recruited “free” labor for their Caribbean colonies, embarking about 1,200 migrants. Their working and travel conditions differed little from slavery, and none of them ever returned. These imprecise totals are lower than for other parts of Africa,

Gabon Once a minor source of slave exports, the West Central African nation of Gabon is currently a major destination for slave imports, mostly children from West Africa. Slavery has had a long history in Gabon, and not all of it lies in the past. While many details of precolonial labor relations remain unclear, kingdoms and clan-based societies in what is now modern Gabon enjoyed a range of rights in persons (wives, junior kin, concubines, pawns). Rulers and elders also sometimes used unfree labor in ways that resembled European concepts of slavery. The incidence and evidence of slavery increased after Portuguese mariners arrived in 1473, redirecting or expanding on the coasting trade that flourished before and after Europeans established themselves. From the 16th through the 18th centuries Loango, Cabinda, and other Atlantic ports became important slave-trading entrepôts of the Loango kingdom of the Vili people. Several of these ports are now in modern CongoBrazzaville, but the Gabonese hinterland was a major source of slaves. African traders acquired slaves primarily by raiding in the interior, but also through purchase or punishment for crimes. Slaves usually passed 279

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but slave raiding disrupted inland areas, heightened stratification and unequal access to trade goods, induced relocation of settlements closer to coastal entrepôts, and increased struggles to control women and other dependents of trading clans. The coastward migration of women was especially striking; highly valued within the continent as wives, concubines, and agricultural laborers, very few moved east into the interior. Expanding French administration led to some enduring historical mythmaking. Libreville, Gabon’s capital and largest city, claims a founding myth as a settlement for freed slaves. This has a certain factual basis: In 1846 the French liberated captives from the Spanish slave ship Elizia, eventually dumping several dozen of them on the site of Libreville in August 1849. Despite the similarity in name to Freetown and Liberia in West Africa, they were settled not from humanitarian motives, but to provide cheap labor for the fledgling colony, and no other recaptives found homes there. As in much of 19th-century Africa, the transition from slave trading to legitimate commerce saw more captives retained for productive labor within Gabon. This provoked dramatic conflicts over the control of slaves and clan dependents. Women and junior males seized economic opportunities provided by new trade patterns, the growth of wage labor, and mission schooling. It became more difficult for clan leaders and entrepreneurial big men to rely on

the labor of such dependents, but they did not cede their rights in persons without a fight. Elders regularly demanded the return of slaves and wives seeking protection from the French, who increasingly declined to hand over runaways. Efforts to control dependents led to a spectacular series of “leopardmen” killings around Libreville from 1860 to 1879, and southern Gabon saw further outbreaks from ca.1904 until the mid-1920s. While some facts remain obscure, notably indigenous beliefs in humans’ ability to either control real leopards or transform themselves into feline predators, women and slaves accounted for the vast majority of victims of these ritual murders and mutilations. The frequency with which other slaves were accused of these crimes suggests the trauma of elders’ waning control over former dependents, as well as the socioeconomic dislocation caused by colonial demands for taxes, labor, and food. France, like other European colonial powers, officially adhered to abolitionism in justifying its vast African empire. But forced labor practices throughout Africa permitted gross abuses of workers, especially in the early decades, when new colonies needed cheap labor for building roads, railways, mines, and administrative centers. Though Gabon largely relied on natural waterways to transport timber (the mainstay of the colonial economy), forced labor had destructive effects in all Central African territories, and France officially abolished coercion only in 1946. Timber

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exports remained important following independence in 1960. While the postcolonial economy diversified with manganese and especially petroleum exports, this merely deepened Gabonese dependence on revenues generated by selling raw materials abroad. Still, Gabon has the most prosperous economy in Central Africa and a large number of foreign migrants, with most “guest workers” employed in the oil and logging sectors. The high disposable incomes of some Gabonese paradoxically heightens the current demand for slaves, especially children. Interestingly, child slaves are not usually found in the productive oil, timber, or mining sectors, but are used as house servants, farm labor, or prostitutes. Most of them come from poorer countries in West Africa, particularly Benin and Togo. Cash-starved families exchange children for money from labor brokers; some recruiters mislead parents with promises to educate youths, but the real purpose of this labor trade is an open secret. Perhaps 200,000 children are sold yearly; while some return home with their earnings, many others are never seen again and endure years of harsh working conditions. As in the past, girls are in high demand and commonly suffer sexual and well as economic abuse. This illicit slave trade has drawn the attention of the International Labour Organization along with other nongovernmental organizations. One notorious case of human trafficking highlights the ongoing exploi-

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tation of children and other vulnerable workers. In late March 2001, the Nigerian-registered ship Etireno sailed from Benin carrying between 139 and 250 passengers bound for Gabon. Turned away from Libreville, then Douala in Cameroon, the Etireno eventually returned to Cotonou. Officials found a mere 43 children and adolescents aboard, raising concerns over the fate of any others on board. Perhaps the total was small, or maybe the vessel disembarked a portion at other destinations; the issue remains controversial. But the existence of a modern-day slave ship, and the chilling possibility that the crew threw human cargo overboard to avoid detection, are alarming reminders that the slave trade still flourishes in West Africa with Gabon as a major importer. Apart from its relative wealth, Gabon is no better or worse than other nations participating in this modern slavery. There will always be exploitation of laborers, but pressure from Gabonese human-rights advocates and the international community offers some hope for a better future. Ultimately, the solution will not be found in any one country, but in equitable and broad-based economic development throughout the continent. Thomas Pyke Johnson Further Readings Anti-Slavery. “The Trafficking of Children Between Benin and Gabon.” 1999. http://www.afrol.com/Countries/Benin/

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documents/gabon_child_trafficking .htm. Bucher, Henry. “Liberty and Labor: The Origins of Libreville Reconsidered.” In Paths toward the Past, ed. R. Harms et al. Atlanta: African Studies Association Press, 1994. Gray, Christopher J. Colonial Rule and Crisis in Equatorial Africa: Southern Gabon, ca.1850–1940. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2002. Johnson, Trevor. “African ‘Slave Ship’ Highlights Spread of Child Slavery.” World Socialist Web site, 2001. http:// www.wsws.org/articles/2001/apr2001/ slav-a19_prn. M’Bokolo, Elikia. “Comparisons and Contrasts in Equatorial Africa.” In History of Central Africa: The Contemporary Years Since 1960, ed. D. Birmingham and P. Martin. London and New York: Longman, 1998. Rich, Jeremy. “ ‘Leopard Men,’ Slaves and Social Conflict in Libreville (Gabon), c. 1860–1879.” International Journal of African Historical Studies 34, no. 3 (2001): 619–638.

antislavery editorials roused the anger of the local slaveholding elite, and in January 1830, he was jailed for libeling a slave trader. His plight caught the attention of philanthropist Arthur Tappan, who bailed him out of jail and provided partial financial support for Garrison to start a new antislavery paper, the Liberator, on January 1, 1831. In the Liberator, Garrison abandoned the gradualist approach of most earlier opponents of slavery and embraced the new doctrine of abolitionism. Denying that slavery was a social and an economic problem of such great complexity that it might take years to abolish, Garrison said slavery was a matter of personal morality that could

Garrison, William Lloyd (1805–1879) William Lloyd Garrison was the most significant U.S. champion of immediate abolitionism. Born into poverty and abandoned by his father at the age of three, Garrison had a lifelong empathy with the disadvantaged and oppressed. He was apprenticed to a printer at 13 and worked at various reform newspapers in New England until 1829, when he became coeditor of the newspaper Genius of Universal Emancipation in Baltimore, Maryland. Garrison’s fervid

William Lloyd Garrison was one of the most important U.S. abolitionists of the mid-1800s. (National Archives)


be remedied on an individual basis instantly. Slavery wrongfully denied blacks certain rights, and slaveholders should be asked to free their slaves immediately in the same way that they would be asked to immediately stop any other immoral action. Slaveholders should not be financially compensated for abandoning sin. The effort to colonize manumitted slaves in Africa reflected white prejudice and should be abandoned. Garrison proposed that blacks be given the same civil and political rights as white citizens of the United States. The Liberator spoke to a generation of antislavery activists who were unhappy with the moral compromises involved in the old gradualist approach to emancipation. Soon after the Liberator began publication, abolitionism burst onto the scene with a suddenness that shocked Americans and alarmed slaveholders. Garrison played the leading role in galvanizing and organizing the new immediatists. Garrison’s pamphlet “Thoughts on African Colonization” (1832) rallied antislavery forces against the American Colonization Society; he also helped found the New England Anti-Slavery Society in 1832 and the American Anti-Slavery Society (AAS) in 1833. Garrison endorsed several other controversial reforms that affected the antislavery movement. Embracing the doctrine of nonresistance, Garrison rejected the use of violence and coercive force and argued that many human relationships were, like slavery, based on violent coercion. Garrison believed that

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the power of religious denominations to compel adherence to creeds was a kind of slavery, and by the late 1830s, he rejected organized religion. Garrison also believed that government was an example of coercive force. Rejecting the moral authority of governments, Garrison argued that Christians needed no law but the higher law of God, and he refused on principle to vote. Understanding that most abolitionists would not follow his nonresistant principles, Garrison continued to speak out in the Liberator on political issues, telling others how to exercise the franchise if they believed in voting. Nevertheless, Garrison argued that it was tactically wrong for abolitionists to concentrate their reform activities on the political world. The role of the abolitionist was not to organize political parties, but to practice moral suasion, holding forth the standard of right and exhorting others to follow it. Garrison applied his beliefs about human equality to gender relationships and encouraged the efforts of abolitionist women such as Sarah and Angelina Grimké to carve out a public role for themselves in the abolitionist movement. Such actions shocked the conventional morality of the 19th century and helped split the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1840. Members of the society argued about whether women should be able to vote and hold office within the AAS and whether abolitionists should organize a political party to accomplish their goals. Ultimately, Garrison himself became an issue. Some abolitionists believed

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potential supporters were driven off by his positions on nonresistance and women’s rights and by his increasingly unorthodox religious ideas and harsh denunciations of opponents. When Garrisonian abolitionists emerged with a majority from the society’s convention in 1840, Garrison’s opponents, led by Arthur and Lewis Tappan and James G. Birney, left the AAS and formed a rival organization, the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. Although other abolitionists worked in the 1840s and 1850s to end slavery through political parties and religious organizations, Garrison played the roles of prophet and agitator. He remained a lonely voice crying out for truth and justice as he saw it and urging others to follow him. In 1843, Garrison proclaimed the U.S. Constitution a “Covenant with Death, an Agreement with Hell” (Liberator, March 17, 1843). Arguing that the Constitution protected slavery, Garrison urged northerners to secede from the Union. Believing that slavery could not survive without the support of the federal government, Garrison believed that the disruption of the Union would strike a deathblow to slavery. Although often remembered today as a divisive figure with a contentious personality, Garrison had a much different image among his closest followers, for whom he served as a kind of father figure. “Father Garrison,” as he was affectionately known, acted as trusted adviser, peacemaker, and encourager for his followers, creating an almost familial closeness among them. Seeking to

overcome the family insecurity of his youth, Garrison also became a doting father to his own children and an affectionate husband to his wife, Helen Benson. Living his reform principles at home, Garrison drew his family into the world of social reform, and his children who survived to adulthood—George, William, Wendell, Fanny, and Frank— would continue to play important roles in such diverse causes as women’s suffrage, international peace, anti-imperialism, tax reform, and civil rights into the early 20th century. The outbreak of the U.S. Civil War caused a change in Garrison’s views and public standing. Heartened by the North’s stand against the South, Garrison believed northerners had been converted to antislavery, and he supported the effort to preserve the Union. Abraham Lincoln’s decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation prompted Garrison to violate his no-voting principle by casting a ballot for Lincoln’s reelection in 1864. During the war, Garrison was transformed in the public’s mind from crank to hero. At the end of the fighting, he was the government’s guest of honor at the ceremony raising the U.S. flag over Fort Sumter. Believing his abolitionist work was largely done, Garrison ceased publication of the Liberator and resigned from the AAS in 1865. This decision estranged Garrison from his longtime friend and collaborator Wendell Phillips, who argued that the AAS must continue its activities in order to secure equal rights and economic security for former slaves. Until his death, Garrison

Garvey, Marcus

continued to lecture occasionally and to write essays for the New York Independent newspaper on various social reforms, including the rights of freed people. Harold D. Tallant See also: Abolitionism.

Further Readings Alonso, Harriet Hyman. Growing up Abolitionist: The Story of the Garrison Children. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002. Kraditor, Aileen S. Means and Ends in American Abolitionism: Garrison and His Critics on Strategy and Tactics, 1834–1850. New York: Pantheon Books, 1969. Mayer, Henry. All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. Merrill, Walter M. Against Wind and Tide: A Biography of William Lloyd Garrison. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963. Stewart, James Brewer. William Lloyd Garrison and the Challenge of Emancipation. Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1992. Thomas, John L. The Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison. Boston: Little, Brown, 1963.

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of persons of African descent from around the world to rescue the continent of Africa from colonialism and slavery. Garvey was born in Saint Ann’s Bay, Jamaica, on August 17, 1887. He was the youngest of 11 children. His father possessed a large personal library, and as a result, Garvey became a prolific reader. After attending school for several years, he dropped out at age 14 and found a job as a printer. He became active in a local union, and was elected vice president of a printer’s union in 1907. He organized a number of labor strikes. He also started his first newspaper, The Watchman. Around 1910 he traveled through South America and Central America.

Garvey, Marcus (1887–1940) Marcus Garvey was the founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), one of the largest mass movements in African American history. He believed that it was the duty

Marcus Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association. (Library of Congress)

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As a result of his travels he came to the conclusion that blacks around the world were the victims of discrimination. He helped workers in Costa Rica form unions, and he contributed to the founding of newspapers in Panama and Costa Rica that championed the rights of workers. The government of Costa Rica deported him back to Jamaica because of his activism. In 1911, Garvey traveled to England where he studied at Birbeck College. It was here that he was exposed to the ideas of African American educator Booker T. Washington, especially by reading Washington’s autobiography Up From Slavery, which championed the notion that blacks should help themselves. He returned to Jamaica and, in 1914, founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), and its associated administrative organization the African Communities League. The motto of UNIA was “One God, One Aim, One Destiny.” In March 1916 Garvey traveled to the United States. He spent a year traveling throughout the United States. Through his travels he learned about the racial discrimination that blacks faced, including the inability to vote, lynching, and segregation. Based on his experiences, Garvey came to believe that whites would never regard African Americans as equals. Consequently, he began to call for separation of the races and argued that blacks should migrate to Africa to live. He negotiated with the government of Liberia to obtain land upon which blacks from around the world could move and live.

Garvey also emphasized racial pride by encouraging blacks to honor and celebrate their African heritage. In June 1917, he organized the first branch of UNIA in the United States, and he began publication of the newspaper Negro World, which he used as a vehicle to promote his ideas. The newspaper eventually grew to a circulation of approximately 200,000. He ultimately moved the headquarters of UNIA from Jamaica to Harlem in New York City. UNIA became very popular in the United States and had more than 700 offices in 38 states. Worldwide, it had more than 1,100 offices in 40 countries with approximately 2 million members by 1920. Garvey began to recruit blacks to join an army that he hoped would push colonial whites off the African continent. He especially appealed to black veterans of World War I to join his army. In 1919, Garvey established the Black Star Line, consisting of two steamships. This was to be a shipping company that would encourage trade between African nations and the United States, and also be used to transport African Americans to Africa. He also founded the Negro Factories Corporation and sold stock in the company to African Americans. The corporation ultimately owned three grocery stores, two restaurants, a printing firm, a laundry, and several buildings and trucks in New York City. At an international UNIA convention in 1920, the delegates elected Garvey as the provisional president of Africa. After making only a few trips to Africa, the Black Star Line went bankrupt. Several of Garvey’s business

Germany

partners were found to be embezzling money from the shipping company. Due to his involvement in the company, Garvey was arrested and convicted in 1925 of using the U.S. mail to defraud potential investors. He served half of a five-year prison sentence before President Calvin Coolidge commuted his sentence and ordered Garvey’s deportation. In 1928, Garvey lectured widely in Western Europe and Canada. He returned to Jamaica and established a new political party and a newspaper. Although he ran for a seat in the Jamaican legislature in 1929, he lost the election. In the early 1930s, Garvey founded another newspaper and also published a magazine. He relocated to England in 1935 and officially moved the headquarters of UNIA to London. It was there that Garvey wrote the book The Tragedy of White Injustice (1927). He continued to hold annual UNIA conventions and lectured frequently on black civil rights. Garvey died in London on June 10, 1940. Gene C. Gerard See also: Abolitionism.

Further Readings Boxill, Bernard. Blacks & Social Justice. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1992. Cronon, David. Black Moses; The Story of Marcus Garvey. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969. Garvey, Amy-Jacques. The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey. Dover, MA: Majority Press, 1986. Garvey, Marcus. Marcus Garvey; Life and Lessons. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987.

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Graves, John L. “The Social Ideas of Marcus Garvey.” Journal of Negro Education 31 (Winter 1962): 65–74. Harrison, Paul C. “The Black Star Line: The De-Mystification of Marcus Garvey.” African American Review 31, no. 4 (1997): 713–716. Moses, Wilson. Black Messiahs and Uncle Toms. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1982.

Germany The Federal Republic of Germany is located in Central Europe, bordering the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France in the west; Switzerland and Austria in the south; the Czech Republic and Poland in the east; Denmark in the north, and the Baltic Sea (northeast). Germany was on the losing side in World War I (1914–1918), and its adversaries from the Triple Entente imposed heavy restrictions especially in the military and heavy industry fields, as well as reparations to be paid. After the futile Weimar Republic failed to produce durable democratic rule, militant nationalist Nazis led by Adolf Hitler established an authoritarian dictatorship. They triggered strong military buildup, and strong expansion, aiming at vast territorial enlargement of the so-called Third Reich. These moves were based upon the ideology of the Germans as a “supreme,” Aryan nation. This meant exclusion and extermination of the “imperfect” ones, such as Jews, Slavs, Roma/Gypsy, as well as homosexuals. From the mid-1930s on a large scale, first in Germany itself, then from the occupied territories all over

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Europe, large groups of Jews and the other target groups has been relocated to the so-called concentration camps. All property of the detained was confiscated. Those fit for heavy works were used as cheap labor—only in exchange for low quality and a frugal meal, and ghastly living conditions. Minors, ailing, elder people, as well those who suffered from the heavy regime, were sent to the gas chambers—a dreadful device for massive killing through suffocating and contamination. Lives have been cheap—each deceased could be easily replaced by new human shipments from the occupied countries. Some large German industrial concerns, especially those in the defense, automotive industries, and other war suppliers, benefited from this contemporary form of slave labor. Huge groups of captured soldiers and civilians from Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus were also transported to mainland Germany and Austria for road works, other heavy labor, and as farm workers. Many were used to prepare secret sites for armament factories and test ranges to be shot after finishing the works. Since Soviet Russia was not among the Geneva treaties signatories, its POWs were not treated accordingly. At the Wannsee Conference (named after a lake in southwestern Berlin, where it was held on January 20, 1942), senior civilian government officials, SS officers, and business representatives, the Nazi plan called “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” was adopted. It aimed at complete extermination of the Jewish population in Europe, later know as the Holocaust. A similar fate

also anticipated Roma/Gypsies and Eastern Slavs, who were expected to be killed or resettled mainly beyond the Ural, and to serve as physical workers and servants to the German masters. Defeated, Germany, as well as its capital, Berlin, were divided into four occupation zones, run by the Allied powers (U.S., U.K., France, and the Soviet Union). After the Soviet Union refused any cooperation with former Western allies, and imposed communist regime in its zone, in 1949 there emerged two German states—the Federal Republic of Germany, comprising the three Western Allies’ zones, and the German Democratic Republic, or Eastern Germany. In order to prevent the mass migration from East Germany to West Germany, including residents of other Soviet bloc countries, in 1961, initially around East Berlin and on all internal (German-German) border lines, a sophisticated border facility was built. It was known as Berlin Wall. However, with the sweeping collapse of the communist regimes, it became obsolete in 1989. After the German reunification on October 3, 1990, its capital and largest city is again Berlin. Since then, Germany has spent considerable funds to bring East German productivity and wages up to West German standards. Germany has an affluent and technologically powerful economy—the fifth largest in the world. It is also Europe’s second most populous nation. From the 1950s on, it has attracted thousands of gästarbeitern (literally, guest workers) mostly from Turkey and former Yugoslavia, but also from Portugal, Spain,

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northern Africa, Middle East, and elsewhere. They filled many low-paying jobs that were avoided by the Germans—in the fields of public cleaning, fast food facilities, the construction industry, and so on. Many of them succeeded to integrate themselves within the German society, with second and third generations already speaking fluent German and opting at better professional positions. These foreign laborers contributed greatly for the postwar German “economic miracle.” When their help was no longer needed, some programs were implemented to incline those workers to return to their countries, offering them certain compensation. Many, however, preferred to stay in Germany, thus creating relatively huge compactly populated areas, with non-German, especially Muslim, inhabitants, in Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt, and other large cities. Germany became even more attractive, especially for the poor eastern neighbors, after the disappearance of severe division of Europe, and the lifting of the main obstacles for travel that were restricting former communist bloc countries. Currently, Germany has become one of the slowest-growing economies in the euro zone. Its aging population and high unemployment has pushed social security expenses to a level exceeding contributions from workers. Structural rigidities in the labor market—including strict regulations on laying off workers and the setting of wages on a national basis—have made unemployment a chronic problem. Nevertheless, the high living standard of Germany and especially its western

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part attracts poor people from close and distant Eastern European, African, and Asian countries. It is both a transit and destination country for persons, primarily women, trafficked mainly from Central Europe and Eastern Europe for the purpose of sexual exploitation. Russia alone accounted for one-quarter of the 1,235 identified victims reported in 2003, the latest year for which statistics are available. For the first time, Germany’s statistics also included victims who were German nationals, who numbered 127. In the very last U.S. State Department Report (2006), Germany was charged with lack of adequate policy to prevent influx of prostitutes, mainly from Eastern Europe. For the 2010 Soccer World Cup championship, officials expected up to 40,000 illegal prostitutes to enter the country. Prostitution in Germany is legal, and 400,000 registered prostitutes pay taxes and are socially and medically secured. Authorities do not tolerate coercive prostitution, but are apparently not able to cope with temporary import of illegal street workers. Efforts to improve the legal situation of prostitutes have been criticized as inadequate by prostitutes’ organizations such as HYDRA, which lobby for full normality of the occupation. Stephan E. Nikolov See also: Nazi Slavery.

Further Readings Abadan-Unat, Nermin, ed. Turkish Workers in Europe, 1960–1975: A SocioEconomic Reappraisal. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1976.

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Alba, Richard, Peter Schmidt, and Martina Wasmer, eds. Germans or Foreigners? Attitudes toward Ethnic Minorities in Post-Reunification Germany. New York: Palgrave, 2003. Bauböck, Rainer. Transnational Citizenship: Membership and Rights in International Migration. Brookfield, VT: E. Elgar, 1994. Martin, Philip L. The Unfinished Story: Turkish Labour Migration to Western Europe, with Special Reference to the Federal Republic of Germany. Geneva: International Labour Organization, 1991. Soysal, Yasemin N. Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.

Green Revolution Historians term the increase in crop yields in the developing world between 1960 and 2000 the Green Revolution. As early as 1917, scientists bred hybrid corn. Further efforts yielded corn, rice, and wheat with sturdy stalks to prevent lodging and with resistance to pathogens and insects. Agronomists coupled these crops with fertilizers, insecticides, herbicides, and irrigation to double yields on test plots. The prospect of extending these gains to farmers worldwide led the Rockefeller Foundation and the Mexican Ministry of Agriculture in 1943 to fund what would in 1966 become the International Center for Wheat and Maize Improvement (known by its Mexican acronym CIMMYT) in Mexico. In 1960, the Rockefeller Foundation founded the International Rice Research Institute in

the Philippines and in 1967 the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Nigeria. The achievements of the Green Revolution were not uniform. Between 1961 and 2000 the yield per acre of grains, root crops, tubers, and legumes increased 2.8 percent in East Asia, 2.5 percent in sub-Saharan Africa, 2.4 percent in Mexico, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean (Latin America), and 2.3 percent in the Near East and North Africa. These data refute the perception that the Green Revolution bypassed sub-Saharan Africa. Rather, sub-Saharan Africa lagged behind East Asia, Latin America, the Near East, and North Africa in yield gains until 1980. Thereafter, sub-Saharan Africa surpassed the rest of the developing world in yield gains. Humanitarian ideals underlay the Green Revolution. American agronomist Norman Borlaug and other leaders of the Green Revolution saw in the new crop varieties and agrochemicals an opportunity to alleviate hunger and poverty. The Green Revolution furthered this aim by boosting the food surplus, thereby pricing food within the means of the poor. Between 1970 and 1990 the percentage of malnourished people declined everywhere in the developing world except in sub-Saharan Africa. During these years, the poverty rate fell from 60 to 20 percent in Indonesia and by small amounts in India and Pakistan. Between 1973 and 1983, the consumption of calories and protein rose faster among the poor than among the affluent in North Arcot, India.

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Despite these achievements, the Green Revolution ended neither poverty nor class divisions in the developing world. The Green Revolution offered the technical means to increase crop yields but not the political resolve to end social polarization. Absent countervailing policies, the Green Revolution has not ended inequality. On the contrary, critics contend that the Green Revolution has sharpened the divide between rich and poor, since only those with money or access to credit could afford seeds, agrochemicals, and irrigation. These were the farmers who captured the yield gains of the Green Revolution. The rest lost ground; not only did they fail to share in these gains but they sold their crops at the low prices that prevailed amid the food surpluses made possible by the Green Revolution. Those without title to land—the tenant, the sharecropper, and the laborer— fared the worst. By increasing farm productivity, the Green Revolution drove up the value of land, pricing it beyond the means of many tenants and sharecroppers. During the 1970s, the ratio of rent-to-wages doubled in India. At the same time, the mechanization that attended the Green Revolution diminished the demand for labor. Caught between an increase in rent and a decrease in the demand for labor, the peasant fell from the bottom rung of the ladder. Between 1965 and 1975 the number of landless laborers rose from 5.7 to 10.2 million in India. Between 1967 and 1972 the number of tenants fell by nearly four-fifths in Ethiopia.

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Between 1970 and 1975 evicted tenants and sharecroppers swelled the ranks of the landless by 300,000 in Brazil. A 1981 study by the University of Delhi estimated that mechanical combines reduced the need for labor by 95 percent. Before the Green Revolution, rice in Bangladesh was milled by a foot-operated pestle and mortar as women traditionally did this work and the income from it kept divorcees and widows from destitution. By the 1980s, 40 percent of rice was machine-milled. Farm operators built on average 700 new mills per year, thus eliminating between 100,000 and 140,000 jobs. Without jobs, the rural poor streamed into overcrowded cities. To the degree that the Green Revolution leveraged science to increase crop yields, it was a success. To the extent that the Green Revolution was an experiment in social engineering, it demonstrated the inability of science to cure social pathologies. Christopher Cumo See also: Sharecropping.

Further Readings Conway, Gordon. The Doubly Green Revolution: Food for All in the Twenty-First Century. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997. Evenson, R. E., and D. Gollin. “Assessing the Impact of the Green Revolution, 1960–2000.” Science 300 (May 2, 2003): 758–762. Shiva, Vandana. The Violence of the Green Revolution: Third World Agriculture, Ecology and Politics. London and New Jersey: Zed Books, 1991.

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Gulag (Main Administration of Camps) The Soviet government authorized the creation of Corrective Labor Camps (ITLs) by the OGPU (Unified State Political Administration, the Soviet security police) on April 7, 1930. This resolution led to the formation of a network of labor camps under the direction of a section of the OGPU called Gulag (Main Administration of Camps). Originally reserved for 10,000 “socially dangerous” prisoners, Gulag rapidly expanded to oversee the incarceration of millions of prisoners. By January 1, 1931, the Gulag camps held more than 212,000 inmates. Under the armed watch of OGPU guards, these prisoners worked in construction, felling timber, and fishing. Prisoner labor under Gulag jurisdiction came to play an important role in certain sectors of the Soviet economy during the 1930s and 1940s. Gulag began its first major construction project in September 1931, the White Sea–Baltic Canal. Gulag allocated 140,000 prisoners to this task. The canal took 20 months to build and reached completion on May 1, 1933. It measured 227 km (136.2 miles) long and cut through the Karelian Isthmus. Immediately following the completion of this project, Gulag began a second large canal joining Moscow and the Volga River. By 1935, Gulag oversaw more than 196,000 prisoners assigned to build this canal. They finished the 127 km (76.2 mile) canal on July 15, 1937. Other large construction projects undertaken by Gulag included the Baikal Amur Mainline railway with a work

force of over 260,000 camp inmates by 1940. Gulag accounted for more than 20 percent of all construction in the Soviet Union by 1951. The forced labor provided by Gulag built many of the large infrastructure projects of the Soviet Union, such as canals and railways during the 1930s and 1940s. In addition to construction projects, Gulag also oversaw forestry, mining, factory, and agricultural operations. In the 1930s, prisoners became an important source of labor for developing extractive industries in remote areas of the Soviet Union. Gulag-run camps mined coal in Ukhta, Vorkuta, and Karaganda, gold in Kolyma, and nickel in Norilisk. By 1941, Gulag accounted for 12 percent of lumber, 54 percent of nickel, 75 percent of molybdenum, 35 percent of tungsten, 40 percent of chrome, 40 percent of cobalt, 75 percent of tin, and 60 percent of gold produced in the Soviet Union. A decade later, prisoner labor produced 90 percent of Soviet gold and nearly all of its platinum and diamonds. Nonferrous metals became heavily dependent upon Gulag-supplied labor. In July 1934 the Soviet government reorganized the Soviet security services and Gulag. The Stalin regime transferred all OGPU personnel and responsibilities to the NKVD (Peoples Commissariat of Internal Affairs). It also placed the penal institutions known as ITKs (Corrective Labor Colonies) under the newly reorganized NKVD. Previously, they had been under the authority of the various republican ministries of justice. By January 1, 1935, Gulag supervised 725,483 prisoners in camps and 240,259 in colonies for


a total of 965,742 inmates. As a general rule, more serious offenders, including political prisoners, served their sentences in camps. Inmates in camps thus tended to serve longer and harsher sentences. The core mission of both institutions, however, revolved around exploiting prisoner labor. During 1934, Gulag also greatly tightened the security of the camps. The Gulag leadership militarized the camp guards and provided them with proper training and armaments. Escapes from camps declined from 16.36 percent in 1934 to 9.3 percent in 1935. By 1939, escapes from camps had been reduced to fewer than 1 percent of prisoners. The militarization of the camp guards succeeded in reducing an extraordinarily high escape rate to virtually nil. Gulag guarded 1,500,524 inmates in camps and 429,205 in colonies by January 1, 1941. The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, caused a number of changes in this system. First, Gulag ceased to release political prisoners after they had completed their sentences. By December 1, 1941, they had prevented the release of 26,000 inmates up for release and forced another 60,000 to remain as “free laborers.” Second, Gulag lost a number of facilities to the rapid German advance. In response, the NKVD shot a large number of political prisoners, haphazardly released many common criminals, and transferred 750,000 remaining prisoners to camps and colonies east of the Ural Mountains. This transfer caused severe overcrowding. Finally, the Soviet authorities released hundreds of thousands of ordinary prisoners to fight

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against Nazi Germany. In total, Gulag freed 975,000 inmates to fight in the Soviet army during World War II. As a result of these policies, the percentage of political prisoners in the camps increased from 28.7 percent in 1941 to 59.2 percent in 1946. The Stalin regime viewed common criminals as capable of redeeming themselves by fighting in defense of the Soviet Union. Political prisoners received no such consideration. Severe shortages of food and other necessities made living conditions extremely difficult for the remaining prisoners. The Gulag leadership reduced food rations during this time by nearly 30 percent. They also increased the work norms of the already exhausted and famished prisoners. As a result, inmate mortality in the camps and colonies skyrocketed. Between 1941 and 1945, the NKVD recorded 1,005,000 prisoner deaths. This represents more than 60 percent of the 1,606,748 documented fatalities in camps and colonies between 1930 and 1956. In 1942, one-fourth of all camp and colony prisoners perished, and in 1943 one-fifth of them died. These figures do not include deaths in transit or those released by Gulag to die at the expense of somebody else. The total number of deaths to result from incarceration in Gulag camps and colonies may exceed 3 million. After World War II, the prisoner population of the Soviet Union grew dramatically then shrank significantly in the mid-1950s. From 1945 to 1951, camp and colony inmates increased by 42 percent to 2,528,146. Following the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, the Soviet

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A men’s labor camp at Nizhny Seimchan in Siberia in the mid-1950s. After Stalin’s death in 1953 the government released most prisoners. (Peter Reddaway Collection, MS Russ 78 (2235)/ Houghton Library, Harvard University)

government released most of its prisoners. A March 27, 1953, decree provided amnesty for 1,201,738 inmates. In subsequent years, further releases ensued, and by 1959, fewer than a million remained incarcerated, of which only 11,207 were political prisoners. On January 25, 1960, the Soviet government officially abolished the Gulag. J. Otto Pohl See also: Beria, Laventy Pavlovich; Central Asia.

Further Readings Applebaum, Anne. Gulag: A History. New York: Doubleday, 2003. Gregory, Paul R., and Valery Lazarev, eds. The Economics of Forced Labor: The Soviet Gulag. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2003. Khlevniuk, Oleg. History of the Gulag: From Collectivization to the Great Terror. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004. Pohl, J. Otto. The Stalinist Penal System. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1997.

H regulations, had been designed mainly to remove any pretext that European powers could use to compromise Ethiopia’s sovereignty. After all, the European “civilizing” mission in Africa, that is, its claim of ending slavery, had been the justification for seizing territories in Africa. In 1931, Haile Selassie, by then the emperor of Ethiopia, had invited the London-based Anti-Slavery Society to send a delegation to Ethiopia for advice and consultation purposes. This was yet another move motivated by the Ethiopian desire to maintain its independence. British advice in 1932 did not lead to much, except for eliciting a promise from Selassie to end slavery within a couple of decades. In the meantime, slavery, as well as slave raiding and trading continued unabated, with the southwestern provinces being the main sources for slaves destined for local or foreign markets in Arabia. Selassie went on to establish a new Slavery Department with an Englishman as his adviser. Despite Selassie’s promise to end slavery, little progress was made until the eve of the Italian invasion. By then, however, it was too little too late as the Italian aggression against Ethiopia in 1935–1936 was carried out as usual, under the pretext or propaganda of ending slavery. The Italians claimed to

Haile Selassie I (1892–1975) Even before being crowned as Negus (king) in 1930, Haile Selassie, as one of the regents of Ethiopia, began early in his political career to take steps that he thought would lead to the modernization of Ethiopia (according to Western models) in the administrative, educational, health, and social services fields. Nevertheless, he received a rude awakening in 1919, when his country applied for membership into the League of Nations but was turned down due to the practice of slavery. By 1923, working closely with Empress Zauditu, he was successful in getting Ethiopia admitted into the league supposedly for having abolished the slave trade. With his long-held objective of bequeathing Ethiopia a legacy of pride and national purpose, he instituted a number of reforms, one of whose aims was eventually to emancipate existing slaves and their children. Yet the reforms were not necessarily implemented at the time, and, therefore, it would be false to claim that Ethiopia had abolished slavery by 1924. On the contrary, slavery continued to be legal in Ethiopia even after the signing of the International Slavery Convention of 1926. The signing of this convention, as well as the instituting of slave 295

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Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie’s efforts to end slavery were largely an attempt to forestall foreign intervention, and his later modernization plan allowed slavery to continue in the form of forced labor and peasant exploitation. (Library of Congress)

have liberated slaves, especially in the Oromo-Sidamo areas, and their occupation (despite its brutal consequences) led many tenants to escape the Ethiopian system of serfdom under which they had labored for quite some time. After the defeat of the Italians by the Allied Forces in 1941 and the restoration of Selassie to the Ethiopian throne, it was no longer possible to continue with the old slavery and serfdom. Accordingly, Haile Selassie issued a proclamation on August 27, 1942, abolishing slavery. The proclamation spelled out alternative punishments, including severe penalties and even possible death, for anyone convicted of transporting or

trading in slaves. This finally brought to an end Ethiopia’s ongoing saga to end slavery by finally denying it legal status. This apparently had been Selassie’s desire all along. Selassie was committed to bringing about modernization in Ethiopia by instituting some administrative reforms, including introducing a central government with a council of ministers and a central parliament with some powers. He also reformed the taxation system to look less like a form of tribute, which had been the case in the past. Outside the continent, Selassie was without doubt the most widely known African leader, to the point of being revered as some kind of god by the Rastafarians. Within Africa he was widely respected and was one of the founders of the Organization for African Unity (OAU). He did, however, face serious problems that plagued his rule and in the end led to his downfall. He had not completely succeeded in removing the vestiges of the old feudal order that had allowed slavery to thrive in his country in the first place. In fact, there were some uncanny feudal resemblances of his Ethiopia to medieval Europe in terms of the powers of the Church, severe and exemplary punishments for offenders, and the lack of decent health services and facilities. His government was very much hierarchically organized with Selassie as the monarch at the top and slaves (until slavery was ended though forced labor and other forms of peasant exploitation or sharecropping continued) at the bottom. Despite his land reforms, including those

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of 1964 and 1972, the royal family, the nobility, and the Church (the three “estates”) continued to own much of the land in Ethiopia with some changes here and there. The new land reforms that he announced in 1972 were not implemented until the armed forces took over power in 1974. He died in mysterious circumstances while in detention, although his death was officially announced in 1975. Abdin Chande Further Readings Marcus, Harold. Haile Selassie I: The Formative Years, 1892–1936. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987. Miers, Suzanne, and Martin Klein, eds. Slavery and Colonial Rule in Africa. London: Frank Cass, 1999.

Haiti Haiti is located in the Caribbean on the western one-third of the island of Hispaniola. It is bounded by the Caribbean Sea, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Dominican Republic, which is located on the eastern two-thirds of the same island. Hispaniola was colonized by the Spanish in 1492. In 1697, Spain ceded the western third of the island to France. During the French colonial period, Haiti was known as Saint-Domingue. A slave revolt ended colonial slavery by force in Haiti in 1804. Forty percent of Haiti’s population is under 15 years of age, and this age group is the most vulnerable to modern enslavement.

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Modern slavery currently exists in Haiti in the form of domestic enslavement of Haitian children by other Haitians, a practice initiated by the affluent after independence in 1804. These children are known as restaveks (from the French, meaning “stay with”) or domestiques. Restaveks are usually between 5 and 14 years of age. UNICEF estimates that there are 250,000 to 300,000 restaveks in Haiti today. The enslaved children come from poor, rural families. Their parents are approached by agents or families who promise a better life and education for the child if he/she comes to live with a wealthier host family and works as a domestic servant. Once the children arrive at the homes of their host families, they are used as domestic slaves and rarely get the opportunity to go to school. They are not paid for their services. They usually sleep on mats or cardboard on the floor and eat once a day, a meal that usually consists of leftover scraps from the family meal. The children lose contact with their families and have no means of leaving their situation. They are usually forbidden to leave the house. Restaveks are expected to perform all sorts of domestic chores, including laundry, caring for children, cooking, collecting water, cleaning the house, and emptying chamber pots. Physical and verbal abuse is frequent. A type of cowhide whip is manufactured particularly for punishing restaveks. The Haitian police are complicit in the violence and can be called to administer beatings to restaveks who steal from their masters.

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Sixty to eighty-five percent of restaveks are female and they often suffer sexual exploitation. If they become pregnant, they are kicked out of the home. Most restaveks are forced out of the home before they reach age 15, because Haitian law requires that children be paid for work at that age. On the streets, their career options are usually limited to service jobs, such as gardener, porter or sex worker. Within Haiti, this form of child slavery is socially condoned. The pervasive restavek system is embedded in acute poverty, sharp class distinctions, and Haitian views about children. In recent decades, the most affluent have distanced themselves from the restavek system by employing paid domestics in their stead. However, lower and middle class families continue to take in restaveks. Some Haitians bring their restaveks with them when they move to the United States. The Haitian government has officially recognized child domestic labor as a problem since 1984. A labor code regulating the situation of child domestic labor was issued that year, but it had serious shortcomings. In 1994, Haiti ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. In April 2003 a law was passed to prohibit child domestic labor. The new law has limited value, because it fails to provide penalties for engaging children in domestic labor and fails to specify which judicial authority is responsible for enforcement. On a local level, some progress has been made in the support and rescue of

restavek children. Most of this has been accomplished through international organizations and religious groups. A few shelters for restaveks have been opened in recent years, both to provide food, medical support, and education and to aid in rescue. Boniface Alexandre, the interim president of Haiti, has publicly denounced the restavek tradition and has called on the interim government to do more to address the problem. Despite these various legal reforms and public denunciation, little progress has been made in changing the restavek system. Modern slavery also existed during the U.S. occupation of Haiti (1915– 1934) in the form of corvée (road law) labor. U.S. administrators exploited an obsolete corvée law, drafted in 1864, that required peasants to work on public roads or pay a road tax. This law was originally used to conscript citizens to build roads within their communities for less than three days per year. The U.S. Marines and the Gendarmerie manipulated this law to round up workers and take them forcibly from their homes to work, under force and excessive violence, on road projects to connect major cities in order to ease military control and police operations. The unpaid workers were sometimes roped together in gangs. The gangs were always kept under military guard and were frequently subject to brutality. The corvée was initiated in August 1916 and continued under military sanction through October 1918. Corvée labor was unacceptable to the Haitian people, who perceived it for what it was—a form

Hak Sun, Kim

of enslavement. The corvée sparked a Cacos revolt that diminished in 1919 when U.S. soldiers assassinated Charlemagne Péraulte, a leader of the rebellion. More than 3,000 Haitians were killed in military operations against the Cacos. The victims were not restricted to the Cacos; indiscriminate killings were broadly acknowledged. Although the corvée was officially abolished in October 1918, other forms of coerced labor for public projects persisted until the end of the U.S. occupation, particularly in the North of Haiti under command of Colonel Clark H. Wells. A U.S. Senate inquiry later determined that Wells permitted the continuance of the corvée and the brutal treatment and murder of corvée laborers. He also gave orders to eliminate Caco prisoners and kill suspected Cacos rather than bring them in for imprisonment. Wells was never tried by military or criminal court for any of these crimes. Lori Lee See also: Cadet, Jean-Robert; Cane Harvesters; Restavek.

Further Readings Cadet, Jean-Robert. Restavec: From Haitian Slave-Child to Middle-Class American, An Autobiography. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998. Delorme, Jacky. Haiti’s Tarnished Children. Belgium: International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, 2004. Renda, Mary. Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism, 1915–1940. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.

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U.S. State Department. Trafficking in Persons Report. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2005.

Hak Sun, Kim (1924–1997) Kim Hak Sun was the first Korean woman to testify publicly about her life as a “comfort woman” (a euphemism that has become the standard phrase for the thousands of women used to serve Japanese soldiers sexually) during World War II. Following nearly half a century of silence, Kim made her story public and later became a litigant in a landmark class-action lawsuit against Japan, seeking an official apology from the government, monetary compensation, an investigation of their cases, revision of textbooks to reflect their plight, and a memorial. Prior to the revelations of her ordeal as a comfort woman, little was known about the Japanese Imperial Army’s practice of abducting young girls and forcing them into prostitution. Abducted by Japanese soldiers at the age of 17, Kim was forcibly transported to northeast China where she was compelled to become a comfort woman for a Japanese military unit stationed near Beijing. Obligated to share a house with five other Korean women, Kim was required to have sex with 20 to 40 Japanese soldiers a day. After a short period of time, Kim was relocated to another comfort station in northeast China. While at this new comfort station, Kim managed to escape with the aid of a sympathetic Korean man who eventually became her husband.

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Kim and her husband had a daughter and son in China before they returned to Korea at the end of World War II. Shortly following their arrival in Korea, their daughter died of cholera. and following the end of the Korean War, Kim’s husband died in an automobile accident. A few years later, her son died of an apparent heart attack. Coping with the loss of her entire family, Kim’s life spiraled out of control as she began drinking and became destitute. In 1981, after years of alcohol and drug abuse, Kim found work as a house cleaner. After Japan’s public denial of the existence of comfort women, the Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan was established in November 1990 in South Korea. The members of the council demanded that the Japanese government reveal the truth regarding comfort women, make a formal apology, and pay reparations. In August 1991, Kim Hak Sun broke nearly half a century of silence and made her story public. Her bravery in stepping forward encouraged other comfort women to come forward with their experiences. With the support of nongovernmental organizations, lawyers, and researchers, Kim and three other surviving Korean victims filed a lawsuit against the Japanese government in December 1991. The effect of Kim’s testimony was immeasurable. By the end of 1992, former comfort women from North Korea and South Korea, the Philippines, China, Taiwan, Indonesia, and the Netherlands began to reveal their stories openly. After presenting her

testimony before the Korean Council for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, Kim became a public figure in South Korea and made several guest appearances at conferences in South Korea and abroad chronicling her life as a comfort woman and detailing the abuse that she and other women had suffered. Kim also became an outspoken advocate of the need to teach about comfort women in history textbooks. Up to her death, Kim continued to press the Japanese government to issue a formal apology. Kim died on December 16, 1997, at Ehwa Women’s University in Seoul, South Korea. She was 73 years old. Keith A. Leitich See also: Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan.

Further Readings Howard, Keith, ed. True Stories of the Korean Comfort Women: Testimonies. London, New York: Cassell, 1995. Kim-Gibson, Dai Sil. Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women. Parkersburg, IA: Mid-Prairie Books, 1999. Soh, Chunghee Sarah. “Centering the Korean ‘Comfort Women’ Survivors.” Critical Asian Studies 33, no. 4 (2001): 603–608. Soh, Chunghee Sarah. “The Korean ‘Comfort Women’: Movement for Redress.” Asian Survey 36, no. 12 (1996): 1226–1240.

Haratine Haratine (or Haratin) is the term used to refer to the populations of African origin

Haratine

living in several West African countries particularly in Mauritania and Morocco. There is no consensus on the origins of the word since its meaning varies from country to country. While some argue it is derived from the Arabic word for “freedom” or “agricultural laborer,” others believe it is the Berber word used to describe darker-skinned persons. In Morocco, the Haratine are considered a separate ethnic group from the Berbers and Arabs. Overall, they make up around 40 percent of the population but there are some reports of populations as high as 80 percent in some villages. The defining characteristic for the Haratine is their darker skin color. Unfortunately, this feature has relegated the Haratine to a lower social status compared to other ethnic groups. They continue to face social discrimination and, until recently, were prevented from participating in politics or exercising their civil rights. Traditionally, the Haratine do not own land and worked as agricultural laborers on farms owned by Berbers or Arabs. Later, they became sharecroppers but were often poorly compensated or were treated inhumanely. As a consequence, some Haratine migrated to nearby North African countries or to Europe to find other employment opportunities in the 1960s. Their remittances are an important source of capital, because it has allowed a growing number of Haratine to purchase land in Morocco. This new wealth has also translated into an increased, albeit limited, amount of local political power as Haratine political candidates emerged in the 1980s.

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In Mauritania, the Haratine are known as “freed slaves” or “assimilated blacks.” They are believed to be descendants of African slaves (‘abd), originating from such countries as Senegal and Mali, who were captured by Arabs and forced into chattel slavery. Although the Haratine are emancipated, some Beydane have maintained their master-slave relationships with their former slaves through a combination of religious manipulation, the Haratine’s lack of education, and their economic dependence. The Haratine in Mauritania are also considered a separate ethnic group and comprise anywhere between 30 to 40 percent of the population. Racially, they are regarded as blacks because they are darker skinned and are often referred to or describe themselves as “Black Moors” or “Black Arabs.” These terms are used to distinguish the Haratine community from the Beydane, known as “White Moors,” who are Mauritanians of ArabBerber descent. Like the Beydane, the Haratine speak primarily Hassaniya or Arabic, and the idea of a shared Moorish culture is often used to differentiate the Haratine from other blacks from other Sub-Saharan African countries living in Mauritania. This cultural division was tested during a border dispute between Senegal and Mauritania from 1989 to1991. It escalated into a violent ethnic conflict between black African farmers from Senegal and the nomadic Beydane from Mauritania in the countryside and quickly spread to the urban areas. There were several reports that some Beydane asked their slaves and

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the Haratine to kill blacks, mostly Senegalese, in Nouakchott and other southern cities along the border. The French were the first to abolish slavery in Mauritania, in 1905; however, their emancipation was not enforced. Slavery continues to exist despite a presidential decree in 1981 that was intended to outlaw slavery in the country. As a result, most Haratine managed to escape from slavery, because they were freed by their masters, required to purchase their freedom, or fled to safety. Despite their status as freed slaves, the Haratine in Mauritania continue to face racial and social discrimination because of their skin color and perceived lower status. This has led to the emergence of

political organizations such as El Hor (“the Free”) and SOS Esclaves led by Messaoud Ould Boulkheir and Boubacar Messaoud, respectively. These Haratine organizations are working to improve the status of the Haratine community and enforce antislavery laws in Mauritania. Unfortunately, the Mauritanian government has refused to recognize these organizations and they operate largely outside of the country. Haratines such as Messaoud Ould Boulkheir have brought these issues facing their community to the national agenda. As the leader of the opposition party, Action for Change (AC), Ould Boulkheir became the first presidential candidate from the Haratine community in 2003. Although, his party

Mauritanian Messaoud Ould Boulkheir is an important Haratine political leader and the founder of the emancipation organization El-Hor. (AFP/Getty Images)

Hardenburg, Walter Ernest

was later banned, he reemerged as the leader of the People’s Progressive Alliance (APP) and campaigned for the presidency again in the 2007 election. Leslie Fadiga-Stewart See also: ‘Abd; American Anti-Slavery Group (AASG); Cotton, Samuel L.; Mauritania; SOS Esclaves (Mauritania).

Further Readings Amnesty International. Mauritania: A Future Free from Slavery? Amnesty International, 2002: http://web.amnesty.org/ library/pdf/AFR380032002ENGLISH/ $File/AFR3800302.pdf. Cotton, Samuel. Silent Terror: A Journey into Contemporary African Slavery. New York: Harlem River Press, 1998. Ilahiane, Hsain. “The Social Mobility of the Haratine and the Re-working of Bourdieu’s Habitus on the Saharan Frontier, Morocco.” American Anthropologist 103 (2001): 380–394. Parker, Ron. “The Senegal-Mauritania Conflict of 1989: A Fragile Equilibrium.” Journal of Modern African Studies 29 (1991): 155–171.

Hardenburg, Walter Ernest (1886–1942) Walter Ernest Hardenburg was a U.S. engineer, adventurer, and antislavery activist, who is chiefly remembered for his denunciation of the atrocities committed by the Peruvian Amazon Company in the Putumayo region. The son of an agricultural merchant, Hardenburg was raised in Youngsville, New York, among a closely knit community of the Methodist faith. After

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graduating from high school in 1903, he had brief service in the U.S. Navy and later sought fortune as a handyman in Panama, during the first years of the canal construction. From there he immigrated to Colombia posing as a qualified engineer (which apparently he wasn’t) and found employment as a surveyor of rail works in the State of Cauca. Due to the political instability and low wages after the “thousand-day” civil war, Hardenburg decided to try for a position in the administrative staff of the Madeira-Mamoré railroad project in Brazil. Thus, in October 1907 he started from Buenaventura toward the Amazon region, accompanied by his friend W. B. Perkins. Their plan was to reach Brazil by early February and earning some money on the way by selling merchandise to Indian and white settlers. Business, though, turned to failure, and by January 1908, both travelers had barely reached the Colombian Putumayo, in the frontier with Peru, then a district embedded in the economics of the rubber boom. They made the acquaintance of Colombian entrepreneur David Serrano, based at La Reserva station on the banks of the Caraparaná River, with whom they agreed to become business partners. However, these plans were frustrated on January 11, 1908, when an armed detachment of the Peruvian Amazon Company (PAC) detained Hardenburg and Perkins at Argelia station, and ransacked La Reserva, taking Serrano and his family as hostages. During the following weeks, Hardenburg

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claimed to witness all sorts of crimes and tortures inflicted on the Indian rubber gatherers, subjugated under PAC’s regime of terror and the system of endeude, or perpetual indebtedness. After threatening to sue the Peruvian company, Hardenburg and Perkins were released in Iquitos, Peru, on February 1. Although Perkins left almost immediately for the United States, Hardenburg stayed in Iquitos (the regional center of PAC transactions), working as an English teacher and gathering documentary information on the company’s crimes, especially pursuing the public denouncements made by Benjamín Saldaña Rocca, a local socialist journalist who previously had to escape to Lima. While in Iquitos, Hardenburg interviewed Julio César Arana, PAC’s founder and general manager, who denied all charges and offered instead to compensate Hardenburg for the loss of his luggage in the Putumayo. Convinced that Arana was secretly seeking to silence him, Hardenburg left for Manaos on June 1909, and a month later was arriving in London, where he sought the assistance of Reverend John Harris, the celebrated organizational secretary of the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society. Harris introduced Hardenburg to the staff of Truth magazine, a publication that officially (and lucratively) took up the cause of Putumayo slavery, starting in September 1909 with the publication of the headline “The Devil’s Paradise: A British Owned Congo,” due to the participation of numerous prominent British shareholders in PAC.

Hardenburg’s denunciations eventually took the form of a book in 1912, but, more importantly, led to the creation of a parliamentary special committee to investigate the Putumayo atrocities, many of which were allegedly perpetrated by Barbadian (and hence, British) overseers. The fundamental and horrific evidence that confirmed Hardenburg was soon to be produced by the report prepared by British Consul Roger Casement. Meanwhile, Hardenburg married and left for Canada. Although he briefly returned to London to testify before the select committee, his further involvement in the Putumayo investigations was basically marginal and referential. In later life, Hardenburg became a socialist activist in the Canadian provinces. Carlos Guillermo Páramo Bonilla See also: Peruvian Amazon Company.

Further Readings Collier, Richard. The River That God Forgot: The Story of the Amazon Rubber Boom. London: Collins, 1968. Hardenburg, Walter E. Putumayo: The Devil’s Paradise. Travels in the Peruvian Amazon Region and an Account of the Atrocities Committed upon the Indians Therein. London: T. F. Unwin, 1912. Paternoster, G. Sidney. The Lords of the Devil’s Paradise. London: S. Paul, 1913. Select Committee on the Putumayo. Correspondence Respecting the Treatment of British Colonial Subjects and Native

Hassaniya-Berbers Indians Employed in the Collection of Rubber in the Putumayo District. Presented to Both Houses of Parliament of His Majesty. London, 1912. Stanfield, Michael Edward. Red Rubber, Bleeding Trees: Violence, Slavery, and Empire in Northwest Amazonia, 1850– 1933. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998. Taussig, Michael T. Shamanism, Colonialism and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.

Hassaniya-Berbers Arab expansion into the western part of North Africa began a slow but steady process of Arab-Islamic infiltration and influence that began in the eighth century in the area today known as Mauritania. The primary impetus for this expansion (beyond the conquest drive of a religious empire) had more to do with ecological disasters, especially in South Arabia (Yemen), which forced people to migrate northward and eventually westward across Egypt to North Africa. The influx of these nomadic peoples exerted pressure on the region’s indigenous Berbers who moved farther south (a trend that probably had begun much earlier), thereby forcing Africans (Soninke) to do the same. This was the situation as the African empire/ kingdom of Ghana arose in southern Mauritania (and parts of modern-day Mali), which experienced some level of conflict with the Saharan Berbers. The destructive wars of the Almoravid dynasty’s Berber Islamic reform movement to some extent weakened, but did

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not destroy, the former trans-Saharan trading links. The Banu Hilal influx to North Africa that resulted from an 11th century drought in Yemen was felt in northern Mauritania in the 14th century, when Arab-Berber struggles for control of the region occurred. The Arab chronicler Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) mentioned the extent of their destruction, which he likened to that of locusts. Coincidentally, this was also the period when the Mali empire was expanding across West Africa to include areas where the Berbers lived. Although the Berbers had successfully resisted the process of Arabization, they were eventually infiltrated by Yemeni groups, especially the Banu Hassan, who would become dominant in Mauritania by the 17th century. As Berbers were maneuvering for territorial control, Africans were pushed farther south toward the Senegal River basin. When the final Berber attempt at resistance (1644–1674) against Yemeni invaders failed, the Berbers were forced to turn to Islamic scholarly pursuits in order to assert their dominance, at least in the religious sphere. The process of Arab-Berber integration became so intense or sustained that eventually the Berbers became both Islamized and Arabized. In the new social and political configuration that emerged, Africans slaves occupied the bottom of the resulting social pyramid. Collectively, all people who ended up speaking Berber-influenced Hassaniya Arabic (derived from the name of Banu Hassan) and who lived in the northern part of the country became

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known as Maures or “Moors” (hence the name of the country, Mauritania). These included Arab/Berbers and their former African slaves (Haratin) who had been assimilated to the Maure culture. The Maures came to be distinguished from their neighbors to the south who included Pulaar-speakers (Fulani cattle breeders), Soninke (the indigenous people of Mauritania who had been associated with the empire of Ghana), Wolof (the dominant ethnic group in Senegal), and Bambara. The Sahelian drought of the late 20th century forced many Arab/Berber nomadic and seminomadic camel herders of the north to migrate to the south where sedentary African farmers and cattle breeders live. This set the stage for sometimes bloody ethnic conflict between northerners, the Maures who dominated the government, and southerners who felt discriminated against by the northerners. This repeats the pattern of northern Arab/Berber population pressures that have led to African groups being displaced from their homes or territories. Thus, Mauritania has failed to serve as a geographical bridge linking North Africa to West Africa, a region historically traversed by the massive trans-Saharan trade of the past in which salt and other northern products were exchanged for gold. On the contrary, the interaction between the nomadic Arab/Berber herders of northern Mauritania (speakers of Hassaniya Arabic) and the sedentary African farmers of the lower Senegal River basin has been charged with tensions over competition for scarce resources,

especially the valuable agricultural land in the south during the period of desertification in the north, and issues of justice, equity in education and civil service employment, and fair treatment. In the modern era, whenever the name of Mauritania is mentioned, it is often in the context of discussing contemporary slavery. This is because the country has a significant number of African ex-slaves known as Harratin (derived from the Arabic word for freedom) who live in the northern part of the country and share in the Maure identity. This is in addition to the presence of African slaves from the south known as Abid. Both the Harratin and the Abid have strong cultural and other attachments to their former or present masters respectively. Abdin Chande See also: ‘Abd; Mauritania.

Further Readings Abun-Nasr, Jamil. A History of the Maghrib. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975. Garteiny, Alfred. Historical Dictionary of Mauritania. African Historical Dictionaries, No. 31. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1981. Norris, Harry T. “The Legacy of Banu Hassan.” Maghreb Review 2, no. 2 (1977): 21–25.

Huerta, Dolores (1930–) The activist, feminist, public speaker, and civil rights leader Dolores Huerta is best known as a farm workers’ advocate

Huerta, Dolores

and spokesperson, and as a cofounder of the United Farm Workers of America (now part of the AFL-CIO). Huerta was born in Dawson, New Mexico. Her father was a union organizer, miner, and field-worker, who eventually became a member of the New Mexico state legislature. Although her parents divorced when Huerta was a child, after the divorce her mother moved Huerta and her four siblings to Stockton, California, where she opened a restaurant and hotel. Huerta credits her mother for instilling in her a passion for social justice, commitment to the rights of farm workers, and her feminism. Huerta received a degree in teaching

United Farm Workers cofounder Dolores Huerta attends a dedication of the Cesar Chavez Monument on the San Jose State University campus in California in 2008. (AP/ Wide World Photos)

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at the University of the Pacific’s Delta Community College, taught school, then decided she could do more good “by organizing farm workers than by trying to teach their hungry children.” After leaving elementary school teaching, she founded the local chapter of the Community Service Organization in 1955 and the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) in 1960, lobbying for the passage of legislation to help farm workers gain such rights as the ability to vote in Spanish. Huerta is best known for cofounding the National Farm Workers’ Association (NFWA), predecessor to the United Farm Workers, with Cesar Chavez, and leading the Delano grape strike in the late 1960s, in which AWOC and NFWA boycotted grape growers in California. The UFW and AWOC became the United Farm Workers’ Organizing Committee (UFWOC), and in 1966 Huerta negotiated the first collective bargaining agreement of its kind in the United States. The 1968–1970 boycott is viewed as one of the “largest and most successful boycotts in U.S. history.” Huerta is largely responsible for the creation of Aid for Dependent Families, obtaining disability insurance for California farm workers, handling workers’ grievance filings, and negotiating the first health and benefit plans for farm workers. In the 1970s, she continued to lobby for the rights and protections of farm workers, speaking out against the use of pesticides, leading national consumer and farm workers’ boycotts, obtaining unemployment benefits for farm workers, and campaigning for

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Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP)

national political candidates. She was arrested more than 20 times during nonviolent protests and was beaten brutally by a police officer during a protest in 1988. Huerta was instrumental in the passage of the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, granting farm workers the right to organize collectively and negotiate for better wages and working conditions and the passage of the Immigration Act of 1985. Huerta has been divorced twice, raising 7 of her 11 children as a single mother. With longtime partner Richard Chavez, she had 4 more children. Her children often attended protests and joined their mother as she traveled. She also has 15 grandchildren. Huerta still travels nationally, promoting the rights of farm workers and women. Emily C. Martin-Hondros Further Readings Baer, Barbara, and Glenna Matthews. “The Women of the Boycott.” Nation 218, no. 8 (1974): 232–238. “Birth of a Union.” CQ Researcher 14, no. 35 (2004): 843–844. “Dolores Huerta at Seventy-Five: Still Empowering Communities.” Harvard Journal of Hispanic Policy 18, no. 1 (2005–2006): 13–18. Herrera, Lu. “For the Sake of Good.” Hispanic 16, no. 5 (2003): 28–29.

Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) was formed in 1986 by sisters Hina Jilani and Asma

Jahangir and a small group of fellow lawyers and human and women’s rights activists. In the ensuing two decades, the HRCP has worked for human rights and democratic development, becoming Pakistan’s largest nongovernmental organization (NGO). The HRCP investigates reports of human rights violations, publicizes individual cases and systemic violations through national and international media, holds human rights seminars and workshops, organizes and mobilizes activists, lobbies parliament, provides legal assistance to victims of human rights abuses, organizes protest rallies (in violation of Pakistan’s law prohibiting public political activity), and publishes annual reports, monthly and quarterly newsletters, as well as special investigative reports regarding human rights issues in southern Asia. Since its inception, the HRCP has been a strong advocate for women’s rights, drawing attention to the persistence of honor killing and the forced labor of women. Pakistani women continue to be victims of trafficking for the purposes of forced domestic labor and sexual slavery, as well as swara, the trading of women and girls to settle debts or interfamily conflicts. (Amnesty International considers swara to be a form of slavery.) The HRCP continues to raise awareness of these outlawed practices, generating publicity and providing legal aid for individual victims. Since the mid-1990s, the HRCP has struggled to curb the proliferation of bonded labor in Pakistan’s

Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP)

brick-making, carpet manufacture, and mining industries. Some of the world’s worst manifestations of bonded labor occur in Pakistan’s Sindh province, where some agricultural laborers (hari) have been bonded to landowners for generations, private jails are used to punish workers, and bonded hari who have managed to pay their peshgi or have escaped are frequently returned to the landlord with the collusion of local officials. Compounding the inherent class discrimination with ethnic and religious discrimination, Pakistan’s Hindu minority and members of minor tribes are disproportionately ensnared in the Sindhi bonded labor system. In addition to investigating and publicizing this practice, the HRCP established the Special Task Force on Sindh to address this issue and has promoted reform legislation including the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act of 1992. Under this law, the Special Task Force on Sindh has filed cases against landlords, resulting in the release of 15,000 bonded Sindhi laborers. However, as Sindhi landlords reasserted their influence over local government, efforts to further curb bonded labor have stalled. The HRCP in 2002 claimed that more than a million Sindhi peasants continued to endure bonded labor; the organization and other NGOs maintain that millions more Pakistanis are so enslaved. For their efforts, the HRCP’s activists and leaders have suffered intimidation and violence at the hands of private individuals and Islamic extremists opposed to their agitation for women’s rights.

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Both Hina Jilani and Asma Jahangir have endured death threats, destruction of their personal property, and attacks on their families. In addition, local officials have periodically halted publication of the HRCP’s quarterly newsletter, and both sisters were inexplicably charged as accessories to murder in 1999, following the honor killing of one of their clients. Meanwhile, the Pakistani government has increased its intimidation of the HRCP, detaining HRCP leaders and activists, keeping Jilani and Jahangir under constant surveillance since 1996, waging a media campaign against Jahangi and the HRCP, and refusing to temper Islamic extremists’ harassment of the organization. Michael Mundt See also: Bonded Labor; Peshgi.

Further Readings Anti-Slavery International. Contemporary Forms of Slavery Related to and Generated by Discrimination: Forced and Bonded Labor in India, Nepal and Pakistan. London: Anti-Slavery International, 2003. Anti-Slavery International. This Menace of Bonded Labor: Debt Bondage in Pakistan. London: Anti-Slavery International, 1996. Bales, Kevin. Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Human Rights Watch. Pakistan: Contemporary Forms of Slavery. New York: Human Rights Watch, 1995. Karim, Farhad. Contemporary Forms of Slavery in Pakistan. New York: Human Rights Watch, 1995.

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U.S. Department of State. “Pakistan: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices—2003.” Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, U.S. Department of State, 2004. http://www. state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/61710. htm. Accessed May 17, 2006.

Human Rights Day December 10 is observed annually as Human Rights Day, commemorating the date in 1948 when the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Human rights are universal and everyone possesses fundamental economic, cultural, social, political, and civil rights. Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: (1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment; (2) Everyone, without any discrimination has the right to equal pay for equal work; (3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favorable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection; and (4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests. Today, a variety of human rights violations are reflected from the word “slavery.” The state of children, child prostitution, child pornography, the exploitation of child labor, the use of children in the arm conflicts, debt bondage, the traffic in persons or in the sale of

human organs, certain practices under apartheid and colonial regimes are also considered in the context of human rights violations, in addition to traditional chattel slavery and the slave trade. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979), and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) all explain protection against abuses of human rights in general and through slavery in particular. Yet, in spite of these international agreements, human rights violations persist. Legislation for ending legal strikes by public sector workers and the threatening of federal government in the provinces of Newfoundland and British Columbia in 2004, contradicts human rights. Workers are still denied equal pay for equal work and many face workplace discrimination on the basis of race, disability, age, and gender. Human rights abuses are occurring in our society every day and interestingly some are also state sanctioned. People are facing inadequate health care, education, housing, and employment opportunities and are forced to endure it. It is also a common event to refer to the death sentences for many active trade union leaders around the world, and it signifies no limitation for human rights abuses. The United Nations has identified Sudan’s strife-torn Darfur region as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis and one among the many human rights

Human Trafficking for Labor Purposes

tragedies plaguing the world. About 1.45 million people are internally displaced in Darfur, and another 200,000 are living as refugees in neighboring Chad in accordance with United Nations official sources. In 2004, Louise Arbour, a former Canadian Supreme Court justice, was appointed to the position of United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, but unfortunately Canada is not an exception to many countries around the world witnessing human rights violations and atrocities. International covenants, national legislation, and enforcement procedures no doubt are the positive steps for the protection of human rights globally, but official actions alone cannot stamp out slavery in its various forms. Attitudes and customs that are often deep-rooted have to be changed through public awareness that broadens mental outlook, influencing belief structure and changing the attitude patterns toward the issue and class of people facilitating the protection of human rights. December 10 as Human Rights Day is a step toward introspection against abuses of human rights, and there is no disagreement on it. Patit Paban Mishra See also: Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Further Reading Schifter, Richard. Human Rights Day, 1989. Washington, DC: U.S. State Department, 1990.

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Human Trafficking for Labor Purposes Human trafficking for labor purposes or labor trafficking is a relatively new term for a concept of modern slavery that has origins in the European abolition of the transatlantic slave trade at the end of the 19th century. Labor trafficking refers to slavery-like practices called by other names from the early 20th century. Elements of labor trafficking include coerced labor, debt bondage, sexual servitude, and slavery-like practices according to the 2000 United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. Labor trafficking is a growing global problem linked to the expanding world economy, international migration flows, and the demand for cheap labor. Labor trafficking primarily involves exploitation of migrants in contemporary forms of bondage through indebtedness. Most prominently, persons are trafficked across borders or internally, then forced to work in agriculture, textile sweatshops, mines, domestic service, factories, construction, food processing and services, and exotic dancing and sexual entertainment among other licit and illicit industries. Coercive practices involve debts incurred for work-related expenses (including transportation, rent, equipment, recruitment fees and/or permits), restriction on workers to quit work or leave the workplace, and confiscation of identity documents. Fraud often

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occurs in the form of nonpayment of promised wages. Violence or the threat of violence is often used to enforce worker compliance. Violence can be psychological, in the form of threats and confiscation of identity documents, and physical, including beatings, sexual assault, and even murder of captive workers. The emergence of contemporary labor trafficking coincides with colonial development in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The indentured labor system marked one of the new forms of coerced labor. With the abolition of chattel slavery, many European colonies faced a labor crisis and decline in production. To meet the crisis, the Europeans recruited indentured workers from other colonies and sometimes within Europe. In theory, indentures came voluntarily and signed contracts for a limited period, after which workers were to be repatriated or free to buy land and settle in the colony. In practice, recruiters kidnapped, coerced, and deceived workers, few of whom understood the conditions of their transport, the nature of their work or the limits on their personal freedom. Managers wielded arbitrary authority and enforced harsh and violent discipline, often through the use of whips and stocks. Many indentures suffered or died on the overcrowded transport ships or due to the oppressive working and living conditions. Managers often forced workers to remain indentured after their contracts expired and many never returned home.

Labor trafficking in the late 19th century and most of the 20th century was a function of colonialism. However, contemporary labor trafficking is influenced by economic globalization. From the middle of the 19th century to about the 1970s, labor trafficking was characterized by abduction, kidnapping, and coerced recruitment. Human trafficking for labor purposes was tied to colonialist expansion and domestic practices in colonized countries. In contrast, contemporary labor trafficking is more characterized by voluntary migration and willing recruitment with coercion and denial of freedom in the final destination. Moreover, where labor trafficking in the late colonial period was perpetrated by the state or companies under colonial government charge, contemporary labor trafficking is perpetrated by organized criminal groups or individual employers taking advantage of weak or nonexistent protections in the labor market. Although contemporary labor trafficking has a long history, the international community did not agree on a definition until the end of the 20th century. The definition of trafficking in the 1949 UN Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Women and Children become less relevant as it forbade only human trafficking for sexual purposes, while the international community was becoming aware that people were trafficked for labor and other purposes (Miers, 2003, p. 432).


Contemporary labor trafficking often involves voluntary migrants, sometimes illegally smuggled, sometimes legally with foreign employment documents. Migrant workers become trafficked when at some stage in their movement they become coerced, forced, or deceived about the work or employment arrangement. A person may make an agreement with a recruiting or transport agent on an apparently voluntary basis. However, the consent of a person to migrate illegally becomes irrelevant when coercion, fraud, or other means included in the definition of human trafficking have been used to compel forced labor from the person. The expansion of international trade and offshore investment by wealthier countries, the ease of transport between nations, and the rapid spread of information worldwide has propelled increased international migration. While people in many nations have benefited from this process of globalization, others have suffered economic crisis, decline of living standards, and loss of livelihood. Consequently, the movement of people across borders in search of work has increased. The difficulty of legally migrating and accessing foreign work has increased the opportunities for criminal activities relating to migration, particularly trafficking. The existence of contemporary labor trafficking has always been in relation to global capital expansion and the imbalance in labor markets between countries resulting in the demand for foreign

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work to fill domestic labor and production needs. The International Labour Organization posits that the contemporary rise in international labor trafficking may be attributed to imbalances between labor supply and the availability of legal work in a place where the jobseeker is legally entitled to reside (ILO, 2001, p. 53). In this supposition lies the connection of migration to labor trafficking. Workers not satisfied with employment or lack thereof in their home country are pulled by the need for workers in more industrialized or capital-rich countries. Trafficking for labor purposes becomes a more lucrative crime where labor is in high demand while legal work opportunities are more limited and legal means of migration are restricted. Steven Lize See also: Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Women and Children; Economic Globalization; Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation; International Labour Organization; International Organization for Migration; Organized Crime and Slavery.

Further Readings Bales, Kevin. Disposable People. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Free the Slaves and Berkeley Human Rights Center. Hidden Slaves. Washington, DC: Free the Slaves and Human Rights Center, 2004. Lee, Maggy. Human Trafficking. Portland, OR: Willan Publishing, 2007.

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International Labour Organization. Stopping Forced Labour. Geneva: International Labour Office, 2001. Miers, Suzanne. Slavery in the Twentieth Century. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2003.

Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation In 2000, the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime defined trafficking as “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.” Human trafficking is a global phenomenon that engenders tremendous profits. Women and children are the majority of the victims. Because this is an illegal activity, accurate statistics are difficult to obtain, but international organizations conservatively estimate that each year millions of women and children are trafficked for purposes of sexual exploitation. Trafficking is a human rights violation that strips its victims of their dignity. This criminal activity also

poses immediate public health problems for society that include substance abuse, unwanted pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, and psychological trauma. Governments are also saddled with numerous other serious problems due to trafficking being closely linked to organized crime syndicates. Two main causes of human trafficking are poverty and unemployment, but other factors include destitution, corruption, and social crises. War, persecution, and social violence also play roles in its spread. Further, increasingly restrictive migration policies in receiving countries and deteriorating economies in sending countries often cause women and their families to be deceived by the lure of good jobs. They believe the promises of the traffickers only to find themselves in a slavelike situation due to the vulnerability of their situation. They are often confined under guard, kept in debt, stripped of their documents, and threatened. Victims often find themselves in an environment where they do not understand the language, they fear deportation, and they have little or no money. In addition, their captors threaten their families back home with violence if their debts are not fully repaid. The women are raped and beaten until they agree to prostitute themselves. Trafficked individuals, especially in transit and receiving countries, are in need of governmental aid and protection, but it is rarely available. Traffickers succeed for several main reasons. One is that there is still little global cooperation or coordination to


combat what is a transnational criminal phenomenon. Another reason is because the sex industry creates a demand for prostitutes with increasing governmental support. In 1998 the International Labour Organization recommended that Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand accept that prostitution plays such an important role in their national economies that its revenues should be incorporated into their gross domestic products (GDPs). In addition, governments have not been able take effective measures to eliminate trafficking or impose

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sufficiently stiff sentences to deter traffickers. There also remains a lack of awareness by the populations of the sending countries of the dangers involved in believing the promises of legal, high-paying jobs. Globalization has made the movement of people and capital much easier and faster. Traffickers have become expert at reading local, regional, and international politics and therefore at taking advantage of the disruption caused by economic, political, and social dislocation. Finally, the trend to legalize prostitution has created an ideological barrier that

Members of a rescue unit evacuate the body of a Colombian woman who died of dehydration near the Israeli town of Eilat in September 13, 2006. She is believed to be a victim of a human trafficking organization operating on the border between Egypt and Israel. (AP/Wide World Photos)

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leans toward ignoring the problems of trafficking for sexual exploitation. Whereas governments remain poorly organized in their efforts to combat human trafficking, traffickers have successfully developed extensive networks. Sometimes family members and friends of the victims are involved in the process of entrapping them. Travel arrangements are easily made. Aspects of the transit can be furnished by small, independent operators. This is especially true in border regions when crossings are made in trucks, cars, or boats, but trafficking could not have developed into a global industry without sophisticated, large criminal smuggling rings with extensive networks of contacts for the false documents, hidden lodgings, surreptitious transportation, and knowledge of how to deceive border police. Some businesses that have been used to cover for traffickers are employment agencies, modeling agencies, travel agencies, beauty contests, language schools, shipping companies, and matchmaking agencies. Today the Internet also plays an important role in trafficking for sexual exploitation. Newsgroups and chat rooms,

which are rarely regulated, allow traffickers to organize their activities. Because of issues related to free speech and the right to privacy, governments have not been able to generate the collective will necessary to rein in cyber abuse. The Internet also permits a higher level of anonymity among those who buy and sell women and children. Loni Bramson See also: Illegal Migration; Organized Crime and Slavery; Prostitution.

Further Readings Bales, Kevin. Disposable People: New Slavery and the Global Economy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Cwikel, Julie, and Elizabeth Hoban. “Contentious Issues in Research on Trafficked Women Working in the Sex Industry: Study Design, Ethics, and Methodology.” Journal of Sex Research 42, no. 4 (2005): 306–316. Miers, Suzanne. Slavery in the Twentieth Century. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2003. Pickup, Francine. “More Words but No Action? Forced Migration and Trafficking of Women.” Gender & Development 6, no. 1 (1998): 44–51.

I and their more pragmatic opponents in the administration of Ibn Saud. Ibn Saud’s new kingdom had inherited old institutions or practices such as slavery, which was openly practiced, especially in Western Arabia. In the Treaty of Jiddah of May 1927 the British had recognized Ibn Saud as an independent ruler in return for his cooperation against slave trade, but since the kingdom had not signed the 1926 League of Nations convention on slavery, nothing much had changed. In 1936, a Saudi Arabian royal decree entitled “Instructions Concerning Traffic in Slaves” was ostensibly issued for the purpose of reducing slave imports, regulating the sale of slaves, and ensuring that they were well fed and taken care of. An Office of the Inspector of Slave Affairs was established in the Ministry of Interior to monitor the implementation of the regulations. Despite these measures, the commitment of the Saudi monarchy was not toward ending slavery, which, after all, was still legal, but only toward reforming it. Not surprisingly, therefore, illicit slave imports continued. Ibn Saud’s imposition of peace and order in the country allowed pilgrimages to the holy sites in Mecca to resume with protection provided to pilgrims. Yet, one thing had not changed;

Ibn Saud, Abdul Aziz (1880–1953) The creation of modern Saudi Arabia is associated with the al-Saud family whose most ambitious member was Abdul Aziz ibn Saud (1880–1953). He battled his way to power in the Najd and Riyadh (central Arabia) by 1905– 1906 and along the way displaced the Ottoman power in al-Huffuf in eastern Arabia by 1913. This was after the Ottoman Empire had already recognized him as its client and the imam in Najd. He relied heavily on the support of the Ikhwan brotherhood (consisting of nomadic Wahhabi reformers) to push forward with his military advances. In the early 1920s he waged a war to unify Najd and Hijaz by removing the Hashimite family from power in the Holy Lands to form the modern kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1925. In 1929, Ibn Saud dealt with his fanatical Ikhwan allies who wanted to attack other Muslims, including Hashimites, by militarily suppressing them and disbanding them as a fighting unit. The Ikhwan were too eager to force “puritanical” reform on other Muslims whether they were in Saudi Arabia or Iraq. This left an unresolved tension or conflict between the more strict conservative Wahhabi reformers 317

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Ibn Saud, Abdul Aziz

King Abdul Aziz ibn Saud (seated, center) is credited with the creation of modern Saudi Arabia. (Library of Congress)

slave imports, while declining, continued, and the king began charging customs duties on them. Slaves were being sold, not openly, but in informal markets. The royal family itself owned many slaves, and Ibn Saud saw slavery as acceptable especially since existing slaves were generally well treated. The discovery of oil in Saudi Arabia in the early 1930s did not foster a social revolution or progressive thinking

that would have convinced or encouraged Ibn Saud to end slavery as soon as possible. Rather, the institution was being slowly undermined by economic changes (for example, slave soldiers and slave camel drivers were no longer needed in an age of motorized vehicles). Although slave markets had been curtailed by the late 1950s, slavery had not been ended by the time Ibn Saud died in 1953. That would come in 1962,

Illegal Migration

when his son, Prince Faisal, abolished slavery in Saudi Arabia. Abdin Chane See also: Saudi Arabia, Abolition in.

Further Readings Hutson, Alaine. “Enslavement and Manumission in Saudi Arabia, 1926–38.” Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies 11, no. 1 (2002): 49–70. Miers, Suzanne. Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. New York: Altamira Press, 2003.

Illegal Migration The term “migrant worker” refers to a person who is to be engaged, is engaged, or has been engaged in a remunerated activity in a place where he or she is not a national. The legal or illegal nature of this enterprise comes from the particular circumstances of the migrant’s residence and work capacity with respect to the regulative framework of the host nation. Illegal migration consists of those people who enter a country without the proper consent of national authorities, people who remain in a country after their visas or work permits have expired, people who are moved by migrant smugglers or human trafficking agencies, and those who abuse the asylum system. Furthermore, those individuals who travel to other countries as a result of fake marriages or adoptions may also be included in this group. The term “illegality” is

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a key concept in the exploitation of migrant workers due to its negative implications. The term connotes criminality, although migrants are only illegal in their residence because they are not considered a valid presence by authorities. The history of illegal flows of labor likely went hand in hand with the inevitable and ceaseless demand of employers toward decreasing the cost of production by diminishing the social value of laborers. It is impossible to give the exact number of illegal migrants, but it can only be guessed. Many researchers believe that the number of illegal migrants may well exceed the number of legal migrants in the world today. It is likely that the growth of low-wage and part-time jobs facilitates the employment of illegal immigrants, since higher labor costs usually force employers to look for not only new forms of supply but also cheaper and more vulnerable labor sources in order to achieve low-cost labor. Women, children, and illegal migrant workers are among the most common labor sources that are used in that manner. Since the Industrial Revolution, searching for new but cheaper sources of low-cost production has taken two major forms. Employers, mostly guided by states, have either exported the production process to locations where cheaper labor sources are found or imported low-cost laborers to replace or supplement their more expensive labor force. Therefore, within the capitalist world economy, labor immigration has always performed the

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historical function of providing a regular and unlimited labor supply so that the capitalist system can maintain its rates of profit. The capitalist mode of production requires not only cheap labor but, ideally, the cheapest one. Therefore, illegal immigration has evidently increased throughout the capitalist world economy, not only in the developing or lessdeveloped countries but also in highly developed countries. The flows of large number of illegal immigrants will continue as long as the economic globalization of the world economy creates a space for illegal migration to be able to feed the informal need of labor utilization. The informal economy forces the workers to deal with flexible production without any regulative framework, such as social security, health insurance, and minimum wage and working conditions policies. Thus, illegality is highly preferred by many employers, since all the added costs, including recruitment of labor, social welfare, social security, and other taxes, can easily be bypassed. The greater exploitation of immigrant workers, especially those of illegal workers, has nothing to do with their obedience. It is all about their objective vulnerability, and it is a direct result of having crossed national territories without document or of being illegal after certain periods of their initial arrival. It is their legal status and the legal relationship with the state and law that creates their objective position of weakness vis-à-vis their employers. As more migrant workers acquire their rights under international human

rights agreements, they instantly come to resemble the native labor force with full working rights. Therefore, they turn out to be useless for flexible and lowcost production. It is for this reason that the key interest of employers is to import immigrants in the most legally tenuous position. Thus, illegal immigrants become the most vulnerable workers. Their legal status deprives them of most basic civil rights and prevents their effective organization for making demands. Their illegality formally confronts them with the enforcement apparatus of the receiving state. Their status as a violator of legal codes prevents them from challenging the work terms and conditions and claiming or taking advantage of any benefit. The rate of exploitation of illegal migrant workers is indubitably associated with their conditions as a legally defenseless group. Therefore, illegal migrants turn out to be modern slaves, defined by the International Labour Organization as someone “forced to work under physical or mental threat, and where the owner or employer controls the person completely.” Bayram Unal See also: Child Labor.

Further Readings Baldwin-Edwards, Martin, and Joaquín Arango. Immigrants and the Informal Economy in Southern Europe. London: Frank Cass, 1999. Williams, Phil. Illegal Immigration and Commercial Sex: The New Slave Trade. London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1999.

Incest

Incest Of all the forms of sexual abuse, incest is one of the most soul destroying. Incest is sexual relations between relatives. Each culture has a different definition of who is a relative and what comprises sexual relations; therefore, the exact definition of incest changes depending on the culture. Incest can be nonexploitative and nonabusive if the sex act takes place between peers and is wanted. Usually, though, it is an abusive and exploitative encounter that traumatizes the victim regardless of how distant the relationship is or even if there is only an attempt at sexual contact. Due to the shame and trauma created by incestuous abuse, to a large extent, incest remains a taboo subject for those who live it. Victims can be female or male, although mostly female. Abusers are usually men, but can also be women. The abuse almost always starts in childhood. Since victims often cannot talk about incestuous abuse, eliminating it is virtually impossible even though in most cultures it is either a criminal act or culturally forbidden. In the United States many women are still silenced about their experience with incest, though it began to loose its taboo status after the publication of such books as Sandra Butler’s Conspiracy of Silence (1978), Louise Armstrong’s Kiss Daddy Goodnight (1978), and Florence Rush’s The Best Kept Secret (1980). These publications, among others, helped to create an environment that opened the way for scholarly research on incest, and a flood of

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popular books and articles by victims have since resulted. Publicity about incest from the victim’s point of view spread from the United States to other parts of the world in the 1980s. Since incest happens within a family, and because the victim is often pressured not to reveal it, accurate statistics concerning its frequency are rare. Incest is seldom officially reported, and even when it is, the abuser is almost never convicted or seriously punished. A usual goal is to rehabilitate the offender and reestablish the family unit. Researcher Diana E. H. Russell conducted a rigorous random sample survey study in San Francisco, which found that 16 percent of the women identified themselves as having experienced at least one instance of incestuous abuse. Of these, 4.5 percent of the women had been forced to have sexual relations with their father before the age of 18 (father-daughter incest was usually the most traumatic kind). Of the 16 percent, three-fourths of the incest cases took place before the victim had reached the age of 14. The incidence level of incest is important because of the impact that it has on the lives of the victims, the other members of the family, and the people who are close to the victims later in their lives. Incest is an atrocity that for many remains a secret throughout their lives. It is therefore self-integrated as a psychological trauma. Further, the pain and trauma usually experienced by the victim is long-term, even if the abuse only occurred once. Therefore, incest is a serious public health problem. In

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addition, it has been shown that incestuous abuse socializes the victims to becoming more susceptible to other forms of sexual abuse as they grow older. Incest has also been closely linked to substance abuse, eating disorders, posttraumatic stress disorder, running away from home, prostitution, suicide, destructive anger, confusion about one’s sexuality, mental illness, and self-mutilation, among other serious problems. There are also the tragedies of unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. The incestuous experience leads large numbers of victims to believe that there is something inherently wrong with them; they have very low self-esteem. Additionally, incest occurs in families of all socioeconomic levels, educational backgrounds, and religious, racial, and ethnic groups. One reason for the serious impact of incest on the victims’ lives is that they often blame themselves for allowing the incest to happen. This is because, as children, they consented to the sexual relations, even when they did not want it to take place. As children, they were not sufficiently mature to understand that in the family hierarchy they were expected to defer and obey authority. Because of the imbalanced power differential, in reality, there could not have been consent. Further, resistance is often not an option because of the difference in size, the abuser uses force. Other times, the incest occurs while the child is asleep. Threats such as taking away a loved one or economic necessities can be used. In addition, the

children often do not understand what is happening. Children can also be disarmed by fear, the need for attention, or powerlessness. Some children, though, are able to engage in resistance strategies. The more distant the relationship, the more often children feel capable of verbally and physically resisting. Some try to run away. Others attempt to resist verbally by screaming, protesting, or asking the perpetrator to stop. Nevertheless, research shows that telling someone else about the incest is not an evident option for children. This can be because they are afraid of punishment, being hurt, or rejection; they do not want the abuser to be punished; they do not think they will be believed; they think they will be blamed; and they are too ashamed to verbalize what happened to them. Loni Bramson See also: Sexual Abuse.

Further Reading Russell, Diana E. H. The Secret Trauma: Incest in the Lives of Girls and Women. New York: Basic Books, 1986.

India The Republic of India is the largest democracy and second most populated country in the world today. Geographically, the borders of India touch those of many other countries. It stretches from the Arabian Sea in the west to the Bay of Bengal in the east and borders Pakistan to the northwest; China,

India

Nepal, and Bhutan to the north; Bangladesh to the northeast; and Myanmar (Burma) to the east. The capital of India is New Delhi, and Mumbai (Bombay) is its largest city. India covers an area of 1.2 million square miles (excluding Kashmir). Although acceleration in economic growth has made India among the 10 fastest growing developing countries, the country’s per capita income remains low and 26 percent of the population live below the income poverty line. Hindi, English, and 17 other major languages are spoken, and its main religions are Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism, Christianity, Buddhism, and Jainism. India has a population of approximately 1.1 billion people. An estimated 400 million are children up to 18 years of age. The American AntiSlavery Group states that of the 15 million people who are enslaved within India, many are children. Although India may boast to be the largest democracy, international human rights reports state that the country can claim little virtue in being host to more slaves than all other countries in the world combined. Slavery is historically and geographically variable and it resists concise definition. It may be defined as social practices that legitimate a relationship in which people are at the disposal of another person or group. Slavery as a particular kind or form of exploitative behavior runs through premodern and modern societies, but it is the content of the exploitative relationship that gives slavery its diversity and complexity. No single definition of slavery is thus able to embrace such a diverse

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range of exploitative practices. Rather, it becomes possible to extend orthodox practices and distinctions between helots, debt bondage, and chattel slavery, to a range of other exploitative practices. India is not unique when it comes to describing practices as slavery. Other developing countries, including the Middle East, have widespread social and economic inequalities and questionable citizenship and human rights records, many of which have been described as slavery. It is difficult to assess whether slavery in India has received as much scholarly or public attention as slavery in the Americas or Africa. There may be several reasons, but one is the visibility of the caste system as the predominant form of social stratification. The scaffolding erected by the caste system has provided the primary lens through which commentators have made sense of a variety of social, economic, and political inequalities. There may be sound analytical and empirical reasons for why inequalities reflecting slavery should be examined independently from those of the caste system. It would be remarkable, however, to assume that there are no commonalities between the inequalities inherent within the caste system and those that are characteristic of slavery since both are based on symbolic degradation, physical segregation, and economic servitude. In India, a range of economic, sexual, and human rights exploitations have appeared under the rubric of slavery that include the internal and external trafficking of women, children, and men

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for the expropriation of sex and labor, and there is bonded labor in carpet factories. Bangladeshi women and children are trafficked to India, or through India to Pakistan and the Middle East for sex, domestic servitude, and forced labor, while Nepalese women have received a similar fate. Many people are victims of forced or indentured labor. Studies suggest that many women in the commercial sex industry were initially victims of sexual servitude and sex trade trafficking. These have been compounded by sex tourists from other Western countries. The Anti-Slavery Society reports practices of hierodulic prostitution that refers to religiously sanctioned prostitution. Parents dedicate their daughters to a Hindu deity for a range of possible reasons, usually as a sacrifice to appease gods, or they are purchased (prostituted) by wealthy worshipers and offered to gods. There has been an apparent revival of these practices in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. Practices of child abuse and prostitution animate and give sustenance to the durability of institutionalized slavery. Slavery is also given shape by legislative boundaries and other mechanisms of social control created to deal with exploitative practices. The perceived causes and consequences of slavery are given recognition and gravitas by governments, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and other activists. Indian governments have expressed considerable disdain with modern slavery as activists, and NGOs have expressed disdain with

governmental incompetence. Government strategists and activists do not always see eye to eye in the context of a multiple and shifting context of national and international human rights organizations and claims to authority. Practices of slavery, the social control of slavery, and human rights discourse emerge and evolve together in a dynamic contestation over meanings, actions, and politics. Some improvements have been acknowledged by NGOs since the arrival of the new Indian government in June 2004. The secretary for women and child development has been empowered to develop and implement antitrafficking policies. Fast-track courts have ensured greater convictions in Tamil Nadu and New Delhi. In March 2005, an order was implemented by the home minister of Maharashtra state to close dance bars used for prostitution and trafficking. In Mumbai, a staterun home for underage trafficking has improved its collaboration with U.S. government-funded NGOs. This has improved levels of care provided for trafficking victims. The updated 2001 Juvenile Justice Act, provides criminal penalties for sexual offenses committed against minors, including the prostitution of children. It also ensures strong protections for child victims of trafficking through the oversight of child welfare committees in each state and mandatory care provided in stateapproved protection homes. The Immoral Trafficking and Prosecution Act (ITPA) criminalizes the selling, procuring, and exploitation of any person

India

for commercial sex and for profiting from prostitution. India’s National Human Rights Commission, in late 2004, produced a report of the trafficking situation in India. It included recommendations for the government to take in preventing future trafficking. A study of sex tourism in Goa was also undertaken by the Human Rights Commission. The National Commission for Women joined with the Maharashtra State Commission for Women in holding a workshop on sex tourism in that state. Reports from NGOs and human rights organizations have claimed that government administrations have not done enough to eliminate trafficking. For instance, India has been placed on a Tier 2 Watch List for two successive years for failing to provide evidence of increased efforts to address trafficking of people, inadequate progress in forming a well-coordinated national law enforcement response to interstate and transnational trafficking crimes, and poor governmental response to law enforcement collusion with traffickers. In contrast to laws against sexual exploitation, Indian laws for addressing forced labor, child labor, and domestic servitude, remain inadequate for a number of reasons. Fast-track courts remain inadequate: Prosecutions may take up to eight years, during which evidence may be lost and witnesses fade way, and acquittals become the norm. Government-provided shelters for victims of trafficking remain insufficient as do formal referral systems—through

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which police regularly refer victims of trafficking to qualified NGO service providers. Inadequate penalties are attached to these offenses. Although the Child Labour Act (1986) and Abolition of Bonded Labour Act (1976) have aided the emancipation and rehabilitation of children in forced labor, they only carry a maximum of three years in prison. This may be a poor deterrent for recidivism of this severity. Furthermore, the enforcement of these acts is undermined by overburdened and poorly trained local magistrates. Local magistrates’ additional responsibility of collecting state taxes from the very businesses that employ bonded labor do not sit well with their pragmatic task of law enforcement. Indeed, the ethos of law enforcement is further undermined by officials’ acceptance of bribes and their pretense of not knowing. Collusion with trafficking is not a deterrent. There are a number of NGOs or intermediary organizations that challenge these inadequacies and endorse antislavery sentiments and changes. They include Global March against Child Labour, South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude, and Human Rights Watch. Rampaul Chamba See also: Anti-Slavery International; Bonded labor; Convention against the Worst Forms of Child Labour (1999); Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW); Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Women and Children (1949).

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Further Readings Bales, Kevin. Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Patnaik, Utsa., ed. Chains of Servitude: Bondage and Slavery in India. Madras: Sangam Books, 1985. Pinto, Jeanette. Slavery in Portuguese India: 1510–1842. Bombay: Himalaya Publishing House, 1992. Saradamoni, K. Emergence of a Slave Caste: Pulayas of Kerala. New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1980.

Indian-Mestizo Captives Unknown to many, brutal forms of human slavery thrived for more than three centuries in what is today the U.S. Southwest. Indian-Mestizo servitude resonated with many of the same deleterious affects as black slavery, including harsh transactions, a lack of bodily integrity, and extraordinary deprivations of liberty, all of which scarred the lives of captives. Emerging in the late 16th century, the Indian-Mestizo slave trade lingered in unconventional forms like dependent term labor arrangements until well into the 20th century. In places like New Mexico, the trade became deeply rooted in cultural borderland customs. New Mexicans, indigenous traffickers, and sometimes even captives themselves acted in ways that defined Indian-Mestizo servitude. Voracious reciprocities characterized the trade as both New Mexicans and Indians took captives from one another, but powerful evidence suggests that New

Mexicans were much more aggressive and successful in their slave raiding activities. Indian-Mestiza women and children were most often the target of putative raids launched frequently by New Mexican militias. Captive-taking, reciprocal abductions, and the desire to accrue borderland capital in human beings continually fueled Indian-Mestizo servitude. Indian-Mestizo captives were frequently kept as domestic servants by wealthy New Mexicans, but captives were also traded along with livestock, textiles, and tools as part of borderland commerce. Captives were often held in isolated and sometimes rapidly changing circumstances. For example, individuals might be abducted via a raid in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and kept by slave traffickers as personal servants. Held captive, these slaves might later be sold or traded for sheep or other livestock in adjoining pastoral areas. These same captives might then be trafficked through a maze of shifting borderland markets, perhaps changing hands several times before ending up in a New Mexican household or as a surrogate member of an Indian clan. Early studies on Indian-Mestizo servitude characterized the trade as exploitative, but recent scholarship has argued that Indian-Mestizo servitude evolved over time into a kin-based institution. Some scholars contend that filial rhetoric was frequently used to demarcate real, fictive, and dependent familial ties between masters and servants. For some captives, kinship structures like marriage, adoption, or godparentship


(compadrazgo) mediated some of the harsher aspects of captivity. These kinbased structures might have eroded some of the hard distinctions between masters and servants as servants became integrated into custodial households. Still dependent and subordinate, some captive kin nonetheless became prized as cultural interpreters often brokering tense relations between Hispanic and Indian communities. Like paternalism on plantations in the U.S. South, kin-based servitude involved mutual obligations between owner and slave. Servants were expected to be obedient and dutiful whereas masters were supposed to educate and Christianize Indian-Mestizo servants. On large land grants, like the Maxwell Land Grant, paternalism played an integral role in Lucien B. Maxwell’s control of his estate. Maxwell ruled his grant via quasi-familial relationships that included the ownership of Indian slaves and the management of peon-servants, but there were boundaries to Maxwell’s paternalism as financial considerations also played an important role in his management of the grant. But servitude on the Maxwell Grant may have been atypical of the overall captive experience in New Mexico. Recent scholarship argues that Indian-Mestizo captivity was intended to expand borderland communities through the incorporation of abductees into households via internal kinbased structures. Thus, unlike black servitude’s racism and labor exploitation, the Indian-Mestizo slave trade

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may have also been relied on to develop borderland settlements as well as energize natal exchange markets. Clearly, however, both kinds of paternalism could quickly slip into violence and intimidation should servant’s commit unwelcomed social transgressions. Even paternalism within the slave trade might have been utilized by some masters as pretext to obscure what was essentially captivity driven by racism and class exploitation. In some instances, kinship may have played only a nominal role in what was ostensibly chattelbased servitude. In 1868, the federal government tried to extend universal emancipation into the Southwest and abolish the New Mexican slave trade. To this end, the government implemented civilian interdiction teams to locate and liberate Indian-Mestizo captives. Given the paradoxical nature of the trade’s custodial settings, federal investigations into captivities may have been particularly vexing. Once federal officers had informed captives of their liberty rights some of them left, while others stayed. That some captives remained in their custodial households might suggest genuine filial ties between masters and servants. It may well have been that captives became emotionally and materially tied to masters because they had been incorporated into households through kin-based structures like marriage, adoption, and godparentship. But captives might also have been reluctant to leave because they had been abducted as children and no longer had strong familial bonds to their biocultural clans.

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Thus, they did not feel compelled to reunite with native families. Further, servants might have been reluctant to flee captivity because to them kinship was fictive and these servants feared the wrath of their masters should they flee. Finally, the awareness that their captivity could unpredictably shift between intimacy and violence might have also created such emotional vertigo for captives that they chose to remain in captivity rather than face the uncertainties of the harsh New Mexican frontier. These circumstances made the government’s job in rooting out this kind of slavery very difficult. Federal officers would have been required to sort out factual circumstances associated with these captivities. Since motives and intentions between masters and servants might have become emotionally muddled due to kinship conventions, this could have made such investigations extraordinarily tedious and painstaking. Ultimately, the level of precision needed to scrutinize incidents of captivity accurately might have progressively weakened because of a lack of manpower, resources, and altruistic resolve by federal officers. Surviving evidence suggests that some officers might have even used their positions as federal liberators to further their own financial interests. Robert F. Castro Further Readings Brooks, James F. Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands. Chapel Hill:

University of North Carolina Press, 2002. Gutierrez, Ramon. When Jesus Came the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500–1846. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991. Montoya, Maria. Translating Property: The Maxwell Land Grant and the Conflict over Land in the American West, 1840–1900. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

Indonesia There was a remarkable variety in the forms of bondage and slavery that existed in the southeast Asian region, including the country now known as Indonesia, where slavery existed from quite early times. This disparity results from the demographic situation in the region, particularly the need to control labor of which there was a severe shortage, coupled with the relative abundance of land to which an enslaved person might flee, determined the types and the nature of subordination that could exist. This made it difficult to practice the form of slavery that existed, for instance, in the West Indies, where plantation slavery was the norm rather than the exception. This also accounts for why slave rebellions were a relatively rare occurrence in Indonesia, although there were a few shipboard revolts that took place when slaves were being moved, and there was a Javanese slave uprising in Patani in 1616. This has led scholars to recognize the absence of a clearly demarcated boundary between free and unfree; instead, there

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is a continuum from what approximates chattel slavery at one extreme to debt bondage at the other extreme. Thus, there were degrees of enslavement from very little (those who worked for a few days only for their master) to very much (those who worked most of the time). Where did the slaves originate and how were they acquired? As would be expected, it was often the more organized or centralized kingdoms/states that captured slaves from the weaker, decentralized marginal societies or groups that could not defend themselves very well. Some slaves ended up in the major commercialized urban centers such as Batavia (now Jakarta), which had slave ordinances where the demarcation lines between slavery and other forms of bondage was not so distinct and upward mobility was possible. Geography also played a role in determining the pattern of enslavement, as it was often the people from the lowland kingdoms who enslaved the divided, often peripheral peoples of the highland areas. This, for instance, was the case in Celebes (south Sulawesi), where the more organized and trade-minded Bugis raided the highland Toraja for captives. Yet, it should not be assumed that the highlanders themselves did not keep slaves; in fact, a few of their headmen, Pong Maramba and Pong Tiku, were well known for their heavy involvement in the slave trade. Generally, the slaves in this area were attached to a highland family for generations and were unlike recent slaves

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(commoditized entities) sold to complete strangers. Although the character of southeast Asian (or Indian Ocean) slavery might seem mild in comparison to its counterpart in the Atlantic world, one cannot ignore the coerced labor systems that developed later—in particular the cultivation system on Java and southeast Sumatra in Indonesia. This was the period of not only the Dutch presence in southeast Asia (Indonesia in particular) but also of Dutch participation in both the Atlantic and Indian Ocean slave trades in the 17th and 18th centuries. It has been estimated that in the late 17th century the Dutch East India Company (VOC) owned several thousand slaves (we know also that some people from this region were sent as slaves to Dutch Suriname and to the Cape Colony of South Africa). Slavery had widespread acceptance among Dutch officials, and a majority of Calvinist ministers both in the Dutch Republic and abroad justified it based on biblical authority (Genesis 9:25–27—the so-called “Curse of Ham” ideology). Dutch officials referred to the milder treatment of slaves by Europeans, the servile nature of Asians, and the strong possibility that once freed slaves would gravitate toward Islam as reasons to retain slaves in their lowly status. Furthermore, it is quite revealing that the VOC was far more concerned about protecting its spice trade from smugglers than it was about people being “stolen” (a euphemism for enslavement) in the areas where the company exercised jurisdiction. In fact, between 1650 and 1675

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the Dutch concluded “slave-clause” agreements with some local chiefs near Sumatra, Timur, New Guinea, and Sulawesi to provide them with protection and military assistance in exchange for their provision of slaves and other commodities as tribute. When the people of the Banda archipelago south of the Malukus continued to sell nutmeg and mace to British traders despite being told not to, the Dutch took severe punitive measures that included relocating many of the people of the island. The island was then repopulated with VOC indentured workers and slaves to work in the nutmeg groves. The cultivation system that was implemented in Java from the 1830s onwards was one of the worst and most exploitative colonial schemes to have been introduced by Europeans. Through coercive means that were only slightly different from those of the slave plantations that sought to maximize the profits of the slave masters, it forced the local people to grow export crops such as coffee, sugar, indigo, tea, cinnamon, pepper, tobacco, cotton, and silk for the purpose of strengthening the Netherlands weak financial position in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars and a civil war with Belgium. It is estimated that between one-fifth and onethird of the Netherlands state revenues between the 1830s and 1860 were made up of profits derived from this system that imposed a heavy burden on helpless villagers. It left farmers with little time to grow rice, their main staple food crop, and famines and epidemics broke out in the 1840s.

By the 19th century, especially the second half, the emancipation movement had gained sufficient momentum, making the trade in humans unacceptable. Slavery itself was abolished by the Dutch in the first decade of the 20th century. Although the Toraja, for instance, welcomed the Dutch, some, especially those who had benefited from slave trade, and the nobility, for whom possession of slaves was proof of status, refused to accept colonial authority. The modern state of Indonesia is a 19th-century creation formed when its boundaries were defined and the process of exploitative economic and political integration started. It is against this background that we should understand the severe Dutch response to Tana Toraja nobility, many of whom were either jailed or killed for daring to challenge their authority. This was part of the process of pacification by which colonial authorities forced local people to submit to their authority, pay taxes, grow certain specified cash crops, relocate if necessary, and work on certain public projects through a system of coerced labor. This was one of the ironies of the situation; ending slavery only to replace it with other coercive means of advancing capitalist interests. Abdin Chande

Further Readings Kelly, David, and Anthony Reid. Asian Freedoms: The Idea of Freedom in the East and Southeast Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Industrial Revolution Reid, Anthony, ed. Slavery, Bondage and Dependency in Southeast Asia. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983.

Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution was a series of economic and technological changes, originally and principally in Great Britain in the late 18th century and followed by the northeastern United States, which led to a greatly expanded and transformed economy. Its relation to the slave economies of the British colonies and the U.S. South is complex, and many aspects are still debated by historians. The direct contribution of capital generated by the slave economy to the British Industrial Revolution was limited as few slave trade and colonial fortunes went directly into manufactures. The considerable number of British Caribbean planters who relocated to Britain itself tended to spend their fortunes on country houses and entering politics rather than investing in capitalist industrial development. The initial surge of British industrialism was in textiles, particularly cotton—so-called light industry that made Britain the unquestioned global center of cotton textile manufacture. The quantity of raw cotton imported into the British Isles went from 11 million pounds in 1785 to 588 million pounds in 1850, with the output of cloth going from 40 million to 2.025 million square yards. The growing demand for cotton reshaped and revitalized the slave economy of the U.S. South,

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which had been declining in the late 18th century. Transportation improvements, most importantly, the railroad and the steamship, also contributed to the creation of a transatlantic market in cotton and other commodities. As slave-grown cotton became the economic mainstay of the U.S. South, slavery was perceived by white southerners as an essential institution, and those few white southerners who opposed it were viewed as traitors to the region. The perceived importance of slave-grown cotton to British industry was one of the chief reasons for the confidence with which the southern landowning class led their states in secession from the Union–they were confident that British dependency on cotton would force their intervention in the U.S. Civil War. Whatever the economic impact of the Industrial Revolution on slavery, the political and cultural changes it wrought were inimical to it. The rise of domestic industry and the wealth it generated marginalized the economic and political power of the “West India interest” in Britain itself, a necessary precondition for the passage of the Abolition Act of 1833 that abolished slavery throughout the British Empire. The Industrial Revolution in Britain and the northeastern United States—two leading areas of abolitionist organization— was based on an ideology of free labor, a concept to which masters and workers alike subscribed. Propagandists of industrial capitalism vaunted the superior economic efficiency of free labor over slavery, while reactionary opponents of industrialism, like Thomas

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Carlyle, unfavorably compared the position of the free laborer, for whom the employer had no responsibility beyond the payment wages, to the West Indian or American slave. British manufacturers, in opposition to both domestic agricultural interests and Caribbean sugar planters, tended to support free trade, which meant that the West Indians were distracted from their struggles to maintain slavery by the need to maintain protected access to home markets for their sugar. In the United States, regional divisions were exacerbated by the realization that the North in the 19th century was developing industrially at a far faster rate than the South, which remained comparatively backward economically. Conscious of their dependence on the North, both as a source of manufactured goods, and (along with Britain) as a market for raw cotton, southern planters and intellectuals called for an industrial revolution in the South, with the building of textile mills and the expansion of railroads and transportation infrastructure. Other white southerners took the opposite perspective, proclaiming the superior virtue of the agrarian and rural society of the South over the urban and industrial North, and favorably contrasting the security of the southern slave with the condition of the northern “free” industrial worker. The call for a southern industrial revolution was largely in vain, however, and the U.S. South continued to lag behind the North— a major reason for southern defeat in

the U.S. Civil War and the abolition of southern slavery. William Earl Burns See also: Abolition of Slavery Act (1833); Abolitionism; United States.

Further Readings Cochran, Thomas C. Frontiers of Change: Early Industrialism in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981. Drescher, Seymour. Capitalism and Antislavery: British Mobilization in Comparative Perspective. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Mokyr, Joel, ed. The British Industrial Revolution: An Economic Perspective. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1998. Teich, Mikulas, and Roy Porter, eds. The Industrial Revolution in National Context: Europe and the USA. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Inheritability of Slavery The inheritability of slavery is a common feature found in many different forms of slavery, from the milder versions of debt bondage to the harsher chattel slavery. Historian James Watson provides a useful classification for placing this aspect of slavery in the traditional systems of Africa and Southeast Asia, in what he terms “open” and “closed” slave systems. According to Watson, open systems are geared toward acquiring labor through the capture or purchase of slaves, yet gradually assimilating them into the dominant


group. Examples of open systems are found throughout Africa, and in several past mercantile- and trade-based kingdoms in Southeast Asia, places where land was usually abundant, and labor was scarce. In contrast, closed systems of slavery are primarily geared toward retaining the labor of slaves by reinforcing their distinctiveness from the dominant population. The aim of closed systems is a static one, to keep the slave class in its dependent position over many generations, preventing its assimilation into the larger society, and in this sense are the main systems in which the inheritability of slavery occurs. Closed forms of slavery were common in more complex agricultural or aristocratic societies, which usually had larger populations and different levels of class. For example, the religions Islam and Christianity had their own unique influences on systems of slavery, the former enslaving only those who were nonMuslim and (as in the open system) absorbing slaves who had converted into the general population, while the latter, which rapidly spread around the globe through European colonialism, tended to emphasize a closed system of slavery, stressing racial difference in order to maintain a distinct slave class that could be inherited from generation to generation. In reality, there seemed to be a remarkable degree of variation and overlap in these systems, particularly among some of the more traditional and out of the way places. One of the traditional closed slavery systems is found in the upstream region

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of Jambi Sumatra, where slaving still occurs between the Islamic Malay villagers of Tanah Garo and the Orang Rimba, the animist peoples of the surrounding rain forests. According to local tradition, the Malay in Tanah Garo believe they have the customary right to manage the surrounding forests and all its contents, including the labor power of the Orang Rimba. However, unlike the other resources found in the forest, which tend to be categorized according to communal rights of use, the Orang Rimba are considered an individual’s private property of considerable value, which can be owned, bought, sold, traded, or inherited by a specific class of individuals in the village, known as the waris. Although the relationship is much more complex than this brief account implies, the economic basis of the relationship concerns the valuable trade in forest products. And while the Orang Rimba rarely meet with their patron outside of these exchanges, they are born into a bonded economic relationship with this waris, to whom they are obliged to provide these forests products, throughout their lifetime. Although the Orang Rimba may be transferred among waris, they never have the opportunity to choose their patron, nor the rate of the exchange that occurs. As with homes, land, and rubber holdings, the Malay waris consider Orang Rimba families heavy or immovable inheritance (harta yang berat) and, reflecting their bilateral kinship system and uxirolocal postmarital residence patterns, can be inherited by both

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sons (who marry within the village), but more likely handed to and owned by daughters, and managed by their husbands (who may or not be a waris). Orang Rimba are not owned individually, but by the family unit (bubung), which depending on the family size can consist from three to seven individuals. Although ownership of the bubung is linked to the male head of the family (who performs the majority of the labor and is dealt with in trade relations), following postmarital residence patterns, the value and the composition of the bubung is determined by the number of female children in the family, who following postmarital residence patterns, will eventually bring to the family the labor power of an in-marrying husband. In this sense, depending on marriage and divorce, men are fluid in these relationships, and after marriage will leave the relationship of their former patron and enter into a relationship with the waris of their wife and father-in-law. Aside from this, there are no hard and set rules for which children and how many bubung are handed down by the waris as inheritance. Although elder siblings generally have precedence over younger siblings, it is ultimately up to the parents which child receives bubung, or if a particular child even has the desire or the ability to manage these relations with his Orang Rimba. Although the waris are aware of the similarities that this system shares with slavery and are cautious to discuss the topic with outsiders, how many bubung one possesses remains a prominent marker of wealth and status

in this small Malay village. In contrast to national programs that encourage mobile animist peoples to settle in a village outside the village and enter Islam, the waris respect the Orang Rimba’s right to live by the religion and culture of their ancestors, which also has the added effect of maintaining the continuity of the system, albeit these days in an increasingly weakened form. With the change in economy from forest products to logging, the continued participation of the Orang Rimba in this system threatens to destroy their traditional subsistence basis in the forests. Steven Sager Further Readings Reid, Anthony. “ ‘Closed’ and ‘Open’ Slave Systems in Precolonial Southeast Asia.” In Slavery, Bondage, and Dependency in Southeast Asia, ed. Anthony Reid. London: University of Queensland Press, 1983. Watson, James L. Asian and African Systems of Slavery. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.

International Agreement for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic (1904) In 2000, the United Nations defined the term “trafficking” as the recruitment, transportation, and harboring of persons by means of threat, force, coercion, abduction, fraud, and giving or receiving money or benefits (to achieve the consent of persons having authority over a victim) for the purpose of


exploitation. Exploitation includes prostitution and other forms of sexual service, forced labor, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude, and the removal of organs. Today, organized criminal enterprises are known to traffic vulnerable people. For example, although women from the Balkan area had traditionally been traded until the late 19th century to seraglios (harems) in Islamic states, a similar but more pernicious trade has evolved since the collapse of Soviet Union, one that involves many thousands of Russian and Ukrainian women and children who have been trafficked as far as Latin America, the Middle East, Central and Western Europe, and the United States to work as prostitutes. The Federal Bureau of Investigation estimates that Russian mobsters have forced nearly 8,000 women of Slavic origin into prostitution in the United States alone, but the trafficking of prostitutes in large numbers is far from new. During the 19th century, although the United States did nothing to protect immigrant or resident Chinese women who were trafficked as prostitutes to service Chinese men employed on the railroads, the government was fully aware of the practice. At the close of the 19th century, concern about the prostitution of white women and girls became a public concern in Europe, especially with respect to colonial outposts, and in the United States. The so-called white slave traffic developed into an international crusade, based, to a great extent, on hysteria rather than compelling evidence of organized criminal endeavor,

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but, certainly, a number of women and children were trafficked and sexually exploited. At intervals throughout the 20th century, a series of international laws, beginning with the International Agreement for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic of 1904, sought to eliminate this traffic. However, this legislation was largely symbolic as none of the signatory states implemented effective controls. Driven as much by moral as humanitarian concern, European nations held an international conference in 1902 that, in turn, generated legislation, signed in Paris on May 18, 1904. The law was designed to protect European adult women and underage girls (that is, white females) from being trafficked for sexual purposes within their own countries or abroad. The signatories of the agreement included representatives from the United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Sweden and Norway, and Switzerland. They agreed to establish an authority in each nation to monitor the induction of women or girls into prostitution; to appoint officials to watch travel routes and report possible instances of such trafficking; to assist in the repatriation of women or girls who desired it; to pay for the transfer of such persons to the nearest frontier or port, with the country of origin to cover the remaining cost; and to supervise employment agencies that might be involved in trafficking. In 1905, the United States agreed to the terms of this legislation and the U.S. Senate ratified

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International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU)

the agreement in 1908. These measures, designed to prevent the exploitation and prostitution of vulnerable women and girls rather than to prosecute perpetrators, were largely ineffective. Just as migration, urbanization, industrialization, and corruption foster trafficking today, they also did so in the early 20th century. Successes in suppressing the trafficking of coerced women and underage girls were extremely limited. In the United States, for example, despite a widespread publicity campaign, it was all but impossible to identify and prosecute large-scale traffickers or to save victimized women from exploitation. On the other hand, several Jewish organizations were established in New York City to monitor the entry and employment of Jewish girls entering the United States, to warn the girls about procurers, to rescue prostitutes, and to close brothels. In fact, the U.S. government took the situation so seriously that it enacted domestic legislation for the suppression of coerced prostitution in its White Slave Traffic Act (or the Mann Act) of 1910. In 1949, the 1904 law was ratified as a protocol signed at Lake Success, New York, under the auspices of the United Nations. At that time, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ceylon, Chile, the Republic of China, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Egypt, Finland, India, Iran, Iraq, Luxembourg, Pakistan, Turkey, the United States, and Yugoslavia signed the agreement. Susan B. Iwanisziw See also: International Agreement for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic

(1910); International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children; International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic of Women of Full Age; White Slave Traffic Act (1910).

Further Reading United Nations. The International Agreement for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic (1904). Lake Success, NY: United Nations, 1950.

International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) was created on December 9, 1949. It was the result of 10 days of intense discussions at the International Free Trade Unions Conference held in London and attended by 178 delegates and 68 observers representing trade unionists in 47 countries in Western Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the Americas. Its headquarters were established in Brussels, Belgium, and the Belgian Paul Finet was elected as it first president. Currently, the ICFTU includes 233 affiliated organizations from 145 nations. The confederation includes a combined membership of 125 million laborers of whom 25 percent are estimated to be women. ICFTU is an international agency that works in consultation with the International Labour Organization (ILO), United Nations Economic and Social Committee (ECOSOC), the World Bank, the International Monetary

International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women

Fund (IMF), and the World Trade Organization (WTO). ICFTU publishes Trade Union World, a monthly journal, along with the annual Survey of Trade Union Rights. Chief among the confederation’s concerns are the defense of laborers rights, the elimination of child labor, support for women’s rights, encouragement of literacy and universal education, and protection of the environment. In recent years ICFTU has expressed strong advocacy for programs that stress sustainable development. Giulia Pietrangeli See also: International Labour Organization (ILO).

Further Reading International Confederation of Free Trade Unions Web site: http://www.ifctu.org.

International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children (1921) Following upon the 1904 and 1910 international agreements to suppress the so-called white slave traffic, the International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children, which was signed in Geneva, Switzerland, on September 30, 1921, under the auspices of the League of Nations, extended protections to women and to children of both sexes throughout the world. The signatories to the convention included representatives of Albania,

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Germany, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the British Empire (including Canada, the Commonwealth of Australia, the Union of South Africa, New Zealand, and India), Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, the Netherlands, Persia, Poland (with Danzig), Portugal, Romania, Siam, Sweden, Switzerland, and Czechoslovakia. Article 2 of the convention required all contracting parties to take the necessary measures to discover and prosecute persons engaged in the traffic of children of both sexes and in committing offenses within the meaning of the first article of the 1910 convention. Subsequent articles required the punishment of persons for attempting to commit trafficking crimes; the extradition of persons accused or convicted of offenses; the raising of the age of consent by one year, to 21 years of age; the licensing and supervision of employment agencies or offices in order to regulate services and offer greater protections to women and children; and the institution of administrative and legislative measures to check the traffic in women and children, especially with regard to those traveling on emigrant ships. Interestingly, the Italian delegate announced that the age of consent “for native women and children” in Italian territories would be reduced from 21 to 16 years of age. Unfortunately, the symbolic nature of this convention prevented the implementation of significant protections. In 1947, this law was amended as protocol and signed at Lake Success, New

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York, with the same signatories under the auspices of the United Nations. Susan B. Iwanisziw See also: International Agreement for the Suppression of the White Slave Trade (1904).

Further Reading United Nations. The International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children (1921). Lake Success, NY: United Nations, 1948.

International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women of Full Age (1933) Despite its title, the International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women of Full Age (1933) states its aim as securing “more completely the suppression of the traffic in women and children.” Following upon the 1904, 1910, and 1921 agreements to control the international trafficking of prostitutes, this new legislation was signed by representatives of Albania, the German Reich, Austria, Belgium, Great Britain (also, for Ireland, the British Dominions, and India), Bulgaria, Chile, China, Poland and Danzig, Spain, France, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Monaco, Norway, Panama, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia at Geneva, Switzerland, on October 11, 1933. The goals were to specify the geographical range covered by the legislation and to reiterate the necessity

of international cooperation. The convention provided for the punishment of traffickers, regardless of women’s consent to their trafficking; the necessity of ensuring adequate domestic laws to combat trafficking; the mutual reporting of offenses under the 1910 and 1921 trafficking acts; and the sharing of information about offenders, but like the previous laws, it was fairly ineffectual. Indeed, although Japan signed the 1921 convention, its support for international intervention in forced prostitution was evidently insincere, since it failed to sign the 1933 convention, and, during World War II, initiated a state policy of enforced prostitution that affected mainly Korean women and girls, who were relegated to Japanese servicemen as “comfort women.” The convention became a United Nations Protocol, signed at Lake Success, New York, on November 12, 1947. During the early 20th century, certainly some traditional forms of trafficking were pushed farther into disrepute by the series of international laws enacted from 1904 to 1933. In China, the type of female bondage known as (the purchase of young girls pei-n as domestic servants), t’ung-yanghsi (a form of marriage by purchase), and concubinage were dying out; and similar practices in other Asian nations were similarly under threat. The laws certainly helped a number of individuals to live under less exploitative conditions following their rescue from trafficking or prostitution and to return home through international repatriation programs, but the failure of


most nations to implement more than a token show of policing this neverending traffic in vulnerable girls and women ensured that little positive change resulted from these valorous promises of protection and threats of punishment. The international desire to criminalize the recruitment of women to serve as prostitutes in another country was continued by the Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Women and Children, adopted in 1949 under the auspices of the United Nations. Although this law rendered the international trafficking laws of 1904, 1910, 1921 and 1933 obsolete, it, too, proved ineffectual in controlling the sexual exploitation of women and girls, and never sufficiently addressed other forms of exploitation. Susan B. Iwanisziw See also: Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Women and Children; International Agreement for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic (1904).

Further Readings United Nations. International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women of Full Age (1933). Lake Success, NY: United Nations, 1948. United Nations. Traffic in Women and Children: Addendum to the Summary of Annual Reports for the Period 1948–1950, Prepared by the Secretariat. New York: United Nations, 1953.

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International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966) The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights was adopted and opened for signature, ratification, and accession by United Nations General Assembly resolution 2200A (XXI) of December 16, 1966, and entered into force on March 23, 1976. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights is based on the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) contained civil and political rights as well as economic, social, and cultural rights. Substantial differences between Western and communist countries prevented the declaration from becoming a binding treaty. To solve this problem, the UN created two binding covenants in 1966, each with a different focus: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. Together with the optional protocols, they constitute an International Bill of Human Rights. The Covenant on Civil and Political Rights defends the right to life and stipulates that no individual can be subjected to torture, enslavement, arbitrary detention, forced labor, or be restricted from freedom of movement, expression, and association. Part I confirms the right of self-determination. Article I declares: “By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development. All peoples may, for their

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own ends, freely dispose of their natural wealth and resources without prejudice to any obligations arising out of international economic co-operation, based upon the principle of mutual benefit, and international law. In no case may a people be deprived of its own means of subsistence. The States Parties to the present Covenant, including those having responsibility for the administration of Non-Self-Governing and Trust Territories, shall promote the realization of the right of self-determination, and shall respect that right, in conformity with the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations.” In Part II we find general obligations by state signatory parties, to implement the principles of the covenant, to provide effective remedies to victims and to ensure gender equality. Part III lists the classical civil and political rights. Part IV contains regulations on the Human Rights Committee, the State reporting procedure, and the inter-state complaints mechanism. The covenant contains two optional protocols. The first creates an individual complaints mechanism whereby individuals in member States can submit complaints, to be reviewed by the Human Rights Committee. The second optional protocol abolishes the death penalty. The implementation of the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights by States Parties was monitored by the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations. Jürgen Nautz See also: International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (1966);

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948).

Further Readings Klein, Eckart. “Human Rights Conventions” and “CCPR-International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.” In A Concise Encyclopedia of the United Nations, ed. Helmut Volger. The Hague: Kluwer Law Internat, 2002. Klein, Eckart. “Participation in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: How States Become States Parties.” In Negotiating for Peace: Liber Amicorum Tono Eitel. Berlin: Springer, 2003. Klein, Eckart, ed. The Monitoring System of Human Rights Treaty Obligations. Berlin: Berlin-Verlag Spitz, 1998.

International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (1966) The International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (1966) can be called one the twin international covenants on human rights, the other one being the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966). Both of them were adopted and opened for signature, ratification, and accession by the General Assembly in Resolution 2200 A (XXI) on December 16, 1966. The Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights was entered into force on January 3, 1976, in accordance with Article 27, by providing ratifications of 35 states, which is the number required to bring the covenant into force. As a treaty, the covenant has binding legal obligations for the States that have


become parties to it. This covenant establishes rather distinctive mechanism than its twin. A State Party ratifying this covenant does not have the requirement of immediate implementation, which is explained in Article 2/1. In accordance with the article, a State Party is only under obligation “to take steps . . . to the maximum of its available resources” to achieve “progressively the full realization of the rights recognized” in the covenant. The covenant has a preamble, and 31 articles divided into five parts. Like the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, this covenant has important provisions. Two of these can be described as peoples or collective rights: “All peoples have the right of self determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social, cultural development.” It also claims: “All peoples may, for their own ends, freely dispose of their natural wealth and resources . . . In no case may a people be deprived of its own means of subsistence” (Article 1/2). In accordance with the classical conceptions of equality and nondiscrimination, the covenant, strongly emphasizes that the rights in the covenant “will be exercised without discrimination of any kind as to race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status” (Article 2/2). It also obliges the States Parties “to ensure the equal rights of men and women to the enjoyment of all economic, social, cultural rights” stated in the covenant

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(Article 3). Besides these, this covenant lists and describes substantive economic, social, and cultural rights: the right to work; the right to the enjoyment of just and favorable conditions of work; the right to form and join trade unions; the right to social security, including social insurance; the right to the protection of the family; the right to an adequate standard of living; the right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health; the right of everyone to education and the right to take part in cultural life. Unlike the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, this covenant does not permit individuals to file petitions against violations of their rights stated in the covenant. It also does not establish any inter-State complaints system. The States Parties should submit “reports on the measures which they have adopted and the progress made in achieving the observance of the rights” in the covenant. There is no special committee to review these reports. All reports are submitted to the secretary general of the United Nations and the secretary shall transmit copies to the Economic and Social Council. Tugba Asrak Hasdemir See also: Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966).

Further Readings Buergenthal, Thomas. International Human Rights. St. Paul: West Publishing, 1988. Directorate of Human Rights, ed. “International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.” In Human Rights

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in International Law. Netherlands: Council of Europe Press, 1992. United Nations. Human Rights Questions and Answers. New York: United Nations Department of Public Information, 1987.

International Day for the Abolition of Slavery The International Day for the Abolition of Slavery, recognized annually on December 2, commemorates the date of the adoption by the United Nations General Assembly of the Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Women and Children. This convention was contained in UN Resolution 317 (IV) adopted on December 2, 1949. In many respects, the 1949 convention was an international response to the gross violations of human rights that had transpired during the era of World War II in various settings. The language of the 1949 convention is truly historic as the United Nations began to expand the definition of slavery to include various additional forms of unfree labor and other coercive practices that took place within the global workplace. This convention preceded the research and recommendations of the UN Ad Hoc Committee on Slavery (1950–1951) and the subsequent UN Protocol (1953) and UN Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of the Slave Trade (1956). Taken collectively, all of these efforts represented a renewed interest on the part of the

international community to address the abuses of human rights that were associated with contemporary slavery. By setting aside a day to commemorate the abolition of slavery internationally, the UN was effectively providing a vehicle that could be used to educate and to agitate. Much like earlier abolitionists campaigns of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the UN action permitted governments, human rights activists, and the nongovernmental organization community to use the annual commemoration as an opportunity to educate respective communities about the history of slavery and its historical demise. Such educational programs, it was hoped, would stimulate discussion and lead to questioning in those areas where it was less clear if the specter of slavery had really vanished. This type of educational reach could inspire new generations of abolitionists to take up the antislavery banner and consider the social campaign that had begun in earlier centuries. The commemoration of December 2 was also designed to remind individuals worldwide that slavery still existed in the modern era and that sustained abolitionist efforts remained necessary among people of good will who hoped to eradicate the practice. By acknowledging the place of slavery and abolitionism in human history—both past and present—people across the world could see that courageous individuals motivated by faith and common interests had helped to dismantle the apparatus of slavery through moral suasion and political action and gain confidence

International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade

that a renewal of such efforts could be effective once more. Junius P. Rodriguez See also: Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Women and Children (1949).

Further Reading United Nations. Human Rights: A Compilation of International Instruments. New York and Geneva: United Nations, 1994.

International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and Its Abolition In 1997, the General Conference of the United Nations Economic, Social, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) created the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition by a unanimous resolution. UNESCO established August 23 as the date when this special commemoration would occur annually. All member States were encouraged to recognize the somber anniversary with reflective programs that would educate and inform the public about the past history of slavery and its persistence in the modern era. August 23 was selected as the day because it marked the anniversary of a transitional event that set in motion the end of the transatlantic slave trade and began to hasten the eventual emancipation of all who were enslaved. On the night of August 22–23, 1791, what

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began as a civil war in the French colony of Saint Domingue (modern-day Haiti) evolved into a massive slave insurrection. After more than a decade of fierce fighting for their emancipation and their liberty, the island’s black population overthrew their colonial masters and, in 1804, proclaimed the independence of Haiti, which became the first black republic in the Western Hemisphere. UNESCO’s action was largely due to success stemming from its initial launching of the Slave Route Project in 1994, an endeavor that had sought to document and quantify the volume and extent of the transatlantic slave trade that had persisted for nearly four centuries. UNESCO delegates believed that the horrific extent of exploitation that transpired during the transatlantic slave trade was the equivalent of a modern holocaust that had impacted four continents and wrought tremendous demographic change in its wake. It was felt that both the horror of the slave trade and the promise of abolition should be commemorated jointly as the historical cause and effect of these connected events reflected that hope could grow out of despair. It was hoped that nations would use August 23 annually as an opportunity not only to reflect and commemorate but also to educate so that history’s past violence could become an instrument for understanding and peace. By acknowledging the place of abolitionism in human history, people across the world could see that courageous individuals motivated by faith and good

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will had helped to dismantle the apparatus of slavery through moral suasion and political action. In this fashion, new legions of modern abolitionists might be so inspired to join the cause of eradicating contemporary slavery practices that have now persisted into the 21st century. Junius P. Rodriguez

Further Reading Anti-Slavery International. Enslaved Peoples in the 1990s. London: Anti-Slavery International, 1997.

International Labour Organization (ILO) The International Labour Organization (ILO) is a United Nations specialized agency that seeks the promotion of social justice and internationally recognized human and labor rights. It was founded in 1919 in the aftermath of World War I, and it is the only surviving major creation of the Treaty of Versailles that brought the League of Nations into being. It became the first specialized agency of the United Nations in 1946. The ILO constitution was written between January and April 1919 by the Labour Commission set up by the Versailles Peace Conference. The commission was composed of representatives from nine countries (Belgium, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, France, Italy, Japan, Poland, the United Kingdom and the United States) under the

chairmanship of Samuel Gompers, then president of the American Federation of Labor (AFL). It resulted in a tripartite organization—the only one of its kind—bringing together representatives of governments, employers, and workers in its executive bodies. The ILO constitution became Part XIII of the Treaty of Versailles. The first annual International Labour Conference, composed of two representatives from the government of each member State, and one each from employers’ and workers’ organizations from each member State, met in Washington, DC, on October 29, 1919. It adopted the first six International Labour Conventions, which dealt with hours of work in industry, unemployment, maternity protection, night work for women, minimum age, and night work for young persons in industry. Albert Thomas was chosen as the first director of the International Labour Office, which is the permanent secretariat of the organization. The ILO was officially headquartered in Geneva in the summer of 1920. The ILO formulates international labor standards in the form of conventions and recommendations setting minimum standards of basic labor rights: freedom of association, the right to organize, collective bargaining, abolition of forced labor, equality of opportunity and treatment, and other standards regulating conditions across the entire spectrum of work-related issues. It provides technical assistance primarily in the fields of vocational training and vocational rehabilitation,

International Labour Organization (ILO)

employment policy, labor administration, labor law and industrial relations, working conditions, management development, cooperatives, social security, labor statistics, and occupational safety and health. It promotes the development of independent employers’ and workers’ organizations and provides training and advisory services to those organizations. The ILO accomplishes its work through three main bodies that encompass the unique tripartite structure of the organization. 1. International Labour Conference: The member States of the ILO meet at the International Labour Conference in June of each year in Geneva. Each member State is represented by two government delegates, an employers’ delegate, and a workers’ delegate. They are accompanied by technical advisers. The cabinet ministers responsible for labor affairs in their own countries usually head the delegations and take the floor to present their governments’ points of view. Employers’ and workers’ delegates can express themselves and vote according to the instructions received from their organizations. They sometimes vote against each other or even against their government representatives. The conference plays a very important role. It establishes and adopts international labor standards and acts as a forum where social and labor questions of importance to the entire world are discussed. The conference also adopts the budget of the organization and elects the governing body.

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2. The Governing Body is the executive council of the ILO and meets three times a year in Geneva. It makes decisions on ILO’s policy. It establishes the program and the budget that it then submits to the conference for adoption. It also elects the director-general. It is composed of 28 government members, 14 employer organizations’ members, and 14 worker organizations’ members. Ten of the government seats are permanently held by nations of chief industrial importance. Representatives of other member countries are elected at the conference every three years, taking into account geographical distribution. The employers’ and workers’ association also elect their own representatives. 3. The International Labour Office is the permanent secretariat of the International Labour Organization. It is the focal point for the overall ILO activities, which are prepared under the scrutiny of the governing body and under the leadership of a director-general, who is elected for a five-year renewable term. The office employs some 1,900 officials of more than 110 nationalities at the Geneva headquarters and in 40 field offices around the world. In addition, some 600 experts undertake missions in all regions of the world under the program of technical cooperation. The office also constitutes a research and documentation center and a printing house issuing a broad range of specialized studies, reports, and periodicals. Giulia Pietrangeli See also: League of Nations.

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Further Readings Alcock, Antony E. History of the International Labour Organisation. New York: Octagon Books, 1971. Ghebali, Victor Y. The International Labour Organisation: A Case Study on the Evolution of U.N. Specialised Agencies. Boston: M. Nijhoff, 1989. International Labour Organization. http:// www.ilo.org. Jenks, C. Wilfred. Social Justice and the Law of Nations: The ILO Impact after Fifty Years. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970. Morse, David A. The Origin and Evolution of the I.L.O. and Its Role in the World Community. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1969.

International Needs The Ghanaian-based Christian aid organization International Needs (IN) has functioned for more than three decades to combat many of the contributing social ills that perpetuate slavery in the contemporary world. Founded in 1974 with headquarters in the capital city of Accra, IN operates in all regions of Ghana and provides human rights advocacy for those who are the most marginalized, particularly women and children. Despite political changes within the nation, ranging from socialist experimentation to military dictatorship to incipient democracy, the organization has remained true to its mission to serve those who are often the most overlooked, and by default, the most at risk of exploitation. International Needs uses communitybased outreach programs in human

rights advocacy to educate Ghanians about the dangers they face at the hands of potential traffickers and others who might attempt to violate their most basic liberties. The organization’s ongoing efforts are largely funded through financial assistance provided by Christian churches that support the mission and goals of the human rights and antislavery efforts undertaken by IN staffers. Most of the work done by the organization is community based as history has shown this approach to be the most effective. Individuals are trained within villages and urban neighborhoods to educate and monitor activities locally since they are most aware of the risks and needs faced by members of their respective communities. Recognizing that people often become entrapped within modern forms of slavery because of underlying social circumstances, the organization works to combat poverty, disease, and oppression in their manifest forms so that the intrinsic worth of each individual can be esteemed and protected. The work of IN takes place in urban centers like Accra and Kumasi, where needs are great, but it also operates in the most rural villages because the conditions upon which slavery is often predicated are ubiquitous. Recent social and economic pressures stemming from Ghana’s implementation of a structural adjustment program in the 1990s have exacerbated conditions that make forms of modern slavery a real threat and make modern abolition efforts all the more pressing. International Needs has also taken great strides to eradicate the traditional

International Organization for Migration

practice of slavery known as trokosi that persists in the Volta region of eastern Ghana in spite of laws that have outlawed the custom. This cultural practice permits the enslavement of young girls who are turned over to fetish priests in order to atone for past wrongs that their families have supposedly committed. Advocacy efforts by IN workers have included both the liberation of young victims of trokosi and ongoing efforts to support rehabilitation and social reintegration efforts as these girls are restored to their freedom within their families and communities. Although the organization functions in all of Ghana’s regions, as a Christian aid society its influence is least effective in the northern countryside where Muslim influence predominates. In spite of this, International Needs has proven itself to be an important asset to humans rights efforts as its campaigns of education and advocacy throughout Ghana as women, children, and all who are at risk have become more empowered through these ongoing activities. Junius P. Rodriguez See also: Trokosi.

Further Readings Bales, Kevin. New Slavery: A Reference Handbook. Santa Barbara, CA: ABCCLIO, 2000. Greene, Sandra. Gender, Ethnicity, and Social Change on the Upper Slave Coast. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1996.

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International Organization for Migration In response to the movements of refugees, displaced persons, and economic migrants caused by World War II and its aftermath, the United States and Belgium convened the International Conference on Migration in Brussels in 1951, out of which emerged the Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration (ICEM). This organization aimed to facilitate both the departure of migrants and their integration into the economy and society of a receiving country. By the end of the 1950s, this body had facilitated the migration overseas of one million Europeans, including the 1956–1957 resettlement of 180,000 Hungarians fleeing Soviet intervention. In the 1960s the ICEM began directing the emigration of qualified workers from Europe in an attempt to foster economic development in Latin America and Asia. In 1980 the organization became known as the Intergovernmental Committee for Migration; in 1989 the organization became the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Both name changes reflected the body’s increasing work with migrants outside Europe. Based in Geneva, Switzerland, the IOM currently functions on every continent, is engaged in 1,400 projects, operates 290 field locations, has a staff of 5,400 and an annual budget approaching one billion dollars (US), and has assisted more than 11 million migrants to date. The IOM works closely with its 116 member states, offering technical

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assistance on migration issues and capacity building for government officials in regions that are prone to migration. IOM’s efforts emphasize the orderly management of migration, maintaining that this benefits both departure and receiving countries and safeguards the human rights of migrants. Since 1994 the IOM has become increasingly involved in combating human trafficking. The IOM contends that the dire economic and social conditions pushing labor migrants to emigrate coupled with their frequent lack of valid travel documentation leaves them subject to human rights violations and economic exploitation, including forced labor, debt bondage, and prostitution. IOM’s Southern Africa Counter-Trafficking Assistance Program (SACTAP) illustrates IOM’s multifaceted approach to this issue: This regional effort to counter the trafficking of women and children for forced labor and prostitution has trained 1,200 law enforcement officials in countertrafficking, promoted sustained media coverage to raise public and institutional awareness, and provided training and technology for border enforcement as well as emergency shelter, medical aid, and counseling for victims, with the goal of returning and reintegrating them to their countries of origin. The IOM’s emphasis on repatriating trafficking victims has led some human rights activists to question the organization’s goals. Since 2001 critics—including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the World Council of Churches, and Jesuit Refugee

Services–have alleged that IOM’s activities allow the governments of member states who engage IOM’s technical assistance to avoid their international obligations of aiding refugees and asylum seekers. Further, some NGOs have documented human rights violations of migrants under IOM’s charge, which included poor physical conditions in some IOM-operated holding centers and denial of access to legal counsel to assess refugee or asylum status. The IOM continues to engage these critics in open dialogue. The IOM’s counter-trafficking efforts have recently dovetailed with its more traditional work of serving migrants of natural disasters or armed conflict. In response to the December 2004 tsunami, the IOM’s Tsunami Response Program provided its traditional services including rapid outmigration from devastated areas, humanitarian aid, public health, and plans for the return and reestablishment of victims in their home provinces. Additionally, the IOM’s response has attempted to combat human trafficking by replacing lost work tools, rebuilding destroyed workplaces, and providing vocational training to ease the economic motivations that drive migrants to traffickers. Michael Mundt See also: Human Trafficking for Labor Purposes; Migrant Workers.

Further Readings Castles, Stephen, and Mark J. Miller. The Age of Migration: International Population

International Program on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) Movements in the Modern World. New York: Guilford Press, 2003. Human Rights Watch. “The International Organization for Migration (IOM) and Human Rights Protection in the Field: Current Concerns.” Submitted to IOM Governing Council Meeting, November 21, 2003. Available at http://hrw.org/ backgrounder/migrants/iom-submissions.pdf. Kyle, David, and Rey Koslowski. Global Human Smuggling: Comparative Perspectives. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. Loescher, Gil. The UNHCR and World Politics: A Perilous Path. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Weiner, Myron. The Global Migration Crisis: Challenge to States and to Human Rights. Palo Alto, CA: Addison Wesley, 1995.

International Program on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) The International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) was launched by the International Labour Organization (ILO) in 1992 with the overall aim of “the progressive elimination of child labor through strengthening the capacities of countries to deal with the problem and promoting a worldwide movement to combat it.” Since its founding, IPEC has evolved from a technical cooperation program to one of the eight ILO InFocus Programs. Although the goal of IPEC remains the prevention and elimination of all forms of child labor, the priority target groups for IPEC’s action are the worst

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forms of child labor, including not only hazardous work, but also slavery-like practices, trafficking, sexual exploitation, and other illicit activities, which are defined in the ILO’s Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention. The commitment of individual governments to deal with the problem—in cooperation with employers’ and workers’ organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and other relevant parties in society—is the basis for IPEC’s action. ILO member states confirm this commitment by signing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the ILO to initiate action within the framework of IPEC. During the 2004–2005 biennium, IPEC was operational in 86 countries, with 61 of these having signed an MOU. In the remaining 25 countries that have not yet signed an MOU, IPEC has supported various activities to tackle the problem. Following the signing of an MOU with the ILO, IPEC support is based on a phased, multisectoral strategy with the following steps: encouraging ILO constituents—governments and workers’ and employers’ organizations— and other partners to begin dialogue and create alliances; determining the nature and extent of the problem; assisting in devising national policies to counter it; setting up mechanisms to provide incountry ownership and operation of a national program of action; creating awareness in the communities and the workplaces; promoting development and application of protective legislation; supporting direct action aimed at preventing child labor or withdrawing

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children from work; replicating and expanding successful projects; and integrating child labor issues into social and economic development policies, programs, and budgets. The achievements that stem from these activities have been noteworthy. Information gathered from active IPEC projects reveals that during the period of September 2003 to August 2005, a total of 350,047 children have been removed from child labor or prevented from being engaged in child labor through the provision of educational and other rehabilitation services. Knowledge building and sharing has been another cornerstone of IPEC’s work. Research and statistics have been produced for policy, advocacy, and operational purposes, and knowledge from operational experiences has been presented in strategies, models of intervention, and good practices. In order to reinforce its local efforts with worldwide public awareness and mobilization, IPEC supported several global initiatives, including the World Day against Child Labour, the Red Card to Child Labour Campaign, SCREAM (Supporting Children’s Rights through Education, the Arts, and the Media), the 12-to-12 Partnership Initiative and the 12-to-12 Community Portal. Fatih Gungor See also: Convention against the Worst Forms of Child Labour (1999); International Labour Organization (ILO).

Further Readings IPEC. IPEC Action against Child Labour: Highlights 2004. Geneva: International Labour Organization, 2004. IPEC. IPEC Action against Child Labour, 2004–2005: Progress and Future Priorities. Geneva: International Labour Organization, 2006. IPEC. IPEC Highlights 2000. Geneva: International Labour Organization, 2000.

International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) During the International Congress of Americanists held in August 1968, a group of anthropologists and human rights activists concerned with the issues of indigenous peoples were prompted by the contemporary genocide of Amazonian Indians to form the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA). The group initially began working in conjunction with Brazilian and Paraguayan activists to address the immediate crises in the region. The IWGIA collaborated with indigenous organizations, expanding such activities over the next three decades to form its current worldwide network of indigenous and nonindigenous peoples. Based in Copenhagen, Denmark, this nongovernmental organization currently works with North American Indian activists and groups in the Arctic, Oceania, Asia, Russia, Scandinavia, and Africa. The IWGIA also lobbies and advises regional and


international bodies including the United Nations, the Organization of American States, the Arctic Council, and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, to ensure that political leaders are kept aware of indigenous affairs. The IWGIA became a membership-based organization in 2000 and secures the remainder of its funding from the Nordic Ministries of Foreign Affairs and the European Union. The IWGIA continues to heavily draw its membership from the ranks of those in the social science community with expertise in indigenous peoples. True to its origin among academics, the IWGIA creates extensive documentation on indigenous affairs throughout the world. Its research raises awareness of indigenous issues with regional and international leaders, focuses the energies of activists, and serves as a knowledge base for many human rights NGOs. The IWGIA’s publications include the annual The Indigenous World, the monthly Indigenous Affairs, and a series of over 100 in-depth supplementary reports on specific indigenous issues and peoples. The IWGIA’s 1997 book Enslaved Peoples in the 1990s: Indigenous Peoples, Debt Bondage, and Human Rights (published in conjunction with Anti-Slavery International) portrayed the persistent enslavement of the world’s indigenous peoples. The book emphasizes a recurring theme in the IWGIA’s publications: encroachment on indigenous peoples’ traditional lands weakens their societies,

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economically marginalizes indigenous individuals, and leaves them vulnerable to human rights abuses and practices akin to slavery. Viewing land as the center of cultural resilience and a bulwark against slavery, the IWGIA works with indigenous peoples to press their land claims within nations and in the international arena. Moreover, the IWGIA was one of the first organizations to emphasize respect for the cultural persistence of indigenous peoples rather than their integration and the regional economic development of their then-popular territory. Belief in maintaining cultural integrity drives IWGIA’s principle operating philosophy of capacity building. The organization’s capacity-building efforts are designed to develop indigenous peoples’ ability to resist future encroachments on their territory. Pursuant to this belief, the IWGIA never directs nor leads projects, and instead it forms partnerships with organizations formed and led by indigenous peoples and, where none exists, fostering the development of such organizations. The IWGIA then offers consultation and monitors the progress of projects originated by these indigenous partner organizations. Michael Mundt See also: Land Reform.

Further Readings Anti-Slavery International and International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs. Enslaved Peoples in the 1990s:

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Indigenous Peoples, Debt Bondage, and Human Rights. London: Anti-Slavery International, 1997. Blaser, Mario, Harvey Feit, and Glenn McRae, eds. In the Way of Development: Indigenous Peoples, Life Projects

and Globalization. London: Zed Books, 2004. International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs. The Indigenous World 2006. Copenhagen: International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, 2006.

J Fourteenth Amendment to regulate the discriminatory behavior of either businesses or individuals. Some of the earliest Jim Crow legislation was associated with the transportation industry. Louisiana passed a law in 1890 that required white and black passengers to ride in separate railroad cars, and soon other states followed with similar measures. These laws written to “protect” both races were given support by the federal government when, in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the U.S. Supreme Court held that “separate but equal” accommodations on Louisiana’s railroads were constitutional. This ruling subsequently led to legalized segregation in education, public parks, and libraries. Other Jim Crow laws did not mention race specifically but were written and applied in ways that discriminated against African Americans. Literacy tests and poll taxes barred nearly all African Americans from voting. These laws contributed greatly to an atmosphere of racial hysteria that fueled lynchings, antiblack riots, and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. The system extended to deny private as well as civil rights as many businesses refused to serve blacks. White homeowners, using restrictive covenants, refused to rent or sell property to blacks. Under

Jim Crow Laws “Jim Crow” was the system of laws and customs that enforced racial segregation and discrimination throughout the United States, especially the South, from the late 19th century to the civil rights movement of the 1960s. These laws regulated social, economic, and political relationships between whites and African Americans. The laws and customs mandated racial segregation in schools and public places. African Americans also faced discrimination in jobs and housing and were often denied their constitutional right to vote. Jim Crow laws had their origins in a variety of sources, including the Black Codes imposed upon African Americans immediately after the U.S. Civil War and prewar discrimination in railroad cars in the northern states. The system grew slowly. In the last two decades of the 19th century, African Americans enjoyed the civil rights granted in the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution. In 1875, Congress passed a Civil Rights Act that outlawed racial discrimination in public accommodations, but in the Civil Rights Cases of 1883, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the act unconstitutional. The Court held that Congress had no power under the 353

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the Jim Crow system, African Americans were denied all forms of social respect. The repressive atmosphere led, in part, to the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to the North during the 20th century, but many found the conditions in the North little better. The dismantling of Jim Crow began in the mid-20th century. U.S. Supreme Court decisions dealing with segregation in higher education started to break the “separate but equal” doctrine. In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954), the Court outlawed state-sponsored segregation by ordering the desegregation of public schools in the United States. Resistance by southern whites was met by the growing civil rights movement. The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 furthered eroded Jim Crow, but African Americans continued to face discrimination. The mid-1960s witnessed the emergence of new methods of protest, such as the Black Power movement, which sought to repair the lasting damage of Jim Crow laws and customs. Michael A. Vieira See also: Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).

Further Readings Litwack, Leon. Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow. New York: Knopf, 1998. Woodward, C. Vann. Origins of the New South, 1877–1913. Baton Rouge: Louisiana University Press, 1997.

Woodward, C. Vann. The Strange Career of Jim Crow. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.

Just War Theory and Slavery Just war theory was used to justify slavery in several ways. Just war theory remains one of the more complex justifications for slavery because its original purpose was to prevent war or justify going to war based on a nation’s right to self-defense. Only later was it used to justify slavery. When a nation’s need for slave labor increased, the likelihood of wars of conquest justified through just war theory increased. Typically, opposing nations each used just war arguments to defend its decision to engage in war. The victor’s just war arguments were then used to justify enslaving the opposing side. When slavery and war were linked in this way, the moral implications of slavery were rarely considered because the society had established the morality of the war through just war theory. Just war is then believed to produce just slavery because the slave is seen to have forfeited a right to freedom by engaging in an unjust war. Just war theory assumed that peace was the natural state of neighboring nations. For each war, the theory assumed the existence of an aggressor nation and a nation that was the victim of aggression. By implication, one nation was just and the other unjust. However, many scholars point out that while a

Just War Theory and Slavery

nation’s reasons for going to war are often complex, nations tend to engage in wars that are in their economic interest. They also note that self-defense can be broadly categorized. For instance, wars fought on religious grounds are often a product of the belief that the opposing religion is immoral and therefore a threat to the nation’s existence. From this point of view, a war fought on religious grounds is then characterized as a war of self-defense because the existence of the other religion is seen as a threat. While many religions included provisions for slaves who were willing to convert, nations often failed to adhere to these provisions. Judaism, for instance, held provisions that allowed converts who also married into the religion to be freed and absorbed into the society. When just war arguments were used to justify slavery, the institution of slavery was seen as a permanent extension of the state of war. Just war theory as a justification for slavery increased with the expansion of agricultural societies that required a large supply of cheap labor. Through the use of slave labor, these societies sustained a surplus of food that allowed them to keep slaves with

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minimal expense to the slaveholder. Through the use of slave labor, Rome, for instance, was able to transform itself from a subsistence economy with very little surplus to a market economy capable of producing and consuming a large surplus by increasing agricultural productivity on large farms. As Rome’s productivity increased, so did the need for slave labor. While the primary purpose of just war theory was to prevent war, when the theory was used in connection with slavery, it increased the profitability of war and, in turn, increased the likelihood of war. When the just war theory was used as a justification for slavery, it allowed the society to remove the social obstacles that might have prevented individuals from justifying slavery because it made slavery part of the war sanctioned by social institutions. Shelinda Pattison

Further Readings Finley, M. I. Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology. New York: Viking Press, 1980. Meltzer, Milton. Slavery: A World History. New York: Decapo, 1993.

K his brick kiln factory. Khan undertook the mission to educate his people about bonded labor, which is still widespread not only in Pakistan but also in many countries in South Asia. His experiences in 1967 made him aware of the problems caused by owners, police, and political leaders. These problems made the struggle for freedom dangerous and difficult. Already at an early stage, the organizations against the bonded labor system were facing threats, while workers were being beaten and even killed. These struggles in his youth turned out to be the first step in a lifelong involvement in the struggle against bonded and child labor. After his first experiences, he became the recourse person for many other brick kiln workers. He formed Bhatta Mazdor Mahaz (BMM, Brick Kiln Workers Front) among the brick kiln workers in September 1967. The BMM was not only organizing actions and demonstrations of different kinds against the bonded system of labor, but it was also providing legal aid to give basic human rights to the bonded workers at the brick kilns for the first time in the history of South Asia. The bonded labor system was also common among many other groups, like agriculture workers, carpet workers, and mine workers. To struggle with bonded labor in a wider scope

Khan, Ehsan Ullah (1947–) Ehsan Ullah Khan has become a prominent figure in contemporary antislavery campaigns as a warrior against slavery through the power of education. Khan was the founder and president of the Brick Kiln Workers Front, the Bonded Labour Liberation Front (BLLF), and BLLF Global, a human rights organization that opposes slavery and child labor in Pakistan and South Asia. He is the national coordinator of Global March in Sweden. Khan is also working against the caste system in South Asia through different networks. He is one of the important figures from South Asia raising the slavery issues in the United Nations—through the Working Group for Contemporary Forms of Slavery and in International Labour Organization (ILO) meetings. He was born in Gwader, Baluchistan, a province of Pakistan. The compassion for people’s freedom and their right to live forced him to undertake many missions to guide people at an early age. He has been involved himself in the social and legal problems related with bonded workers in the brick kiln industry since 1967, when he met with one of the brick kiln workers, whose daughters had been kidnapped by a brick kiln owner, who then forced him to work in 357

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and more efficiently, Ehsan Ullah Khan founded the Bonded Labour Liberation Front (BLLF) in 1988. The BLLF was an umbrella organization for different groups of bonded workers. Many have tried to convince Ehsan Ullah Khan to work more aggressively and more militantly, but in spite of all resistance, he strongly believes that only education and development in a democratic way can create positive changes and create peace in the region. The importance of the role of children is emphasized in his development strategy, which is that “the victims should be empowered.” He strongly advocates that only if children get an education and an awareness about basic human rights and democracy, the country and the region can have a hope of a future with dignity. Ehsan Ullah Khan also believes that “those children, who get a basic education, knowledge about their rights, and hope for their future, will themselves eliminate the slavery.” During his efforts to struggle against the bonded labor system, he was working as a journalist and many times he was arrested due to his activities for human rights and the freedom of press. In 1982 he was incarcerated for six months and kept in confinement in a dark cell in the notorious torture camp of Lahore Fort during Zia ul Haq’s decade-long dictatorship from 1978 to 1988. He was arrested and tortured after he had written an article about the genetic development of biological warfare germs in Lahore in a government-controlled laboratory and how bonded brick kiln workers had been used as guinea pigs

and died due to experiments on human beings in a secret research project. The charge against him was high treason, which carried the death penalty. Ehsan Ullah Khan has been forced to live in exile outside Pakistan since 1995, after the murder of Iqbal Masih. Since he has been forced to stay in Europe, he founded BLLF Global in 1996 to fight against slavery and child labor. Although his intention is to return to Pakistan and continue his work with his organization, he has had to remain in Europe, because he has faced a baseless legal accusation that carries the death penalty since he is believed to have provoked the public against the state. After seven years, the sedition case was quashed in Lahore High Court on November 28, 2001, when the judge declared that the case was unlawful and the allegation was false. However, the Pakistani government has not allowed him to return to Pakistan. During the years of exile he has always been working on an international level for the rights of the child and the struggle against child labor and slavery. Bayram Unal See also: Ahmed, Zafaryab; Bhatta Mazdoor Mohaz; Bonded Labor; Bonded Labour Liberation Front.

Further Readings Anti-Slavery International. Contemporary Forms of Slavery Related to and Generated by Discrimination: Forced and Bonded Labor in India, Nepal and Pakistan. London: Anti-Slavery International, 2003.

Koran and Antislavery Anti-Slavery International. This Menace of Bonded Labor: Debt Bondage in Pakistan. London: Anti-Slavery International, 1996. Human Rights Watch. Pakistan: Contemporary Forms of Slavery. New York: Human Rights Watch, 1995. Karim, Farhad. Contemporary Forms of Slavery in Pakistan. New York: Human Rights Watch, 1995.

Koran and Antislavery Like the revelations of the Torah and the Gospel before it, the revelation of the Koran was a profoundly transformative event in human history. Within 150 years of the death of the Prophet Muhammad, in 632 CE, much of the inhabited world—stretching from Spain to India—had become Muslim, responding to the vigorously asserted new faith and an entirely new legal system in ways that had, and continue to have, a tremendous impact on world events. What impact did the revelation of the Koran have on the age-old institution of human slavery? A cursory review of the text and of the early Islamic history following its revelation might lead one to the conclusion that the Koran, much like the other Abrahamic scriptures that preceded it, left the institution of slavery just as it found it. Many scholars have contended that, while the Koranic text contains a number of ameliorative provisions lessening the harshness of the treatment of slaves and encouraging manumission, the Holy Book of the Muslims does not suggest abolition and it cannot be read as an antislavery document.

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Closer analysis of the Koranic text and a critical approach to the history surrounding the revelation of the text shows that this conclusion is not completely accurate. It is important to note that the early revelations of the Koran exhorted the Prophet Muhammad and his small band of followers to embrace a dynamic new worldview. This worldview emphasized, in newly phrased and uncompromising terms, the oneness of God and the unity of the human race. It ardently rejected the domination of any group in human society by any other individuals or group of oppressors. The Koranic message, first revealed in an Arabian society riven by tribal rivalries, warfare, and socioeconomic strife, was initially directed to members of the Prophet Muhammad’s own tribe, the dominant and aristocratic Quraish of Mecca. Ultimately, the message became a universal call, directing all human beings to seek justice and upright moral and ethical conduct in all their affairs. It demanded the abolition of worldly distinctions between human beings based on ethnicity, language, class, caste, wealth, lineage, or geographic origin. The Koran’s egalitarian message is likely why slaves, the poor, and the disenfranchised in Mecca were among the first converts to the new religion. Slaves who converted to Islam endured particularly harsh retribution from their masters. For example, Muslim schoolchildren are familiar with the story of Bilal ibn Rabah, an Ethiopian slave who was tortured by his Meccan owner for days in the hot midday sun

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because he refused to renounce his conversion to the newfound faith. One of the prophet’s companions, Abu Bakr, a wealthy man and a new Muslim himself, interceded, purchasing Bilal and instantaneously freeing him. Bilal enthusiastically took up the cause of the new religion and ultimately originated the adhan (“the call to prayer”), first used by him at the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina and now heard all over the world five times a day. Bilal thus was Islam’s first muaddhin (“caller to prayer”). We owe our enjoyment of the melodious tones of the Muslim call to prayer to this emancipated slave, Bilal ibn Rabah. In those early days of Islam, there were many more events like the instance of the emancipation of Bilal. Those events did not just concern slavery and persecution. They also involved other practices of the Meccan aristocracy that were viewed as corrupt, immoral, or oppressive. The texts of the early Meccan Koranic revelations, while powerfully condemnatory of Meccan immorality, tribalism, and polytheism, make only oblique references to the actual events that prompted the revelations. Instead, most accounts of the actual facts will be found in the historical literature and in the traditions of the prophet. A review of those facts leaves no doubt, however, that the early Muslim experience led to the liberation of many new Meccan Muslims from lives of slavery and degradation. This reality is confirmed by the fact that all the important Koranic rules on slavery are emancipatory. There are no

provisions in the Koran that actively promote or counsel the continuation of the institution of slavery. The message of the Koran rather exhorts mankind to work toward the achievement of a slavery-free society. This message was, unfortunately, deemphasized after the death of the Prophet Muhammad and ultimately lost in the rapid expansion of the Islamic Empire. Although the Koran’s assertions of absolute human equality, the inviolability of human dignity, and the importance of earthly justice were key rhetorical factors in fueling the rapid expansion of Islam, those messages did not result in any impulse or movement seeking the widespread abolition of the slave trade or of the system of chattel slavery. Yet, consistent with the core Koranic message, manumission of slaves in the Muslim world was a common and frequent occurrence. In some places, notably Egypt, former slaves rose to occupy the highest positions in political and religious hierarchies. Thus, in spite of the existence of a 1,300-year horrific and anti-Koranic history of plunder and trading in slaves, an examination of the Koran’s textual provisions on slavery and its more general discussions of the ideas of social justice and human equality shows the clear presence of a theological and jurisprudential basis for an antislavery position. As noted, not all of the Koranic usages are equally significant in determining the Koran’s attitude toward slavery, and in some cases they are ambiguous or neutral, displaying a matter-of-fact acceptance of the existence of chattel slavery in


Arab society at the time of the revelation. Yet, in many other instances the antislavery message is unmistakable. The most effective way to analyze the Koranic treatment of the issue is to group its provisions on slavery by Arabic linguistic usage. Using a linguistic lens in the analysis helps separate the Koran’s neutral provisions from its antislavery provisions and will make the Holy Book’s intendment clearer to the reader. The Koran generally uses three linguistic forms in its references to slaves and slavery. The first linguistic form involves the use of the Arabic masculine noun ‘abd, which literally means “slave,” but is also frequently used in the Koran to describe a servant or worshiper of God. Although the form is often used in a neutral way, a number of the usages of this form carry emancipatory messages. The second Koranic linguistic form describes chattel slaves with the use of the Arabic idiomatic expression, ma malakat aymanukum (“those whom your right hands possess”). This phrase describes war captives and others who may fall into a state of enslavement as a result of hostilities, negotiations between belligerents, or as tribute or war booty. The phrase, or some variant of it, is used 13 times in the Koran (4:3, 4:24, 4:25, 4:36, 16:71, 23:6, 24:31, 24:58, 30:28, 33:50, 33:52, 33:55, 70:30). Although many of the verses using this phrase do nothing more than lay down rules of etiquette or decorum involving treatment of prisoners, a number of them also clearly contemplate a lightening of the

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burden of the captive or outright emancipation. The third linguistic form uses variants of the metaphorical expression raqabah (“the neck”) to describe slaves, an obvious reference to the ancient practice of yoking captives by the neck. The Koranic usage of this form is much more graphic, and the verses employing this usage give us the most direct expression of the Koran’s overarching purposes in regard to slavery. In all of the verses using this form, God instructs the believers to free “the neck” or substantially lighten the burden placed upon it. Several of the instances of this usage are found in chapters and sections that convey a powerful message of equality and human freedom. The most important Koranic linguistic usages for descriptions of slavery are the first and the third forms. In a number of the instances in the Koran where ‘abd usage is employed, the Koran instituted an important change in how slaves were to be treated under the law. For example, verses 2:178 and 2:179 established the principle of equality in terms of punishment for homicide, abolishing distinctions based on social status or tribal affiliation. After the revelation of verses 2:178 and 2:179, slaves in Muslim society no longer feared being sacrificed as satisfaction to the victims of homicides committed by free persons, and, more importantly, they were protected by the law of homicide in the same way that free persons were protected. This was a revolutionary change in the Arab tribal customary law, and, as the criminal law often does, it sent a powerful rhetorical

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message of equality to all of the new Muslims. In the area of personal relations, the Koran also made profound changes in the law governing slaves. Prior to the emergence of Islam, slaves were often either not allowed to marry or they faced difficulties in establishing and maintaining marriage ties. Sometimes prisoners of war, captured and enslaved during hostilities, were allowed to bring a spouse with them into captivity, but this did not guarantee that the marriage tie would be respected. The Koran, to a large extent, changed these and other rules governing slave marriages. In verses 2:221 and 24:32, the Koran exhorts Muslims to permit their slaves to marry and, using the ‘abd linguistic form, extols a preference for marital partnerships between believing slaves and believing free persons over those between slaves and unbelievers, even though they might be free. While the social taboo associated with marriage to a slave may have persisted, the text clarifies that such relationships should no longer be legally taboo and that marriage among believing slaves and between believing slaves and believing free persons were henceforth to be viewed as acts of piety. It is important to remember that, while a slave’s conversion to Islam did not automatically result in emancipation, a free person’s marriage to his or her slave would result in the slave’s emancipation, based on the jurists’ Koranic interpretation that it was legally impossible to own one’s spouse. Although these provisions might cause a male owner of a concubine to eschew marriage to her,

preferring ownership and unrestrained access, the Caliph Ali, the fourth caliph of Islam, acting within 30 years after the revelation, nullified the untoward results of this practice by ordering that a female slave mother of children by her free male owner (known as umm walid or “mother of the child” in Arabic) could not be sold and that she must, by operation of law, be emancipated upon the death of her owner. The Islamic law, drawn from interpretations of the Koran and Traditions of the prophet, also stipulated that the children of such unions were free at birth. These rules encouraged meaningful and long-term humanitarian relationships between slaves and masters, ultimately ending in emancipation, and many prominent figures in Islamic history, including heads of state, military leaders, poets and scholars, were products of such unions. Each Koranic use of the metaphorical Arabic word raqaba (“the neck”) is also unmistakably emancipatory. Each time this word is used, the Koran orders or strongly urges that “the neck” be freed. Perhaps the most frequently referenced passage using the neck description of slaves is the verse that immediately precedes the verses announcing the ordinance that the law of equality must be applied in homicide, referred to above. The verse, 2:177, counsels the believers to eschew blind adherence to religious ritual, and, in imparting that counsel, it gives an express definition of righteous behavior. The verse requires that every righteous believer “spend of your substance . . . for the ransom of slaves.”


The exhortation to righteous behavior is not the only way that the Koran encouraged the freeing of slaves. Again using the harsh linguistic phrase “the neck,” the Koran announced that slaves were to be freed in partial expiation for the crime of unintentional homicide (4:92), for failure to comply with an oath or for taking false or futile oaths (5:89), and as penalty for inappropriate or unjust behavior by a husband toward his wife (58:3–6). Two other instances of the use of the neck linguistic form in the Koran involve explicit pronouncements of legal injunctions and are of major importance for the Islamic law of slavery. A third instance, while only hortatory, is of nearly equal importance because of its delineation of the Islamic ethic in regard to slavery. The first instance, at verse 9:60, is widely cited in legal treatises because it sets out the eight classes of persons in society who are entitled to receive public charity or Zakat, one of the five “pillars” of the Islamic faith. Those classes of persons are: (1) the poor; (2) the needy; (3) Zakat workers; (4) new Muslims; (5) slaves; (6) debtors; (7) those struggling “in the cause of God”; and (8) travelers. Although this verse does not expressly suggest that the heads of Islamic states should affirmatively work to eliminate or abolish slavery, it commands the authorities to consider the plight of slaves as one of their highest categories in the social welfare context. The next instance of the Koran’s use of the neck metaphor is at verse 47:4,

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which sets out provisions for the treatment of prisoners of war. The verse provides that the Muslim military commander is permitted to capture and enslave nonbelieving enemy prisoners of war but, when hostilities are concluded, efforts must be made to free the prisoners or to ransom or repatriate them back to their communities. Despite a fair amount of scholarly opinion suggesting that the verse is only advisory, rather than mandatory, and the fact that, during the medieval era, heads of Islamic governments often ignored the verse’s provision, the plain meaning and imperative tense of the Koranic language seem to mandate that heads of government must free captives at the cessation of hostilities. The third and last instance of the use of the neck metaphor is perhaps the most compelling evidence of a Koranic philosophy in favor of individual freedom and an insistence on emancipation and abolition in the case of slaves. This philosophy, summed up in the wonderfully terse chapter entitled al Balad (“The City”), was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad early in his prophetic mission. The revelation, addressed to the prophet, concerns his relationship with Mecca, the city of his birth, and the struggle he was about to undertake, which would eventually require him to flee the city in order to save his life and continue his mission. The chapter first points out that he, the prophet, is a “freeman” or “dweller” of the city, but, like other men, he will face toil and struggle in life, of which many other men cannot fathom the meaning.

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The chapter then announces that there are two roads in life, one steep, and difficult, and the other flat, and easy. The steep road is the preferred road, but how is one to know the steep road? The Koran answers this question, stating that the steep road, among other things, involves freeing slaves, protecting orphans, and uplifting the indigent in society. The Koran’s exhortation to the prophet in al Balad describes the struggle required of the prophet if he is to succeed in creating the virtuous society contemplated by the Holy Book. Every Muslim who emulates the prophet in his or her individual effort to create this virtuous society must behave similarly. The good Muslim therefore frees slaves and works for abolition, and the virtuous society contemplated by the Koran will ultimately be one that is free of slavery. Bernard K. Freamon See also: Muscat and Oman, Abolition of Slavery in; North Africa, Abolition in.

Further Readings Ali, A. Yusuf, trans. and comm. The Holy Quran, 9th ed. Maryland: Amana Publications, 1997. Ali, Syed Ameer. The Spirit of Islam, a History of the Evolution and Ideals of Islam, with a Life of the Prophet. London: Christophers, 1922. Arberry, A. J., trans. The Koran Interpreted. New York: Touchstone, 1996. Bell, Richard. Introduction to the Quran. Revised by William Montgomery Watt. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1977.

Esposito, John L. Islam: The Straight Path, 3rd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Greenidge, C. W. W. Slavery. London: Allen and Unwin, 1958. Margoliouth, D. S., and H. Carless Davis, eds. Mohammed and the Rise of Islam. New York: Putnam, 1905. Pickthall, Marmaduke, trans. The Glorious Koran. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1976. Qutb, Sayyid. In the Shade of the Quran. (Fi Zilal al-Quran). Trans. M. Adil Salahi, Ashur A. Shamis. Vol. 30. New Delhi: Idara Ishaat E. Diniyat, n.d. Rodinson, Maxime. Muhammad. Trans. Anne Carter. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980. Watt, William Montgomery. Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman. London: Oxford University Press, 1961. Watt, William Montgomery. Muhammad at Mecca. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953. Watt, William Montgomery. Muhammad at Medina, new ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981.

Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan Formed on November 16, 1990, by Professor Yun Chông-ok, as a response to the Japanese government’s denial of involvement in the recruitment of the so-called “comfort women,” the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan is a coalition of Korean women’s organizations that lobby the Japanese government. The goal of the council is to

Korean Council for the Women

have the Japanese government admit to the drafting of Korean girls for use as comfort women by the Japanese Imperial Army and to uncover the truth about comfort women before and during World War II. In South Korea, the issue of comfort women emerged in the late 1980s, when a group of Korean women’s organizations began lobbying the Japanese government for reparations for Korean comfort women during the time of Japanese colonial rule. The formal establishment of the Korean Council was in response to the continued denials of responsibility and culpability by the Japanese government; in particular, the 1990 declaration by a Japanese government representative that the comfort stations were run by private entrepreneurs and not by the Japanese government spurred action. The Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan led the fight to recognize the suffering of comfort women in South Korea and other parts of Asia. Following Kim Hak-sun’s riveting testimony of her life as a former comfort woman, the Korean Council encouraged other former comfort women to speak publicly about their experiences. In 1992, the council succeeded in having the international community take notice of the comfort women issue when Professor Lee Hyo-chae of the Korean Council submitted a formal petition to the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC), requesting that the commission investigate the atrocities committed against Korean women by

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the Japanese Imperial Army and force Japan to pay compensation to individual women who filed suit against the Japanese government. The UNHRC responded by placing the comfort woman issue on its official agenda for an August 1992 meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, where delegates from the Korean Council as well as one former comfort woman testified. Following the testimony and subsequent investigation by the UN special investigator on violence against women, the report concluded that the Japanese government should admit its legal responsibility for the enslavement of comfort women, identify and punish those responsible for sexual slavery during World War II, and compensate the victims. In addition to their political work, the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan in association with the Research Association on the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan has published the testimony of several Korean survivors of Japanese military sexual slavery in Korea and China, edited by Keith Howard. The Korean Council has also held international conferences on the comfort women issue in South Korea in 1992 and in Tokyo, Japan, in 1993. Keith A. Leitich See also: Hak Sun, Kim.

Further Readings Hicks, George. “The Comfort Women: Japan’s Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War.” Korea Journal 27, no. 2 (1997): 136–141.

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Howard, Keith, ed. True Stories of the Korean Comfort Women: Testimonies. London and New York: Cassell, 1995. Kim-Gibson, Dai Sil. Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women. Parkersburg, IA: Mid-Prairie Books, 1999. Soh, Chunghee Sarah. “Centering the Korean ‘Comfort Women’ Survivors.” Critical Asian Studies 33, no. 4 (2001): 603–608. Soh, Chunghee Sarah. “The Korean ‘Comfort Women’: Movement for Redress.” Asian Survey 36, no. 12 (1996): 1226–1240. Tanaka, Toshiyuki. Japan’s Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution during World War II and the U.S. Occupation. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. Yoshimi, Yoshiaki. Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military during World War II, trans. Suzanne O’Brien. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.

Kosoko, Oba (1815–1872) Oba Kosoko was a renowned ruler, slave trader, and a diplomat of the precolonial west African kingdom of Lagos who ruled from 1845 to 1851. His international recognition is attributed to his involvement in the Atlantic slave trade and resistance to British control of trading activities along the West African coast in the 19th century. Born in 1815, he was the son of Oba Esilogun (Osinlokun in some sources) who ruled Lagos from 1780–1819. From youth he was considered to be an intelligent, bold, courageous, and defiant prince. This aspect of his personality featured prominently in his relations

with the missionaries and British colonial officials. As a result of being passed over in the kingdom’s succession process, he attempted to overthrow his cousin, Oluwole. The failure of the coup attempt called the Ewe Koko war forced him and his followers to flee from Lagos. While his followers relocated to Epe and other towns, Kosoko moved down the western lagoon to Porto Novo and subsequently to Whydah. In both locations he became involved in slave trading activities with the Portuguese and Brazilian slave dealers. Following the death of Oba Oluwole in 1841, Kosoko was passed again by the kingmakers in favor of his uncle, Akitoye. Following the accession of Akitoye to the throne, Kosoko was recalled to Lagos and made a chief of Ereko, a part of Lagos where he had his own court. By 1845, through the assistance of his slave trading friends, Kosoko masterminded a revolt and overthrew Akitoye. Having lost the throne to Kosoko, Akitoye tried to persuade John Beecroft, the British consul for the Bights of Benin and Biafra to reinstate him to the throne of Lagos. In November 1851, using gunboat diplomacy, Beecroft persuaded Kosoko to sign a treaty with the British abolishing the slave trade in the kingdom. Kosoko refused and this led to the British attack on the kingdom. Writing on the Kosoko-British diplomatic tangle, one scholar noted, “After he had expelled King Akitoye from the throne, and made himself King of Lagos, Her Majesty the Queen of England sent an English consul to convey to him, that

Kosoko, Oba

it would be Her Majesty’s great pleasure to see that he put down the ‘Slavetrade’ in his Kingdom; and to sign such a treaty, pleading as an excuse he was under the King of Benin, to whom the treaty should be first submitted by Her Majesty’s Consul and he would follow. This message was conveyed to the British Officers through his War-Captain Osodi” (Losi, 1914). On December 27 the town of Lagos was seized by the British, and Akitoye was restored to the throne. The British in explaining their intervention in Lagos politics in 1851 argued that they were trying to stamp out the slave trade and institute legitimate commerce in palm produce, cotton, indigo, shea butter, and other local goods. It is without doubt that there was more to it than meets the eyes. As J. F. A. Ajayi has written, “it is essential to remember that the dispute between Akitoye and Kosoko was not a dispute between slave-traders and anti-slave traders but a struggle for power between two rival branches of the ruling dynasty of Lagos” (Ajayi, 1961). The dynastic crisis provided the British the opportunity to intervene in the internal affairs of Lagos. More importantly, the British colonial officials were invited by English missionaries and traders who were determined to utilize Lagos as a corridor to the interior of Yorubaland. According to Ajayi, “the missionaries and British traders, saw Lagos the gateway to the thickly populated, prosperous Yoruba country, full of great potentialities for the missionary and the trader. Together, they began to urge the British

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Government to take Akitoye under their protection and use him to establish British interests in Lagos. In order to get the British Government to act, they publicised the picture of Lagos as the ‘notorious slave depot’ and of Kosoko as the arch-slave trader who had determined to wipe out English traders and missionaries in the interest of the slave trade. At the same time, they built up Akitoye as confirmed anti-slave trader” (Ajayi, 1961). Following British intervention, Kosoko and his followers escaped from Lagos and settled at Epe with the consent of the ruler, the Awujale of Ijebu Ode. Through the support of about 300 to 400 warriors and a Lagos chieftain, Osodi Tapa, Kosoko established Epe as a rival kingdom to Lagos. From Epe, he extended his influence to Leki and Palma, where he engaged in export trade in presumably slaves and palm produce. He succeeded through the support of European slave merchants, Portuguese and Brazilian associates. In addition, “the most important factor in explaining Kosoko’s success in establishing himself almost at once as an independent territorial power was his military strength. He is remembered in Lagos and Epe as a leader of courage and energy, and his career shows that he inspired loyalty in his followers. He had been brought up to warfare, and was especially experienced in the naval form which obtained among the lagoon peoples” (Smith, 1969). Fearing Kosoko’s power would disrupt political and economic activities in Lagos, the British, represented by

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Consul Benjamin Campbell. entered into a treaty with Kosoko on September 28, 1854. The Treaty of Epe as it was called, contained seven articles. The treaty, among other things, provided that Kosoko and his chiefs refrain from attempting to seize Lagos, renounce slave trade, and promise to protect merchants and traders who want to trade. On the other hand, the British agreed to recognize Palma as Kosoko’s port and pay him an annual salary of 10,000 heads of cowries or 1,000 dollars at his option for life. Kosoko died in 1872. Onaiwu W. Ogbomo

Further Readings Ajayi, J. F. A. “The British Occupation of Lagos, 1851–1865: A Critical Review.” Nigeria Magazine 69 (1961): 96–105. Burns, A. History of Nigeria. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1929. Geary, Sir William N. M. Nigeria Under British Rule. London: Frank Cass, 1927. Losi, John B. History of Lagos. Lagos: Tika-Tore Press, 1914. Matheson, Jane D. “Lagoon Relations in the Era of Kosoko, 1845–1862: A Study of African Reaction to European Intervention.” PhD thesis, Boston University, 1974. Smith, Robert. “To the Palaver Islands: War and Diplomacy on the Lagos Lagoon in 1852–1854.” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 5, no. 1 (1969): 3–25.

L and ultimately eliminate it, but few success stories exist, whereby nations have remedied the tremendous levels of social stratification existing worldwide in the modern era. It is rare for privileged classes that enjoy hegemonic power to share their wealth willingly with those who are lowly, and national governments that try to promote such social and economic leveling often find themselves at risk if they seriously attempt to effect such a profound change. As a result, the pledges that are made to fight poverty are usually empty promises, as the nexus of wealth in landed power influences policies to its own interest rather than to better the conditions of the poor. Historically, land ownership and land tenure have been perhaps the greatest sources of economic power and prosperity across the world. As a general rule, those who have their own land have a greater tendency to succeed and those who are landless often fall victims to the vicissitudes of the impoverished. Although it is possible that a mechanical form of land redistribution might remedy this situation and begin to right this historic socioeconomic wrong, such programs are rare. Land reform programs have typically been associated with socialist states that have tried to engineer a more

Land Reform The concept of land reform refers to proposals involving the redistribution of property so that levels of poverty within a society might be mitigated. Such policies are rarely implemented, due to social, political, and economic concerns of the privileged elite who stand to lose power and prestige if such policies are carried into action. Poverty may be the one consistent indicator worldwide that more often than not reflects a high affinity toward those who are the most likely to be victims of contemporary forms of slavery. Those who struggle daily to eke out a meager existence often find themselves the most marginalized in society, and as the most vulnerable, they often succumb to the unscrupulous whims of those who feed upon their misery by entrapping them in exploitative labor practices or outright abuse. For the many who are poor and who are enslaved, they seemingly exist in a nether world that is far from the wealth, power, and privilege of economic globalization, but they are instrumental in its most base levels of operation. Political leaders in a host of countries through time immemorial have pledged themselves to policies that are designed to reduce levels of poverty 369

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perfect society at the cost of dissuading initiative and violating free market economic principles. Such ideas range from the briefly considered notion of “forty acres and a mule” for the emancipated freedmen after the U.S. Civil War to promises of land redistribution made to indigenous peoples during the Mexican Civil War when their support was needed. Elements of land reform were also evident in policies of collectivization in the Soviet Union (USSR) during the 1930s and in the so-called Great Leap Forward that Mao Zedong introduced in the People’s Republic of China in the 1950s. The promise of land reform is often bantered about by political demagogues who make bold promises to aid the poor in the hope of inspiring a popular uprising. Seldom are such policies ever implemented. Threats of land reform always unite powerful interests in opposition. The families of privileged elites, the church, multinational corporations, and the government itself often collude their common interests in an effort to maintain that they keep what they hold. Although some within these groups might express their concern in helping to uplift the conditions of the impoverished, they rarely advocate the distribution of land to the poor as a viable solution to the problems faced. Efforts at supporting land reform movements have often come from clergymen who are inspired by the doctrine of liberation theology that became a powerful movement in the developing world during the era of decolonization that followed World War II. Other

calls for support of land redistribution have come from some nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), Christian socialists, and leftist political parties. Reactionary governments have sometimes jailed the proponents of land redistribution as a means of silencing them and disrupting their movement. Junius P. Rodriguez

Further Readings Dai, Hongchao. Land Reform and Politics: A Comparative Analysis. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974. Hellum, Anne. “Women’s Human Rights and African Customary Laws: Between Universalism and Relativism—Individualism and Communitarianism.” European Journal of Development Research 10, no. 2 (1998): 88–104. Moore, Sally Falk. “Changing African Land Tenure: Reflections on the Incapacities of the State.” European Journal of Development Research 10, no. 2 (1998): 33–49. Prosterman, Roy L., and Jeffrey M Riedinger. Land Reform and Democratic Development. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987. Randall, Laura. Economic Development: Evolution or Revolution? Boston: D. C. Heath, 1964. Vorster, Jakobus M. “The Ethics of Land Restitution.” Journal of Religious Ethics 34, no. 4 (2006): 685–707.

Latin America, Antislavery and Abolition in The long military struggle for Latin American political independence from


Spain, beginning in 1808 and ending with the withdrawal of the Spanish armies from mainland Latin America in 1824, culminated in the creation of the new republics of Latin America. The civil wars across Latin America also fatally weakened the colonial institution of slavery, which had helped to prop up Spanish colonialism. It took some time for all the independent republics to abolish slavery with formal legislative acts, but the death knell had been sounded well before the institution actually disappeared. The wars of national independence fought across Latin America were not in themselves wars of abolition, but these wars began a process that led to the abolition of slavery within the independent countries of Latin America. The Latin American wars of independence had part of their origin in the age of revolution that preceded them. The American Revolution had provided a powerful example of how to throw off European colonialism, and the French Revolution had spread the ideas of the Enlightenment throughout Europe and beyond. French revolutionary ideas had helped to precipitate the overthrow of slavery in the French colony of Saint Domingue, and this, in turn, led to the independent black republic of Haiti, an evocative symbol of revolutionary change for the Americas. The idea of liberty now was no longer an abstract intellectual term; for the slaves of the Americas, rumors of the Haitian Revolution meant freedom from the hated institution that imprisoned them. For their masters, however, it inspired the

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fear of slave rebellion and the loss of their slave property. The leaders of the Latin American independence movements embraced the rhetoric of the Enlightenment to promote their cause. They accused Spain of enslaving the peoples of Latin America and called for freedom from this Spanish colonial servitude. The language of political freedom, which gained ground as the civil wars slowly led to the collapse of Spanish colonialism, was directed at Spain, but collective and individual freedoms were inextricably connected. Slaves who were persuaded to fight for the freedom of a country in return for personal freedom made the connection very quickly. However much slave owners who had lived off slave labor wanted to retain the institution, in the minds of slaves the catchword of liberty meant individual freedom just as much as it meant collective freedom. Even slaves who were illiterate, and most were, were attuned to the words and rhetoric of the civil wars in which they played such an important part. Historians do not agree on how many slaves there were in Latin America on the eve of independence, but they agree that outside Brazil and Cuba slave labor was dominant only in selected areas of Latin America. The largest slave numbers were to be found in Brazil, but in the remainder of mainland Latin America, slaves did not exceed 10 percent of the population. Slave populations were concentrated in the cacao and sugar plantations of Venezuela, the coastal regions of Peru and Ecuador, the mining

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communities and the port towns of what would become Colombia, and the area around Buenos Aires in the Rio de la Plata. They were to be found wherever their labor was deemed essential. In urban areas they dominated as domestic servants and worked at a variety of artisan positions. One recent estimate found approximately 30,000 in the Rio de la Plata, 78,000 in New Granada (Colombia), nearly 65,000 in Venezuela, and less than 90,000 in the viceroyalty of Peru, of whom up to 6,000 were located in Chile.

Abolition of the Slave Trade in Latin America As soon as Britain abolished the African slave trade within its own colonial empire in 1807, British politicians and diplomats embarked upon a campaign to persuade other countries to follow Britain’s example, so that slave traders could not use flags of these countries to carry on the slave trade. When the Latin American independence movements began, their leaders were anxious to secure British support, and one way was to embrace the new liberalism of equality by proscribing the Atlantic slave trade. The British government would not accept declarations alone or even legislation. It insisted on including articles banning the slave trade in all treaties it signed with the newly independent countries of Latin America recognizing their independence, seeking to bind these new nations together in a campaign to enforce the abolition of the slave trade. By 1826, Britain had

succeeded in signing treaties with Mexico, Colombia, and Buenos Aires, and in each, a standard clause prohibiting the slave trade was included. Apart from Brazil and Cuba, where an illegal slave trade flourished into the second half of the nineteenth century, the most difficult area confronting British diplomacy was Uruguay and the surrounding La Plata region. The British feared a renewal of the slave trade as a means of supplying more slaves to the flourishing plantation areas of southern Brazil. Here it took until 1842 before a treaty including a binding anti–slave trade provision was ratified. By checking the possible renewal of the slave trade through the La Plata region, the British government was striking a blow at the continuing slave trade to Brazil. Slaves were also being brought from Uruguay to Buenos Aires from the late 1820s. Governor Juan Manuel de Rosas reopened the slave trade into Buenos Aires from 1831 to 1833. British pressure again forced a halt, and a new Anglo-Argentine anti–slave trade treaty of 1840 effectively suppressed it. British support for the anti–slave trade campaign was occasionally misinterpreted. When a British army invaded and occupied Buenos Aires in 1806, the African slaves in the city apparently believed that their emancipation was at hand. The British general obliged the Creole elite in Buenos Aires by issuing a decree saying that he had no intention of abolishing slavery. When, in turn, the inhabitants of Buenos Aires expelled the British, they were assisted by slaves fighting with


arms issued by the town council. Slavery would continue in Buenos Aires and Argentina until much later. Venezuela was the first independence movement to ban the slave trade in a decree issued by the Supreme Junta of Caracas in 1810. The banning of “the vile traffic in slaves” was then included in the first Venezuelan constitution promulgated in 1811. The independence movement in Chile banned the slave trade in the same year and also provided that children of slaves would subsequently be born free, thus beginning a free womb process that would be followed eventually by most of the newly independent Latin American countries. In Chile, this step prompted some slave owners to free their slaves. Some 300 slaves then marched to the government in Santiago, armed with knives, asking the new government for their freedom and offering to defend the new republic. The republican government of Buenos Aires issued an executive decree in 1812, prohibiting the slave trade, and confirmed it in legislation the following year. The constitution of the new state of Cartagena in 1812 included a clause banning the slave trade, although the civil war conditions made enforcement of this provision highly doubtful. Not all of these early anti–slave trade declarations remained in force, but the overall effect was to seal the fate of the African slave trade to mainland Latin America and to weaken Latin American slavery. Just as Simón Bolívar would try to set an example for abolitionists in northern South America, the liberator

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José de San Martín did the same in the former viceroyalty of Peru, issuing a decree in Lima in 1821, banning the slave trade and initiating the free womb concept throughout the new republic of Peru. In Mexico, the earliest revolutionary leaders went even further, as Miguel Hidalgo proclaimed the abolition of slavery in 1810, which his successor, José Maria Morelos, confirmed. The ultimate failure of their social revolution postponed the abolition of slavery in Mexico until after formal independence had been achieved. The cumulative effect of these decrees and early legislative acts was to signal that the demise of slavery throughout Latin America was inevitable, even though it would take much longer to eliminate it completely. Of the mainland Latin American republics, only Chile and Central America abolished slavery immediately following independence. Chile abolished slavery in 1823, the first mainland Latin American republic to do so, and once the Central American Federation had broken away from Mexico and declared its own independence, it, too, abolished slavery in 1824. When the Central American Federation dissolved in 1839, none of the Central American successor states reverted to legal systems of slavery. In Santo Domingo, now the Dominican Republic, Haitian occupation forces abolished slavery in 1822. By 1851, Britain had succeeded in signing anti–slave trade treaties with nearly all the newly independent states of Latin America, ensuring that the flags of these nations would not be used

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in the African slave trade. Latin American willingness to assist Britain in suppressing the slave trade helped to ensure that it would not spread and also cut off the external supply of slaves that the institution had depended upon. Without that supply, slavery could not last long in any of the new nations. That it survived as long as it did is testimony to the lack of any strong antislavery commitment among the ruling classes of the new republics.

Slave Emancipation in Venezuela and Colombia Following the decree ending the slave trade to the region, the Venezuelan patriot Francisco Miranda proclaimed a slave enlistment decree in 1812, seeking to lure slaves to enlist in the republican army by promising them eventual freedom after fighting (and surviving) for four years. Slave owners who feared that the experience of Haiti would be repeated in Venezuela forced Miranda to limit the number of slaves included, but the precedent of recruiting slaves to fight in the civil wars had been set. Both sides, the royalists and the republicans, would use this device, and slaves themselves would join the armies in an effort to obtain their freedom, just as some would later desert if they saw an opportunity to throw off the legal shackles of slavery. Thousands of slaves utilized the continuing civil wars in northern South America, as they did in other areas of South America, to flee their masters. An estimated 5,000 joined Bolívar’s army in Colombia between

1819 and 1821, and up to a third of recruits in Ecuador were slaves hoping to gain freedom. The civil wars provided the opportunity, but it was the slaves themselves who seized the chance of fighting with all its attendant risks to escape their past servitude. Many became casualties of the wars, either killed or suffering wounds that would leave them incapacitated in years to come. Slaves and former slaves did much of the fighting throughout Latin America, and their contribution to the independence movements has often been overlooked. In 1816, Simón Bolívar promised President Pétion of Haiti that in return for the president’s political and financial support in the struggle against Spanish colonialism, he would issue a proclamation declaring freedom for all slaves. In this and subsequent pronouncements, Bolívar repeated his commitment to the abolition of slavery, but he was never able to persuade his countrymen to live up to the promise he had made. He did, however, free his own remaining slaves in 1820 as an example to others. Later, in October 1821, he passed a law freeing the slaves of Spaniards who chose to leave Gran Colombia rather than live in the newly independent republic. In 1820, Bolívar wrote: “it seems to me madness that a revolution for freedom expects to maintain slavery.” He was unable to resolve the central contradiction of his statement. As the leader of the independence forces in northern South America, Bolívar was trying first of all to seduce slaves to


fight for the republican side with offers of freedom following the wars. His real message was that slaves who wanted their freedom would have to fight as republicans to gain it, but time would prove that the eradication of the institution needed even more than the sacrifices of individual slaves. It required clear legislative action. In spite of the ringing declarations of freedom from Bolívar, and the important contribution of slaves and ex-slaves to the republican victory, the institution of slavery survived into the independence period in northern South America. Bolívar summoned legislators to a congress at Angostura in 1819 to create a constitution for the newly independent nation of Gran Colombia, encompassing present-day Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador. The legislators, many of whom were Creole planters and slave owners, refused to ratify Bolívar’s abolition policy. Instead they postponed effective and complete abolition through a series of rhetorical statements affirming eventual slave emancipation. Two years later, in 1821, legislators passed the Cúcuta Slave Law, decreeing the free birth of all children born to slave mothers. This set in motion a process of gradual emancipation with conditions. To ensure compensation to slave owners, the child had to serve the mother’s master for 18 years. Even then, full legal freedom would only occur if a local board of manumission approved. Bolívar continued to issue decrees against slavery in the new republic of Gran Colombia, at least four more, in

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1822, 1823, 1827, and 1828, but none succeeded in bringing complete emancipation. The slave owners used every method available to them in opposing emancipation and in preserving what was left of an institution they relied on for labor and wealth. Slave labor, although in slow and steady decline, remained deeply entrenched in the economic and cultural fabric of the society, and those possessing slaves fought the idea of emancipation as long as possible. Although the number of slaves in Caribbean New Granada (Colombia) fell to less than 7,000 by 1835, urban elites still relied upon female slaves for their domestic labor, and the census figures did not include the labor of the children who had ostensibly been freed by the free womb legislation but still were performing servile labor for the slave masters. It remained true throughout the region that the majority of slave women were to be found as domestic laborers in the cities and the majority of slave men worked in rural areas. The failure to achieve genuine emancipation in Gran Colombia meant that with the breakup of the state in 1830 and the emergence of Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador, the end of the institution was left to the new states to resolve. Slavery in the new state of Gran Colombia, and after 1830 in the successor states of Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador, was by then an institution affecting only a small minority of the population. Two of these states, Venezuela and Colombia, along with Peru, however, had possessed the largest slave

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populations in Spanish South America at the beginning of the independence period. Slave populations had steadily declined due to the end of the African slave trade, the severe disruptions of the civil wars over many years, natural death, and the impact of the free womb law of 1821, along with growing opportunities readily seized by slaves to obtain their own freedom. Slavery remained concentrated in the plantation areas of Venezuela and the port towns of the future Colombia. By 1844, less than 2 percent of Venezuela’s population still remained slaves. These slaves, however, carried on working as servile laborers and also functioned as sources of financial credit for their often financially overstretched owners. But in the years following independence, fewer slaves were willing to put up with slavery. They became more aggressive in seeking freedom through flight, abandoning plantations to join bands of guerrillas, and finding other ways to escape from servitude. Yet, even when slavery as an institution was clearly in its last stages with the number of slaves steadily diminishing, Venezuelan slave owners were unwilling to abolish slavery without adequate compensation. Their demand for compensation held up final abolition in 1854 when the bill was being debated. The formal abolition of slavery in Venezuela occurred on March 24, 1854. Emancipation in New Granada, or Colombia as it became in 1856, had occurred two years earlier at the beginning of 1852.

Slave Emancipation in Peru Complete emancipation of slavery throughout Peru seemed to be just a matter of time in 1821, following San Martín’s declaration that the country itself was free from Spanish colonialism. That declaration proved premature, as was the hope for immediate emancipation. It was not until 1824 and the final defeat of Spanish forces at the Battle of Ayacucho that a republican victory was secured. In Peru and in the neighboring Latin American states, complete emancipation of slavery had to wait for another 30 years. No antislavery movement powerful enough to overcome the vested interests of the conservative property-owning elite existed. Peru’s slave population at independence amounted to some 50,000 individuals, which was less than 4 percent of the total population of 1,325,000. Slave labor, therefore, did not play a vital role in the economy as a whole, but it did play a role where the slave population was concentrated—in the plantations of the Peruvian coastal river valleys and around Lima itself. There, the importance of slaves, as sources of wealth and as symbols of social status, was much greater. Peruvian slave owners succeeded in postponing effective emancipation as long as possible. Peru’s experience mirrored that of the neighboring states; emancipation was characterized by gradualism and the preservation of the social structure underpinning slavery even as the institution itself slowly withered away.


Emancipation finally occurred in Peru in 1855, at approximately the same time it happened in Venezuela, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and the Argentine Confederation. All these countries were no doubt influenced by the liberal ideas of the 1848 revolutions in Europe, but in each country there were unique circumstances dictating the timing of emancipation. When it came, slave emancipation in Peru, as in other Latin American countries, was a product of a steadily disintegrating slave structure and the unremitting efforts of the slaves themselves to use every means possible to obtain their own freedom. Flight, legal suits brought before the courts, self-purchase, and a variety of challenges to slave owners, both active and passive, slowly undermined what remained of a once dominant colonial institution. Following his successful invasion of Peru, San Martín proclaimed the law of free womb on August 12, 1821, and later that same year he issued a decree on November 20, prohibiting the slave trade. Further decrees strengthened the trend toward emancipation in Peru, including proclamations of freedom for slaves who joined the patriot army. The arrival in Peru of Bolívar in 1823 to consolidate the independence that San Martín had won reinforced the hopes of the antislavery elements in the country. These were soon disappointed by the absence of any substantive measures to implement the complete abolition of slavery. Neither San Martín nor Bolívar was prepared to risk an open

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confrontation over abolition with the Creole elites who were now in power. The two liberators set in motion policies of gradual emancipation, but that is as far as they would go. Neither contemplated the emancipation of slaves without compensation for the slave owners whose loyalty was essential if republicanism was to succeed. Abolishing slavery without compensation might have quickly converted the Creole slave owners back to royalists. The desperate financial state of the new republics precluded the use of scarce funds for solely humanitarian purposes. After Peru’s independence from Spain, writers, politicians, and landowners alike attributed the decay of Peru’s agriculture, especially the decline of the coastal plantations, to the lack of slaves. Labor shortages were viewed as the major problem, and rural labor was still equated with slave labor. The country’s governing elites continued to make a strong mental connection between agricultural prosperity and the continuation of slave labor. Even as slave numbers declined, the remaining slaves continued to be seen as indispensable in a variety of occupations, both rural and urban. For slave owners, slaves also proved to be a significant financial investment, and they could bring a high rate of return. On rural estates the total value of the slaves often reached a substantial portion of the overall value of the estate. Slaves could serve as collateral for loans and mortgages and they could earn money for their master by being

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hired out. Because slavery was such a profitable enterprise in many varied ways, in the midst of the political and financial chaos that characterized Peru’s existence in the postindependence period, slave owners and the governing elites firmly opposed immediate abolition. Instead, the Peruvian slave owners focused their energies on trying to reestablish the remnants of Peruvian slavery upon a stronger foundation. Peru’s landowning elites proved strong enough to persuade the government to reopen the slave trade beginning in 1846, permitting the importation of slaves from neighboring American republics for a trial period of six years. The Peruvian government in 1839, acting in response to pressure from the landowners, modified the free womb provision to ensure that former slaves would not be freed until they reached the age of 50. Previously, between 1837 and 1842, as the children of the free womb laws reached their age of freedom, Colombia, Uruguay, and Venezuela had raised the age of these “libertos,” as they were termed, to 25, to retain their labor. In each of these cases, the policy of gradual emancipation embodied in the free womb laws was being twisted into a last ditch defense of slavery by the Creole slave owners of the new republican states. No strong abolitionist movement appeared in Peru during the first half of the 19th century, but by the middle of the century there were signs of growing repugnance toward the continued existence of slavery, evident in newspaper columns and letters to the editor

from individuals. As Peru’s neighboring countries moved toward emancipation in the early 1850s, more Peruvians began to believe they should follow this wider Latin American example not to be seen as uncivilized. The Peruvian government, however, remained obdurate in its defense of slavery, as first Bolivia abolished it in 1851, then Colombia and Ecuador in 1852, the Argentine Confederation in 1853, and finally Venezuela in 1854. The eruption of a civil war in Peru in 1854 created the context in which Peruvian emancipation took place. President José Echenique, seeking to continue in power, issued a decree on November 18, 1854, encouraging slaves to enlist in his army in what has been described as a “self-serving, opportunistic gesture.” Any slave enlisting and serving for two years would be freed, as would his legitimate wife. The president’s rival, a man named Ramón Castilla, responded in early December with a decree, extending freedom to all slaves. His decree, too, was also self-serving and opportunistic, but both decrees followed a well-established tradition going back to the liberators Bolívar and San Martín, who had lured slaves to fight with promises of freedom. When Castilla became president of Peru in 1855, he found that he had to ratify his promise of emancipation. In order to retain the support of slave owners, he also had to pay compensation. Eventually, more than 25,000 remaining slaves were freed with compensation exceeding 7 million pesos. The emancipation of Peru’s slaves did not


lead to a social revolution in the country, nor did it mean any significant improvement in their economic or social status. It did fulfill the long-delayed promise of liberation given by both San Martín and Bolívar that Peru’s landowning elite had fought so hard and so long to thwart.

Slave Emancipation: Buenos Aires, Argentina, and the La Plata Region The declaration of independence in Buenos Aires in 1810 coincided with expressions of racial equality, but even in 1810 the Buenos Aires City Council was not willing to contemplate the abolition of slavery. Property rights were viewed by these Buenos Aires Creoles as sacrosanct, and slaves were still seen as property. Here, as in northern South America, the outbreak of civil wars that would endure for years created a demand for soldiers that caused the military leaders to look to slaves to fulfill. Beginning in 1813, slave owners were required to sell some of their slaves to the state. The slaves were enlisted in army units and promised their freedom after the fighting had ended. Many died during the fighting, others returned with wounds of varying severity, and still others seized any opportunity they were given to desert and find freedom. The 1813 impressments of slaves into the republican army followed a free womb decree passed by the republican Constituent Assembly of Buenos Aires and opened the door for future forced slave enlistments.

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Half of San Martín’s army of liberation, which crossed the Andes in 1816 to free Chile from Spanish rule, consisted of slaves conscripted into military service from Buenos Aires and its surrounding territory, and promised their freedom after the fighting was over. The former slaves who fought in San Martín’s army participated in a remarkable military campaign in which they fought battles in Chile, Peru, and Ecuador, but less than 150 of the original 2,000 or so former slaves actually returned to Argentina following the end of the wars. Desertion, death, and wounds or disease determined the fate of the others. San Martín was certainly not the only military leader in the southern cone of South America to use slaves in his army. Historians estimate that from 4,000 to 5,000 slaves served with the republican forces in the Río de la Plata region between the years 1813–1818. José Artigas, the caudillo leader in the Banda Oriental (the future Uruguay), encouraged slaves to fight with him, although in reality most were probably fighting for themselves. He was eventually defeated by a Portuguese army that came from Brazil supported by the landowners of the region. With slavery restored in the future territory of Uruguay and the Portuguese triumphant, Artigas fled to Paraguay in 1820. The former slaves who were the core of his army accompanied him to Paraguay and settled in communities there. Under the dictatorship of Francia, slavery in Paraguay flourished until Francia’s death in 1840, when his own

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slaves were freed, steps were taken to stop the slave trade, and a free womb law was adopted, guaranteeing the gradual emancipation of the slaves in Paraguay. It took until 1869, however, before Paraguay accepted the abolition of slavery. In Argentina, the constitution of the Argentine Confederation of 1853 contained a clause abolishing slavery, but the province of Buenos Aires delayed ratifying the constitution and joining the state until 1861, thereby preserving slavery a little longer. By 1861, however, slavery in all areas of Argentina had effectively ended.

Abolition of Slavery in Mexico The Hidalgo revolt witnessed the beginnings of the independence movement in Mexico. Following the outbreak of revolution in 1810, Hidalgo broadened the appeal of his revolutionary movement by issuing an emancipation proclamation that caused many more slaves to enlist in Hidalgo’s revolutionary army. Mexico possessed very few slaves on the eve of the Latin American independence movements, perhaps some 6,000 out of a total estimated population of 6 million. The slaves were concentrated in the port regions of Veracruz and Acapulco and their hinterlands. The eventual defeat of Hidalgo and his successor, Morelos, did not end the Mexican slaves’ own efforts to procure their freedom. Mexico’s independence from Spain came in 1821, and the Mexican leader of independence, Iturbide, issued a proclamation freeing slaves

who had fought on the republican side, one indication that slaves had continued to fight for their freedom throughout the civil wars preceding independence. Although several Mexican states abolished slavery in the mid-1820s, the final Mexican legislation emancipating all slaves in the country came in October 1829, during the brief presidency of Vicente Guerrero, a Mexican of mixedrace background and a veteran of Mexico’s preindependence civil wars. This emancipation measure was clearly directed at stopping the immigration of slave owners from the United States into Texas along with their slaves, a migration that would turn Texas into a slave plantation state. The emancipation decree was not enforced immediately, but outside of Texas, it was accepted throughout Mexico. Once Texas seceded from Mexico in 1836 and became the Republic of Texas, slavery was legalized once more and the U.S. annexation of Texas in 1845 recognized Texas as a slave state. Within Mexico, the constitution of 1857 included an article again abolishing slavery.

Conclusion With the outbreak of the independence struggle in Latin America, the rhetoric of the Enlightenment embraced by the republican leaders signaled that freedom would come not only collectively for the colonies of Spain, but individually for slaves as well. The rhetoric obscured the reality of a Latin American society where property rights took precedence over slaves’ rights to individual


freedom. The Creoles who found themselves in power after the elimination of Spain from mainland Latin America put their own self interest ahead of the concept of freedom where slaves were concerned. Slavery was fatally weakened by the long and damaging civil wars, which characterized the independence period both in the northern and southern parts of South America, as well as in Mexico. Nevertheless, the institution of slavery took a long time to die. The final emancipation of slavery in many Latin American countries did not occur until the 1850s, and even then the social and economic reality for the former slaves was not significantly altered. The wars of independence did open new opportunities for the slaves to grasp their own freedom by fighting for one side or the other, and, following independence, gradual emancipation was solidified through free womb laws and the abolition of the slave trade. Yet the story of slave emancipation in Latin America is one of a protracted struggle in which the slave owners fought every step of the way to protect their slave property even as slave numbers declined continuously and the institution of slavery slowly, but steadily, disappeared. David Murray See also: Abolitionism; Abolitionism, British; Brazil; Mexico; Spain.

Further Readings Blackburn, Robin. The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776–1848. London: Verso, 1988.

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Blanchard, Peter. “The Language of Liberation: Slave Voices in the Wars of Independence.” Hispanic American Historical Review 82, no. 3 (2002): 499–523. Blanchard, Peter. Slavery and Abolition in Early Republican Peru. Lanham, MD: SR Books, 1992. Klein, Herbert S. African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. Lombardi, John V. The Decline and Abolition of Negro Slavery in Venezuela. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1971. Lynch. John. The Spanish American Revolutions, 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1986.

Lavigerie, Charles-MartialAllemand (1825–1892) Reverend Charles-Martial-Allemand Lavigerie, the Roman Catholic cardinal archbishop of Algiers and Carthage, primate of Africa, and missionary founder and antislavery campaigner, was born in France on October 31, 1825. He was a towering figure in the movement against slavery in the late 19th century. In 1868, he founded the Society of Missionaries of Africa (commonly known as the White Fathers), a Roman Catholic missionary society. In the following year, he founded the Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Africa (commonly known as the White Sisters) to assist the White Fathers in their African missions. He was made a cardinal in 1882 by Pope Leo XIII, who in 1884 made him primate of Africa.

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He had always opposed slavery, and the suppression of slavery was the subject of his first pastoral letter. During his lifetime, he founded refuges in what are now Tunisia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Zanzibar to serve the pressing needs of rescued child slaves. From 1878 onward, his missionaries established missions in the Great Lakes region of East Africa. At the time that part of Africa was being ravaged by Arab slave raiders and their African allies. The slave raiders were devastating large areas, killing or enslaving an estimated 400,000 persons each year. Even whole provinces had been depopulated as the slave raiders worked out an area, stripping it of its young people, and burning the villages before moving to the next area. After Rome fell to the forces of the king of Italy in 1870, Lavigerie sent Father Charmetant to recruit a force of former soldiers of the Pontifical Zouaves, who had been disbanded. Six former Pontifical Zouaves, including Captain Joubert, joined. Lavigerie also published an appeal to young Roman Catholics to join this force, which was answered by four Belgian and two Scottish Roman Catholics. This armed auxiliary force, which was commanded by Captain Joubert, was designed to protect the missions in East Africa from attack by slave raiders. They built palisades around one of the missions and raised a small force of local Africans. In 1888, in spite of age and infirmities, Cardinal Lavigerie launched a campaign for the forcible suppression of the slave trade with the words:

“Today, slavery threatens an entire population with extinction!” He visited several of the capitals of western Europe, such as Paris, London, Brussels, and Rome. He told his audiences of the horrors of slavery witnessed by his missionaries in equatorial Africa, as well as his personal experiences of slavery. In London, he addressed a public meeting called by the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. People of all denominations flocked to hear him, many of whom were astonished to learn that the slave trade not only existed but was flourishing. While in London he paid a visit of respect to the grave of David Livingstone in Westminster Abbey. He subsequently remarked: “Gentlemen, you have inherited his glory and you must carry out his wishes.” He called for the formation of a volunteer force to go to the Great Lakes region of Africa to combat the slave trade by training and arming Africans to repel the slavers. His campaign revitalized the faltering British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in London, and he organized or inspired the formation of antislavery committees in the capitals that he visited. Soon there were active antislavery organizations in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Switzerland. His campaign was the catalyst for the Brussels Conference of 1890. His address in London had resulted in a petition to the British government. In response, Lord Salisbury, the British prime minister, suggested to Leopold II, king of the Belgians, that he convene

League of Nations

a conference to consider measures against the slave trade. This resulted in the signing of the General Act for the Repression of the African Slave Trade, commonly known as the General Act and Declaration of Brussels of 1890 (Brussels Act), which allowed visit and search of suspected vessels within an area of the coast of east Africa, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the western Indian Ocean. In 1891, he founded the Frères Armés du Sahara (Armed Brothers of the Sahara), composed of laymen, with Prosper Augustin Hacquard as their religious superior. They carried firearms. Their purpose was to rescue slaves from the slave caravans crossing the Sahara, to establish refuges for slaves, and to promote the development of agriculture. They established themselves in one of the oases. They had only 22 members. One of them, Maurice Delafosse (1870–1926), was a member in 1890–1891 (he later became a member of the League of Nation’s Temporary Slavery Commission whose report in 1925 led to the Slavery Convention 1926). They were subsequently dissolved at the request of the French governor-general of Algeria. Cardinal Lavigerie died at Algiers on the night of November 25–26, 1892. Paul Bravender-Coyle Further Reading Clarke, Richard F. Cardinal Lavigerie and the African Slave Trade. New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969.

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League of Nations The League of Nations, established in 1919, played an important role in the campaign to abolish slavery. Article 23 of the league covenant bound its members to “ensure fair and humane conditions of labor” for men, women, and children, not only in their own countries but also in all countries with which they had commercial and industrial relations, and to secure the “just treatment” of the natives under their rule. The league established the League Permanent Mandates Commission to ensure that the powers, which acquired former enemy territories as the result of World War I, administered them in the interests of their inhabitants. Among other things, they were to suppress the slave trade and to end slavery as soon as “social conditions” allowed it. However, the league itself, apart from the Mandates Commission, might never have been drawn into the general campaign for the abolition of slavery had not the secretary of the British Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society, John (later Sir John) Harris, lobbied members of the league after he had heard that slave raiding and trading were rife in southwestern Ethiopia. Finding that for political reasons the British government did not intend to take any action, Harris persuaded the delegate for New Zealand, Sir Arthur Steel-Maitland, to propose in September 1922 that the council of the league launch an inquiry into slavery. The league then solicited member governments and asked for information

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League of Nations

Delegates take their seats during the League of Nations’ opening session in Geneva in 1920. (Corel)

on slavery. When this failed to produce much information, it established the Temporary Slavery Commission to inquire into slavery worldwide. Unable to prevent this, the European colonial powers limited the commission’s evidence to published works and information supplied by governments, or government approved nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The commission consisted of former colonial governors or officials, who had experienced slavery first hand, as well as a member of the International Labour Organization (ILO). A Haitian was included as window dressing. These were “independent experts.” Hitherto, slavery to most Westerners meant only chattel slavery. Chattel slaves were

property. They could be bought, sold, and inherited. Their servitude was lifelong and hereditary. Some were state owned, but most were private property and only their owners, or a court, could free them. They were captured, inherited, bought, paid as tribute, or given away. Some sold themselves or their children in times of famine. The leading members of the commission knew that the main problem for colonial peoples was not the chattel slavery still legally practiced in parts of Africa and Arabia, but the labor demands of the colonial powers themselves. Against the wishes of the colonial governments, the Temporary Slavery Commission extended the definition of slavery to include debt bondage, peonage, serfdom,

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forced marriage, the adoption of children to exploit them, and the forced labor imposed by governments. As the result of pressure from this commission, and the drawing up of a draft treaty by its British member, Sir Frederick (later Lord) Lugard, the league negotiated the Slavery Convention of 1926. This was followed in 1930 by the negotiation of the Forced Labour Convention by the ILO. Its aim was to protect colonial peoples from the various forms of forced labor demanded by their colonial rulers. The league appointed two more slavery committees, backed by Britain, anxious to display its antislavery zeal. The first, the Committee of Experts on Slavery, met in 1932. This time only the European colonial powers were represented. Its evidence was even more restricted than that of its predecessor, and it was marked by friction, particularly between its English and French members. It complained that, owing to the rules of procedure, it did not have enough information, and recommended the appointment of a permanent League Slavery Committee. The result was the appointment by the league of the Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery, which met from 1934 to 1938. It consisted of delegates of the colonial powers, and, as before, its sources were strictly limited to protect the colonial governments. After a halting start, this committee was soon dominated by its British member, Sir George Maxwell. His plan was to collect as much information as possible to concentrate on freeing the remaining chattel

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slaves, mainly in Ethiopia and parts of Arabia where slavery was still legal. He wanted to pass such matters as the exploitation of adopted children, which theoretically ended when the child grew up, and debt bondage, which ended when the debt was paid, to the ILO and more influential league bodies, such as the Social Questions Committee and the Child Protection Committee. When this was achieved, he believed that the committee could be disbanded—its work successfully accomplished. Meanwhile, he insisted on honest reports from the British government and bombarded his colleagues with reports on all aspects of slavery. To the dismay of the Colonial Office, the result was that as Maxwell produced most of the committee’s reports, it seemed that slavery existed mainly in the British Empire. Maxwell had not succeeded in his aims when, to his great disappointment, the outbreak of World War II ended all hope of further meetings. However, the league committees had some impact. The first treaty against slavery in all its forms had been negotiated and ratified by a number of powers. A great deal of information had been collected on the practices that the Temporary Slavery Commission had designated as slavery. Both the French and the British reviewed their antislavery laws. On the downside, Italy used the suppression of slavery to justify its conquest of Ethiopia in 1935. Slavery was now well and truly in the public arena, and after the war it was taken up by the United Nations, which succeeded the League of Nations.

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It should be noted that these committees did not discuss the new forms of slavery and forced labor that were taking shape in the form of gulags in the Soviet Union from the 1920s, or the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. Meanwhile, other league bodies dealt with such questions as forced prostitution (sometimes called the white slave trade), and forced recruitment for contract labor from Liberia to the Spanish island of Fernando Pó. Suzanne Miers Further Readings Miers, Suzanne. Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 2003. Reports of the Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery, 1934–1938. League of Nations Archives, Geneva (also available in the British Library). Reports of the Committee of Experts on Slavery, 1932. League of Nations Archives, Geneva (also available in the British Library). Reports of the Temporary Slavery Commission, 1924–1925. League of Nations Archives, Geneva (also available in the British Library).

League of Nations Covenant The covenant, or charter, of the League of Nations embodied the paternalistic colonial worldview of the victorious powers in World War I. Colonized peoples deemed too uncivilized to govern

themselves were placed under a League of Nations mandate, to be administered by a league member. Parts of Articles 22 and 23 of the covenant bear on slavery and the slave trade, and nominal mandate responsibilities for these areas, as well as in colonies. The covenant was hardly ambiguous, and included, in Article 22, a “prohibition of abuses such as the slave trade,” and in Article 23, the following clauses regarding labor: “(a) [colonial and mandate powers] will endeavor to secure and maintain fair and humane conditions of labor for men, women, and children, both in their own countries and in all countries to which their commercial and industrial relations extend, and for that purpose will establish and maintain the necessary international organizations; (b) undertake to secure just treatment of the native inhabitants of territories under their control; (c) will entrust the League with the general supervision over the execution of agreements with regard to the traffic in women and children.” The league’s enforcement actions in many of these areas were almost nonexistent, as the interests of its members who were colonial powers in commerce, tax revenues, and political stability outweighed almost all other considerations. Great Britain, for example, did not act to end slavery in the interior of Sierra Leone until 1928. The colonial head, hut, and other taxes which natives usually had to pay in the coin of the realm forced colonized peoples to work for European enterprises—the


only source of such legal tender—in de facto slavery for less than subsistence wages in order to avoid jail. None of the European colonial powers did much more than pay lip service to their covenant obligations in their own colonies or mandates. Only one league member, Liberia, came under systematic investigation and censure for its failure to uphold the covenant. Local and national elites in Liberia had, if anything, expanded labor abuses through exploiting the traditional pawning or indenture system while eroding the protections of traditional practices. Tribal and village labor quotas resulted in widespread corvée labor and individual forced recruitment for tasks such as porterage, which included carrying outsiders through the interior in hammocks, and road building. Forced labor was also required for development of farms and plantations for district commissioners and other members of the AmericoLiberian elite, often during the crucial peak labor demand of the village farming season, so that starvation often followed such coerced labor. Overseers of such labor, having quotas to meet, were essentially unsupervised; consequently, violence and many other abuses commonly occurred. With the U.S.-promoted 1926 contract between the Monrovia government and the American Firestone Rubber Company, demand for forced labor outside the local economy increased dramatically. Chiefs coerced the powerless, rivals, alcoholics, and others perceived as troublemakers to work at Firestone,

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the labor force of which expanded to over 10,000. The final outrage, however, came when troops under the orders of members of the Americo-Liberian elite, themselves former slaves who had settled in Liberia with the motto “The Love of Liberty Brought Us Here,” engaged in systematic night raiding, kidnapping, and shipping of villagers to Spanish plantations on the island of Fernando Pó. Even the Liberian vice president, Allen Yancy, was accomplice to a trade that brought as much as $45 a head for each of 3,000 men exported. This brought down the government (1920–1930) of President C. D. B. King and led to some reform and a decline in international opprobrium. Short-term coerced labor on private and on nominally government projects continued in the hinterlands, however, at least into the 1980s. While criticisms of Liberia were justified, both Britain and France had held designs on Liberian territories and sovereignty. The publicity they gave to Liberia’s violations was clearly self-serving. Only objections from the United States, which had its own neocolonial agenda in Liberia, had repeatedly prevented the African republic’s dismantling by neighboring colonial powers whose treatment of their own subjects, excepting the literal export of slaves to other countries, was little if any better, and certainly no more in conformity with the League of Nations’ ideals. Gordon C. Thomasson See also: League of Nations.

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Further Readings Liebenow, J. Gus. Liberia: The Quest for Democracy. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987. Sawyer, Amos. The Emergence of Autocracy in Liberia: Tragedy and Challenge. San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies, 1992.

Leopold II (1835–1909) Leopold II was king of Belgium (1865– 1909) and is best remembered for his colossal human atrocities in the Belgian Congo (modern Democratic Republic of the Congo). In the age of the European scramble for Africa and the subsequent partition of the continent at the Berlin West African Conference (1884–1885), Leopold used diplomatic craft and promises of humanitarian and benevolent commercial goodwill, to have the United States and Europe’s “great powers” allow him to gain a stranglehold on the Congo. This he also did largely through the able services of the famous explorer, Henry Morton Stanley, who helped Leopold stake territorial claims to a massive region that the king renamed the Congo Free State. Driven by an intense greed to marshal the colony’s resources for his own ends, Leopold ventured into the Congo in his private capacity as an ordinary citizen. Accordingly, the Congo went on to become his personal property, whose atrocious affairs were kept to the king and his repressive Free State regime, with the Belgian government dimly aware of the abuse of humans and rape of natural resources that Leopold had instituted.

King Leopold II of Belgium is remembered for his expansion of Belgian power into the Congo and his decimation of the indigenous people and their land. (Library of Congress)

Once in control of the Congo after 1885, Leopold, in spite of his immense wealth, found the cost of running the colony financially prohibitive. Subsequently, his tenure in the Congo was one bent on deliberate denigration of the Congo natives and their longentrenched indigenous socioeconomic, cultural, and political institutions, all in the singular pursuit of private gain. After abolishing the long-established Arab slave trade in Eastern Congo, the Free State regime discredited itself by institutionalizing a modern form of slavery, the basic tenets of which comprised the exploitation of African labor, mass murders and body mutilation of those opposed to the state’s repressive policies, massive depopulation of villages, and terror. In the bid to maximize

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profit for the king and to pay for the costs of administering the Congo, Belgian officials in charge of the Congo Free State were commissioned to use every means at their disposal to realize that objective. In no other way was the resulting atrocity so vivid in the Congo as the methods that the officials used to ensure sufficient supplies of ivory and rubber. Up to 1890, ivory was the chief export from the Congo, when it led to the decimation of the region’s elephant population. After 1890, however, rubber surpassed ivory as a major export, as its demand in industrial Western Europe and North America increased. Leopold was eager to reap a fortune on rubber, and he ensured a monopoly on its harvest and sale in the Congo. He also was a major shareholder in the Belgian companies that he allowed to venture into the lucrative business. To facilitate the exploitation of rubber, Leopold secretly created for his personal benefit an extensive area in Western Congo called the Domaine de la Couronne, which became an epitome of oppression and suffering for the local African population. Here, state officials were required to ensure rubber supplies at strategic centers through set quotas for the African villages. State and company officials often received limited wages, and since they were expected to make up for the shortfalls in rubber deliveries, they exacted heavy demands on the African laborers, circumstances that created incentives for exploiting the populace. Hence, abuses of African labor to meet the set quotas were

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rampant. Cases of women and children being taken hostage or killed when men failed to deliver the required amounts of rubber were common. Famine, disease, and malnutrition were evident as African agriculture suffered labor scarcity, while any food that was available in the villages was served to the state and company officials. African resistance against the regime was common, but was met with unparalleled brutality. The most extreme cases of human atrocities involved the cutting off of hands of men, women, and children, when expected rubber and ivory supplies were not produced. Villages that resisted were sacked by the Force Publique (the military) and their inhabitants were arrested, killed, or forced to seek refuge in the neighboring French, British, and Portuguese territories. The result was an environment of terror and massive depopulation of rural areas. Leopold’s “Red Rubber” enterprise became Congo’s burden as the Domaine system eventually spread to other parts of the Congo. Leopold’s atrocities were initially exposed to the outside world by George Washington Williams, an African American emancipation activist who toured the Congo in 1890. Similar reports also came from the African American Presbyterian missionaries then in the Congo, William Morrison and William Shippard. But concerted efforts to have Leopold give up the Congo to the Belgian government were initiated by the journalist Edmund Dene Morel, who mobilized British and U.S. public opinion in such a way to have Great

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Britain, the United States, and Germany put pressure on Belgium to take over the Congo. Under pressure from the House of Commons, Britain commissioned its consul in the Congo, Sir Roger Casement, to inquire into the alleged human rights abuses. The 1904 Casement Report all but confirmed previous reports on the Congo atrocities. More pressure for action came from the Aborigines Protection Society in London and the British Congo Reform Association. With the major world powers aligned against it, Belgium had to take the initiative. The Brussels Parliament, under pressure from the Socialist leader Emile Vandervelde, forced Leopold to institute a commission of enquiry in 1905 that only confirmed the findings of the Casement Report. After about three years of indecision, the Belgian government finally agreed to annex the Congo on November 15, 1908, by which time Leopold had the opportunity to take every drop of profit from the beleaguered state. Martin S. Shanguhyia See also: Aborigines’ Protection Society; Casement, Sir Roger; Morel, Edmund Dene.

Further Readings Bauer, Ludwig. Leopold the Unloved: King of the Belgians and of Wealth. Boston: Little, Brown, 1935. Ewans, Martin. European Atrocity, African Catastrophe: Leopold II, the Congo Free State and Its Aftermath. London: Routledge Curzon, 2002. Hochschild, Adam. King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism

in Central Africa. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998.

Lim, Janet (1923?–) A former mui tsai in Singapore, the story of Janet Lim as told by herself in her autobiography, Sold for Silver: An Autobiography of a Girl Sold into Slavery in Southeast Asia (1958), sheds light on the experience of a particular group of bonded servants commonly founded in Chinese communities in Southeast Asia in the pre– World War II era. Mui tsai, which means ‘little sister’ in Cantonese, was a common practice in South China in which young girls were acquired by a family to perform domestic duties in their household and would be married off when they reached adulthood. The family would pay the natal families a certain amount of money when the girls were transferred. In return, the natal families would sign a document to forfeit their rights over the girls. The practice led to a series of controversies in the British colonies of Hong Kong and Malaya and despite protests from humanitarian activists, it was never officially acknowledged as a form of slavery. Lim’s story reflects the typical experience of a mui tsai in the 1920s. Born in Hong Kong and having grown up in South China, Lim was sold by her mother and stepfather for $250 in 1932. She was then taken to Singapore and worked as a mui tsai. Although Lim sees herself as a slave girl in this household, she is aware that mui tsai

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was different from slaves in the AngloAmerican world. She tried to escape numerous times during the two years she worked in this household, and she was eventually rescued by a European woman who took her to Po Leung Kuk, a Chinese charity that provided shelter for women and girls. Lim entered the Church of England’s Zenana Missionary Society (CEZMS) School in 1934 where she would stay for the next five years. According to Lim, Christianity has always played a role in her life. Her father was a devoted Roman Catholic, and she learned about Christianity from a friend of her employer when she was a mui tsai. She was eventually baptized in 1935. When she graduated from the CEZMS School in 1939, she went on to study nursing at Saint Andrew’s Mission Hospital. In 1942, when Japan occupied Singapore, she was evacuated but her vessel sank. She managed to reach Indonesia but only fell to the hands of the Japanese who had already controlled the area. Life was harsh under the Japanese, and Lim often had to hide in order to avoid the molestations of Japanese soldiers. In the final years of World War II, her nursing skills brought her to work in a Japanese war hospital where her condition improved slightly. She returned to Singapore after Japan surrendered in 1945. Lim finished her training upon her return to Singapore. In 1954, she became the first Asian to be promoted to matron at the Mission Hospital. Subsequently, Lim married an Australian

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doctor and they settled in Australia. Her autobiography was first published in 1958, and it has remained a valuable source for scholars studying the life of mui tsai and women in Southeast Asia to this day. Karen M. Yuen See also: Mui Tsai.

Further Readings Lim, Janet. Sold for Silver: An Autobiography of a Girl Sold into Slavery in Southeast Asia. Singapore: Monsoon Books, 2004. Miers, Suzanne. “Mui Tsai through the Eyes of the Victim: Janet Lim’s Story of Bondage and Escape.” In Women and Chinese Patriarchy: Submission, Servitude and Escape, ed. Maria Jaschok and Suzanne Miers. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1994.

Lincoln, Abraham (1809–1865) Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, was the first Republican to be elected to the post. His administration (1861–1865) was consumed by the U.S. Civil War, which began just as he took office and ended only days before his assassination. During his presidency, Lincoln arrived at the conclusion that the abolition of slavery in the Confederate states would speed the end of the war, and he issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. From that point, ending slavery in the U.S. South was a major Union war aim.

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President Abraham Lincoln, issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, freeing thousands of slaves in the Confederate South. (Library of Congress)

Lincoln was born in Hardin County, Kentucky, on February 12, 1809. His formal education was scanty, the result of his family’s poverty. When Lincoln was a child, his family moved to Indiana, and then, in 1830, the Lincoln family moved to Saga on County, Illinois. He worked at several manual labor jobs, as a shopkeeper, as a surveyor, and as a postmaster before deciding to study law. Lincoln’s lost his first political race in 1832, but was chosen by his neighbors that same year to be their captain in the Black Hawk War. He saw no combat. In 1834, Lincoln won election to the Illinois State Legislature as a Whig. He began his legal studies in preparation. His chief legislative issues were state public works (an idea made difficult by national economic distress at the

time) and relocation of the state capital from Vandalia to Springfield. He also voted against antiabolitionist resolutions, offering more moderate resolutions instead. In 1841, Lincoln ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Congress. On November 11, 1842, he married Mary Todd, the daughter of wealthy Kentucky slaveholding parents. In his legal practice, too, Lincoln represented both slaveholders and slaves alike. In 1845, Lincoln ran for Congress again. He won the election by the largest majority in the district’s history, and he would be the only Whig in the Illinois delegation to the coming Congress. Lincoln served only one term in the House of Representatives, beginning in December 1847, and his chief impact lay in mischaracterizing President James K. Polk’s role in the start of the Mexican War. In his December 22, 1847, “Spot Resolutions,” Lincoln implied that Polk had instigated the war, which, in reality, a Mexican colonel had told his government he had started. Lincoln’s stance proved unpopular even among Illinois Whigs. Lincoln explained that he intended his resolutions simply to damage Polk and the Democrats, and he advocated a Whig presidential candidacy devoid of policy positions, even on slavery, for General Zachary Taylor, one of the conquerors of Mexico. Representative Lincoln advocated House acceptance of both proslavery and antislavery petitions. He opposed congressional abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia without residents’ approval, which he tried to obtain via

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referendum. The Taylor administration offered him the governorship of the Oregon Territory, but he declined the appointment. Lincoln eventually saw the political potential of opposition to U.S. Senator Stephen Douglas’s Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), which he described as “the extension of slavery into free territory.” He agreed to be the anti-Nebraska point man in Illinois’ legislative campaign, countering Douglas’s campaign efforts. In that campaign, Lincoln subscribed to the “universal feeling” that blacks could not be whites’ social or political equals. His side won control of the state legislature. This victory set the stage for Lincoln’s Senate campaign against Douglas in 1858. The candidates debated throughout the state, with Douglas championing popular sovereignty (local control) in the territories and Lincoln insisting that Congress should keep slavery out of all remaining federal territory. Douglas prevailed in the election, but Lincoln won national recognition for his positions. The Republican National Convention of 1860 nominated Lincoln for president instead of more established figures in the party because he was seen as less polarizing. Many voters were well aware that Lincoln viewed closing the territories to slavery as a way ultimately to eliminate it entirely. Lincoln won the presidency by sweeping the North, with virtually no support outside of isolated pockets in the South. When he was inaugurated on March 4, 1861, seven states of the Deep South

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had already seceded from the Union, created their own Confederate States of America Constitution, and installed Jefferson Davis as their president. In his first inaugural address, Lincoln pledged to collect the tariff in the South and to retain the federal properties there. Lincoln also blamed southerners for any military steps that he might take to subjugate them. When Union and Confederate forces came to blows at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers. Four additional southern states seceded in response. As Secretary of State William Seward had warned Lincoln, violence against the seceding states would serve to unite the South against the Union. The war at first went the Confederates’ way, particularly in the eastern theater. Called upon repeatedly by abolitionists to convert the war into one to free the slaves, Lincoln flatly refused, at one point telling a prominent New York newspaper editor that he would free all, none, or some of the slaves if that would end the war. His goal, he said, was to reestablish federal authority in the South. He even proposed an unamendable amendment making slavery permanent where it already existed. Finally, claiming military necessity and purporting to rely on the inherent constitutional powers of the president, Lincoln on September 22, 1862, issued his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. He gave the Confederate states 100 days to return to the Union or see all of their slaves forever freed. The

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Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863 followed. The war’s climactic battle came at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on July 1–3, 1863. Speaking at the dedication of a cemetery for the men killed there, Lincoln on November 19, 1863, delivered his Gettysburg Address. In that speech, he made reference to some of the values of the founders of the Union and challenged the country to live up to some of what he called the ideals of the Declaration of Independence. While the military outcome of the war seems to have been determined at Gettysburg, one major obstacle remained in Lincoln’s way—reelection. His defeat in 1864 likely would have meant some kind of negotiated settlement. Yet, General William T. Sherman captured Atlanta, Georgia, in time to seal the outcome of the election— and the war. Lincoln had chosen as his running mate Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, the only southern Democrat to remain in Congress after secession. Rather than stand for reelection as a Republican, he elected to run as the Union candidate. Lincoln was reelected president in November 1864.

Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address on March 4, 1865, but would only live to serve six weeks of his second term. He was assassinated on April 14, 1865, and died the following day with Vice President Andrew Johnson then ascending to the presidency. Kevin R. C. Gutzman See also: Emancipation Proclamation (1863).

Further Readings Basley, Roy Prentice, ed. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 9 vols. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953–1955. Beck, Warren A. “Lincoln and Negro Colonization.” Abraham Lincoln Quarterly 6 (September 1959): 162–183. Donald, David H. Lincoln. New York: Simon Schuster, 1995. Findley, Paul. A. Lincoln: The Crucible of Congress. New York: Crown Publishers, 1979. Oates, Stephen B. With Malice toward None: A Life of Abraham Lincoln. New York: Harper and Row, 1977. Riddle, Donald W. Congressman Abraham Lincoln. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1957. Wesley, Charles H. “Lincoln’s Plan for Colonizing Emancipated Negroes.” Journal of Negro History 4 (January 1919): 7–21.

M elected president of the new country in two rounds of a highly manipulated election. Relations with Spain deteriorated immediately after independence. In March 1969, Macías seized dictatorial powers and liquidated most of his opponents. Influenced by the authoritarianism of Francisco Franco, Adolf Hitler, and Joseph Stalin, Macías’s policies were violently anticolonialist, particularly focused against churches and intellectuals. He abolished all political parties in favor of Partido Unico Naciónal de Trabajadores (PUNT, the Unique National Workers’ Party) and created the Juventud en Marcha con Macías (Youth on the March with Macías), a paramilitary youth group that was given power to harass anyone outside of the elite. The country’s 1968 Constitution was nullified by decree, and the president was allowed to dissolve the National Assembly at his pleasure. Provisions on elections and the removal of the president from office were repealed. An October 1971 law provided the death penalty for any person who attempted to kill the President or threatened him with death, any person who deprived the President of the Republic of his personal freedom, or who used violence or serious intimidation to force him to perform an act

Macías Nguema, Francisco (ca. 1920s–1979) One of Africa’s most brutal dictators, Francisco Macías Nguema instituted numerous repressive policies, including state slavery, during a decade-long reign of terror in Equatorial Guinea. Macías’s origins are shrouded in mystery. Although he claimed Nsangayong in Spanish-ruled Río Muni (Mbini) as his home, he was probably born in Oyem, Gabon, in either 1920 or 1924. A very poor student, he failed the civil service examinations several times before being hired as a forestry service orderly by the Spanish colonial administration. Later, as a clerk in the Department of Public Works, he changed his name from its original, Masie, to its Spanish form, Macías, in 1950. Eventually, he was posted as an assistant court interpreter in Mongomo, where he unscrupulously twisted translations for bribes. Noting the respect that people seemed to show him, the Spanish appointed him mayor of Mongomo. In 1964 he was made deputy president and head of public works. His underachievement in education, inexplicable easy promotion, and deafness troubled him deeply. When Spanish Guinea gained its independence as Equatorial Guinea in 1968, he was 395

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against his will. Thousands died under suspicion of such charges. Real and imagined coup attempts provided excuses for further killings. The mass departure of Spaniards after independence dealt a severe blow to the country’s cocoa economy. After unpaid and harassed Nigerian contract laborers were evacuated by their government, Macías turned to state slavery in an attempt to revive production. Failing to attract voluntary labor, he had more than 2,000 people from each of 10 districts arrested and used as unpaid laborers. Beatings, rape, withholding rations, and execution faced those who did not perform satisfactorily. In July 1972, Macías declared himself “President for Life, Major General of the National Armed Forces and Grand Master of Education, Science and Culture.” His best-known nickname was the “Unique Miracle.” Insisting that all names be Africanized, he became Masie Nguema Biyogo Ñegue Ndong. Fed by hopes of future profits and influence, Spain, the Vatican, the Soviet bloc, China, France, the United States, various international organizations, and a host of European and African states chose to remain silent about the regime. Meanwhile, Equatorial Guinea’s infrastructure fell into total ruin as public education ceased in 1975 and all churches were forced to close in 1977. Private boats were destroyed and fishing was banned. Gross violations of human rights led to the flight of one-third of Equatorial Guinea’s population. In a country of fewer than a half million, between 25,000

and 80,000 died at the hands of the regime. Having turned against members of his own Esangui clan, Macías was overthrown by his nephew, Lt. Col. Teodoro Obiang Nguema M’ba N’Zogo, on August 3, 1979. Deaf, impotent, almost blind, and probably insane, he was tried in September 1979. The indictment charged him with “continued and repeated crimes of genocide, mass murder, embezzlement of public funds, damage to property, systematic violation of human rights and treason.” As he tried to spread the blame on members of the new regime, the charges dwindled to 474 named victims, then 101 proven murders. Furthermore, the accusations were limited to the period up to 1974, after which time most of the new leaders had been involved in his terror. On September 29, 1979, Macías’s execution was carried out by Moroccan troops, after Equatorial Guinean soldiers fearing his magical powers refused to carry out the sentence. Sometimes compared to Cambodia’s Pol Pot because of his regime’s violent, unpredictable, and anti-intellectual nature, Macías was one of history’s worst dictators. His institution of slavery was one of numerous offenses that traumatized his country. Randall Fegley See also: Fernando Pó, São Tomé, and Príncipe.

Further Readings Fegley, Randall. Equatorial Guinea: An African Tragedy. Bern: Peter Lang, 1989.

Mauritania Liniger-Goumaz, M. Small Is Not Always Beautiful: The Story of Equatorial Guinea. London: Hurst, 1988. Sundiata, I. K. Equatorial Guinea: Colonialism, State Terror, and the Search for Stability. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1990.

Mauritania Located in northwestern Africa, Mauritania is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean on the west, Senegal to the southwest, Mali to the east and southeast, Algeria to the northeast, and the Moroccanannexed territory of Western Sahara to the northwest. Since 1904, when France recognized it as an entity separate from Senegal, it was managed as a French protectorate and later became a civil territory. In January 1921 the name was changed to the Colony of Mauritania under the leadership of French lieutenant-governors. During the era of decolonization, the country became fully independent as the Islamic Republic of Mauritania in 1960. The enslavement of black Africans has existed in Mauritania since the 12th century during the Islamization of the country. The black population, mostly sedentary farmers from the Tukulor, Fulani, and Wolof tribes, were brought north after being captured by raiding Arab-Berber tribes. This slaving activity both predates and postdates the Atlantic slave trade. Mauritania was the last country on earth to abolish slavery. In 1905, a French decree forbade slavery even though the colonial authorities tolerated slaveholding within the Moorish

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community. Under the nation’s first constitution in 1960, a second abolition law was passed, but it, too, had little effect. A third abolition came in 1981, following a protest movement against the public sale of a woman, and made this practice illegal, but like the previous abolition decrees, the last one has never been applied, because the release of slaves was made conditional to the payment of compensation to the slave owners. Thus, the institution of slavery continues today unabated, especially in rural areas, and is deeply embedded in Mauritanian society. The complex interconnection between social class and ethnic divisions in Mauritanian society constitutes an obstacle to the eradication of slavery. In the Hassaniya Arabic-speaking communities, the white Moors, known as the Beydanes, hold the political power, while the black Moors, because they have previously had servile status (Haratines) are still victims of their condition or maintained in slavery (‘abd). The non–Hassaniya-speaking peoples, comprised of different black communities, the Soninké, the Wolof, the Bambara or the Halpulaar, are socially graded in groups of nobles, castes, and slaves. In the Beydane and the AfroMauritanian communities, nobles and members of the craftsman caste are permitted to possess slaves. In its traditional form, the slaves are frequently offered as wedding presents and can be transmitted from generation to generation. They do not have the right to marry without permission, and any refusal to obey their masters’ commands

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can result in torture. In its other more modern form, the slaves carry out domestic work without being paid. The El Hor movement, founded in 1978, agitated for the emancipation of the Haratines. President Mohamed Khouna Ould Haidalla’s government tried to solve the problem, by allowing the visit of Marc Bossuyt, an expert from the UN Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities in January 1984. But the December 1984 coup d’état set up Ould Taya’s regime, with a more ambiguous position on the slavery issue. By appointing some members of the Haratine in its government and by creating in July 1998 the Commission on Human Rights, Poverty Alleviation, and Inclusion, Taya’s regime wanted to demonstrate its attempt to tackle what it called the “aftermath of slavery.” Despite this apparent posturing, the Commission has never followed up on any cases of slavery that were brought to its attention. Many human rights organizations, forbidden by the government, have shed light on the persistence of this practice in the entire Mauritanian society and the discrimination that persists against the descendants of the former slaves. The Mauritanian Parliament enacted a law in 2003 against the trade of persons and organs, but it did not mention slavery. Clara Palmiste See also: ‘Abd; Action pour le Changement; Hassaniya-Berbers; SOS Esclaves (Mauritania).

Further Readings Cotton, Samuel. Silent Terror: A Journey into Contemporary African Slavery. New York: Harlem River Press, 1998. Ruf, Urs Peter. Ending Slavery: Hierarchy, Dependency, and Gender in Central Mauritania. New Brunswick N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1999.

Mexico Mexico is considered a source country for trafficking in persons, primarily because of high rates of poverty and its proximity to the United States. There is already a high rate of migration from Mexico into the United States, most of which occurs outside of the law and is therefore fraught with danger. With more than 40 percent of its population in poverty, Mexico’s economic underdevelopment creates conditions that make poor people more likely to migrate, both within Mexico and to the United States, in order to earn income to support their families. In addition, Mexico has historically been a transit point for Central American migrants traveling to the United States. When Mexican nationals migrate into the United States, they often travel with the help of people who regularly pass migrants through a travel network—these people are known as coyotes. Migrants usually pass through the border by foot and catch a bus to a major transportation hub, such as Los Angeles, California, before then acquiring fake documents that will allow them to continue their trip to another

Mexico

area. Since this migration is unlawful, Mexican migrants are vulnerable during this process, both to natural hardships and exploitative human behavior. Many Mexican migrants have died of dehydration when crossing the desert toward the Arizona or California border. Those who survive face an uncertain human element—many are at risk of being trafficked into one of many low-wage industries in which Mexican migrants work once they enter the United States. These include restaurant work, farm work, domestic work, and sex work, among others. Since they are desperate for work, and they need to pay off whoever facilitated their journey, migrant workers must begin work immediately, and often find work through their ethnic/ immigrant communities in their new cities. Some people are trafficked into the United States, where their travel and work are under the control and authority of traffickers throughout the entire process. Others travel on their own and encounter a coercive employment situation once they arrive in the United States. Both of these situations are considered to be “trafficking in persons.” Some are beaten, raped, or verbally threatened that they or their families will be harmed if they attempt to escape. Some migrant farm workers in the United States are beaten and have their pay withheld, even as they work on farms and are sprayed with pesticide. Some women decide to enter into sex work because it will pay more than other types of labor, such as domestic

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or restaurant work, and they know that they do not have better options because they lack proper employment authorization. Others are forced into sex work and are raped as a means of “preparing” them for prostitution. In these situations, shame and stigma are also used as weapons, where a young woman knows that once she has been raped or forced into prostitution, gender norms will not allow her to return to her family and community, thus leaving her with no other options but to continue in sex work. In Mexico, there is very little prosecution of those who engage in trafficking in persons, and, in fact, local government officials are sometimes involved in covering for those involved in trafficking schemes. Efforts to punish traffickers and to assist victims have been both limited and poorly documented within the country. Although Mexican law prohibits trafficking in persons, trafficking still remains a serious problem, and the U.S. Department of State has documented “credible reports that police, immigration, and customs officials were involved in the trafficking of such persons” (Mexico: Country Reports). The Mexican government has cooperated with the United States in at least one major antitrafficking case, and increased its surveillance and investigation into one trafficking ring, due to pressure from the U.S. government. Moreover, the government of Mexico does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; although it has made efforts

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to interdict illicit migration, efforts to assist victims and punish traffickers, especially those that sexually exploit minors, are still limited. Mexican women are the most common victims of human trafficking, and trafficking in women for the purpose of sexual exploitation, in particular, is a problem. Repatriation is not a welcome option for most Mexican nationals who survive a trafficking situation. Although there are nongovernmental organizations in Mexico that can assist with reintegration into society, there are not many, and they lack the resources to assist fully with security and mental health concerns. Additionally, because many trafficked persons will move back to their small communities, they will return to a community that likely knows what has happened. Julu Thukral See also: Human Trafficking for Labor Purposes; Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation; Migrant Workers.

Further Readings Shirk, David, and Alexandra Webber. “Slavery without Borders: Human Trafficking in the U.S.-Mexican Context.” Hemisphere Focus (publication of Center for Strategic and International Studies) 12, no. 5 (January 23, 2004). Available at http://csis.org/files/media/ csis/pubs/hf_v12_05.pdf. U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Mexico: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2003. February 25, 2004. Available at http://www.state .gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2003/27905.htm.

Migrant Workers The concept of migration, in general, has been associated with all flows of people throughout history who have relocated in response to demographic growth, climatic change, ecological factors, changes in ethnic and political organization of communities, and the development of production and trade. The concept of the migrant worker, on the other hand, refers to those people who move or have to move from one location to another for either a short or long period of time in order to find work. In most cases, their transit and/or return is usually arranged through some type of legal arrangement. Thus, migrant workers attempt to reach economic opportunities that are unequally distributed in the world. Excluding the migratory flows that have resulted from natural causes, the modern history of labor migration can be analyzed in five distinct phases. The first phase took place from 1500 to 1800 and was dominated by labor flows out of Europe in relation to the creation of colonies. These migrations were mainly from Britain, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Germany, and Austria-Hungary and provided laborers to the United States, Canada, Argentina, Australia, and Brazil. A second phase of international migration started in the early 19th century due to the economic development of Europe and the spread of industrialism to the former European colonies in the New World. The migration flows

Migrant Workers

in this period were the greatest mass migration of people in history. Demographic shifts from 1800 to 1925 indicate that more than 48 million people left the industrial countries of Europe in search of work and new lives in the Americas, Oceania, and elsewhere. The third phase began with the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Emigration (and immigration) patterns for this era reveal an immobility of migration with limited flows until the end of World War II in 1945. Besides the two world wars, the Great Depression of 1929 virtually stopped all of the international flows of labor, since the employment patterns and dynamics at

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work in all sectors of the world economy were greatly diminished. Due to a remarkable labor shortage, there was a massive expansion in international labor flow following the third phase. During the fourth phase, which lasted from 1945 to the 1970s, millions of people in search of employment opportunities migrated from less developed parts of Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas to Western Europe. The remarkable increase in concentration of capital investments and expansion of production in Western European countries after the world wars turned the large-scale immigration of labor into a structural necessity for the developed

The children of Mexican migrant workers pose under a sign at a Farm Security Administration camp in 1941. (Library of Congress)

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countries that were rebuilding their economies. In this period, the most significant flows in terms of intensity and geographical extent were the migrant workers from densely populated less-developed countries to nations in Western Europe, Oceania, and North America. In the fifth phase, several lessdeveloped but capital-rich nations, especially in the Persian Gulf region, also began to sponsor and encourage massive labor migration. The petrodollars infused the economies of Persian Gulf countries by transforming these economies into capital-rich but labor-scarce ones. By the 1980s, international migration had also spread into the newly industrialized countries in Asia, such as Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia along with Japan and Australia. The flows of migrant workers have served as a primary input in economic development, nation building, and in comparative advantages of certain regions, because reliance upon migrant labor significantly reduces the costs of production. This has always been possible by reducing the wages paid to migrant workers. Thus, labor migration and industrialization have jointly fashioned the modern world economy. The need for cheap labor in various world regions has been generally met by labor migration, usually organized by the bilateral agreements that exist between sending and receiving countries. These agreements have often been designed to maintain the unskilled labor force under the control of the receiving state,

so that migrant workers will have little to no chance of changing their work situation or of questioning the conditions that are forced upon them by employers, thus leading them to accept the miserable conditions they may face. Therefore, labor migration of unskilled workers is utilized as a legal form of slave labor, because all restrictions of the liberty of the migrant workers and control of them during their work are undertaken by the state. Unskilled migrant laborers have been utilized in all heavy works without any legal arrangements in terms of social security, minimum payment, and housing. Nations have always adopted highly restrictive recruitment policies to keep the immigrant workers temporary and stationary during their working period. Therefore, as a foreign people in a host society, migrant workers are modern-day slaves due to their exhaustive labor and their susceptibility to threats and repression by employers and the state. Bayram Unal See also: Domestic Workers; Illegal Migration.

Further Readings Castles, Stephen, and Godula Kosack. Immigrant Workers and Class Structure in Western Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. Faist, Thomas. The Volume and Dynamics of International Migration. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Gordon, I. “The Role of International Migration in the Changing European

Model Business Principles Labour Market.” In European Factor Mobility, ed. I. Gordon. London: Macmillan, 1989.

Model Business Principles (1995) In June 1995 the U.S. Department of Commerce made public its Model Business Principles as a suggested guideline for corporate ethics in an era of economic globalization. The statement of principles was widely touted by the administration of President Bill Clinton as a baseline rubric for good behavior and global citizenship for U.S. firms that did business overseas and wanted to demonstrate their commitment to social responsibility. The Model Business Principles depended upon voluntary compliance, and there was no means of effective enforcement that was put into place. Skeptics charged that the establishment of the Model Business Principles was a weak effort to encourage good corporate citizenship and that its real aim was to bolster the image of a Commerce Department that had not always demonstrated the strongest commitment to fair trade and labor practices globally. The Clinton administration had been criticized for its support of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and for its controversial renewal of most-favored-nation trading status to the People’s Republic of China in June 1995 despite that nation’s dismal record on human rights. Key elements of the Model Business Principles include promotion of safe,

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healthy workplaces; encouragement of fair employment practices; commitment to responsible environmental protection; compliance with U.S. and local “good business practices”; and promotion of corporate cultures that respect free expression “consistent with legitimate business concerns.” It was hoped that U.S. corporations would adopt the guidelines into their global codes of conduct and that other transnational businesses would follow suit, but this could not be mandated. U.S. corporations that adopted the principles were encouraged to model good behavior abroad so that their partners, suppliers, and subcontractors would be induced to commit themselves to the benchmark standards. Officials in the Commerce Department decided to keep the Model Business Principles brief. They also focused upon what were considered industry benchmark standards so that a firm could adopt the principles without making serious changes to its unique corporate culture. In reality, many of the principles were a restatement of international law, many of which stemmed from previous International Labour Organization (ILO) conventions, and others were already embedded within the framework of U.S. law that had to be followed by American corporations that did business overseas. Concerns about contemporary slavery and other unfree labor practices were voiced in the Model Business Practices, as the voluntary code urged the “avoidance of child and forced labor” as one of its central tenets. Still,

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some believed that the use of the term “avoidance” reflected a passive tone that was not meant to incite animosity in those settings where labor abuses certainly existed. In spite of the shortcomings of the Model Business Practices proposal, many multinational corporations did adopt voluntary codes of conduct during the 1990s. Although self-enforcement is usually associated with these codes, the adoption of guidelines based upon human rights concerns does reflect a growing sense of social responsibility on the part of many large corporations. Junius P. Rodriguez See also: Company Codes of Conduct.

Further Readings Baker, Mark B. “Tightening the Toothless Vise: Codes of Conduct and the American Multinational Enterprise.” Wisconsin International Law Journal 20, no. 1 (2001): 89–142. Hemphill, Thomas A. “Corporate Citizenship: The Case for a New Corporate Governance Model.” Business and Society Review 109, no. 3 (2004): 339–361. Holme, R., and P. Watts. Corporate Social Responsibility: Making Good Business Sense. Geneva: World Business Council for Sustainable Development, 2000.

Morel, Edmund Dene (1873–1924) Edmund Dene Morel was a British journalist and antislavery campaigner, instrumental in denouncing Belgian

King Leopold II’s barbarous exploitation of the Congo Free State. The son of a French civil servant and a Quaker mother, E. D. Morel (as he would usually sign his abundant literary production) grew up between England and France, finally taking a clerkship in 1891 with Elder Dempster, the firm that had an exclusive contract with the Congo Free State for the Antwerp-Boma connection. Simultaneously, he started to write regular contributions to various West African and European newspapers and magazines (of which Speaker was the most conspicuous), mostly on behalf of French and Belgian decolonization. Being both a respected bilingual clerk in the service of a company that profited from Belgian colonialism and a severe critic of that same phenomenon, Morel was in a vantage position to expose the evidence kept in Elder Dempster account books, namely, the continuous skimming of profits that ended unreported in private hands (presumably Leopold II’s and those of his closer associates), and, more significantly, the unrepressed violence and terror inflicted by the Belgian crown upon its African “protectorate.” The firm’s ships, he found out, left Antwerp loaded only with weapons and explosives and returned full of rubber and ivory. After several bribe attempts from his employers, Morel resigned from Elder Dempster in 1902, in order to commit himself fully to the antislavery cause. He started publishing his own magazine, The West African Mail, in 1903 and proceeded to found the Congo Reform Association

Movement to Abolish Prostitution and Pornography (MAPP)

in 1904—an international organization in which he militated with the likes of Joseph Conrad (whose own Congo sojourn was immortalized in his novella Heart of Darkness), Arthur Conan Doyle (the creator of Sherlock Holmes), Mark Twain, Booker T. Washington, William Cadbury (the Quaker chocolate millionaire), the Reverend John Harris, and (most influentially) Roger Casement, with whom Morel set up a plan to call for gunboats to liberate native slaves. Following Casement’s Congo report of 1904, the association won an early victory with the acknowledgment by Leopold II’s own commission of enquiry that the accusations on slavery and the maltreatment of natives were essentially true. This event led to the Congo’s annexation to Belgium in 1908 (as opposed to its former status as the king’s private enterprise since 1884), and to the association’s own eventual dissolution after 1911. (A year later its remnants would merge into John Harris’s own Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society.) Besides his involvement with the antislavery movement, Morel would also be known as a severe critic of British foreign policy (particularly following the Agadir crisis of 1911), a notorious pacifist (an issue that—combined with his close friendship with Casement— led to a six-month incarceration in Pentonville during the final stages of World War I), and a charismatic Labour Party member of Parliament, a position he held in the last two years of his life. His most important writings on the Congo were published in King

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Leopold’s Rule in Africa (1904), Red Rubber: The Story of the Rubber Slave Trade that Flourished in the Congo in the Year of Grace 1906 (1906), and Great Britain and the Congo: The Pillage of the Congo Basin (1909). Carlos Guillermo Páramo Bonilla See also: Casement, Sir Roger; Leopold II.

Further Readings Forbarth, Peter. The River Congo: The Discovery, Exploration, and Exploitation of the World’s Most Dramatic River. New York: Harper and Row, 1977. Hochschild, Adam. King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. Louis, William Roger, and Jean Stengers, eds. E. D. Morel’s History of the Congo Reform Movement. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968. Marchal, Jules. E. D. Morel contre Leopold II: L’histoire du Congo 1876–1910. Paris: Harmattan, 1996.

Movement to Abolish Prostitution and Pornography (MAPP) The history of the Movement to Abolish Prostitution and Pornography (MAPP) and all forms of sexual violence and sexist discrimination began in May 1998 when the organization was founded by its president, Claire Malka Marcovich. It is an international feminist human rights nongovernmental organization with headquarters in Paris, France. MAPP is involved in

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many issues connected to sexism, discrimination, violence against women, prostitution, pornography, and human trafficking. It holds category II consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council. This allows MAPP to contribute significantly to the work of the UN by offering its views at sessions of commissions, committees, and working groups both orally and in writing. From its inception, MAPP has worked together with the Coalition against Trafficking in Women (CATW). Until the creation of CATW-Europe in 2005, MAPP served as CATW’s European representative. MAPP is also affiliated with the European Lobby of Women, an umbrella organization that represents women’s organizations from 25 countries to the European Union. In addition, in 1999 MAPP began to ally itself closely with the French human rights network Collective Article 1 and other groups, such as the Association des Femmes de l’Europe Méridionnale. MAPP’s founding philosophy is to continue Josephine Butler’s (d. 1906) abolitionist battle to end prostitution and to focus on the need to eliminate demand for it. MAPP considers demand to be one of the root causes of prostitution and human trafficking. In 1866, Butler was among the first social reformers to consider prostitution as a modern form of slavery. In her writings she criticized the hypocrisy of men who buy sex from women, then criminalize the women who sell their bodies but free the men from all responsibility and culpability. MAPP supports the

position that all prostitution is a fundamental violation of human rights and it should be abolished. The organization believes that regulating prostitution remains a human rights violation. MAPP’s first newsletter, dated January 1999, praised the passing of a Swedish law that redefined prostitution. According to this law, the client is held responsible for the act of prostitution as the buying of sex is criminalized while the selling of sex is decriminalized. This is an important legal distinction for MAPP because prostitutes are recognized as victims and not as criminals. Another philosophical influence on MAPP came from the pioneering efforts of Marcelle Legrand Falco (d. 1985) who in 1926 founded the abolitionist school of activism against prostitution in France. Falco worked closely with the League of Nations and the League of Human Rights. Her work and that of her niece, Denise PouillonFalco, against regulated prostitution greatly inspired Marcovich. MAPP also firmly supports honoring the UN Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Women and Children (December 2, 1949). This abolitionist convention is the only one that clearly defines that it is those who “procure, entice, or lead” (Article 1) who should be criminalized and not the women who are the victims of prostitution. The document also states that victims of prostitution can be parties to the legal proceedings against the people who have exploited them. MAPP vigorously works to prevent this convention’s

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authority from being eroded. In 1999, MAPP helped cofound the International Network of Human Rights, a collective of international nongovernmental organizations concerned about the future of this UN convention. Before founding MAPP, Marcovich had been an active member of another nongovernmental organization originally founded by Butler, but toward the end of the 20th century, she decided that it was no longer sufficiently feminist or political in nature. Since MAPP’s inception, its members have been very active, mostly on the European front, participating in public debates, on the radio, in the press, and at conferences. MAPP has spearheaded important research on the propagation of violence in the mass media and on violence against women on the Internet. It has helped organize conferences and participated with consultative status in government and nongovernmental organizations working conferences. It proved especially effective in promoting its position at the negotiations for the UN Convention against Transnational Crime. It has translated important documents in the abolitionist fight against prostitution into different languages, and its members have written scholarly articles on related subjects. In 2000, MAPP published a widely read essay on violence against women and the Internet. In 2002, Marcovich submitted a report to the French Ministry of Equality detailing how prostitution is a system of violence against women. In 2003, she was also appointed a scientific expert for the large municipalities

in France. In 2004, MAPP became involved in a sociological study of sexism in children’s magazines. Loni Bramson See also: Coalition against Trafficking in Women (CATW); Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Women and Children (1949); Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation; Prostitution.

Further Reading Whisnant, Rebecca, and Christine Stark. Not for Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography. North Melbourne, Australia: Spinifex Press, 2004.

Mui Tsai Mui tsai, which means “little sister” in Cantonese, was a practice popular in South China in which young girls were acquired by a family to perform domestic chores in their households and would be married off by this family when they reached adulthood, usually in their late teens. The girls usually received no wages, and the family provided for food, clothing, and other expenses. When the girls were transferred, the natal families would receive a sum of money and they would sign a deed or presentation card stipulating that the new family had control over the girls. In essence, mui tsai was a form of bonded labor. Once the girls were married, they ceased, in theory, to be mui tsai. From the provisions in the lateimperial Chinese penal code, one can conclude that the practice was probably

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common at that time. According to the code, any abuse or cruelty to mui tsai were punishable offenses. The practice was relatively unknown outside China until the late 19th century when Chinese began to immigrate en masse to various parts of Southeast Asia and continued this practice in their new places of residence. Although mui tsai could be found in several localities, it was in the British colonies of Hong Kong and Malaya (modern-day Singapore and part of Malaysia) that the practice gained international attention. Because of high demand, traffickers sometimes kidnapped and abducted girls from China and sold them to employers in these colonies as mui tsai. In 1879, the chief justice of Hong Kong declared mui tsai a form of slavery and it was illegal in the colony. Colonial officials adamantly denied such charges and argued that mui tsai was a Chinese tradition. The Protection of Women and Girls Ordinance was passed in these colonies to curtail trafficking of women and girls. Also with the support of the colonial governments, Chinese elites set up a number of chapters of the Society for the Protection of Women and Children in Hong Kong and various Malayan cities to rescue and provide shelter for kidnapped girls and abused mui tsai. The passing of the ordinance ended the first part of the mui tsai controversy, and it remained in place in these British colonies. The practice was in the limelight again when in 1919, a British naval officer, Hugh Haslewood, and his wife, who were stationed in Hong Kong, heard stories about the mui tsai

and believed it was child slavery in disguise. The Haslewoods decided to raise awareness in Hong Kong and Britain and drew the attention of various British humanitarian organizations, and together launched a campaign to abolish mui tsai that lasted two decades. These activists argued that mui tsai was slavery because children were bought, sold, and resold and were often abused. The colonial governments maintained their stance that mui tsai was a Chinese tradition, and they regarded the deeds signed at the time of transferal of the girls as null and void. Chinese supporters of the practice argued mui tsai was an act of benevolence in which the girls were “saved” from death by starvation and extreme poverty. The controversy resulted in the passing of the Female Domestic Service Bill in Hong Kong and Malaya in 1923 and 1925, respectively. The bill prohibited girls under the age of 10 to work as mui tsai and girls cannot be transferred to another employer. Girls over the age of 10 were to receive wages. The secretaries of Chinese Affairs of these two colonies were invested with the power regarding the custody, control, and employment of mui tsai as they saw fit. The mui tsai could also appeal to the secretaries if they were abused or desired to leave the families for whom they worked. An important, as well as controversial, part of this bill was the registration of all mui tsai with the secretaries of Chinese Affairs. Girls would remain on the registration until they reached 18. Those who employed


unregistered mui tsai were subjected to fines and possible imprisonment. Although the British authority never officially recognized mui tsai as a form of slavery, the League of Nation’s Slavery Committee often devoted sessions of their meetings to this practice in the 1930s. Yet they did not pass any significant resolutions regarding mui tsai. In 1936, under international and domestic pressure, the British government sent a commission to Hong Kong and Malaya to investigate the working of the various mui tsai ordinances. World War II stowed further amendments of the law and by the early 1950s, authorities regarded the practice as officially ended because all the mui tsai on the prewar registration would have reached the age of 18. Karen M. Yuen See also: Lim, Janet.

Further Readings Jaschok, Maria. Concubines and Bondservants: The Social History of a Chinese Custom. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1988. Jaschok, Maria, and Suzanne Miers, eds. Women and Chinese Patriarchy: Submission, Servitude, and Escape. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1994. Pedersen, Susan. “The Maternalist Moment in British Colonial Policy: The Controversy Over ‘Child Slavery’ in Hong Kong, 1917–1941.” Past and Present 17 (May 2001): 161–202. Watson, James L. “Transactions in Peoples: The Chinese Market in Slaves, Servants, and Heirs.” In Asian and African

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Systems of Slavery, ed. James L. Watson. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980. Watson, Rubie S. “Wives, Concubines, and Maids: Servitude and Kinship in the Hong Kong Region, 1900–1940.” In Marriage and Inequality in Chinese Society, ed. Rubie S. Watson and Patricia Buckley Ebrey. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.

Muscat and Oman, Abolition of Slavery in Slavery was widely practiced in Muscat and Oman, where slaves were used as domestics, laborers on the date plantations, and as pearl divers along the coast of Oman. Slaves continued to arrive in Oman in the late 1940s from the Makran coast and from Baluchistan in Pakistan, despite the fact that the institution had been abolished in neighboring Bahrain in 1937. For Oman it was clear that abolition had to be accomplished from within, otherwise any attempts to do so from without would have met with problems of compliance. Accordingly, Great Britain, the dominant power in the region, used its influence to persuade the states in the region to end domestic slavery. This in itself, however, was not a sufficient deterrent; the demand for slave labor, for instance, on date plantations in Oman in the mid-20th century was quite crucial in affecting the prevalence of the institution. At least two more decades would pass before slavery was finally abolished there, after a palace coup deposed Sultan Said Ibn Taimur, an owner of hundreds of slaves.

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As with some of the other states in the region, the British did not directly pressure the ruler of Oman to suppress slavery. They argued that they could not force him to end an institution that was recognized by Muslim law. Moreover, they believed he opposed abolition because he was unwilling to pay compensation to former owners. In the 1950s, the British manumitted slaves—excluding those in the sultan’s possession— at the rate of about 18 per year on the grounds of ill-treatment, and understood the sultan’s tolerance of these actions as evidence of his good faith. There were, of course, inconsistencies in the British position here as elsewhere. Their claims that manumitted slaves still in the service of their former masters were free to leave were proven to be untrue when they learned that domestic slaves in Batinah were, in fact, prevented by force from seeking full freedom. Furthermore, while the rulers of the northern six states (which included Dubai) and later Abu Dhabi agreed to sign a treaty in May 1963 declaring that slavery, like the slave trade, had long been banned in their territories, no such pressure was brought to bear on Oman to do the same, despite the fact that conservative Saudi Arabia had just abolished slavery. It was thus no surprise that Britain faced continuous attacks at the United Nations over the next several years for being a supporter of the autocratic sultan. The British position was dictated by their economic, political, and strategic interests to maintain the flow of oil from

the region and to retain their air base in Masirah. They continued supporting the despotic sultan whose son, Qabus, was still too young to replace him. Both domestic and foreign opposition to the sultan grew more vociferous by the mid-1960s, especially once oil was discovered. At the same time, Britain came increasingly under attack from the leading Arab states for its involvement in Oman. The anticolonial atmosphere both at home and in the Arab world forced the Labour government to announce its intention to leave Oman by 1971. Before this could happen, however, a palace coup took place in July 1970, during which Qabus, with the British endorsement, deposed his father and assumed the crown for himself. One of the first reforms of his new administration was to outlaw legal slavery in that year. Oman now ceased to be the only country in the region in which slavery was legal. Abdin Chande See also: North Africa, Abolition in.

Further Readings Earth, Frederick. Sohar: Culture and Society in an Omani Town. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1983. Gordon, Murray. Slavery in the Arab World. New York: New Amsterdam, 1989. Hutson, Alaine. “Enslavement and Manumission of Africans and Yemenis in Saudi Arabia, 1926–1938.” Critique 11, no. 1 (2002): 49–70. Miers, Suzanne. Slavery in the Twentieth Century. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 2003.

N African American newspaper editors and television producers. Media attention began to grow: the New York Times published an article by Charles Jacobs detailing the extent of slavery, and public television aired an investigative report on the slave trade in Africa. In the U.S. Congress, Representatives Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.) drafted a resolution to require the United States to take a more active role in ending slavery in Africa. Additionally, Representative Frank Wolf— a member of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus who had visited Sudan in early 1993 and confirmed the existence of slavery in that nation—called on the NAACP to become involved. The NAACP responded to events after activist Earl Shinhoster, who had been personally involved in human rights issues in Africa, became the organization’s acting executive director. Joseph E. Madison, the head of the NAACP’s national Political Action Department, authored the Resolution to Combat Modern Day Slavery, which the NAACP issued on May 20, 1995, shortly after the AASG held a Conference on Modern Day Slavery at Columbia University. The resolution condemned “the barbaric practice of slavery” in Mauritania and Sudan and the ongoing “mass expulsions and

NAACP Resolution to Combat Modern-Day Slavery In May 1995, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) drafted a resolution in response to mounting evidence of ongoing slavery in the African nations of Mauritania and the Sudan. In the early 1990s growing, but limited, sentiment about the issue surrounded the NAACP’s move to draft the protest resolution. In 1993, the U.S. State Department, Human Rights Watch Africa, and Christian Solidarity International (CSI) all revealed the persistence of black slavery in Mauritania and Sudan, including the presence of slave markets, slave raids, and the attendant social maladies traditionally associated with enslavement. The next year the American AntiSlavery Group (AASG) formed specifically to address this issue and began a campaign to bring the situation to national attention. In particular, its leaders, Charles Jacobs and Mohammed Athie (a former Mauritanian diplomat), attempted to reestablish the anti-Apartheid coalition of the 1980s by raising the issue with the Congressional Black Caucus, the NAACP, Reverend Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition, and 411

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slaughter” in the two nations. The resolution continued: “The NAACP, whose members, in part, are descendants of slaves, recognizes that our own history commands that we act on behalf of those held in human bondage. We now come to the front line of this struggle and we will not rest until these slaves are freed.” The NAACP’s resolution has since been cited repeatedly by those seeking to influence the situation in Sudan and Mauritania. In 1997, the State Senate of Mississippi cited the resolution in its condemnation of slavery in Sudan and Mauritania; a copy of this protest was forwarded to the UN. Additionally, the U.S. House of Representatives’ subcommittee on Africa cited the NAACP resolution in 2003 when it urged a UN investigation into slavery and human rights abuses in Sudan, UN sanctions, and active U.S. engagement with the UN, the European Union, and the African Union to pressure Sudan into abolishing slavery and respecting human rights. Michael Mundt See also: American Anti-Slavery Group; NAACP Resolution to Combat ModernDay Slavery.

Further Readings Cotton, Samuel. Silent Terror: A Journey into Contemporary African Slavery. New York: Writers and Readers Publishing, 1999. Cotton, Samuel. “The Slavery Issue: A Crisis in Black Leadership.” New York Sun, April 5, 1995.

Gregory, Joseph R. “African Slavery 1996.” First Things 63 (May 1996): 37–39. Human Rights Watch Africa. Behind the Red Line: Political Repression in Sudan. New York: Human Rights Watch, 1996. Kellogg, Charles F. NAACP: A History of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. London: Bodmin Books, 1997.

National Child Labor Committee (NCLC) One of the first pressure groups formed to combat the problems of child labor in the United States, the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC) was established in 1904 and is still in existence today. The roots of this committee are in the New York Child Labor Committee, which was founded in 1902. The history of the NCLC charts the changing patterns of child employment in the United States. Walter Trattner (1970) provides an analysis of the role of NCLC in the development of and influencing of legislation in the early part of the 20th century. By the mid-1950s, the organization’s primary aims as defined in 1904 had been achieved, and it is possible to identify a change in the organization’s interests. For example, the NCLC commissioned studies into work-study programs, factors influencing school dropout rates, and the wider issues of adolescents making the transition into adult work. The NCLC is still active in child employment issues and is a member of the Child Labor Coalition. The NCLC has a website and is probably one of the main sources of


historical record on the changing pattern of child employment in the United States. Sandy Hobbs See also: Addams, Jane.

Further Readings National Child Labor Committee. http:// www.nationalchildlabor.org/. Trattner, Walter I. Crusade for the Children. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1970.

National Islamic Front (NIF) Fostering dictatorship, genocide, slavery, and numerous human rights violations, the extremist National Islamic Front (NIF) has been the prime influence in Sudanese governments since 1983. Emerging from Sudan’s Muslim Brotherhood student movement of the 1950s and the Islamic Charter Front of the 1960s, the National Islamic Front is a political party, established by Hassan Abdullah al-Turabi, Ali Othman Muhammad Taha, and other Islamists in April 1985. These militants sought to establish a purely Islamic state by first ridding Sudan, and eventually all of Africa, of western influences that they saw as vestiges of colonialism. In June 1989, the NIF engineered and supported Omar Hassan al-Bashir’s military coup, which overthrew the elected government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi. It then became the dominant faction of the ruling National Congress Party.

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The new regime implemented extensive purges of the civil service. Sexual segregation was strictly enforced, and freedoms of speech, assembly, and religion were denied. During a decadelong “state of emergency,” citizens who cooperated with United Nations observers, questioned the implementation of sharia (Islamic law based on the Koran), or were perceived as threats to the National Islamic Front’s vision were arrested and often tortured in socalled “ghost houses.” Summary executions, arbitrary detentions, and other human rights violations were regularly committed by the NIF regime. Inspiring widespread opposition and exacerbating Sudan’s civil wars in the south and later the western region of Darfur, the NIF’s efforts to create an Islamic state bore mixed results. Recently discovered oil, rather than Islam, fueled the economy, the wealth of which was squandered on military expenditures. Militant fervor led to war crimes, including the bombing of clearly civilian targets, such as churches, schools, and hospitals. First in southern Sudan and more recently in Darfur, the regime has impeded efforts to deliver humanitarian relief in order to cause famines in regions that have opposed Khartoum’s control. During the NIF’s time in power, slavery reemerged in Sudan as a tool for oppressing the non-Muslim south. Raids by the government-backed muraheleen militias of the Muslim Baggara tribes have captured Dinka women and children in the war-torn Bahr El Ghazal and Upper Nile regions. Held

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in bondage elsewhere in Sudan, the captives were forced to work in homes and fields, and were often physically and sexually abused. For the regime, this was a low cost tactic in its expensive counterinsurgency war against the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), which has often been identified with the Dinka. Although its 1991Criminal Code does not prohibit slavery, Sudan has ratified the UN Slavery Convention and other international instruments banning slavery, but the regime in Khartoum has knowingly and persistently been responsible for arming, transporting, and assisting slave-raiding militias and for not enforcing its own laws against kidnapping, assault, and forced labor.

Stonewalling criticism on the issue and claiming that it has little control over rival tribes engaged in hostage taking, NIF leaders denied the findings of numerous international reports documenting slavery in Sudan. Several times the regime announced that it would arrest and try those involved in abductions and forced labor, but to this date no prosecutions have ever been initiated. Following his fallout with al-Bashir in 1999, al-Turabi and some of his supporters established the rival Popular National Congress (PNC), but leading the NIF faction that has remained loyal to al-Bashir, Ali Othman Muhammad Taha has continued to be a major figure in the regime. A former judge and old schoolmate of alBashir, Taha was a hard-line opposition

Sudanese vice president Ali Othman Mohammad Taha (left) and head of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement, John Garang, share a laugh before signing the Comprehensive Peace Agreement on January 9, 2005 at Nyayo stadium in Nairobi, Kenya. (AP/Wide World Photos)


leader during Sadiq al-Mahdi’s government. Widely believed to have been a key planner of the 1989 coup, he served as NIF deputy secretary-general and foreign minister between 1995 and 1998 and first vice president after February 1998. Although controversial as a key figure in Islamization programs in southern Sudan and the Nuba Mountains, he led successful peace talks with SPLM leader John Garang from September 2003 to January 2005. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and numerous Western and African governments have condemned the myriad violations of human rights inspired by the National Islamic Front, which remains a potent political force in Sudan. Randall Fegley See also: Sudan and South Sudan; Turabi, Hassan al-.

Further Readings Deng, F. M. War of Visions: Conflict of Identities in the Sudan. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1995. Johnson, Douglas H. The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars. Oxford: James Currey, 2003. Khalid, Mansour. The Government They Deserve. London: KPI, 1990. Lesch, Ann Mosely. The Sudan: Contested National Identities. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998.

Nazi Germany and Prostitution Following the reform of prostitution laws during the Weimar Republic, Nazi

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Germany experienced a right-wing backlash against Social Democratic progressivism, leading eventually to the reintroduction of state-regulated brothels as a key institution of Nazi sexual policy. The establishment of brothels in concentration camps from 1942, where commands of female prisoners were forced into prostitution, stands as the most inhuman enforcement of this policy. After a decade of progressive sexual politics during the Weimar Republic in the 1920s, the appointment of Adolf Hitler as chancellor in 1933 signaled dramatic change in the German political climate. Hitler had risen to the leadership of the National Socialists in part by promoting an image of Nazis as the purifiers of public morality, playing on the commonly perceived cultural disintegration and moral decay of the Weimar Republic years. The Weimar welfare experiment was denounced as a source of fiscal waste, sexual immorality, and eugenic irresponsibility, which disproportionately benefited the unfit and asocial at the expense of worthy citizens. The National Socialists’ pledge to reestablish law and order as well as to restore the dignity of marriage and family life played a decisive role in winning the support of conservatives and religious conservatives. Feeding into conservative moralists’ anxiety with the gloomy image of the Golden Twenties, Nazi moral agenda throughout the 1930s was characterized by heightened homophobia, a brutal racialization of sex, as well as attempts to reorganize and politicize sexual life. Accordingly, social and welfare policies of the Nazi

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regime were aimed at repealing many of the pioneering Weimar achievements, for example, birth control counseling as well as child and youth welfare. The goals of these policies shifted from regulation and treatment of the ill and needy to racial and political purification of the nation. Similarly, Nazi attacks on Weimar’s prostitution reform combined populist anti-Semitism with arguments about increasing vice and cultural contamination, thus fueling conservatives’ moral panic. In his work Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler had accused prostitution of being one of the major causes of the German nation’s deterioration, by claiming that the increasing “prostitution of love” not only led to the spread of venereal diseases but also signaled moral decadence and cultural decline in general, which he blamed on the “Jewification” of German spiritual life. Thus, the reason for the perceived failure of Weimar’s prostitution policies was its shortfall in addressing the roots, not just the symptoms, of Germany’s moral and racial decay. For example, Nazi racist propaganda determined syphilis to be a “typical Jewish attribute,” and in this way made the spread of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) a liability of Jewry in general. Furthermore, populist Nazi publications pointed to Jews and Marxists as the main beneficiaries of prostitution, who supposedly controlled the white slave trade in Christian women, and eventually to social democracy and the Weimar state as accomplices in these so-called Jewish sex crimes. As part of an effort to mobilize

citizens against Weimar reforms and to strengthen support for national socialism among religious conservatives, Weimar prostitution policies were pictured as attempting to strip prostitution of its dishonorable character, thus undermining the moral and racial foundations of the family and jeopardizing the health of the German people. As a result, penal regulations for prostitution were tightened under national socialism. In May 1933, the revision of the 1927 anti-VD law criminalized all public behavior “that violates morals and decency or harasses others,” in effect outlawing any form of street solicitation. The adjustment led to numerous raids followed by mass arrests of streetwalkers throughout Germany, which were legally based on the Emergency Decree for the Protection of People and State of February 28, 1933—legislation often used by the police to justify serious violations of civil liberties in subsequent years. In addition, the revision of the anti-VD law included tightened punishments for all breaches: prostitutes found guilty of street soliciting or having contracted sexually transmitted infections faced severe penalties such as extended prison and workhouse sentences where hard labor and rigid control were theorized to promote a licit lifestyle. As its major goal, the revised anti-VD law intended to ensure an image of public space “tolerable from the standpoint of general morality,” that is, the ban of any apparently indecent behavior such as street soliciting from public areas. The implementation and enforcement


of the revised legislation did not only affect streetwalkers; under the new law, any unaccompanied woman who acted in an ostensibly flamboyant way could be arrested and forced to be tested for STDs. Nazi efforts to clean public streets from vice were welcomed and politically supported by religious conservatives as a means to save Germany from moral decay and also by the police as a means to better control prostitution and related vice trades. The demise of an independent women’s movement and the suppression of Nazi women fighting for equal rights for Aryan women were other preconditions for a resurgence in police-controlled prostitution after 1933. Following the revision in 1933, conservatives increased their efforts to revive regulationism in direct opposition to paragraph 17 of the anti-VD law, which prohibited the confinement of prostitutes to special streets or blocks. But an official memorandum in fall 1933 proposing the legalization of regulated brothels was met with protests from different parties. Petitions by religious welfare organizations reasoned that only complete criminalization could provide the desired protection of public morality; mere confinement would damage the reputation of the state since it would continue to signify a state sanctioning of extramarital sex. The German Society for Combating Venereal Diseases (Deutsche Gesellschaft zur Bekämpfung der Geschlechtskrankheiten), on the other hand, attacked proregulationist efforts by publicly doubting the effectiveness

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of confinement in achieving its professed aims, that is, the protection of public health from STDs, because in reality, only a small minority of prostitutes were subjected to regular controls. Nevertheless, the numbers of stateregulated brothels grew significantly throughout the 1930s as a result of declining power of churches and the concurrent rise of Heinrich Himmler as chief of police and the SS. Himmler was one of the main proponents of regulated prostitution. With the growing autonomy of the police in Germany, the freedom and civil liberties of prostitutes became even more restricted. Gradually, former interest in eradicating vice was superseded by concerns about the necessity to provide “safe” sexual opportunities for (male) extramarital sex, which was also believed to help fight the “spread” of male homosexuality. The military used similar arguments: the Wehrmacht insisted on regulated prostitution to reinforce military morale and to control the spread of STDs among its men. Immediately after the beginning of World War II, the government issued several decrees that heralded the radicalization of Nazi prostitution policies. In September 1939, licensed brothels were reestablished as the only legitimate form of prostitution, facilitating the strict supervision of prostitutes through the police. Authorities could impose curfews and other restrictions on streetwalkers; violations led to punishments from preventive detention (Vorbeugehaft) to internment in concentration camps. Women engaged in “frequent

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promiscuity” (häufig wechselnder Geschlechtsverkehr—hwG—a term that referred primarily to prostitutes) were subject to regular inspections by special social welfare patrols (Fürsorgestreifen), and all hwG persons infected with STDs were forced to have medical treatment and hospitalization. Despite the revisions in the 1930s and 1940s, the general decriminalization of prostitution provided for under Weimar laws was never completely abolished by the Nazi state. Instead, the regime had great interest in the continued legal existence of the institution of prostitution, last but not least for military reasons. Thus, the aims of VD control of the 1927 law shifted from education and treatment to control and, if required, elimination of the sources of infection, that is, to surveillance and punishment of prostitutes. The apparent antagonism between continued decriminalization and tightened regulation, control, and moral condemnation of prostitution can be traced back to the notorious discrepancy between the content of criminal law and the actual exertion of penal power by the police, a symptom of the increasing power and autonomy of executive authorities in Nazi Germany. Regulated prostitution also played a vital role in maintaining racist hierarchies in Nazi Germany. The massive deployment of forced foreign workers and prisoners of war to help Germany’s labor shortage involved increasing concerns about miscegenation (crimes of intercourse, or GeschlechtsverkehrVerbrechen). In compliance with Nazi

racial politics, Jewish prostitutes were entirely banned, and, after a special order by Himmler in 1940, brothels employing non-German prostitutes for foreign laborers were established throughout Germany to protect “racial purity.” Brothels in concentration camps, for either the SS or male prisoners, constituted another component of Nazi statecontrolled prostitution. After his visit to the Mauthausen camp, Himmler issued instructions in 1942 to have brothel visits be part of the special bonus system for industrious prisoners. By the summer of 1944, brothels had been set up in eight major concentration camps (including Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, and Dachau), where sex was used as a key incentive to stimulate productivity among male laborers. Selected female prisoners were either forced to work in these brothels or convinced to volunteer by false promises of early release. Most of these women, if they had not contracted STDs before, after a few months were replaced by other prisoners and sent back to the camps or to die in the gas chambers. Antonia Levy See also: Forced Prostitution; Nazi Slavery; Prostitution.

Further Readings Bleuel, Hans Peter. Sex and Society in Nazi Germany. Philadelphia: J. P. Lippincott, 1973. Bock, Gisela. “Keine Arbeitskräfte in diesem Sinne: Prostituierte im NaziStaat.” In “Wir sind Frauen wie andere

Nazi Slavery auch!”: Prostitutierte und ihre Kämpfe, ed. Pieke Biermann, 70–106. Hamburg: Reinbek, 1980. Gless, Sabine. Die Reglementierung von Prostitution in Deutschland. Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 1999. Grossmann, Atina. Reforming Sex: The German Movement for Birth Control and Abortion Reform. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Herzog, Dagmar. “Hubris and Hypocrisy, Incitement and Disavowal: Sexuality and German Fascism.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 11, nos. 1–2 (January–April 2002): 3–21. Paul, Christa. Zwangsprostitution: Staatlich errichtete Bordelle im Nationalsozialismus. Berlin: Edition Hentrich, 1994. Roos, Julia. “Backlash against Prostitutes’ Rights: Origins and Dynamics of Nazi Prostitution Policies.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 11, nos. 1–2 (January–April 2002): 67–94. Schikorra, Christa. “Prostitution weiblicher KZ-Häftlinge als Zwangsarbeit.” Dachauer Hefte 16 (November 2000): 112–124. Zürn, Gaby. “Von der Herbertstraße nach Auschwitz.” In Opfer und Täterinnen: Frauenbiographien des Nationalsozialismus, ed. Angelika Ebbinghaus, 91–101. Nördlingen: Greno-Verlag, 1987.

Nazi Slavery Forced labor proved to be fundamental to the Nazi regime. Initially devised as a means to humiliate Jews, during the course of World War II, economic circumstances prompted German government officials and military leaders to implement more elaborate, coercive, and dehumanizing forms of

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enslavement. After the war, the victorious Allied powers prosecuted select individuals for these human rights violations, but justice eluded many of the victims until quite recently, when a compensation fund was established by the German government. Upon seizing power in 1933, the Nazis advocated using manual labor to instill their core values and punish their enemies. Over time, these principles hardened into an elaborate system of forced labor. Three forms of forced labor were employed by the Nazis during their reign: foreign workers (Fremdarbiter) were conscripted often through brutal tactics to meet labor shortages; prisoners of war were pressed into service after 1942; and Jews and other concentration camp prisoners were utilized by the state and corporations from Germany and the United States. The massive system involved more than 8 million forced laborers by the end of the war, including nearly 2 million prisoners of war and 700,000 from concentration camps, and comprised 20 percent of the German workforce. Underlying each of these forms of enslavement was an explicit racial hierarchy that identified the Germans as representatives of the master race. Distinctions were made between workers conscripted from Western Europe and those deported from Poland and the Soviet Union (Ostarbiter), who were deemed subhuman. Similarly, Jews were defined as representatives of an inferior alien race, unworthy of the same treatment due Europeans. The

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Nazi Slavery

treatment of forced laborers directly followed from their position within this racial hierarchy. Eastern Europeans were segregated, treated more harshly, worked harder, and placed in more dangerous situations than were their counterparts from Western Europe. An estimated 10 percent of all Ostarbiter died during the war. Worse still were the circumstances of Jews who were already the targets of extermination. Following the invasion of Poland in 1939, forced labor emerged as a means to marginalize and take advantage of Jews, requiring compulsory service of men and women, aged 14 to 60. As the Nazi campaign against European

Jewry escalated, moving from segregation and dispossession to confinement and deportation, the German leadership thought of them primarily as a pollutant and scourge. Then, in the face of economic pressures, Nazi officials began to weave together production and annihilation, first capitalizing on Jewish labor before killing them, and then sparing the lives of able-bodied Jews who would systematically be worked to death. In 1940, the Nazis began establishing labor camps, to which Jewish men between 19 and 40 years of age were ordered to report. By the end of the war, they had founded 437 such camps. These labor camps often

Guards beat a prisoner at the Poniatowa labor camp in Poland. The Nazis used Jewish prisoners transferred from the Warsaw Ghetto as forced labor for textile factories at Poniatowa. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Zydowski Instytut Historyczny, courtesy of Jerzy Tomaszewski)


were associated with the ghettos from which they built their labor force, and some ghettos, such as Lodz, literally were transformed into massive forced labor camps. Moreover, subcamps within several concentration camps, like Auschwitz and Buchenwald, were dedicated exclusively to slave labor. In 1942, the German authorities expanded the pool of available slave labor, designating other groups of prisoners, namely Gypsies and petty criminals, for destruction through work. The SS, through its Economic and Administrative Main Office, arranged to place slave laborers in factories run by German and U.S. corporations at minimal cost to ensure that they could continue meeting the needs of the war effort despite labor shortages. Among these private enterprises were multinational giants like Krupps and I. G. Farben, as well as the German divisions of Ford and General Motors. Conditions within the camps and the factories were less than human and the demands onerous, leading to premature death, disability, chronic illness, and other health problems. The forced laborers were worked so hard and fed so poorly that the number of conscripted workers dropped from nearly 700,000 in 1940 to 100,000 just three years later. Although trials after the war held some corporate leaders and government officials responsible, many corporations in Germany and the United States eluded justice for decades. In fact, it was only after tireless campaigning by advocacy groups that victims

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were first recognized and more recently compensated from a $5 billion reparations fund established by German corporations and overseen by the German government. C. Richard King Further Readings Allen, Michael Thad. The Business of Genocide: The SS, Slave Labor, and the Concentration Camps. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. Ferencz, Benjamin B. Less than Slaves: Jewish Forced Labor and the Quest for Compensation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002.

Nevinson, Henry Woodd (1856–1941) Henry Nevinson helped publicize the inequities of the forced labor trade from Angola to São Tomé and Principe in the early 1900s. Born in Leicester, England, Henry Woodd Nevinson was among the foremost war correspondents and foreign affairs journalists of his time. After graduating from Oxford University in 1879, he commenced a long career as a writer, publishing literary biographies, essays, travelogues, and memoirs in addition to current affairs. He displayed a notable literary talent in reporting on numerous conflicts of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Nevinson also achieved renown as an ardent supporter of progressive causes, including free speech, pacifism, and

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especially women’s suffrage; he eventually turned from liberalism to join the fledgling Labour Party. Devotion to humanitarian issues helped focus his attention on the labor question in Portugal’s African colonies. In the 1890s and 1900s the island colony of São Tomé and Principe was among the world’s leading cocoa producers, generating hefty earnings for both planters and British chocolate manufacturers. The plantations sought workers from Angola after Portugal abolished slavery in 1875. Legally they were ill-paid contract laborers (servicaes), but as captives from raids deep in the interior, they were slaves in all but name. In 1876–1914 the islands imported about 120,000 workers, perhaps 3,000 to 4,000 per year. Tropical diseases, especially malaria and sleeping sickness, caused horrendous mortality, averaging 20 percent annually; survivors were automatically recontracted with no provision for repatriation to Angola. The ongoing flow of captives to Angolan sugar plantations and the cocoa islands eventually attracted the concern of philanthropists and humanitarians, who pressured chocolate firms and the British government to seek reforms by Portugal. As part of this campaign Nevinson accepted an assignment from Harper’s Monthly to report on the contract labor system. From Dec. 16, 1904, to July 2, 1905, he traveled extensively on the mainland and islands, closely observing work conditions and undertaking arduous journeys along the historic slave-trade routes from interior to

coast, including a harrowing passage through Angola’s dreaded “Hungry Country.” These travels severely debilitated him due to illness and an apparent attempt by hostile Portuguese to poison him, but Nevinson returned to Britain with a mass of incriminating evidence about labor abuses. Nevinson publicized his findings through speaking engagements and in a series of articles for the Fortnightly Review and Harper’s, later expanded to book length. But actual reforms came slowly. Planters and officials fiercely contested this adverse publicity, and Britain hesitated to press Portugal on the matter, even though some Portuguese abolitionists also protested. While some British chocolate firms boycotted São Tomé cocoa from 1909, Cadbury, a major purchaser (ironically, owned by a family of Quakers, the Protestant denomination most associated with abolitionism), resisted the boycott until they secured access to cocoa from the Gold Coast (Ghana) by 1914. Ultimately, diplomacy, publicity and economic pressure impelled Portugal to require island planters to repatriate workers, and Angolan planters themselves sought to retain laborers for their own use. But continued use of coerced labor from Angola bolstered cocoa profits well into the 1920s. A Modern Slavery (1906) was Henry Nevinson’s most enduring contribution to antislavery. It is a curious but compelling mix of factual reportage, ignorance, shrewd insight, and prejudice (for instance, the author naively accepted hearsay about African


“cannibals”). But the core of the work, documenting the plight of slaves on the march and at work on plantations, is irrefutable and has lost little of its power to inspire sympathy and outrage. It is an abolitionist classic, reprinted in the 1960s and 2000s and sadly still relevant in the 21st century. Thomas Pyke Johnson Further Readings Clarence-Smith, W. G. “Cocoa Plantations and Coerced Labor in the Gulf of Guinea, 1870–1914.” In Breaking the Chains, ed. M Klein. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993. Grant, Kevin. A Civilised Savagery: Britain and the New Slaveries in Africa, 1884– 1926. New York: Routledge, 2005. John, Angela V. War, Journalism and the Shaping of the Twentieth Century: The Life and Times of Henry W. Nevinson. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2006. Nevinson, Henry W. A Modern Slavery. New York: Schocken Books reprint, 1968.

Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) An important development of the 20th century has been the emergence of voluntary nonstate actors known as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), many of which are working together to abolish modern slavery. The term “nongovernmental organization” was originally used to describe the status of several independent organizations that served as consultants to the United

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Nations Economic and Social Council. Although this term was first coined 60 years ago, there are nongovernmental organizations such as Anti-Slavery International (ASI) founded in the 19th century that are actively involved in modern antislavery campaigns. It is difficult to quantify accurately the exact number of NGOs involved in the antislavery movement. The passage of several United Nations treaties and conventions concerning slavery, such as the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the Convention on the Abolition of Slavery (1956), the International Labour Organization (ILO) conventions on forced labor (1957) and child labor (1999), and the most recent UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (2000) have all been important catalysts in the growth of these independent organizations in the second half of the 20th century. These organizations have evolved over time, and there is now evidence of an increasing specialization within the NGO community among those groups focusing on abolishing modern slavery. Several NGOs are campaigning against specific forms of slavery, such as bonded labor, chattel slavery, forced domestic service, and forced agricultural labor. Other organizations, like Sweatshop Watch, are working to end the deplorable working conditions that exist in some factories. The Coalition against Trafficking in Women (CATW) focuses on the enslavement of certain groups such as women and children for sexual exploitation, and the South Asian Coalition on Child

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Servitude (SACCS) fights against child labor. Other NGOs have a geographical focus, such as the Coalition against Slavery in Sudan and Mauritania (CASMAS) or ECPAT (formerly End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism), which originally concentrated on Asia but now has an international focus. In an era of economic globalization, it is not only the flow of goods and money that is increasing, but also the number of people who are trafficked across borders. This forced migration of enslaved peoples within and between countries has meant that practically every world region has been affected by this global phenomenon. As a result, this has required cooperation at the international, regional, and national levels. Many NGOs are working together across borders in a transnational activist network to fight modern slavery with other members as part of a global civil society. NGOs have joined forces with international organizations like the United Nations, regional actors such as the European Union, and government officials in origin, transit, and destination countries. Their goals are the same: to protect victims’ human rights, to punish criminals, and to persuade policymakers to eradicate all forms of modern slavery. NGOs have adopted a variety of strategies to achieve their goals, such as promoting awareness, providing training and assistance, and advocating for the rights of victims. Nongovernmental organizations have initiated several awareness campaigns to draw

attention to their antislavery efforts by participating in several UN-sponsored conferences, such as the World Women’s conferences, the World Conference on Human Rights, and special sessions of the UN General Assembly. These international conferences have provided NGOs with numerous opportunities to exchange information and to strengthen their alliances. At the national and local levels, they have worked to educate citizens, legislators, and law enforcement personnel about the scope and horrors of the slavery problem within their regions. NGOs play a key role in monitoring and reporting slavery cases as well as publicizing and disseminating information on effective practices used in other countries to combat slavery. They have developed and broadcast media campaigns on local radio and television stations to alert such potential victims as women, children, and villagers and to warn potential victimizers. Many organizations provide counseling, medical, and legal assistance to victims; however, the most controversial assistance used by some NGOs has been slave redemption, where a slave’s freedom is purchased from the slave owners. Lastly, NGOs have also been important human rights advocates in their campaign to abolish modern slavery. NGOs have also directly lobbied politicians to promote policies to protect victims’ rights and to punish slave owners in their countries. When such efforts have not been effective, they have called on the assistance of NGOs


in other states to apply indirect political pressure to prosecute criminals. Leslie Fadiga-Stewart See also: Anti-Slavery International (ASI); Coalition against Trafficking in Women (CATW); ECPAT; South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude (SACCS); Sweatshop Watch.

Further Readings Bales, Kevin. Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Keck, Margaret E., and Kathryn Sikkink. Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998. Smith, Jackie, Charles Chatfield, and Ron Pagnucco, eds. Transnational Social Movements and Global Politics: Solidarity Beyond the State. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997.

North Africa, Abolition in Abolition of the slave trade in North Africa occurred piecemeal, elements of the slave trade effectively suppressed as early as 1816 and some continuing well into the 20th century. While export slavery diminished considerably under pressure from European and Ottoman powers, domestic slavery, which could be conducted privately, persisted throughout North Africa. The slave populations involved were diverse; historically, North Africa was the center of the oriental trade in slaves. Slaves

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trafficked through North Africa were “white” Christian Europeans from the Mediterranean region and “black” pagan Africans, but only very rarely “white” Circassians and Georgians, who generally traveled the Black Sea route. Located from west to east on the southern Mediterranean coast, the countries we now know as Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt were motivated in banning the slave trade or in forestalling abolition by various cultural and economic considerations. Among the motivations for action or inaction were threats of foreign or imperial intervention, diplomatic and trade advantages, local and religious custom, the importance of slaves as domestic and agricultural workers, and the revenue generated from slave-trading markets and ports. Historically, Europeans from the Mediterranean region and Africans from the Gold Coast, the Sahara, and the Sudan comprised the major human commodities for North African Muslim slave traders. International trade for European countries depended on access to the Mediterranean Sea, and, centuries before 15th-century Europeans initiated the Atlantic slave trade in Africans, the Muslim states of Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli trafficked in European, as well as African slaves, both for domestic use and for sale in the east. According to Muslim law, or sharia, which sanctioned servitude, those who did not conform to Islam, those without peace treaties, and those forcibly defeated in accordance

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with the rules of jihad (or holy war) were all subject to enslavement.

Mediterranean Christian Slavery and Abolition Mediterranean slaves came from nearly every part of Europe, acquired as prisoners in open warfare, by corsair (pirate) raiding in coastal regions, on merchant shipping, and by shipwreck. From the Middle Ages, both France and Spain had encouraged friars of their Trinitarian and Mercedarian Orders, respectively, to negotiate the ransom or redemption of Christian Europeans. Some historians claim that as many as a million Europeans were subjected to North African or Turkish slavery, but the numbers have always been far lower than those for the oriental traffic in black Africans. With the expansion of international trade in the 16th century, most European countries involved in Mediterranean trade and, later, the United States, endeavored to limit the enslavement of seafaring nationals in North Africa by means of treaties with the individual states or with the Ottoman Empire, which, for many years, exerted direct or nominal control over Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, and Egypt. Not all treaties specifically denied North African states the right to enslave Europeans, but even when they did, European and American nationals were sometimes captured and sold. Narratives about European servitude became popular among the reading public; some publications describing Englishmen in North African bondage

include A True Description and Breefe Discourse, of a Most Lamentable Voiage, Made Latelie to Tripolie in Barbarie . . . Set Foorth by Thomas Saunders (1587), Francis Knight’s A Relation of Seaven Yeares Slaverie under the Turkes of Argeire . . . (1640), and Simon Ockley’s edition of An Account of South-West Barbary Containing What Is Most Remarkable in the Territories of the King of Fez and Morocco. Written by a Person Who had been a Slave (1713). Famous captives include the Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) and the French priest and reformer Vincent de Paul (1581?–1660), who was later sanctified, as well innumerable naval and military officers. Except for women inducted into seraglios (harems) or sailors and artisans detained for their valuable technical skills, the period of bondage was often brief—an average of about five years. Although many perished in North African galleys and public works projects, some slaves were ransomed, redeemed, or exchanged for Muslim prisoners; some escaped, making their own way home; and some converted to Islam, thus securing their own freedom. From 1580 to 1680, the total number of Europeans held captive at any one time in North Africa probably amounted to about 35,000, with the numbers declining thereafter. After the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade by several European nations and the United States, Britain, in particular, turned its attention to the abolition of the Mediterranean-Christian slave trade. In 1814, British Admiral William


Sidney Smith stepped up to champion the end of Christian slavery by demanding military action against the corsair states of North Africa. Smith founded an international charity to finance the effort, naming it the Society of Knights Liberators of the White Slaves in Africa. His mission was forestalled, however, by the pivotal bombardment of Algiers by Britain’s Lord Exmouth in 1816, which freed the remaining 3,000 or so Christians held in Algiers and across North Africa. After Exmouth’s military intervention, the North African states generally capitulated to their European and American trading partners by signing treaties that included nonenslavement clauses. Moreover, the British and American navies spearheaded military efforts to enforce compliance. The northern Circassian trade to eastern markets continued unabated, with a large influx of agricultural slaves in the 1860s. The Ottoman Porte was reluctant to interfere, but by the 1890s only a few women of slave status were acquired for harem service, and the institution of Circassian slavery in Islamic culture gradually died out.

Abolition of the African Trade The abolition of the African slave trade in North Africa was more difficult to accomplish than the abolition of the white slave trade. From the mid-17th to the mid-18th century, some 10,000 Africans were sold into enslavement annually, destined for labor in various parts of North Africa, the Ottoman

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Empire, and Arabia. Attempts to end this commerce came from Europe and from the Ottoman Porte, but most official declarations to end the slave trade or slavery itself had no provisions for enforcement. Humanitarian efforts, whether prompted by antislavery zeal or diplomatic and trade considerations, came from the east and west. Efforts from the east included several 19thcentury Ottoman edicts; the most important of these are the Ferman of 1847, which attempted to prohibit the African export trade to Asia and censured the involvement of government officials, and the Ferman of 1857, which gave legal and moral authority to the Ottoman abolition of the trade. Despite its domestic adherence to antislavery, the Turkish government was able to exert very little pressure to ensure that its satellites conformed. However, the 1880 Convention for the Suppression of the Slave Trade between Britain and Egypt gave Britain the right to search Ottoman ships and to seize contraband slaves, a power that allowed Britain to act as the international enforcer throughout the Mediterranean region. In the west, Britain persuaded the United States and all the major European maritime powers, except France, to sign treaties outlawing the slave trade, and it promoted the right of each state to search the others’ shipping. However, even when backed up by naval power, such treaties often proved a hindrance to slave traffickers rather than a true impediment. Humanitarian concern for slaves continued to have an effect in official circles, but once North Africa was

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partitioned by the colonial powers, reform was frequently nominal rather than actual. Between 1890 and 1919, the European powers established several agencies to oversee the end of slavery. The Brussels Conference of 1889 declared slavery criminal. The resulting Brussels Act of 1890 reaffirmed that the welfare of Africans susceptible to enslavement was an international responsibility and required the signatories to prevent slave raiding and trafficking, to repatriate or resettle freed or escaped slaves, and to curtail arms dealing in slaving areas. While this act actually facilitated colonialism and the further exploitation of Africa under the guise of antislavery legislation, it also created two international bureaus—one in Zanzibar and the other in Brussels—to maintain records of slave trafficking and antislavery legislation by the signatories. These offices, however, had no provisions for enforcing antislavery policies except by resort to public opinion. Between 1892 and 1914, all the colonial powers attempted to reduce large-scale slave raiding and trading, including the export of slaves from Africa, but none was successful in imposing an immediate end to the institution of slavery. By 1919, the League of Nations agreed to suppress slavery in all its forms, but little was accomplished until the British Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society, piloted by John Harris (1874–1940), lobbied the league to promote effective antislavery measures. Even Britain, which complacently regarded itself as the world’s

emancipator, ducked the issue of slavery in its own colonies. Spurred by Harris’s agitation, the league appointed the Temporary Slavery Commission of 1925–1925 to inquire into slavery worldwide, and the Slavery Convention of 1926 became the first international body with a specific mandate to end slavery. This treaty remains in force today. Other committees were convened and discussion about slavery and other forms of forced labor continued, but chattel slavery was legally abolished only on a countryby-country basis, the last capitulation coming in 1970—although slavery is not, even now, completely eradicated. Anti-Slavery International, a contemporary agency dedicated to eradicating slavery, monitors continuing incidents, including small-scale European domestic, agricultural, and sex slavery; Asian child and sex slavery; and Sudanese slavery, which recently erupted as a result of military conflicts and famine. Perhaps tens of thousands of Sudanese children and adults have been snatched as war booty from their homes in the south and transported north, to work for Islamic owners. Many international policies have lacked effective enforcement procedures, relying on the integrity of the signatories, who, often enough, had other interests to pursue. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, most of North Africa came directly into French control during this period of legislation about and oversight of slavery, and French colonials were more interested in preserving local rights and peaceful


coexistence than in pursuing the humanitarian agenda of abolition.

Abolition of the African Trade in Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco France acquired these territories in the 19th and early 20th centuries, although, for hundreds of years previously, Portugal and Spain had controlled vital ports and maintained a military presence across North Africa. Algeria (the nation that emerged from the city-state of Algiers) fell to French control in 1830. The actual number of African slaves in 19th-century Algeria is not known, but they were a significant factor in the economy. In the lands along the Mediterranean coast, slaves were mainly employed in agriculture, and in the Sahara region to the south, slaves worked in date production, the construction and maintenance of irrigation systems, and herding. From 1844, the local French bureaucracies— les Bureaux arabes—were set up to administer local populations, and these authorities became responsible for implementing emancipation when the 1848 French imperial law that abolished slavery took effect. French administrators in Algeria viewed the prospective emancipation of slaves with skepticism, for abolition would not only affect the revenues arising from the trans-Saharan caravans (which were subsidized by slave trading) but also the support of the Arabs who would resent the loss of personal wealth tied up in slaves. In 1857, 1858, and 1887, governmental

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circulars insisted—without result—on the implementation of abolition, even though, in 1880, France decreed that the relationship between a slave and his owner would no longer be recognized by law. Algerian, Moroccan, and Tunisian slaves learned to flee from their owners to regions controlled by the French authority in Algeria in search of emancipation, but only in 1906 did the president of the French Republic issue a decree on the illegal character of the slave trade in Algeria. As a consequence, slavery declined but did not cease altogether. Like Algeria, Tunisia (the nation emerging from the city-state of Tunis) had also been a satellite of the Ottoman Empire since the end of the 16th century. However, the Husseinic dynasty founded in 1705 was able to assert a good deal of autonomy for more than 100 years. Sandwiched between Algeria, which fell to France in 1830, and Tripolitania (now Libya), which was reclaimed by the Ottomans in 1836, the Tunisian ruler, Ahmad Bey (1837– 1855), favored European protection over Ottoman submersion, and he initiated a number of reforms to modernize Tunisia. Tunisia was not a major slave trading country, and, persuaded by Britain and protected by its naval force, the Bey abolished slavery in Tunisia in 1846. However, his successor, Muhammad Bey (1855–1859) reversed the law, claiming that slavery was an integral part of Muslim tradition. Crisis during the reign of Muhammad alSadiq (1859–1882), who carried on the process of modernization, drew Tunisia

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into a series of economic and social reversals, which led to Tunisia’s realliance with the Ottomans in 1871. The Bey soon severed this tie, but, several years later, Britain traded its de facto protection of a highly vulnerable but independent Tunisia for French acquiescence in the British administration of Cyprus. Tunisia was reduced to a French protectorate in 1883. As such, it was subject to French imperial law, with its lax enforcement policies regarding abolition. An empire in its own right from the time of Ahmad al-Mansour (d. 1603), Morocco was a Muslim state accustomed to slaving revenues from both the “white” and “black” trades. From al-Mansour’s time, the empire included the Songhay (a once powerful empire in the Sahel region immediately south of Morocco), which provided a rich source of both gold and slaves who were routinely trafficked through Morocco and across North Africa to the east. Moroccans also used slaves domestically in households, in agriculture, in the military, and in public works. The Ottoman edicts had no effect in Morocco, and the slave trade, traditionally conducted either privately or in open markets in most of the major cities, was not abolished until the end of the 19th century, when the sultan succumbed to European pressures. However, the Moroccan historian Ahmad al-Na¯sira¯ assisted in creating abolitionist sentiment by a strong indictment of slavery in his History of the Maghrib (1881), in which he argued that Islamic law was broken by

the enslavement of Africans who were, for the most part, already Muslim. Britain protected Morocco from European colonization by supporting its nineteenth-century sultans, some of whom attempted to impose reform along modern European lines, but Britain finally ceded Morocco to the French in 1912 in return for a free hand in Egypt. In the French Protectorate of Morocco, the series of laws for the abolition of slavery enacted by the French government had little effect until 1925, when a law was passed that explicitly prohibited slavery. Even then, there was no sudden end to slavery, and freed slaves and their former masters continued to relate to each other in substantially the same manner.

Abolition of the African Trade in Libya Libya, previously known as Tripolitania, developed in the region of the port of Tripoli, and spread as far as the western border of Egypt. It was under Ottoman domination from 1551 until 1722. With sparse agricultural development and a comparatively low population, Tripolitania had little domestic demand for slaves. Thus, most of the Africans transported along the northern route from the Sudan and Morocco or along the trans-Saharan slave routes were exported to the east; indeed Tripoli was a major slave outlet from the late 16th century onward. After 1722, the country was ruled by a hereditary sultanate, which continued to facilitate the slave


trade until 1835, when the Ottomans invaded and resumed control. Current estimates place the total traffic at about 784,000 African slaves between the years 1550 to 1857, when the Ottomans abolished the slave trade. Ottoman prohibition in Tripolitania proved itself somewhat effective; a major influence on abolition was the dreadful deaths in 1849 of 1,600 slaves and the slave merchants who accompanied them when they crossed the desert from Bornu to Fezzan, an event that spurred the British government to urge the Ottoman Porte to take steps to prevent the recurrence of such suffering. As a result, the Porte required the governor of Tripoli to monitor slave trading more carefully, although he was not commissioned to prohibit slave imports altogether. Yet, after the 1857 edict, Tripolitanian governors did attempt to end raids and to repatriate enslaved Africans. Until that point, perhaps twothirds of the caravan trade across the Sahara involved slaves. Owing to Ottoman abolitionist measures, British pressure, and the spread of French imperial power in Africa, which removed important slave catchment areas from predation, by 1869 the numbers of slaves in transit had dropped substantially. This suppression of trafficking along the traditional Tripoli route led, however, to increased traffic along the more arduous Algerian and Egyptian routes. Slaves were sold for domestic use in 20th-century Libya, even after the Italians expelled the Ottomans in 1911.

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Abolition of the African Trade in Egypt Egypt was sequentially subject to foreign powers with different slave policies. Mamluk Egypt fell to Ottoman domination in 1517, although the Mamluk Sultanate managed to regain control by the late 18th century. Curiously, throughout this period, the Ottomans strove to restrict the transportation of slaves for sale in Egypt. This restriction was not premised upon humanitarian principle but upon military pragmatism, a ploy to debilitate the Mamluks who relied on male slaves for their army. When the Ottomans restored direct rule in Egypt in 1786, they simultaneously prohibited any slave imports into Egypt, a prohibition that lasted through the French occupation (1789–1801) and into the AngloOttoman reoccupation that followed, and indeed, until the 1850s, when the Ottoman Empire abolished slavery. Of course, slaves were imported despite the ban, some entering Egypt overland when the Tripoli route was jeopardized by active policing of the slave trade, and some entering from the Sudan, especially after the Egyptian occupation in 1820. Slave trading that originated in the Sudan was difficult to suppress, but the slave markets in Khartoum were closed by 1864, and a river police patrol was established to track down traders’ boats and seize their slave cargoes. Meanwhile, Britain strove to abolish slavery within Egypt, but met with sustained religious resistance. Following

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the Convention for the Suppression of the Slave Trade between Britain and Egypt in 1877, abolition remained elusive. When Sir Evelyn Baring was appointed agent and consul general in Egypt in 1883, he did nothing to promote the cause of abolition, having concluded that slavery in Egypt did not exist by any act of the government but rather as a Muslim religious law, and, hence, could not be abrogated by legislative action. However, the British established manumission bureaus in Egypt, which emancipated any slave who applied, and by 1907, the institution was largely eradicated. Nevertheless, in 1907, Egypt established the Slavery Repression Department to ensure oversight of continuing slave trafficking in the north. Susan B. Iwanisziw See also: Muscat and Oman, Abolition of Slavery in; Sudan and South Sudan.

Colley, Linda. Captives. New York: Pantheon Books, 2002. Erden, Y. Hakan. Slavery and the Ottoman Empire and Its Demise, 1800–1909. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1996. Julien, Charles-Andre. History of North Africa. Ed. and trans. John Petrie, ed. C. C. Stewart. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970. Harris, Joseph E. The African Presence in Asia: Consequences of the East African Slave Trade. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1971. Miers, Suzanne, and Martin Klein, eds. Slavery and Colonial Rule in Africa. London: Frank Cass, 1999. Segal, Ronald. Islam’s Black Slaves: The Other Black Diaspora. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001. Snader, Joe. Caught Between Worlds: British Captivity Narratives in Fact and Fiction. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2000. Toledano, Ehud R. The Ottoman Slave Trade and Its Suppression, 1840–1890. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982.

Further Readings Barbour, Nevill. “Northwest Africa from the 15th to 19th Centuries.” In The Last Great Muslim Empires, ed. Hans J. Kisling et al. Princeton: Markus Weiner Publishers, 1969, pp. 97–147. Bennett, Norman. “Christian and Negro Slavery.” Journal of African History 1, no. 1 (1960): 65–82. “Children in Sudan: Slaves, Street Children and Child Soldiers.” Human Rights Watch, September 1995. http://www. hrw.org.reports/1995/Sudan.htm. Accessed September 16, 2004. Clissold, Stephen. Barbary Slaves. London: P. Elek, 1977.

NUPI NUPI (Norsk Utenrikspolitisk Institutt, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs) was set up in 1959 by the Norwegian Parliament, Stortinget. With a respectable 50 years of existence, it is Norway’s leading independent center for research and information on international political and economic issues, and on areas of central relevance to Norwegian foreign policy. NUPI is a semigovernmental research center which aims at “promoting a better

NUPI

understanding of international issues in Norway . . . to achieve this by undertaking a wide range of research activities and by disseminating information on international issues,” and make relevant propositions. Being a relatively small nation, Norway relies strongly on firm and open ties with the rest of the world. Accordingly, the knowledge about international affairs and the continuously developing world market is an essential requirement for the shaping of both Norway’s foreign and domestic policies. NUPI spreads reliable information, generates concepts and makes recommendations on a wide range of political and economic issues. NUPI’s considerable international esteem is rooted in its contributions for improving the situation in north-south relations, addressing socioeconomic conditions in some of the less developed countries, more particularly in the sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia regions, and for reconciliation in grave protracted conflicts, as in Uganda. Child labor in sub-Saharan Africa is also among the topics of interest. Thoroughly examining the phenomenon, NUPI offered a clear definition of it, thus facilitating its legal tackle. The impacts of population growth, high fertility, education, and the supply and demand for child labor are addressed

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and analyzed. Some of the issues discussed are rural child labor, particularly in family farms, child workers in cities, child migration, street children, and child labor in the formal sector. The year 2009 marked the organization’s anniversary with a largescale international conference in Oslo on 21 January, entitled “A Brave New Order—Multipolar Conflict or Multilateral Cooperation?,” which included presentations by Kofi Annan, Jeffrey Sachs, Lakhdar Brahimi, and Sergey A. Karaganov. NUPI’s annual budget for 2009 was $10.9 million, a noteworthy increase by more than $2 million in three years during a global financial crisis. NUPI’s staff of 75 people includes research fellows, administrative/support employees, as well visiting researchers, interns, and trainees. NUPI continues to publish an extensive number of books, papers, three journals—Internasjonal Politikk, Nordisk Østforum, and Forum for Development Studies—and conducts approximately 90 seminars and conferences annually. Stephan E. Nikolov Further Reading Norsk Utenrikspolitisk Institutt: http:// english.nupi.no/.

Slavery in the Modern World

Slavery in the Modern World A HISTORY OF POLITICAL, SOCIAL, AND ECONOMIC OPPRESSION Volume 2 : O–W

Junius P. Rodriguez, Editor

Copyright 2011 by ABC-CLIO, LLC All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rodriguez, Junius P. Slavery in the modern world : a history of political, social, and economic oppression / Junius P. Rodriguez. p. ; cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-1-85109-783-8 (hardcopy : alk. paper) · ISBN 978-1-85109-788-3 (ebook) 1. Slavery·History·20th century. 2. Slavery·History·21st century. I. Title. HT867.R63 2011 306.3'620904·dc23 2011019834 ISBN: 978-1-85109-783-8 EISBN: 978-1-85109-788-3 15

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1

2

3

4

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This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook. Visit www.abc-clio.com for details. ABC-CLIO, LLC 130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911 Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911 This book is printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America Every reasonable effort has been made to trace the owners of copyright materials in this book, but in some instances this has proven impossible. The editors and publishers will be glad to receive information leading to more complete acknowledgments in subsequent printings of the book and in the meantime extend their apologies for any omissions.

Contents


vii

ESSAYS

1


3


17


34


47


60

ENTRIES, A–N

69


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ENTRIES, O–W

435

DOCUMENTS

595

Index

829

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List of Entries

Anti-Slavery Award

„A School For Iqbal‰ Campaign ÂAbd Abolition of Slavery Act Abolitionism Abolitionism, British Abolitionism and Prostitution AboriginesÊ Protection Society Action pour le Changement Addams, Jane Adoption of Children Ordinance Law Afghanistan African Network for the Prevention and Protection against Child Abuse and Neglect (ANPPCAN) African Squadrons Agnivesh, Swami Ahmad, Muhammad Ahmed, Zafaryab Al-Diein Massacre Alexander II Alien Tort Claims Act All Pakistan Brick Kiln Owners Association (APBKA) American Anti-Slavery Group (AASG) Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society (ASAPS)

Anti-Slavery International Anti-Slavery Society Antislavery and Labor Movements Arana, Julio César Asia Monitor Resource Center (AMRC) Asian Migrant Center (AMC) Asian-American Free Labor Institute (AAFLI) Asociacion De Trabajadora Autónomas „22 De Junio‰ de El ORO Australia Baker, Samuel White Barya Beria, Lavrenty Pavlovich Berlin Conference Bhagwati, P. N. Bhatta Mazdoor Mohaz (BMM) Bok, Francis Piol Bol Bonded Labor Bonded Labour Liberation Front (BLLF) Brazil vii

viii |

List of Entries

Bride-Price Broad Meadows Middle School Brussels Act Burma Burma Peace Foundation Burma Project/Southeast Asia Initiative Buxton, Thomas Fowell Cadet, Jean-Robert Cambodia Campaign for Migrant Domestic WorkersÊ Rights Cane Harvesters Cardoso, Fernando Henrique Cariye

Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Women and Children Convention of Saint Germain-en-Laye Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) Convention on the Rights of the Child Convict Leasing Côte dÊIvoire Cotton, Samuel L. Cox, Caroline COYOTE Czech Republic

Casement, Sir Roger

Debt Slavery

Cash Crops Caste


Central Asia


Charcoal


Chattel Slavery Child Labor Child Labor Coalition Child Prostitution Child Rights Information Network (CRIN)

Devadasi Doe v. Unocal Domestic Workers Dominican Republic Douglass, Frederick

Child Soldiers


Children



ECPAT




The Enlightenment


Concubines Convention against the Worst Forms Of Child Labour

False Adoption Fanon, Frantz

List of Entries


Indonesia


Industrial Revolution

Fishing Platforms


Forced Prostitution


Foreign Aid France Free the Slaves Freedom Network (USA) Gabon Garrison, William Lloyd Garvey, Marcus Germany Green Revolution

International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women of Full Age



Haile Selassie I


Haiti Hak Sun, Kim Haratine Hardenburg, Walter Ernest Hassaniya-Berbers Huerta, Dolores Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) Human Rights Day Human Trafficking for Labor Purposes Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation Ibn Saud, Abdul Aziz Illegal Migration Incest

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International Day for the Abolition of Slavery International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and Its Abolition International Labour Organization (ILO) International Needs International Organization for Migration International Program on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) Jim Crow Laws Just War Theory and Slavery

India

Khan, Ehsan Ullah



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List of Entries

Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan


Kosoko, Oba

Omona, George

Land Reform Latin America, Antislavery and Abolition in

NUPI

Organized Crime and Slavery Oxfam International Palermo Protocol


Pandit, Vidyullata

League of Nations

Pandit, Vivek


Pastoral Land Commission (CPT)

Leopold II

Peonage

Lim, Janet


Lincoln, Abraham

Peshgi

Macías Nguema, Francisco Mauritania Mexico Migrant Workers Model Business Principles Morel, Edmund Dene Movement to Abolish Prostitution and Pornography (MAPP)

The Philippines Plessy v. Ferguson Pornography and Children Prison Labor Prisoners of War Prostitution Protection Project

Mui Tsai




NAACP Resolution to Combat Modern-Day Slavery

Restavek

Reparations Rezende Figueira, Ricardo


Sauckel, Fritz




Serfdom

Nazi Slavery

Servile Marriage




Sexual Abuse Sharecropping

List of Entries

Shoishab Shramajeevi Sanghatana

UNIFEM: WomenÊs Human Rights Programme






United Nations International ChildrenÊs Emergency Fund (UNICEF)


Spain State Law and Order Committee (SLORC)



United Nations Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery

Sudan Peace Act


Sudan PeopleÊs Liberation Movement/ Army

United States


Sudrat Srisang Survival International Sweatshop Watch

Universal Declaration of Human Rights Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (VTVPA) of 2000 Vidhayak Sansad

Thailand

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Thirteenth Amendment Tippu Tip

Wao-Afrique

Trafficking



White Slavery

Trokosi


Tubman, Harriet


Turabi, Hassan al-

World Bank

Ukraine




Undocumented Aliens


Entries, O–W

O resources, and that most children, given a protective and understanding environment, will go through a healing process.” GUSCO was established in response to slave-raiding expeditions that took place in northern Uganda as representatives of Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), one of the world’s most treacherous guerilla forces, kidnapped children to fight in the ongoing cycle of warfare that plagued the region for more than a decade. An estimated 8,000 children, some as young as six years of age have been forced into service as soldiers and forced to fight and kill in the name of the LRA. In many instances, companies of child soldiers aged 6 to 18 have been utilized as human shields to protect the very members of the LRA who stole them from their villages. Victimized and depersonified, the child soldiers become known as kidogo, Swahili for “little ones,” thus representing the loss of personal identity that stems from enslavement. Young girls are not immune to the danger of the slave raids. Captured Ugandan girls are forced into so-called marriages with older members of the LRA who treat the young girls as sexual slaves. For both the young boys and girls who survive this psychological trauma, the road to recovery is quite difficult.

Omona, George George Omona serves as the Uganda area program manager for the Agency for Cooperation and Research in Development (ACORD), a nongovernmental organization that supports ongoing human rights efforts in the Great Lakes region of East Africa. In addition to his work on behalf of ACORD, Omona has served since 1997 as the program coordinator for the Gulu Support the Children Organization (GUSCO), a human rights organization that has been liberating enslaved child soldiers and rehabilitating them since its formation in 1994. Anti-Slavery International (ASI), a London-based human rights organization, awarded its prestigious AntiSlavery Award to George Omona and GUSCO in 2000 for meritorious service to the children of northern Uganda. In recognizing Omona’s efforts, ASI acknowledged the valuable work of social reintegration that GUSCO has performed for thousands of children who were victimized both by slavery and by the savagery of war. In accepting the award on behalf of GUSCO, Omona acknowledged that “two principles guide the work at the centre: that children are perceived not as sick victims but as survivors with individual 437

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Organized Crime and Slavery

The social reintegration of former child soldiers into their families and communities is often strained by communal memory and circumstance. Many of the captive children were forced to participate in attrocities—often targeting their own family members or fellow villagers— while they were under the control of their LRA masters. GUSCO must do outreach with the community members as well as with the former child soldiers to ensure that rehabilitation and healing can occur. Omona’s work with GUSCO has been supported by other international nongovernmental organizations, most notably Red Barnet (Save the Children, Denmark), and has served as a model for what is possible. The United Nations estimates that today as many as 300,000 children may be forced into service as soldiers worldwide with onethird of these child soldiers residing in the nations of East Africa. Junius P. Rodriguez See also: Child Soldiers.

Further Readings Dunson, Donald H. 2002. “The Child Soldiers of GUSCO.” America 186, no. 2 (2002): 12–16. Omona, George, and Karen Elise Matheson. “Uganda: Stolen Children, Stolen Lives.” Lancet 351 (1998): 442.

Organized Crime and Slavery Organized crime refers to affiliations of criminal actors that are often

hierarchical in structure and operate in concert with some degree of violence and corruption, engaging in entrepreneurial illicit activities that sometimes extend into the legal economy. The United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (signed November 2000) defines an organized criminal group as a structured group of three or more persons existing for a period of time and acting together to commit one or more serious crimes or offenses to obtain, directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit. Organized criminal activity has traditionally involved money laundering, racketeering, smuggling of drugs and arms, and control of the commercial sex market. Contemporary organized crime is increasingly transnational as criminal activities cross national borders. Major organized crime groups include Italian and Russian mafia, Japanese yakuza, and Chinese Triad. The Medellin and Cali cartels of Colombia are notorious for their involvement in cocaine trade. Criminologist Phil Williams (1999) points out that organized crime traditionally has been involved in the supply of illicit goods and services. For more than 150 years organized criminal groups have been involved in the trafficking of women and children for commercial sexual purposes. Organized criminal groups have adapted to new demands to supply human beings as commodities for cheap or forced labor and controlled participants in the commercial sex trade.

Organized Crime and Slavery

In the 1990s the international community noticed the expansion of transnational organized crime. Contemporary organized criminal groups mimic legitimate commercial enterprises in structure and operation. Organized criminal groups today use advanced communication technology, are highly mobile and widely dispersed, and operate across borders. The UN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention launched in 1999 the Global Program against Trafficking in Human Beings in response to the growing involvement of criminal organizations in this practice of migrant smuggling and trafficking worldwide. The program conducts research on global human trafficking and smuggling and provides technical assistance projects to strengthen governmental responses to human trafficking. The role of organized criminal syndicates in the control of the international sex trade has gained considerable attention since the late 1990s. The International Labour Organization (2005) reports that powerful criminal organizations control the sex industry in many parts of the world and suggests patterns of recruitment in which women are deceived and coerced into working in prostitution, sex entertainment, and other activities in the sex industry. Due to the clandestine nature of organized criminal group involvement in human trafficking, reliable data on the magnitude of the problem are unavailable. The precise scope and extent of organized crime involvement in human trafficking and other modern-day slavery

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is unknown. There is, however, a growing body of research on the characteristics of organized criminal groups involved in human trafficking and their patterns of operation. Current research focuses on organized criminal groups such as Chinese snakeheads (people smugglers and traffickers), Eastern European mafia, and Latin American criminal syndicates that traffic women and children as well as drugs and weapons. In addition to drugs and arms smuggling, organized crime groups in areas of civil conflict (civil war, political transition, and so on) force young boys to be child soldiers, as in West Africa, and control forced prostitution rings, as in Albania (ILO, 2005, pp. 44, 56). General patterns of organized criminal group involvement in human trafficking include: •

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Employment agencies—victims are promised legitimate jobs, but are deceived upon arrival and forced into servitude; Fraudulent matchmaking or marriage brokering services;

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Smuggling operations that channel migrants to exploitative employers as a means to collect payment;

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Exploitation through forced begging, drug dealing, or prostitution.

Criminologists point out that organized criminal activity involves the illicit exploitation of business opportunities (legal and illegal), predominantly acting as supply organizations (Aronowitz, 2001, p. 171; Williams, 1999, p. 146). Organized criminal groups involved in trafficking

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persons operate in relationship to markets in which the value of trafficked labor or sexual services is at a premium (Williams, 1999, p. 153; Aronowitz, 2001, p. 172). Alexis Aronowitz (2001) identifies three basic markets which are profiting from trafficked persons: (1) legitimate or conventional low-wage labor markets (restaurants, factories, farms); (2) the legitimate domestic service economy (households employing maids or nannies); and (3) the licit and illicit economies of the sex industries (mainly prostitution, but also exotic dancing and pornography). Organized criminal involvement in modern-day slavery is not fully understood but seems to play a role in at least some forms of slavery, especially human trafficking. Steven Lize See also: Economic Globalization; Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation; Illegal Migration; International Organization for Migration; Prostitution.

Further Readings Aronowitz, Alexis. “Smuggling and Trafficking in Human Beings: The Phenomenon, the Markets That Drive It, and the Organisations That Promote It.” European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research 9 (2001): 153–165. International Labour Organization. A Global Alliance against Forced Labour. Geneva: International Labour Office, 2005. Available online at http://www.ilo.org/ declaration. O’Neill Richard, Amy. “International Trafficking in Women to the United States: A Contemporary Manifestation

of Slavery and Organized Crime.” Center for the Study of Intelligence monograph, April 2000. Williams, Phil. “Trafficking of Women and Children: A Market Perspective.” In Illegal Immigration and Commercial Sex: The New Slave Trade, ed. Phil Williams. Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1999.

Oxfam International A confederation was founded by 12 independent nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) from Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Great Britain, Hong Kong, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Quebec, Spain, and the United States in 1994. Its primary aims were to find lasting solutions to poverty, suffering, and injustice. The origin of this contemporary federation can be traced back to the creation of the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief in Oxford, England, in 1942. The committee raised funds for the victims of German occupation in Greece, and attempted to force the British government to provide vital supplies through the wartime blockade. The committee continued its relief activities across Europe during and after World War II. In 1949, the committee enlarged its objectives to help not only war victims but also victims of other causes in any part of the world. For example, the committee responded to the starvation in Bihar, India, by raising monetary support during the 1950s, and it helped the homeless, hungry, and orphans at the end of the Korean War. During this period, the committee’s activities and work transformed

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the organization from the local to the national and international level. Thus, the committee became known by its abbreviated telegraph address, Oxfam, formally adopted in 1965. During the 1960s and 1970s, with an aim of poverty alleviation in the world’s most impoverished communities, Oxfam decided to change its objectives and adopted new policy perspectives to tackle poverty. Thus, Oxfam became the most important part of the International Freedom from Hunger Campaign launched by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization at the beginning of 1960s. The campaign aimed not only to provide food aid against the periodic shortages but supported people to sustain themselves; not to be passive victims but to be active human beings with dignity. During the 1960s and 1970s, Oxfam developed new instruments to help the poor communities, such as technical support, education and information materials, and critical policy reports explaining consequences of the connections between developed and developing countries for the poor, fair trade shops, and waste-saver processes. In the 1970s, Oxfam’s policy against poverty was to include local people in decision making processes and community based participation. The principles of community involvement and control still conduct Oxfam’s work today. Oxfam’s policy in influencing national and international policy makers is

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conducted by its Public Affairs Unit. Oxfam Canada formed in the 1960s and was the first Oxfam outside the United Kingdom, and by 1970s, several other Oxfam branches had formed in different countries. During the 1980s and 1990s, Oxfam broadened its activities worldwide through cooperating with other relief organizations from several other countries. The emergency and rehabilitation support for civilians affected by the collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc were organized. In 1994, Oxfam International was formed by several relief and development agencies, and a “campaign for basic rights” was the first initiation that launched simultaneously in the United Kingdom, Ireland, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Uganda, and the United States. Today, Oxfam International seeks to increase worldwide public awareness that economic and social justice is crucial to sustainable development. The confederation strives to be a global campaigning force promoting the awareness and motivation that comes with global citizenship, while seeking to set an agenda in which equity is a priority of economic growth. Ozeem Sahin Further Reading Courtney, Roger. Strategic Management for Voluntary Nonprofit Organizations. New York: Routledge, 2001.

P transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.” The document further states that a person’s consent shall not change the criminal nature of the offense of trafficking. It also stipulates that “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of a child for the purpose of exploitation shall be considered ‘trafficking in persons’ ” under all circumstances, with “child” defined as any person who is less than 18 years of age. This document is a landmark, because there was no internationally accepted definition of trafficking prior to the Palermo Protocol. The means set forth in this definition make clear that the use of force or some form of coercion is necessary for trafficking to have occurred. This is notable because

Palermo Protocol (2003) The United Nations Convention on Transnational Organized Crime (2000) was accompanied by two optional protocols, the Optional Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air and the Optional Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children. The Trafficking Protocol is the first international law to address modern slavery, as earlier documents, including the 1949 Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Women and Children, focused not on slavery and trafficking but prostitution in general. The 1949 convention and the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) both condemn trafficking without defining the practice, thus promoting the conflation of trafficking with prostitution. The United Nations Optional Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, more widely known as the Palermo Protocol for having been signed in Palermo, Italy, December 2000, defined trafficking as: “ ‘Trafficking in persons’ shall mean the recruitment, transportation, 443

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during the negotiations on this protocol, two conflicting views came to dominate the discussion of the definition of trafficking in persons. At the heart of this controversy was whether prostitution was per se trafficking or a form of labor, and therefore whether force was a necessary component of trafficking into the sex industry. In the end, a note in the travaux préparatoires accompanying the protocol indicated that national governments should address the sex industry as they see fit under national law, stating that “the exploitation of the prostitution of others” and “sexual exploitation” are not defined in this document, and that the protocol is “without prejudice to how States Parties address prostitution in their respective domestic laws.” It is important to bear in mind that the mother convention and the optional protocols are law enforcement tools rather than documents promoting human rights, although trafficking and modern slavery are clear human rights violations. In the two optional protocols, smuggled migrants are criminals while trafficked persons are victims of crime. The official name, known as the Smuggling Protocol, addressed only the movement of persons across borders. This promotes a gendered view of smuggling and trafficking, in which smuggled persons choose to migrate illegally, and are generally perceived to be men, while the stereotype of a victim of trafficking is a young woman or a girl kidnapped and sold or forced into prostitution. In reality, smuggled and trafficked persons are generally ambitious

migrants who have contracted the services of others to help them cross borders and in the case of trafficked persons, whose migration process has gone awry, leading to grievous abuses of their human rights. Human rights protections are mentioned in paragraphs four through six, but ultimately, qualifying language like “in appropriate cases” exempted signatory states from being required to assist trafficked persons. A clear division of perspectives was evident between nations. States that perceived themselves as “sending nations,” whose nationals emigrate for work elsewhere and may therefore be at risk of trafficking, therefore wished to see strong human rights protections for their nationals in other countries. States that perceived themselves as “receiving nations,” where immigrants arrived looking for work in formal and informal channels were reluctant to guarantee such rights. Once poorer nations were confronted with the obligation to guarantee human rights for trafficked persons within their borders—and therefore to pay for these protections—they were no longer willing to include guarantees for a rights-based framework for trafficked persons. Privacy and confidentiality of legal proceedings are assured “in appropriate cases” as well as requiring, again “in appropriate cases” that victims obtain information relevant to their cases and to the courts, while promising assistance without judgment in presenting their concerns regarding their cases. This latter would necessarily include

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translation in a great number of cases. Unfortunately, this is not currently made available in many places. The discretionary language “in appropriate cases” effectively renders these clauses nonbinding. Paragraph 3 of Article 6 states that “Each State Party shall consider implementing measures to provide for the physical, psychological and social recovery of victims of trafficking in persons, including, in appropriate cases, in cooperation with nongovernmental organizations.” As it stands now, many trafficked persons are prosecuted either because law enforcement personnel do not understand their story or because they do not care to investigate this and prefer to deport illegal aliens. Melissa Ditmore See also: United Nations Trafficking Protocol.

Further Readings Ditmore, Melissa. “Trafficking in Lives: How Ideology Shapes Policy.” In Trafficking and Prostitution Reconsidered, ed. Kamela Kempadoo, Bandana Pattanaik, and Jyothi Sanghera. Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2005. Ditmore, Melissa, and Marjan Wijers. “The Negotiations on the UN Protocol on Trafficking in Persons: Moving the Focus from Morality to Actual Conditions.” Nemesis 4 (2003).

Pandit, Vidyullata (1957–) Vidyullata Pandit is the wife of Vivek Pandit, and they were the winners of the British Anti-Slavery Award for their relentless efforts to free bonded

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laborers. They have been struggling to implement India’s Bonded Labour System Abolition Act. In 1982, the Pandits worked to establish Shramajeevi Sanghatana, a trade union that works to release bonded laborers in India, and interestingly, not even a single laborer released has returned to bondage again. They have also created Vidhayak Sansad, a development agency founded in 1979, to ensure the rehabilitation of the freed bonded laborers who are now an estimated 1,500 in number. Vidyullata Pandit moved to the small Indian village of Dahisar with her husband to organize preschool classes, health care, and income projects. She discovered during that period that some young men were unable to join evening sports practices because they were not free to come. The young men were in bonded servitude and were working on repaying debts owed to the landlord for their marriages. Unfortunately, every one in the village’s tribal caste was a bonded laborer. This type of situation shocked her. Vidyullata Pandit and her husband have worked ever since to free debt slaves in India. Vidhayah Sansad, an organization that offers training and support to bonded laborers was founded by them, as was Shramajeevi Sanghatana, a union that organized bonded laborers to demand such basic human rights as freedom, the land upon which they have worked, a minimum wage, and schools for their children. These two organizations are grassroots partner organization out of 80 that the Unitarian Universalist Holdeen India Programme

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has supported with funding and organizational development over decades. To the credit of the Pandits, in recent years freed slaves helped by Holdeen partner groups have risen to leadership positions within their communities, a feat that is rare in the developing world. For example, in 2003, Anita Dhangda was elected as a district representative in Maharastra state, although she was born into a bonded family. Bonded labor is outlawed in India; nevertheless, at least 10 million people remain in bondage. Vidyullata Pandit has worked for more than 20 years with her husband to inform bonded laborers of the law and their rights. Pandit learned that social legislation by itself would not succeed to destroy slavery. Although powerful laws are important and useful, they have often remained on paper without an insistent and powerful voice to demand their implementation. Keshav Nankar, a freed bonded laborer who the Pandits helped liberate, is the executive director of Shramajeevi Sanghatana, and it gives immense satisfaction and the feeling of accomplishment to Vidyullata Pandit in her mission, being actively accompanied by her husband. Patit Paban Mishra See also: Bonded Labor; India; Pandit, Vivek; Shramajeevi Sanghatana.

Further Readings “Bitter Harvest.” UU World 18, no. 6 (November/December 2004): 34–35. http:// www.uuworld.org/2004/06/feature1b. html.

Zucchino, David. “Transforming the Lives of India’s Broken People.” UU World 15, no. 3 (July/August 2001): 18–27. http://www.uuworld.org/2001/03/feature1 .html.

Pandit, Vivek (1957–) Vivek Pandit and his wife Vidyullata Pandit are two contemporary human rights activists working in the Thane district of Maharastra, India, to free bonded laborers. They are the winners of the prestigious British Anti-Slavery Award from the London-based human rights organization Anti-Slavery International, awarded to deserving persons annually. Vivek Pandit, comes from a Brahmin family and was a student of law before he got involved in helping poor villagers through traditional incomegenerating projects. He possesses a good personality to win friendship and influence people due to his charisma, boundless strength, and sense of humor. Upon discovering tribal people working as bonded laborers in the village of Dahisar in 1982, Vivek Pandit was shocked. Interestingly, his own uncle was one of the landlords who “owned” bonded laborers. He made an effort to declare the laborers free and warned the landlords, not even sparing his uncle. In February 1982, he was assaulted by a group of landowners and for this unfortunate incident, his uncle was instrumental. Vivek Pandit believes that India’s constitution provides protections only on paper. To enforce the

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laws effectively beyond these paper promises alone, collective action and strength is essential. This may lead forward positively toward liberation, for the history of India is full of oppression. Unitarian Universalist Holdeen India Programme (UU Holdeen India Programme) is a unique donor effort of the Unitarian Universalist Association. Jonathan Holdeen, a wealthy New York attorney, established a complex series of trusts in the 1940s with the bold plan to eliminate the need for income taxes eventually. He selected the American Unitarian Universalist Association as a charitable group to receive a small portion of the proceeds for “maternity, child welfare, education, and migration expenses” in India. Kathy Sreedhar, director of UU Holdeen India Programme, has worked with Vivek Pandit to free thousands of bonded laborers. Fellow abolitionist Keshav Nankar, happens to be one of the first laborers freed by Pandit. Vivek Pandit was attacked and beaten by a mob of upper-caste landowners in 1985. Pandit and his followers blocked tanker trucks that were illegally drawing water from tribal land in 1996. Pandit was falsely charged on a conspiracy murder case for which he spent five years defending himself in court. Vivek Pandit follows a blending of confrontation and accommodation in his course of action against discrimination and exploitation. To protest against the Indian government’s apathy for schools in tribal areas that

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receive a paucity of funds, he once paraded tribal children carrying “begging bowls” filled with collected rupees into the legislative assembly to humiliate the ruling party. Nevertheless, he extended full cooperation to government officials and politicians who were willing to support constructive works. Patit Paban Mishra See also: Bonded Labor; India; Pandit, Vidyullata; Shramajeevi Sanghatana.

Further Readings “Bitter Harvest.” UU World 18, no. 6 (November/December 2004): 34–35. http:// www.uuworld.org/2004/06/feature1b. html. Zucchino, David. “Transforming the Lives of India’s Broken People.” UU World 15, no. 3 (July/August 2001): 18–27. http:// www.uuworld.org/2001/03/feature1 .html.

Pastoral Land Commission The Pastoral Land Commission (Comissão Pastoral da Terra, or CPT) is a contemporary abolitionist society in Brazil that was established by Reverend Ricardo Rezende Figueira, a Roman Catholic priest in the state of Para. The CPT has been vocal in its criticism of the persistence of slavery in Brazil, particularly within the ranching and mining sectors, among the many indigenous peoples of Amazonia, and also in the Brazilian charcoal industry. Its success has demonstrated that modern nations can be moved

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to take action against slavery on the basis of solid evidence and effective use of moral suasion. Following in the footsteps of many 19th-century abolitionists who fought against transatlantic slavery, the CPT has found a fervent voice through evangelical Christianity. Members of the CPT investigated cases of Brazilian slavery, and in 1991 reported more than 5,000 documented instances. Believing that his mission to preach the gospel called him to serve the needs of the dispossessed, the downtrodden, and the marginalized, Father Rezende emerged as a powerful ally of the enslaved as he “spoke truth to power” and challenged entrenched political power and landowners to end the practice of slavery in Brazil. The priest faced many death threats as he called for land reform and a nationwide commitment to the principle of abolitionism. His town, Rio de Maria, became known as the “town of death foretold,” as so many antislavery advocates were murdered there. Anti-Slavery International (ASI), a London-based human rights organization, awarded its prestigious AntiSlavery Award in 1992 to Father Rezende and the Pastoral Land Commission for their efforts in combating modern slavery in Brazil. This recognition energized the Brazilian antislavery movement, which achieved some of its greatest success in the years that followed. In 1993, CPT worked in conjunction with the Indianist Missionary Council (CIMI) to raise public awareness about

the use of slave labor at the charcoal kilns in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul. Since slave-produced charcoal was being used in the Brazilian steel industry and Brazilian rolled steel was exported for use by auto manufacturers worldwide, the ripple effects of this labor practice were quite great. These charges resulted in an investigation by Brazilian authorities that was followed by police action to remedy the problem. The government of Brazil recognized the problem, acknowledged it, and took positive steps to end the practice of slave labor in the nation’s charcoal production. The CPT issued the report Conflicts in Rural Areas–Brazil 1994, a condemnation of national inaction on the problem of slavery, which finally persuaded the Brazilian government to investigate the charges that had been raised. In June 1995, the minister of labor, Paulo Paiva, announced that the government would investigate the charges and take action as necessary against any landowner who used slave labor in violation of Brazilian law. Father Rezende left the frontier state of Para in 1996, when it became clear that his life was in danger if he remained there. He moved to Rio de Janeiro and earned a doctorate degree with an emphasis on human rights studies. He has since published several books on the topic and is regarded as an expert on contemporary slavery issues. Junius P. Rodriguez See also: Brazil; Charcoal; Land Reform; Rezende Figueira, Ricardo.

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Further Readings Bales, Kevin. Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Sutton, Alison. Slavery in Brazil: A Link in the Chain of Modernization. London: Anti-Slavery International, 1994.

Peonage Peonage is a type of forced labor in which a creditor compels another person to work for him or her until the debtor, whether peon or third party, repays the debt. A person may pledge himself or herself to a creditor, or a third party may give another person, usually a relative, to a creditor as security for a debt. In the latter instance, the third party is the debtor and the peon a pawn. With the consent of a creditor, a debtor may repay a debt through labor or with money. A third party may redeem a peon with payment in full. The latter option is mandatory whenever a creditor stipulates that labor suffices only to service interest on the debt rather than on the principal. Failure to repay a debt consigns a debtor or a pawn to a lifetime of servitude, a circumstance that is tantamount to slavery. For these reasons, blacks in the U.S. South in the early 20th century and a laborer in French West Africa in the 1930s might have equated peonage with slavery. The Nembe term for peonage, kala deri, means minislavery. Colonial officials in French West Africa tended to view peonage as an incipient form of slavery. In Ghana, custom

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and law classed peonage between freedom and slavery. Yet however oppressive, peonage was not slavery because a peon gained freedom upon repaying a debt. In contrast to slavery, the children of a peon were free. Moreover peonage, unlike slavery, did not reduce a peon to property except when creditors sold their peons. Peons tended to be the same ethnicity as their creditors. Often both peon and creditor lived in the same village. In contrast, slaves tended to be foreigners. Blurring the line between peonage and slavery was the close coincidence of the two forms of servitude in Africa. Both expanded after 1500, slavery in the New World and peonage at home, to meet the demand for labor. In Nembe, for example, peonage arose around 1600. The dearth of money made it difficult to attract free labor. The alternative was compulsion, whether through slavery or peonage. In Africa, peonage was thus the product of a precapitalist economy. By contrast peonage arose in the U.S. South only after the demise of slavery. In the United States peonage was the product of the sharecropping system, which indebted farm workers by extending them seed, fertilizer, and equipment on credit. A sharecropper who could not repay his debt at harvest was no longer free to work elsewhere and so descended into peonage. The demand for farm workers spurred the growth of peonage. After 1890 the expansion of cocoa plantations in Ghana opened land to cultivation. Cash-poor farmers gained access to land by pledging a relative, usually

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a girl, to a wealthy merchant or landowner in exchange for a loan to buy land. The pawn served her creditor by transporting cocoa to market, an odious chore before railroads penetrated Ghana in the 1920s, clearing land, planting cocoa seedlings and crops, cultivating the soil, and harvesting beans. In the U.S. South, an Alabama attorney complained in 1905 about the backlog of peonage cases awaiting trial. In 1907, an investigator estimated that one-third of large landowners in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi held peons, and in 1910, a Texas newspaper asserted that between 1,500 and 2,000 farm workers had fallen into peonage that year. Between 1918 and 1930 the incidences of peonage peaked in Liberia as the male heads of households pawned their daughters, nieces, and sisters to pay taxes. In this context, pawnship became a proxy for concubinage, as the creditor was often a man who wanted the pawn for sex. The link between sex and peonage is explicit in Japan, where since the 1980s Thai women have worked as prostitutes. Unable to afford passage to Japan, these women contract a merchant, often one with ties to the Japanese yakuza, to pay their way. In this context, peonage resembles indentured servitude as it was practiced in British North America. Subject to sale and singled out as foreigners without legal protection, the plight of Thai women approaches slavery. The line between peonage and slavery is no clearer today than it was in 1500. Christopher Cumo See also: Debt Bondage; Sharecropping.

Further Readings Daniel, Pete. The Shadow of Slavery: Peonage in the South, 1901–1969. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972. Human Rights Watch. Owed Justice: Thai Women Trafficked into Debt Bondage in Japan. New York: Human Rights Watch, 2000. Lovejoy, Paul E., and Toyin Falola. Pawnship, Slavery, and Colonialism in Africa. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2003.

Peruvian Amazon Company (PAC) Also known as Casa Arana, the Peruvian Amazon Company (PAC) was a British-Peruvian, London-based rubber imports and exports company that was charged in 1910 with complicity in the enslavement and extermination of more than 60,000 Indians of the Putumayo district in Amazonian South America. Originally established in 1907 as the Peruvian Amazon Rubber Company with an installment of £1,000,000, its founder was Julio César Arana, the Peruvian entrepreneur who, by then, controlled the biggest share (18.6 percent) of rubber exports in Iquitos, Peru, the river Amazon’s second most important commercial city during the rubber boom of 1900–1910. Besides Arana, PAC’s board of directors included highly respected British businessmen and former diplomats, such as John Russell Gubbins (an import and export agent with a wide experience in Peruvian politics and economy and personal friend of Peru’s President, Augusto Leguía), Herbert M. Read (former manager of


the London Bank of Mexico), and Sir John Lister-Kaye (a military aristocrat well-connected to King Edward VII). In practice, however, PAC was a European office that represented a series of minor companies that Arana had started acquiring as early as 1889, combining his redoubtable business skills with ruthless methods to oust his temporary associates, thus turning into the virtual owner of the Putumayo district on the Colombian-Peruvian border. During his absolute reign over rubber extraction in the area, Arana implemented various managerial reforms that resulted in a formidable increase in production at the expense of the native Indians life, culture, and territory. Besides maintaining the system of endeude (or perpetual indebtedness forced on the Indians, supported by the use of violence), Arana hired new section chiefs who would not earn a basic salary, but a commission on every collected ton of rubber, therefore stimulating a cruel competition between local managers who would resort to all forms of brutality toward the Indian population, in order to increase the rate and quantity of their produce. This measure was accompanied by the hiring of 36 black Barbadians who acted as labor (and usually cruel) overseers, and the training of 400 native Indian boys as a sort of raid squad in the service of the PAC and against enemy Indian tribes or reluctant gatherers. Finally, Arana disposed his domains in two big stockpiling centers: El Encanto, over the Caraparaná River, and La Chorrera, amid the Igaraparaná and Cahuinarí rivers. A total of 10 rubber stations controlled the region for PAC.

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Arana’s move toward founding a British venture was conceived as a strategy to counter the rapid decline of Amazonian rubber demand in the face of Britain’s monopoly on Asian plantation rubber, which was cheaper and of better quality. He wanted the produce of his properties (basically consisting of weak variants of the jeve type, and an amalgam of latexes known as “Putumayo tails”) to be shipped directly from Iquitos to England, thus avoiding the increasing taxes exacted by Brazilian customs at Pará. Nonetheless, the price of world rubber began a dramatic decrease contemporary to PAC’s establishment. Besides, and most relevantly, outspoken critics of Arana’s practices, such as journalist Saldaña Rocca and judges Paredes and Valcárcel, began to have a wider audience after the revelations made by Walter E. Hardenburg in Truth magazine. Following the report made by British Consul Roger Casement in the Putumayo district, and the conclusive evidence forwarded by British, American, and Peruvian legal and governmental authorities, PAC rapidly fell into public disgrace, its British directors alleging that Arana had kept them uninformed on the company’s ground procedures. Even though the scandal demolished PAC’s credibility, it took advantage of the outbreak of World War I and the Allies’ desperate need for rubber, but its closure in 1919 rapidly followed the end of hostilities. Although there certainly were British economical and political interests in undermining Arana’s (and South America’s) partaking in the rubber industry, the truth is that

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PAC’s presence in the Amazon embodies the darkest episode of the region’s history. Carlos Guillermo Páramo Bonilla See also: Arana, Julio César; Casement, Sir Roger; Hardenburg, Walter Ernest.

Further Readings Collier, Richard. The River That God Forgot: The Story of the Amazon Rubber Boom. London and New York: E. P. Dutton, 1968. Select Committee on the Putumayo. Correspondence Respecting the Treatment of British Colonial Subjects and Native Indians Employed in the Collection of Rubber in the Putumayo District. Presented to Both Houses of Parliament of His Majesty. London: Harrison and Sons, 1912. Stanfield, Michael Edward. Red Rubber, Bleeding Trees: Violence, Slavery, and Empire in Northwest Amazonia, 1850– 1933. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998. Taussig, Michael. Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.

Peshgi The peshgi refers to the bonded monetary relationship that exists between an employer and employee as arranged through intermediaries (Jamadars), an arrangement that certainly always favors the employer. Peshgi is the debt bondage method through which the employers buy the labor power of

workers as a means of repayment for a loan given in advance. The labor obligations that result from this system often trap poor families into generations of bonded labor as they struggle to release themselves from a cycle of seemingly perpetual debt. Money lenders who make these arrangements charge exorbitant rates of interest on their loans, and they frequently use falsified bookkeeping to maintain use and control of the bonded laborers they have obtained. Although the practice has appeared in various settings and times throughout history, it is most commonly found today in portions of southern Asia, particularly among the carpet weaving, brick making, and agricultural sectors of the economy. Many factors influence the prevalence and persistence of debt bondage in the modern world. These include feudalist structures of production, lack of education, cheap labor, lack of knowledge about human rights, religion, the caste system, transnationals’ desire to obtain cheap labor, wars and armed conflicts, poverty, and the continual existence of people who are prepared to exploit the desperation of others. Without land or the benefits of education, the need for cash for daily survival forces people to sell their labor in exchange for a lump sum or a loan. The obligations can be long term as parents are often driven to accept money in exchange for allowing their children to work outside of their village at some future point.

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Debt bondage is a form of enslavement that is both ancient and modern. In South Asia it took root deeply in the caste system, and flourished in feudal agricultural relationships that persisted through the centuries. In the United States, it was also sometimes called peonage. This system is one in which children have to work due to debt bondage that their families have incurred; it is considered the worst form of child labor. The government of Pakistan attempted to abolish both indentured servitude and the Peshgi system in 1992, when it enacted the Bonded Labour Act. Unfortunately, the implementation and enforcement of this legislative measure has been lax and the unscrupulous labor practices have remained in use. Bayram Unal See also: Bonded Labor; Peonage.


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The Philippines The Philippines is an archipelago consisting of 7,107 islands between Taiwan, Indonesia, and Vietnam in the South China Sea. Before its colonization by Spain in 1565, social organization in the Philippines ranged from hierarchical Muslim societies and smaller tribal groups to decentralized barangay of fewer than 100 families. From among similar words in Philippine languages, the Tagalog noun alipin and the Cebuano oripun are translated as “slave,” but the translation alone obscures historically diverse social dependency and rights. Slaves in the Philippines sometimes came from the same ethnolinguistic groups as their masters. Nonetheless, among those in involuntary bondage were chattel slaves, like some among the banyaga (Tausug for “outsider”), whose lives could be forfeited with impunity. Spain’s Asian colony was Las Islas Felipinas (Philippine Islands) from 1565 to 1898, and during this time Spanish slavery coexisted with Filipino slavery. Roman Catholic friars (priests of the religious orders) were key colonial administrators who also bought and sold slaves. In areas under Spain’s control, the last vestiges of chattel slavery had ended by the mid-18th century, but Spanish law neither pursued an active policy of abolition nor prohibited the purchase of children as involuntary domestics from their parents. As a result, a new timawa class of partially indebted laborers (quarter slaves)

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evolved into the modern, largely landless Filipino agricultural laborer by the mid-19th century. Despite the Koran’s admonitions to respect all humans, Jolo on Mindanao (outside Spain’s control) served as an organizational center of slaving expeditions for the sultanate of Sulu from the late 18th century until the mid-19th century. An estimated 200,000 to 300,000 slaves were delivered to Sulu from 1780 to 1880. In 1896, anticlerical Filipino nationalism culminated in a revolution against Spain’s “rule of the friars,” and was overtaken by the Spanish-American War in 1898. Filipino delegates then met in Malolos, Bulacan, to draft a constitution. Just before the outbreak of the Philippine-American War in 1899, they promulgated the Constitución Política, which limited causes for detention to criminal offenses. By mid-1902, however, U.S. military superiority had defeated the main independence forces. The Philippine Organic Act of July 1902 was a U.S. effort to shift the Christian areas of the Philippine Islands from martial law to civil administration. Inconsistently applied, the act included the post–Civil War Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that had abolished slavery. Criticized by the author Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), Edward Atkinson, and others of the Anti-Imperialist League in the United States, those who favored retention of the Philippines grasped at rationales for keeping America’s newly acquired Asian colony. From a moralistic perspective, the opportunity to end slavery was an

added reason for maintaining the imperial burden of colonialism, but U.S.based notions of racialized slavery, naïve field observations, the need to collaborate with Filipino elites, tolerance of enslavement of Muslims by Muslims, and gradualism created a gap between theory and practice. In 1903, the Philippine Commission passed Law No. 8, which ratified an antislavery initiative of the Legislative Council of Moro Province in Mindanao. Accordingly, enslavement meant holding anyone in “involuntary servitude.” Yet the Bates Treaty with the sultan of Sulu in 1910 implicitly recognized slavery. As fighting continued in Mindanao, the United States eventually closed slave markets in Tawi Tawi and elsewhere during the first decade of the 20th century. Filipino nationalists sensed racial arrogance and inconsistency in claims made about slavery by U.S. Secretary of the Interior Dean C. Worcester. In 1912, Resident Commissioner of the Philippines to the United States Manuel L. Quezon countered that slavery had never existed in the Christian Philippines, but Filipino plantation owners and the U.S. colonizers alike supported repressive labor controls. Frequently in the 1920s and 1930s, the Filipino elite joined with the Americans to prevent League of Nations officials from investigating bondage and sex trafficking in the Philippines. These contradictions and tensions were fresh in mind when delegates to a constitutional convention drafted a constitution for the Commonwealth of the Philippines that was approved by

The Philippines

the U.S. Congress in 1935. The new constitution forbade imprisonment “for debt or nonpayment of a poll tax,” and “involuntary servitude in any form” was outlawed “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” Japan’s invasion in 1941 interrupted the implementation of this new policy. After the defeat of U.S. forces in the Philippines, hundreds—perhaps thousands—of Filipino women were kidnapped by the Japanese and forced into military sex slavery in comfort women stations. From 1942 to 1945, these women were forced into pigpenlike barracks where, under threat of beatings and death, they cooked, sewed, and did laundry without wages for the Japanese Imperial Army while providing sex to 5, 10, and even more Japanese soldiers daily. Many sex slaves were battered, disfigured, and even killed for resisting while pain and shame drove others insane. Dr. Jose P. Laurel and other prominent Filipino nationalists collaborated in the Japan-sponsored Second Republic (1943–1944) and later claimed that their cooperation prevented Japan from conscripting Filipino youth into the Imperial Army, but their efforts did not address sex slavery. Guerrilla resistance and then reinvasion by the United States defeated the Japanese forces. In 1946, the Philippines gained constitutional independence and formed the Third Republic. Even afterward, surviving former sex slaves received little relief. Instead, they experienced social pressure from family members to remain silent about

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having been raped hundreds of times. Widely read nationalist social histories ignored the plight of former sex slaves. In the 1990s, coalitions of elderly Filipino and other former sex slaves began speaking to sympathetic audiences and media about wartime sex slavery and their desire for accountability and recompense. Meanwhile, with encouragement from every president since the late 1960s, remittances from Filipino overseas contract workers generated otherwise scarce foreign exchange. Civil society organizations derided this governmentsponsored “warm body export” as an inhumane, antifamily method of servicing the country’s huge debt. The latest wave of migration led to new forms of sex trafficking. Deceived by labor recruiters or tricked by unscrupulous employers, many female Filipino migrants were forced into sexual slavery in Japan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates in the 1980s and 1990s. Activists criticized the government of the Philippines for its slow response to the problems faced by overseas contract workers. Thus, as older forms of bondage dissipated, sex slavery reemerged in a globalized world economy. Vincent Kelly Pollard See also: Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation; Mui Tsai.

Further Readings Calica, Dan P., Nelia Sancho, and LILA Pilipina and Asian Human Rights Council-Philippine Section. War Crimes on Asian Women: Military Sexual Slavery

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by Japan during World War II: The Case of the Filipino Comfort Women, ed. Dan P. Calica and Nelia Sancho. Manila: Task Force on Filipina Victims of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, 1993. McKenna, Thomas M. Muslim Rulers and Rebels. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998 Nadeau, Kathleen. “Is Sex Trafficking in Asia Ancient or New? Challenge to the Churches.” East Asian Pastoral Review 40, no. 1 (2002): 128–143. Salman, Michael. The Embarrassment of Slavery: Controversies over Bondage and Nationalism in the American Colonial Philippines. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. Scott, William Henry. Slavery in the Spanish Philippines. Manila: De La Salle University Press, 1997. Warren, James. The Sulu Zone, 1768– 1898: The Dynamics of External Trade, Slavery, and Ethnicity in the Transformation of a Southeast Asian Maritime State. Singapore: University of Singapore Press, 1981.

Homer Plessy was a mixed-race man (octoroon, or one-eighth black) who was legally black but apparently white. As such, he made a fit party to a test case challenging a Louisiana segregation statute that had been enacted in 1890. Having taken a seat in a whitesonly railroad car, Plessy was arrested and charged with violating the law. On appeal, he claimed that the statute violated his rights as guaranteed by the Thirteenth Amendment and the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court, through Justice Henry B. Brown, treated the Thirteenth Amendment question as a

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) was one of the most significant judicial decisions in American history. The Court held that the “equal protection clause” of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution permitted segregation by race in those cases where the treatment of the races was equal. Its “separate but equal” doctrine soon served as a cover for the widespread practice of racial segregation, which came to be typical of the U.S. South and many other parts of the country.

In 1896, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Henry Billings Brown wrote the majority opinion for the Plessy v. Ferguson case. The court’s “separate but equal” doctrine enabled racial segregation in the southern states. (Library of Congress)

Plessy v. Ferguson

simple one. The type of racial discrimination at issue in the case, he noted, did not threaten a resuscitation of racebased slavery or involuntary servitude. Plessy had not even made an issue of it. The Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause issues drew most of the Court’s attention. Brown began his opinion by saying that, “The object of the amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law,” but then he added that it was not meant to eliminate all race discrimination or to eliminate social segregation. Segregation laws did not necessarily imply either race’s subordination, he said. Brown noted that racial segregation had been the law of the land, without raising much resistance, for a long time, even in the nation’s most problack states. Boston, Massachusetts, for example, had segregated its schools for decades, and people held the practice entirely normal and perfectly consistent with blacks’ rights. The issue at hand, then, was whether Louisiana’s statute was “reasonable.” Brown quickly concluded that yes, it was. It was no more offensive than action by the U.S. Congress in segregating schools in the District of Columbia, a measure that had been adopted in 1867 by the same Congress that had enacted the Fourteenth Amendment. In conclusion, Brown noted Plessy’s argument that the segregation of railroad cars branded blacks with a mark of inferiority. If blacks understood that it did, according to Brown, it was because blacks chose to imagine that it did. If

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political power were to fall into black hands, he said, and blacks chose to segregate railroad cars, whites certainly would not understand themselves to have been branded as inferior. Social equality could not be forced upon the nation by the Court, Brown lectured. Rather, it must come about naturally. “Racial instincts” and “physical differences” could not be legislated away; attempts to legislate them away could only make matters worse. Justice John Marshall Harlan delivered what was to become a very famous dissenting opinion. Although a former slaveholder himself, Harlan here staked out a very egalitarian position on racial matters. Although he joined Justice Brown in echoing the scientific racism that was common at the time (“Every true man,” Harlan opined, “has pride of race”), he denied that government could pay race any heed. Thus, the law here at issue was unconstitutional. The Thirteenth Amendment, Harlan said, “prevents the imposition of any burdens or disabilities that constitute badges of slavery or servitude.” The Fourteenth Amendment was intended to fill the gap left by the Thirteenth in affording federal protection to all civil rights. Under the two of them, “Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.” He lamented that the majority had reached the opposite conclusion, and predicted that Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) would one day be as notorious as Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857). Harlan found it especially galling that under Louisiana’s statute, Chinese

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immigrants were treated better than black Americans. Chinese were “so different” from whites that they could not become citizens, and yet blacks, some of whom had “risked their lives for the preservation of the Union,” were sent into segregated cars, while Chinese people were not. Such segregation was “a badge of servitude.” Harlan did not believe that “separate but equal” was really equal. Over the following seven decades and more, many of his beliefs were borne out. Kevin R. C. Gutzman See also: Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857).

Further Readings Litwack, Leon. Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow. New York: Knopf, 1998. Woodward, C. Vann. Origins of the New South, 1877–1913. Baton Rouge: Louisiana University Press, 1997. Woodward, C. Vann. The Strange Career of Jim Crow. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.

Pornography and Children Child pornography is illegal virtually everywhere in the world. Although it is almost universally illegal to produce it, there are still some nations and states where it is not illegal to own or access it. Child pornography is usually defined as the visual depiction of anyone under 18 years of age in a sexually explicit act. Although international law establishes the age of childhood, some nations vary upon its definition by specific age.

Pornography can involve the visual depiction of a child engaged in a sexual act and can be a digitally produced visual depiction of a child engaged in a sexual act. It can also be the visual depiction of a sexual act that has been modified so that it looks like a child is engaged in a sexual act. The pornography can also be an adult pretending to be a child engaged in a sexually explicit act. Child pornography is considered to be illegal whether in the state of production, distribution, dissemination, transmission, supply, acquisition, or possession. Since it is illegal, it is extremely difficult to know exactly how widespread it is. Nevertheless, the Council of Europe has estimated that in the United States alone, the child pornography industry is worth approximately $3 billion dollars. Child pornography is a form of sexual abuse and a human rights violation. It is the destruction of a child’s natural joy and innocence. It is the rendering of the child, who is easy prey, to an object of power and desire. Individuals who use or produce it are considered to be pedophiles—someone, usually a man, who prefers to have sexual relations with children and whose sexual fantasies focus on children. It is not uncommon for people who traffic in child pornography to do so in sex rings through which they can share their images. Pedophiles also use the pornography as a means of trying to convince children to believe that sexual acts and behavior are normal. As a result of economic globalization and the Internet, the traffic in child

Pornography and Children

pornography is transnational, existing in both developed and developing countries. The abusers come from all socioeconomic classes. Most of the children are victims of people they know and trust. Survivors of child pornography can be psychologically traumatized. Other forms of child abuse, such as prostitution and substance abuse, often accompany the exploitation of children in pornography. Exploitation is defined as using coercion, force, or threats; accepting payment in some form for the child to engage in a sexual act; or the acts are perpetrated by an adult who is trusted or in a position of authority or influence over the child. The United Nations states that some causes of child pornography are dysfunctional families, gender discrimination, irresponsible adult sexual behavior, harmful traditional practices, and trafficking in children. The Economic and Social Committee on the Exploitation of Children decries as responsible the lack of human and social responsibility of economic and government groups, the social hierarchy of values, aesthetic preferences, the growth of an erotic culture, the lack of respect for human nature and life, and the lack of respect for the sanctity and inviolability of human rights. Despite its illegality, requiring it to be an underground industry, child pornography is growing tremendously, especially because of the Internet, where child pornography is closely linked to sex tourism. Governments only seriously began to address the issues of child pornography, the Internet, and

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sex tourism in the late 1990s. It has also been difficult for governments around the world to cooperate to fight the spread of this abuse for three main reasons. First, whereas the criminals work very easily together across borders, governments still have not created a smooth transnational organizational structure to share information and have the authority to act. Second, free speech and expression issues in many parts of the world conflict with what is necessary to implement a process and system to stop child pornography on the Internet. Third, governments around the world are hesitant to do anything that might limit the use of the Internet for economic growth. To date, the Internet remains the only unregulated form of audiovisual communication and telecommunication. The introduction to the report of a 1999 UNESCO conference acutely analyzed the core of the problem to finding a resolution: “During the two day meeting, many people spoke of the chains of silence surrounding the subject of the sexual abuse of children, the silence of children, the silence of the perpetrators, the silence of the courts and of justice, the silence of psychologists and psychiatric counselors.” Loni Bramson See also: Children.

Further Readings Grant, Anna, Fiona David, and Peter Grabosky. “Child Pornography in the Digital Age.” Transnational Organized Crime 3, no. 4 (1997): 171–188.

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Holliday, W. T. Governmental Principles and Statutes on Child Pornography. New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2003. Mitchell, Kimberly J., David Finkelhor, and Janis Wolak. “Risk Factors for and Impact of Online Sexual Solicitation of Youth.” Journal of the American Medical Association 285, no. 23 (2001): 3011–3014. Renold, Emma, and Susan Creighton. Images of Abuse: A Review of the Evidence on Child Pornography. London: National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, 2003. UNESCO Communication Division. Final Report, Declaration and Action Plan, Sexual Abuse of Children, Child Pornography and Paedophilia on the Internet: An International Challenge. Protecting Children On Line. Paris: UNESCO, 1999.

Prison Labor Prison is the only institution in the United States in which slavery remains legal. The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1865, reads: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.” Per the Thirteenth Amendment, slavery and involuntary servitude are justified penalties for crimes. The effect of this amendment creates a cheap labor pool for businesses and corporations, and allows prisons to make money. The idea of forcing prisoners into servitude was actually put into practice

before the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. In the early 19th century, prisoners were leased out to private contractors. This policy increased after the U.S. Civil War (1861–1865), with the implementation of the Black Codes in the South. Although laws varied by state, blacks were subject to regulations that prevented vagrancy and disturbing of the peace. Violation of these codes led to prison sentences. Prison rates skyrocketed, with a shift in populations after 1865 so that African Americans became overrepresented in penal institutions. Consequently, race and incarceration became inextricably linked. The convict leasing system, the oldest form of prison labor, was claimed to increase the chances of rehabilitation. This system made it possible for prisons to lease convicts to private companies, who would pay the state for prisoners’ labor. Prisoners typically worked laying railroad tracks, mining coal, or picking cotton. The practice was usually not paid, so newly emancipated blacks found themselves being forced into labor once again. During this time, chain gangs were created, where prisoners were chained together and forced to perform menial tasks. It was with the growth of labor and trade unions that opposition to prison labor developed, when nonprison employees refused to compete with prisoners for jobs. In the 1930s, pressure from labor brought about tighter regulation of interstate transport and sale of prison-made goods. Congress

Prison Labor

passed the Ashurst-Sumners Act (1935), which made it illegal to transport prison-made goods across state lines. However, in the 1970s there was again an increase in the prison population and correspondingly, renewed interest in prison labor. Under President Jimmy Carter, Congress passed the Prison Industries Enhancement Act of 1979. This measure granted exemptions from the Ashurst-Sumners ban and opened the door for the development of contemporary low-wage prisoner labor. Today, prisoners work for such corporations as TWA, Dell, Starbucks, Victoria’s Secret, Microsoft, and Eddie Bauer, making a wide variety of products. Pay scales range from about 20 cents to $1.50 an hour. These wages are at, or below, contemporary wages in nations within the developing world. In addition, states like Alabama and Arizona have also reinstated chain gangs. Ironically, while the U.S. government has condemned the export of prison-made goods from China, prisonmade goods from California and Oregon are being exported. The Prison Blues line of clothing, made by prisoners in Oregon, is sold in the United States and exported to Asia for retail sale. Prisoners are ideal workers for corporations because employers do not have to pay health benefits or unemployment insurance, vacation time, sick leave, or overtime. Companies can hire, fire, and reassign prisoners

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as they desire, and are exempt from state-mandated safety standards. Profits are moving toward $10 billion nationwide. Prisoners, in turn, cannot respond with strikes or grievance filing. Prisoners that have organized for just working conditions have been punished by prison staff, who rescind what little privileges they have. Although prisoners can refuse to work, those who do so are labeled “uncooperative” and risk losing such privileges as library access and recreation. They also cannot buy goods within prison, such as soap. Proponents of prison labor argue that it has a rehabilitative effect and provides prisoners with job skills. However, opponents to prison labor argue that if jobs are rehabilitative, paying at least the minimum wage is necessary. Further, the jobs available in prisons are menial and low skill. Because jobs do not exist for prisoners when they are released from prison—most corporations have moved overseas for cheap labor—any skills they acquire become useless. The increasing numbers of people of color and poor whites who are incarcerated will continue to supply a cheap labor force for profit-seeking corporations. Prisoners have very little recourse as they have no rights, since the Thirteenth Amendment itself endorses prison slavery. This trend continues to grow as states like Oregon, Texas, and Mississippi have passed laws requiring prisoners to work; however, laws do not yet protect prisoners or give them

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the rights to which other workers are entitled. Jodie Michelle Lawston See also: Convict Leasing.

Further Readings Burton-Rose, Daniel, and Paul Wright, eds. The Celling of America: An Inside Look at the U.S. Prison Industry. Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press. 1992. Lichtenstein, Alex. Twice the Work of Free Labor: Political Economy of Convict Labor in the New South. New York: Verso, 1996. Oshinsky, David. Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice. New York: Free Press Paperbacks, 1997.

Prisoners of War The use of prisoners of war (POWs) as slaves dates at least to the earliest civilizations. Victorious rulers believed that enslavement was a form of mercy to the conquered, who otherwise would have been killed. Rulers in ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, Greece, and Rome put captured soldiers to work in a variety of ways, particularly on imperial construction projects. Frequently, captors kept high-ranking and wealthy prisoners as hostages until they were ransomed. This practice continued in Europe well into the Middle Ages. By the 18th century, European states allowed exchanges of prisoners and formalized ransoms according to military rank. The Enlightenment’s emphasis on personal liberty gradually

led Western states to abandon the notion that POWs, disarmed and therefore nonthreatening, served or survived only at the behest of their conquerors. During the U.S. Civil War, the Confederate government viewed captured black soldiers (freedmen) recruited into the Union Army as runaways and insurrectionists and threatened to execute or return them to slavery if captured. The refusal of the Confederacy to exchange such prisoners led the Union to stop all exchanges. President Abraham Lincoln asked political philosopher Francis Lieber to construct a legal code for the treatment of prisoners of war. The code he produced prohibited the enslavement, torture, or killing of POWs, and required that they receive sufficient food and medical treatment. Nevertheless, prisoners frequently suffered severe deprivations, maltreatment, and loss of life in both Northern and Southern POW camps. Still, Lieber’s work ultimately provided the foundation for the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, the first international agreements governing the treatment of POWs. Most belligerents in World War I attempted to abide by the Hague Conventions. These agreements required the humane treatment of POWs and that they receive adequate food, medical care, and shelter, and allowed them personal property, mail, and parcels. The conventions permitted neutral third parties, such as the Red Cross, to monitor the treatment of prisoners and provide additional relief. Although the conventions prohibited torture, they allowed belligerents to put POWs to

Prisoners of War

work, but only if they received proper payment. The warring powers, most of whom faced severe labor shortages, took advantage of this provision by employing POWs in a variety of agricultural and industrial tasks. As the war progressed, serious shortages of food, clothing, and medicine led countries to allocate dwindling resources to their own civilians and military personnel at the expense of prisoners of war. Worsening treatment especially occurred in nations like Germany in 1918, facing a deteriorating military situation and ultimate defeat. Erratic compliance with the Hague Conventions inspired the Third Geneva Convention in 1929. Although modeled on the earlier conventions, the Geneva Convention provided much more detail for the treatment of POWs than the previously negotiated agreements. For example, the convention not only required humane treatment for POWs, but also specifically required them to be protected “against acts of violence” and prohibited threats, insults, or exposure “to unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind.” The agreement also recognized their inalienable civil status and a guaranteed “right to have their person and their honor respected,” which explicitly rejected any lingering notion that prisoners became slaves with no rights that their conquerors were bound to respect. Although many nations ratified the Third Geneva Convention, Japan and the Soviet Union declined to do so. The ramifications of these refusals

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for the universal acceptance of humane treatment as a right for POWs emerged during World War II, when the enslavement, murder, and torture of POWs became commonplace. The Nazis used the Soviet Union’s failure to ratify the convention to justify its enslavement, maltreatment, and murder of 3 to 5 million Soviet prisoners, whereas American, British, and other Western Allied POWs received treatment comparable to that required by the Third Geneva Convention. The differences in treatment by the German authorities actually owed less to what nations ratified international agreements than to Nazi ideology that defined Slavs as subhuman and therefore subject to slave labor. The Soviet Union responded in kind against the more than 3 million German prisoners they captured. After the war, the Soviet Union continued to use German POWs as slave laborers, repatriating them slowly over the decade following the war. Repatriated Soviet POWs fared little better as the communist government under Joseph Stalin treated most returnees as collaborators and sent them to gulags, where they suffered enslavement, maltreatment, and death. Japanese military authorities also largely ignored international conventions and abused, neglected, and murdered Allied prisoners. Approximately one-third of the Allied prisoners in Japanese custody died. The Japanese military forced POWs to work in factories, mines, and at various other labors. The construction of the Thai-Burma railway is the most well-known use of enslaved

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POWs by the Japanese because of the popularity of the 1957 film The Bridge on the River Kwai. Unlike Germany and Japan, the Western Allies treatment of Axis POWs generally complied with the Third Geneva Convention. The near-universal acceptance of previous international protections for POWs with the Geneva Conventions of 1949 led to a decline, although by no means the eradication, of forced labor for POWs in conflicts after World War II. While some United Nations POWs experienced enforced labor in the Korean War, UN concern focused more on Chinese and North Korean exposure of POWs to unwelcome and intense communist propaganda efforts at ideological conversion, a practice popularly known in the West as brainwashing. North Vietnam’s communist government also engaged in such efforts against U.S. POWs during the Vietnam War. The U.S. government in its “war on terror” following terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001, has resisted extending all the protections of the Third Geneva Convention to stateless Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners designated as “unlawful enemy combatants.” Although many critics of the policy have charged U.S. authorities with committing torture and other forms of maltreatment against such detainees in their efforts to acquire information, forced labor has not been an issue. Dan R. Frost See also: Gulag; Nazi Slavery.

Further Readings Bialke, Joseph P. “Al-Qaeda and Taliban Unlawful Combatant Detainees, Unlawful Belligerency, and the International Laws of Armed Conflict.” Air Force Law Review 55 (2004): 1–85. Krone, Robert M. “Politics and POWs.” Air University Review 21 (March–April 1970): 74–86. MacKenzie, S. P. “The Treatment of Prisoners of War in World War II.” Journal of Modern History 66 (1994): 487–520. Rachamimov, Alon. POWs and the Great War: Captivity on the Eastern Front. New York: Berg, 2002.

Prostitution Prostitution at its simplest is defined as the selling of sexual services for money. Most prostitutes are women, but others are men, girl children, and boy children. Beyond that, everything about prostitution is controversial and debated. There are three main attitudes toward prostitution. The first is that it should be prohibited because it is considered to be a moral issue and a violation of the public order. From such a perspective, prostitution is forbidden, its organization repressed, and both prostitutes and procurers are criminalized, with clients sometimes penalized as well. Those countries in which conservative religions dominate usually support prohibition. The second view is that it should be regulated. Countries that regulate prostitution consider it to be integral to the social order and therefore they try to control it. In such societies prostitutes are tracked and given medical care to

Prostitution

prevent sexually transmitted diseases and nobody is criminalized in this system. Although it is claimed, there has been no proof to date that underground prostitution, human trafficking, or violence have been diminished by regulating prostitution. The Netherlands’ legal system is a prime example of regulated prostitution. The third view is abolition, as ratified in the United Nations Convention of December 2, 1949, for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Women and Children. Abolitionists consider prostitution to be a danger to the public order, but accept that it is practiced. However, there is to be no organization of it. Therefore, the pimps and traffickers are criminalized and sometimes even the clients are criminalized. Governments financially support programs so that prostitutes can be trained and reinserted into society. Sweden is the best example of a country with an abolitionist attitude toward prostitution. The arguments over how to consider prostitution and what to do about it has divided the feminist movement into those for prostitution and those against it. Some of the arguments by those in favor of it are that it has always existed and is a legitimate form of work; women choose to be prostitutes; it is better to regulate it and give women rights and protection; and child prostitution will end if traditional prostitution is decriminalized. Some of the arguments against prostitution are that it is violence against women and a human rights violation; that in the countries

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where it has been legalized the sex industry has dramatically grown and the trafficking in women and children has increased; clandestine prostitution has also increased in regulated countries; child prostitution has grown as well; the health of prostitutes continues to degenerate; most prostitutes do not choose to become one and do not wish their children to enter it; and most prostitutes begin before they are 18, the legal international age for the end of childhood. Feminists against prostitution consider it to be female sexual slavery. International organizations continue to monitor and report the globalization of prostitution, the rise of it as a multibillion dollar industry, and that increasingly large numbers of prostitutes come from racial and ethnic minorities and countries that are mired in poverty and social disruption. In addition, UNESCO reports indicate that child abuse, domestic violence, incest, and rape are possible root causes of prostitution. As a result of its illegal nature in most parts of the world, it is very difficult to have accurate statistics, but various UN bodies have estimated that the child prostitution industry in the United States is worth about $2 billion dollars a year; in Brazil, there are about 5 million prostitutes; and sex tourism is now a multi-billion dollar industry. Medical research done on prostitutes shows that whether regulated or decriminalized, the health of prostitutes suffers. They suffer from physical assaults, rape, exhaustion, sexually transmitted diseases, frequent viral infections, insomnia,

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backaches, depression, headaches, cervical cancer, a higher frequency of violent deaths, unwanted pregnancies, substance abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder, dissociation, and eating disorders. Economic globalization and the Internet have played major roles in the increase in prostitution. With globalization allowing organized crime syndicates to become larger and richer than some countries, women and children have increasingly become a commodity for sex tourism, traffickers, and military personnel. The Internet has fostered this, especially because it is unregulated. Forums, websites, and newsgroups serve as meeting spaces for the advertisement of prostitutes and participants in some of these venues rate the prostitutes. Organizations that support freedom of speech and expression support these individuals, stating that safekeeping this freedom is more important than combating any social ills that might arise from prostitution and the trafficking that it engenders. The selling of sex is one of the most profitable Internet industries and one of the prime users of the most up-todate technology. The sex industry has become one of the largest markets for art computer equipment. Loni Bramson See also: Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Women and Children (1949); Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation; Movement to Abolish Prostitution and Pornography (MAPP).

Further Readings Masika, Rachel, ed. Gender, Trafficking, and Slavery. Oxford: Oxfam, 2002. Van den Anker, Christien, ed. The Political Economy of New Slavery. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

Protection Project The Protection Project is a human rights research institute that strives to formulate an international framework that will support the elimination of trafficking in persons, particularly of women and children. The Protection Project was founded by Laura Lederer in 1994, and it is housed within the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, D.C. Due to its location in the nation’s capital, many members of the U.S. Congress rely upon the research findings and policy recommendations of the Protection Project to formulate antitrafficking legislation. Key objectives of the Protection Project are the elimination of human trafficking both for purposes of labor and of sexual exploitation. The research staffers who work with the Protection Project believe that this can be achieved through the effective formulation of policy that is implemented through the passage of legislation and the effective enforcement of these laws. The researchers hope to enhance both capacity building and coalition building by working with associated partners in the human rights and public advocacy sectors to draft policies that have the potential to yield real results.

Protection Project

Although they examine the theoretical and philosophical side of the issue as social scientists, their ultimate goal is to draft policy proposals that will produce practical and pragmatic real-world effects upon implementation. The Protection Project recognizes that human trafficking is a transnational issue that requires a global commitment if it is to be eradicated successfully. The formulation of an effective strategy to achieve this end must, however, take into consideration the exigencies of operational effectiveness found within various political systems worldwide. There can be no one size fits all solution to a global crisis that is so immense. The sharing of information and research findings is key to advancing this end. The publication of the Annual Human Rights Report on the Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, is one of the important services that the Protection Project provides to the human rights community. In addition to this, SAIS produces the Journal of Human Rights and Civil Society that provides a venue for international scholars to examine further the nature of trafficking and possible policy initiatives that might be considered for combating it. In order to encourage further international participation in the policy dialogue, the Protection Project

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sponsors an international human rights fellowship program that permits international scholars to work together in fashioning proposed legislation and in campaigning for effective advocacy of policy proposals. As an organization of social science policy researchers, the Protection Project brings together many of the best and brightest from the international community to think collaboratively about initiatives that might form effective public policy. The researchers were instrumental in helping members of the U.S. Congress draft and implement the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000. This landmark legislation did not further victimize the victims of human trafficking by instantly deporting those who had been trafficked into the United States. Instead, the legislation sought to punish those responsible for operating the networks that funnel trafficked persons into the country. Junius P. Rodriguez See also: Human Trafficking for Labor Purposes; Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation.

Further Reading Kyle, David, and Rey Koslowski. Global Human Smuggling: Comparative Perspectives. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.

R were quickly established throughout Germany. Almost all of these had ancillary labor camps, factories, and the like in the vicinity, where inmates worked without pay. There was no individual “title,” but rather, entire races were simply the property of the German State, processed by the Schutzstaffel (commonly termed the SS), and rented out to factories, farmers, and so on. There was some recognition that inmates such as engineers, technicians, and skilled workers should be particularly designated and deployed in industry and agriculture. Once the war began, and especially once the Eastern Front was opened in June 1941, a policy of extermination of the Jews was set in motion. Whole communities were massacred. One’s racial identity was sufficient to be a “crime” worthy of death. But there developed a split within the Nazi hierarchy, as one faction was set on extermination pure and simple, while another faction had a realization on some level that such a policy would set the subject populations against the Nazis based on the need to survive and also that this ran counter to the need for forced labor to keep German industry going. Throughout the war, this tension was never really resolved. Significantly, once the extermination camps were in

Reemergence of Slavery during Era of World War II While serfdom and chattel slavery were abolished in nations like Russia and the United States in the mid-19th century, the nature of modern conflict 80 years later meant that for total war, total mobilization of the work force became necessary. Several nations engaged in practices of forced labor that were tantamount to slavery, whether permanent, as in the case of Nazi treatment of Jews and Slavs, or temporary, as in the relocation and internment of Japanese citizens of the United States and Canada. Classic serfdom entailed a complex web of ties of families and even entire clans or tribes to feudal masters. Chattel slavery meant the actual ownership of persons by individuals, with property titles, deeds, and invoices. In the United States, the vast majority of slaves were Africans. The Nazi idea similarly involved racial themes, but with more concentration on “the Jewish question,” as well as such other groups branded as inferior, such as Gypsies and Slavs. There was some dispute whether such untermenschen should be killed outright or dedicated to slave labor. With the advent of the Nazis to power in 1933, concentration camps 469

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full operation, the process of selecting was well developed. Upon arrival, those judged unable to work—the very young, the old, the sick—were sent at once to the gas chambers, while another cohort was destined for the nearby factories. There was a kind of industrial efficiency, wherein clothing, hair, and gold from teeth was processed and recycled. Hence, the people were not only slaves, but they became industrial products themselves. Similarly, prisoners were utilized as clinical material for medical research and cruel experiments on a wide scale. Of the 35,000 slave laborers who worked in the I. G. Farben plants in the Auschwitz complex, 25,000 died there. The rations for workers in such factories were so small that malnutrition was epidemic. The life expectancy of the typical slave laborer was three-and-ahalf months. In classic chattel slavery, the slave was valuable, but in the Nazi context, he or she was worthless, as population reduction was a main goal, and there were always more slaves to be had. In addition to Jews, vast numbers of prisoners and civilians from the East were brought into this system. Frequently, these laborers were so weak from malnutrition and illness that they were useless for factory work. From the Western Front, hundreds of thousands were transferred to Germany to work in factories, some 1.3 million from France alone. In some cases, these were prisoners of war, while others were simply rounded up, and yet others “volunteered” because the alternative was starvation. By the end of 1944,

one-fifth of the workforce in Germany was foreign, totaling 5 million. Those who deny the Holocaust have argued that the crematoria in camps like Auschwitz were used merely to deal efficiently with the corpses of those who died of natural causes in nearby factories. This position tacitly acknowledges the existence of forced labor on a massive scale during the Nazi era. Forced labor under the government of the Soviet Union took on a slightly different character. In 1931, Joseph Stalin stated that the Soviets were 50 to 100 years behind the industrialized countries; they had 10 years to make it up or they would be crushed. Hence, the Great Famine in the Ukraine was caused by a need to accumulate capital by selling grain on the world market, thus enabling the Soviets to purchase entire factories from Ford. In a similarly ruthless fashion, the purge trials and terror produced a compliant bureaucracy that would strive to meet production goals because failure to do so meant imprisonment or death. The Gulag archipelago of labor camps stretching across Russia and far into Siberia was a vast system of industrial development on a crash basis. Though there was usually a pretext of crimes having been committed by inmates— sabotage, conspiracy, and the like—the actual purpose of this system was industrial production at all costs. Whole social classes such as the wealthy peasant Kulaks were arrested, and either shot or transported to labor camps. The basis for the Soviet forced labor system was not race for the most part, but


social class. “Class traitors” or other dissidents went to their deaths, or to the camps. A memorable literary portrait of this process is Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s long poem “Bratsk Station,” in which dedicated Bolsheviks found themselves building electrical power plants in Siberia. As in Germany, the state was the “owner” of the person, rather than individuals. Even whole families could be deported, and thus the familial character of the old system of serfdom was replicated. The numbers involved in this system are disputed, but it was certainly in the tens of millions. In the Far East, the Japanese Empire, allied with Nazi Germany, developed a vast system of slave labor to fuel factory and mine production in China (especially Manchuria), Korea, and in Japan itself. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese and Korean workers were brought into industry, with mortality rates as high as 50 percent in the mines. This system is powerfully depicted in the classic film trilogy The Human Condition (1959–1960), directed by Masaki Kobayashi, in which a young and somewhat liberal Japanese engineer is sent to a remote Manchurian factory where he is soon horrified by its brutal conditions. The sponsoring corporation is depicted as a cynical bureaucracy, indifferent to the suffering from which it profits so handsomely. As in Germany, the Japanese engaged in medical experiments on prisoners of war, during which hundreds died in gruesome ways. These included experiments in germ warfare. Thus, human beings were transformed into

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mere clinical material, in which they had no rights. In addition to factory and mine labor, the Japanese developed a system of comfort women, in which tens of thousands of women were forced into brothels for the Japanese military. In Korea alone, some 200,000 women were so conscripted; many did not survive the experience. Women of all races from the entire reach of the Japanese Empire were included in this system. Even in the Western democracies, such as the United States and Canada, forced labor was also introduced, albeit with significant differences from the fascist model. In both countries, citizens of Japanese ancestry were quickly interned after Pearl Harbor was attacked. In the United States, they numbered 112,000, and in Canada, 21,000. They were transported to hastily constructed camps, often in remote desert regions. Some internees began work on nearby farms, producing food for themselves and in place of those who went off to join the war. As their “crime” consisted only of their racial origin, and there was no evidence of antigovernment sabotage or conspiracy, such internments bore a distinct resemblance to the camps in Germany. One difference was that it seemed to be more in the nature of a wartime emergency measure, rather than a result of a racial stigma that could never be overcome. Indeed, hundreds of Japanese Americans interned in the camps actually served in the U.S. Army, but in Europe rather than in the Pacific. It is also significant that, unlike in Germany, there

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was nothing in place resembling extermination procedures, nor was there a high mortality rate for internees, compared to that for forced laborers under the Japanese. Still, the existence of internment and forced labor in the democracies suggests that the dynamic of such systems was not unique to the fascist powers. While there were isolated revolts by Jewish militants, both in the camps and in incidents like the Warsaw Rising of 1943, these were not sufficient to shake the system, let alone destroy it. As with the end of chattel slavery in the United States at the end of the Civil War, the end of slave labor under the fascists was brought about only through the Allied victory and the total defeat of the fascist armies. After the war, a handful of military officers and corporate leaders in both Germany and Japan were tried for war crimes, including the use of forced labor. Some were convicted and sent to prison. However, the comfort women of Korea who survived 60 years after the end of the war were still endeavoring to obtain reparations from the Japanese government. Fred Whitehead See also: Nazi Germany and Prostitution; Nazi Slavery.

Further Readings Daniels, Roger. Concentration Camps: North America Japanese in the United States during World War II. Malabar, FL: Robert E. Krieger, 1981.

Harris, Sheldon H. Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932– 1945, and the American Cover-Up. New York: Routledge, 2002. Herbert, Ulrich. Hitler’s Foreign Workers: Enforced Foreign Labor in Germany under the Third Reich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Homze, Edward L. Foreign Labor in Nazi Germany. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967. Solzhenitsyn, Alexandr I. The Gulag Archipelago. New York: Harper, 1974. Suhl, Yuri, ed. They Fought Back: The Story of Jewish Resistance in Nazi Europe. New York: Crown, 1967.

Rehabilitation Programs Rehabilitation programs for former slaves are an attempt to address psychological, social, and cultural issues. Until the late 20th century, legal emancipation and economic assistance were assumed to be all that was necessary for ex-slaves to adjust to their new status. These assumptions guided the workings of the U.S. post–Civil War Freedmen’s Bureau and the establishment of freed slave communities in Sierra Leone, Fernando Pó, and Liberia. A variety of more recent solutions have recognized that the psychological, social, and cultural needs of former slaves extend far beyond these efforts. Founded in 1980 to oppose child labor, the South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude (SACCS) pioneered slave rehabilitation in India. Sensitizing parents, children, employers, as well as labor, political, educational,


and religious groups about child labor issues, SACCS spearheaded campaigns to promote compulsory, free education and the child labor-free Rugmark carpet label. Over a 25-year period, its rescue operations liberated more than 55,000 slave children and provided a multifaceted program of education, training, and rehabilitation at three centers. Numerous organizations are involved in slave redemption and trauma counseling in Sudan, where a half-century of civil war has promoted a surge in slavery. The Sudanese government’s Commission for the Eradication of Abduction of Women and Children seeks to identify, retrieve, and reintegrate abducted persons and train those involved in this process. Canadian Aid for Southern Sudan offers educational and vocational training for former slaves. However, ongoing instability, insufficient resources, and the scale and complexity of Sudanese slavery have made the effects of these programs unclear. In isolated parts of eastern Ghana trokosi, the illegal practice of giving virgin girls to traditional priests as slaves to atone for family sins, received international attention early in the 21st century. Sponsored by the Women’s Funding Network, a vocational center and training program has imparted skills like batik dyeing, sewing, and palm oil processing to assist thousands of liberated trokosi slaves, many now grown with children of their own, but few with skills necessary for life outside the shrines where they have been held. Funded by the Australian Government,

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International Needs established a residential center providing trauma counseling and vocational training. In Ghana’s Volta and Central regions, impoverished parents sold children to fishermen. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) registered 1,002 individuals who had been trafficked in this manner. Boys aged 3 to 14 were forced to cast and draw fishing nets and dive to release tangled nets. Poorly fed and never paid, many drowned. Local leaders helped win the cooperation of fishermen, who abandoned slavery and received training and microcredit loans to improve fishing techniques or engage in other livelihoods, such as cattle rearing. An IOM transit center in Yeji gave 298 freed child slaves medical examinations and counseling before they were reunited with their parents and sent to school or vocational training programs. Prior to their release, the IOM identified the needs of the parents and provided training and microcredits in market trading, charcoal production, and restaurant ownership to raise their potential incomes. In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the Addis Meraf Centre provides shelter, medical assistance, counseling, vocational training, and family reunification support to women and children trafficked for sexual exploitation and forced domestic labor, mostly to the Arabian Peninsula. Initially, the center accommodated only 12 clients at a time, though the estimated number of victims is 40,000.

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In 2004, a unique rehabilitation center was established in Abu Dhabi as a result of laws eliminating the trafficking of underage boys as camel jockeys. Run by the United Arab Emirates Ministry of Interior and Pakistan’s Ansar Burney Welfare Trust International, the center can provide health care, counseling, and education for up to 400 rescued children for four to eight weeks before repatriation to their home countries, mainly Pakistan and Bangladesh. As with abolitionist movements, several Christian church organizations are in the forefront of slave rehabilitation efforts. Save the Children addresses the health and educational needs of impoverished and abused children worldwide, including former slaves. Others are more focused. World Vision has developed innovative programs for rehabilitating bonded child laborers in India. A nonprofit Catholic human rights organization, People’s Recovery, Empowerment, and Development Assistance focuses on Filipino women and children exploited by demeaning labor such as prostitution. In September 2005, the Ukrainian government requested church assistance in dealing with thousands of victims of human trafficking. The effectiveness of virtually all rehabilitation programs remains unclear as their development is very recent, their techniques are varied, and little study has been devoted to evaluating them. Randall Fegley See also: India; Social Reintegration of Former Slaves; Sudan and South Sudan.

Further Readings Ahmed, Ashfaq. “Under-Age Camel Jockeys Get Caring Hand.” Daily Gulf News (Dubai), February 12, 2004. Bales, Kevin. Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Franklin, John Hope, and Alfred A. Moss From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans. New York McGraw-Hill, 1994.

Reparations Reparations for slavery, or slave redress, means restitution or the return of unjust enrichment gained at the expense of others. This compensation can take the form of land grants; cash; educational, medical, or social services; museums; monuments; and/or apologies. Acting as private persons, as leaders of public interest groups or as government officials, a number of spokespersons for nations that prospered from slavery have argued that freed slaves or their descendants should be compensated for their injuries from the national stock of wealth spawned by their unpaid labor. The primary focus of reparations are the victims of the transatlantic slave trade and the institution of African slavery in the Americas, but some people argue for compensation on behalf of other enslaved groups, such as the Indians of South America. Proposed programs or actual lawsuits for reparations over the past 150 years have all tended to establish the racial status of prospective recipients; pinpointed the

Reparations

governmental, religious, or commercial institutions that are morally liable for financing reparations; discussed the historical and continuing harms that are associated with slavery; and explained the symbolic, moral, spiritual, psychological, or economic benefits of reparations on a national and an individual level. Although Great Britain made no reparations to former slaves when it abolished colonial slavery in 1834, Parliament has awarded reparations, in the form of debt relief, to certain African nations from which slaves were procured and currently debates the advisability of compensating the descendants of colonial slaves. Following British colonial abuses of human rights in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, the contemporary governments of these nations have acknowledged the pernicious effects of colonial policies affecting the freedoms and dignity of indigenous populations and have apologized to or compensated victims. Two laws frequently cited to justify slave reparations for those of African descent stem from the atrocities of World War II. The U.S. Civil Liberties Act (1988) mandated the government’s apology to Japanese Americans interred during the war and provided cash compensation in the amount of $20,000 for each victim. The right to reparations for victims of the Holocaust and for brutalized indigenous people was raised as early as 1948, and the recent Foundation Law (2000) requires Germany and its corporations (as well as Swiss, Austrian, and French governments and

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corporations) to compensate slave laborers, forced laborers, and the victims of theft, insurance fraud, and other damages. However, these wartime human rights abuses contravened existing laws: The problem with slave redress is that the institution of slavery in the United States was, at the time, a lawful commercial enterprise. The United States is a major center of debate and litigation over the provision of reparations for African slavery. Indeed, the nation has a history of promising reparations. After the U.S. Civil War, the federal government initiated a series of reparations programs to foster the economic independence of freed slaves. In 1865, General William Sherman issued Field Order No. 15, which provided a 40-acre tract (from land captured from South Carolina to Florida) for 40,000 former slaves, and the U.S. Congress immediately established the Freedman’s Bureau to oversee these grants. Shortly thereafter, President Andrew Johnson reversed the order. In 1866, Congress passed the Southern Homestead Act to provide the freedmen (former slaves) with 80-acre parcels of land for the price of five dollars, but only 1,000 freedmen were able to benefit. In 1867, Representative Thaddeus Stevens proposed a slave-reparations bill that would give every freed adult male 40 acres of land and $50 to build a house. None of these measures was successful; most freed slaves remained uncompensated for their labor and suffering during slavery. During the 20th century, various measures brought reparations to

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public notice. A number of lawsuits against federal or state governments and against businesses have been filed, all of them, so far, without pecuniary success, although, in 2000, Aetna Insurance Company issued an apology for its historical involvement in issuing slave-insurance policies. Nonlitigious claims have included James Forman’s Black Manifesto (1969), a claim upon American churches and synagogues for reparations in the amount of $50 million to fund various African American self-help programs; several proposals by Representative John Conyers (D-Michigan) calling for the formation of a commission to study reparations, including a request for a formal apology to the descendants of slaves (1999); and a proposal by Representative Tony Hall (D-Ohio) calling for a formal resolution to acknowledge and to apologize for slavery (2000). Public debate, which is abundant and frequently acrimonious in the United States, goes beyond the question of whether or not African Americans deserve reparations and/or an apology. Even those in favor of atonement disagree about whether reparations should be made to African Americans for the economic and social injustices stemming from slavery or from subsequent civil rights violations. They also disagree about the socioeconomic status and heritage of individuals or groups meriting inclusion, about which private or public institutions should bear the cost of funding reparations, and about the type and degree of atonement to be demanded of white Americans. As yet,

no single avenue of proceeding in the matter of reparations has surfaced in the United States or elsewhere to funnel effort and money into a movement with broad-based popular support. Susan B. Iwanisziw See also: Abolitionism; Jim Crow Laws.

Further Readings Brooks, Roy L. Atonement and Forgiveness: A New Model for Black Reparations. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. Salzberger, Ronald P., and Mary C. Turck, eds. Reparations for Slavery: A Reader. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004. Van Bueren, Geraldine. “Slavery as Piracy: The Legal Case for Reparations for the Slave Trade.” In The Political Economy of New Slavery, ed. Christien van den Anker. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

Restavek The restavek are child slaves in modern Haiti. The term (also spelled restavec) is a Creole word derived from the French reste avec, or “stays with,” in reference to the restavek’s origin as foster children. International awareness about the restavek has grown increasingly since the beginning of the 21st century, but the phenomenon itself has roots that are several centuries deep. The restavek phenomenon can be attributed to two long-term trends in Haitian history: the prevalence of various forms of forced labor, and the habit of welcoming someone else’s children in

Restavek

one’s household. Enslaving human beings, including children, was common in colonial Haiti. Following Christopher Columbus’s first voyage to Hispaniola (1492), Spanish settlers forced the local Taino Indians to work on plantations and gold mines until the practice was restricted under Charles V’s Law of the Indies (1542). After the French takeover of the western part of Hispaniola (Treaty of Ryswick, 1697), imports of African slaves drastically increased Haiti’s slave population to a peak of 500,000 in 1789. Under the 1685 Code Noir, children of female slaves could be legally enslaved as long their owners provided them with religious instruction and sufficient food and clothing. In practice, child slaves performed menial tasks in the master’s home or light field duties. Slavery was abolished by France in 1793, then again when Haiti earned its independence in 1804, but Haitian leaders forced many former slaves to remain on plantations as semifree cultivateurs until 1820. Haitians could also be forced to work on infrastructure projects (corvée) until 1918. Horrendous working conditions experienced by Haitian cane cutters in the Dominican Republic have also led to accusations that their plight mirrors that of colonial slaves. A second factor facilitating the appearance of restavek slavery is the nonnuclear nature of many Haitian families. In colonial times, laws restricting a slave’s right to choose a spouse, along with the two-to-one ratio between male and female slaves, made

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it difficult to found families. During the war of independence (1791–1804), male deaths spiked so high that women outnumbered men, with similar consequences. In more recent times, a high death rate among young adults, emigration, and the pervasiveness of common-law marriages (plasaj) have contributed to the instability of the family nucleus. Haitians have traditionally been willing to care for children who are not biologically theirs to compensate for this familial instability, but this generous custom had the unfortunate consequence of inciting some host families to exploit foster children. According to various estimates, there are between 100,000 and 300,000 restavek in Haiti today out of a total population of 8 million. Their biological parents are usually impoverished farmers. Concluding that leaving the countryside is a prerequisite to social mobility, they part with one of their children—usually a girl, some as young as four—and send her to a host family that promises access to educational facilities, good living conditions, and, occasionally, money. Host families usually live in large cities. They are more comfortable than their rural counterparts, though by no means wealthy (the affluent can afford to hire adult household help). The housewife (called “aunt” by the restavek regardless of family ties) serves as the main supervisor. The restavek’s lowerclass name and dark skin often leads to the aunt’s haughtiness in Haiti’s racially and socially polarized society.

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Given the decentralized, informal nature of the system, a restavek’s living conditions can vary from household to household, but they are typically appalling. Most restavek do not attend school, or only on a part-time basis. Instead, they are given daylong chores such as emptying chamber pots, fetching water, doing the laundry, watching after the host’s children, and cleaning the floor. They receive no salary or medical attention. Instead, they must content themselves with food leftovers and a cot on the floor. Rebellious behavior or unsatisfactory work results in frequent verbal and physical abuse. Female restavek must also meet the sexual demands of the young men of the household. Because of these various characteristics, the restavek system is usually assimilated with child slavery. International criticism of the restavek system increased following the publication of the UNICEF’s Les enfants en situation spécialement difficile en Haïti (1991), and Jean-Robert Cadet’s autobiography Restavec: From Haitian Slave-Child to Middle-Class American (1998). But because of the social stigma associated with restavek status, Haitian leaders willing to defend their cause have been rare. Presidents Dumarsais Estimé (1946–1950) and Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1991; 1994– 1996; 2001–2004) both denounced the institution, to little effect. The Haitian labor code bans employment of servants younger than 12 and specifies that older servants must be treated humanely, and Haiti signed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child,

which bans exploitation of child workers, on August 15, 2002, but these texts are not enforced. When restaveks become teenagers, they usually flee from their household or are kicked out when they become pregnant. They then find a new home in foster homes run by charitable organizations, or must fend for themselves as one of the big cities’ many homeless orphans. Philippe R. Girard See also: Haiti.

Further Readings Aristide, Jean-Bertrand, and Laura Flynn. Eyes of the Heart: Seeking a Path for the Poor in the Age of Globalization. Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 2000. Cadet, Jean-Robert. Restavec: From Haitian Slave-Child to Middle-Class American; An Autobiography. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002. National Coalition for Haitian Rights (NCHR). Restavek No More: Eliminating Child Slavery in Haiti. New York: NCHR, 2002.

Rezende Figueira, Ricardo (1952–) Father Ricardo Rezende Figueira is a Roman Catholic priest and human rights activist who helped establish the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) in Brazil. He has worked for more than two decades defending the indigenous population and the poor in the southern part of the state of Para, where contemporary slavery, land evictions, and


political murder came to dominate the local labor market. His efforts on behalf of oppressed people were recognized and documented in the film Defying Death in Brazil: The Story of Father Ricardo Rezende (1993), produced by Geoffrey O’Connor. Anti-Slavery International (ASI), a London-based human rights organization, awarded its prestigious Anti-Slavery Award in 1992 to Father Rezende and the Pastoral Land Commission for their efforts in combating modern slavery in Brazil. This recognition energized the Brazilian antislavery movement, which achieved some of its greatest success in the years that followed. Members of the CPT investigated cases of Brazilian slavery and reported more than 5,000 documented instances in 1991. Believing that his mission to preach the gospel called him to serve the needs of the dispossessed, the downtrodden, and the marginalized, Father Rezende emerged as a powerful ally of the enslaved as he “spoke truth to power” and challenged entrenched political power and landowners to end the practice of slavery in Brazil. Father Rezende called for land reform and a nationwide commitment to the principle of abolitionism. His town, Rio de Maria, became known as the “town of death foretold,” as so many antislavery advocates were murdered there. The government of Brazil forced Father Rezende to accept its offer of bodyguards after the murder of Expedito Ribeiro de Souza, the president of the Rural Workers Union in Rio Maria, on February 2, 1992. Only begrudgingly

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did he accept the protection once the state agreed to offer protection to the leading trade unionists in the region as well. After a few years of this arrangement, Rezende left the state of Para and relocated to Rio de Janeiro, where he pursued a PhD in sociology and anthropology with a special emphasis on human rights issues. Due to Father Rezende’s courageous leadership, the CPT became vocal in its criticism of the persistence of slavery in modern Brazil, particularly within the ranching and mining sectors, among the many indigenous peoples of Amazonia, and also in the Brazilian charcoal industry. Despite constant death threats from the region’s landowners, Rezende continued to agitate against labor practices that were exploitative in nature. His success in getting Brazilian authorities to investigate his charges has demonstrated that modern nations can be moved to take action against slavery on the basis of solid evidence and effective use of moral suasion. Following in the footsteps of many 19th-century abolitionists who fought against transatlantic slavery, Father Rezende and the CPT have found a fervent voice through evangelical Christianity. A recognized expert on the issue of contemporary slavery, Father Rezende has published extensively on the topic. His works include: A justiça do lobo: Posseiros e padres do Araguaia (The Justice of the Wolf: One Who Holds Legal Titles to Property and Priests of the Araguaia, 1986); Rio Maria: Canto da Terra (Rio Maria: Song of the Earth, 1994); Trabalho escravo no Brasil contemporâneo

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(Enslaved Work in Contemporary Brazil, 1999); and Pisando fora da própria sombra: A escravidão por dívida no Brasil contemporâneo (Stepping Outside of the Proper Shade: Debt Slavery in Contemporary Brazil, 2004). Junius P. Rodriguez See also: Brazil; Pastoral Land Commission (CPT).

Further Readings Bornstein, David. How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. LeBreton, Binka. Stolen Lives: The Modern Slavery in the Brazilian Amazônia. São Paulo: Editions Loyola, 2002. Sutton, Alison. Slavery in Brazil: Link in the Chain of Modernisation. London: Anti-Slavery International, 1994.

S Under Hitler’s direction and under the economic Four-Year Plan, he directed recruitment, allocation of war labor, and Nazi policy of mass deportation, and enslavement. Sauckel became the driving force for determining the number of laborers need for the German war effort and the brutal forced labor of foreign civilians and prisoners of war. In 1942, Sauckel introduced the Labor Mobilization Program that detailed his need for manpower and his reliance on the German armed forces conquering land and using its peoples for wartime employment. When his labor demands were not met, Sauckel traveled to conquered territories to press officials to force more recruitment. By 1943, Sauckel believed that volunteer labor had failed and that compulsory service would be needed to take its place. His objective was to work the slaves as hard as possible for the least expense to Germany. The majority of forced laborers came from Europe’s eastern territories and were used to manufacture war materials and armaments and build fortifications. In fact, slave labor contributed to the building of the German “Atlantic wall” as coastal fortification in France, Holland, and Belgium, and Russian laborers built defenses that were used against their fellow countrymen. Sauckel reported

Sauckel, Fritz (1894–1946) Fritz Sauckel served as general plenipotentiary for the employment of labor for Nazi Germany and directed the implementation of slave labor camps. Born October 27, 1894, in Hassfurt, Germany, Ernst Friedrich Christoph Sauckel was raised the middle-class son of a postal clerk. At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, he was captured in a German vessel and spent the remainder of the war in a French prisoner of war camp until his release in November 1919. After World War I, Sauckel returned to central Germany, where he worked in a factory and studied engineering in Ilmeneau until 1923, when he married. He then joined the Nazi Party and remained a loyal member through its dissolution and its reformation in 1925. By 1927, he had become a party leader in Thuringia, and two years later, Sauckel served in the regional government for the Nazis. When Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party seized power in 1933, Sauckel became a member of the Reichstag, governor of Thuringia, and was given the honorary rank of obergruppenfuhrer (senior group leader) of the militant SA and SS. During World War II, Sauckel served as the Nazi’s general plenipotentiary general for labor from 1942 to 1945. 481

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to Hitler in 1944 that during his tenure more than 5 million exploited workers were brought to Germany as laborers and fewer than 200,000 came voluntarily. At the war’s end, Sauckel was arrested and later appeared as a defendant during the Nuremberg Trials on four counts of war crimes. At Nuremberg, he vehemently denied the charges stating that he could not control other people’s mistreatment of the workers and that he was required to meet the labor demand. The court held Sauckel responsible for the slave labor program and for his knowledge and acceptance of the inhumane methods used to obtain people and work them. The International Military Tribunal found him guilty of two counts for war crimes and crimes against humanity, and he was hanged October 16, 1946. Nathan R. Meyer See also: Germany; Nazi Slavery.

Further Readings Allan, Michael Thad. The Business of Genocide: The SS, Slave Labor, and the Concentration Camps. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. Marrus, Michael R. Nuremberg War Crime Trials, 1945–1946. New York: St. Martin Press, 1999.

Saudi Arabia, Abolition in From ancient times through the 1960s, slavery was a fact of life in Arabia. African captives were imported into the

Arabian Peninsula to be sold as slaves until the late 19th century. While some may have served as soldiers, sailors, and commercial workers, the vast majority were destined to become domestic slaves who provided various services in rich households in urban centers. The practice of confining women to certain quarters of the house—common among the upper class—created a need to acquire domestic servants to perform their domestic chores. This work is now undertaken by maids from south and Southeast Asia. Why did slavery persist for so long in Saudi Arabia despite Koranic teachings encouraging manumission as an act of penance and as a sign of piety? First, slavery was recognized as a right that was permitted by law. Second, readily available slaves from across the Red Sea were relied upon for labor, especially in the households of mercantile families. Well into the 20th century, slavery was understood as both an economic necessity and a critical component of the country’s system of social stratification. Moreover, the royal family itself owned many slaves, and King Ibn Saud saw nothing wrong with slavery, especially since existing slaves were believed to be generally well treated. After World War I and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, Great Britain was increasingly involved in the affairs of the Middle East and attempted to circumscribe the widespread practice of slavery. In 1927, Britain and Saudi Arabia signed the


Treaty of Jeddah, which granted Britain rights of manumission within the country in return for recognizing the independence of the Saudi king’s realm. Thus, in the late 1920s and 1930s, Britain freed and repatriated hundreds of runaway slaves. This right of manumission, however, was revoked in 1936, the year that King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud (reigned 1902–1953) established new slave regulations. King Ibn Saud had issued a decree—an outcome of yet another treaty with Britain—ending the importation of new slaves into the country, regulating the conditions of slaves, and providing for manumission under some conditions. Nevertheless, British records show clearly that these regulations were not being enforced, and the number of slaves who continued to run away attested to their masters’ poor treatment of them. In fact, the policy of consular manumission was pursued even as the British attempted not to meddle in the internal affairs of the kingdom. The Saudis appeared unwilling even to ameliorate slavery, let alone abolish it. Although Ibn Saud’s imposition of peace and order helped restore some stability to the kingdom and pilgrimages to Mecca resumed, slave imports, while declining, continued and the king profited from customs duties assessed on them. Slaves were now being sold, not openly, but in informal or disguised markets. In 1928, West Africans, called Takruni, were still being imported illegally to Saudi Arabia during the pilgrimage season—but not at the levels

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they had in decades past, because closer control of the pilgrimage by European colonial powers ensured that unscrupulous dealers did not bring in people to Saudi Arabia under false pretexts. Declining demand for slaves further unsettled the institution of slavery. The increasing use of cars to replace slave camel drivers undermined the economic interests of Hijazi dealers who gained most from this trade. Demand for slave soldiers was drying up. Thus, by the end of the 1950s, slave markets had been significantly curtailed as had been slavery itself. In November 1962, Prince Faisal, appointed prime minister by his brother, King Saud, issued a ten-point program to abolish slavery. This was a bold and revolutionary move on the part of conservative Saudi Arabia, which was increasingly vulnerable to the criticism of such progressive Arab leaders as Egypt’s outspoken Gamal Abdel Nasser. Prince Faisal officially abolished slavery on the grounds that it was difficult to guarantee the Islamic stipulation that kindness ever be shown to one’s slaves. Yet, it is doubtful that slavery came to an end at once. Several more years were required to make it an obsolete practice. The emergence of the lucrative oil industry, gradual modernization of the Saudi economy, and outside pressure from the West eventually made slavery no longer respectable or acceptable. In 1964, the sixth World Muslim Congress, which has consultative status with the United Nations and observer status with the Organization

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of Islamic Countries, pledged support for all antislavery movements. Abdin Chande See also: Muscat and Oman, Abolition of Slavery in; North Africa, Abolition in.

Further Readings Hutson, Alaine. “Enslavement and Manumission in Saudi Arabia, 1926–38.” Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies 11 no. 1 (Spring 2002): 49–70. Miers, Suzanne. Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. New York and Oxford: Altamira Press, 2003.

Serfdom Serfdom arose in late antiquity as an alternative to slavery. A landowner divided his property into sections, keeping some for his own use and allotting the rest to laborers. In exchange for access to this land, laborer agreed to work the owner’s land as he required. In some instances, an owner required laborers to work his land one or more days per week, while in other cases an owner converted the labor obligation to payment in kind or rent. To simplify these arrangements, a system of payment in labor is serfdom, payment in kind is sharecropping, and payment in rent is tenancy. The restrictive nature of serfdom rooted laborers to the land. Serfs were not free to pull up stakes whenever they wished, because laws forbade them from leaving the manor without the landowner’s consent. The

tendency to couple land and labor both benefited and burdened serfs. Over time, they asserted a right to the land they worked, but the inertia of tradition allowed them to claim the land their families had worked for generations as theirs in practice if not in title. By the 14th century, serfdom had run its course in western Europe only to rise in central and eastern Europe to restrict the migration of peasants to new land. The Polish crown imposed serfdom at the turn of the 16th century to halt the flow of peasants to Lithuania and Ukraine. Similarly, the Russian czar instituted serfdom in the mid17th century to outlaw the migration of laborers to land south of Moscow, Ukraine, North Caucasus, and lands east of the Volga River. Between these events, the Hapsburgs established serfdom in the early 16th century in Austria and Bohemia to attach labor to the land during a period when disease and war were depopulating the countryside. The shortage of labor following a smallpox epidemic led the Dutch to enserf the Khoi of South Africa in the 18th century. In all of these instances, serfdom was a response to a shrinking supply of labor. This trend reversed after about 1600. New World crops like potatoes and corn yielded more food per acre than did Old World grains and thus fed more mouths than had been possible before the discovery of the Americas and the “Columbian exchange” that followed. Improvements in nutrition are evidenced in the expansion of Europe’s population, which was 145

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million in 1750, 265 million in 1850, and 440 million in 1900. The rise in population undermined the rationale for serfdom. No longer was labor so scarce that landowners needed to freeze it in place. Moreover, writers of the Enlightenment had condemned serfdom as wasteful and inefficient. In place of serfdom, Scottish economist Adam Smith and his disciples exulted free labor as the engine of the modern economy. Other factors in the demise of European serfdom were the military reversals of the ancien regimes. The Russian defeat in the Crimean War, for example, led critics of serfdom to blame it for impoverishing the peasants, thereby crippling Russia’s army of peasant conscripts. In addition, peasants expressed their unhappiness with serfdom and their sporadic revolts roused Europe to action. The Hapsburgs abolished serfdom in Austria and Bohemia in 1781, Baden followed in 1783, Denmark in 1788, France in 1789, Prussia in 1807, Russia in 1861, and Romania in 1864. The abolition of serfdom in Europe did not end serfdom elsewhere. Since 1727 the Diallonke, Susu, and Poullis have worked five days per week from morning to early afternoon for landowners in the Republic of Guinea, and during mid and late afternoon and the other two days per week on land set aside for their own use. In addition, they owe 10 percent of the harvest to the landowner. Serfdom persisted into the 20th century in Tibet and Peru, and serfs of the Sokoto Caliphate in Africa worked for their landowner between

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9:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. and the other hours of the day on land set aside for their own use. The landowner supplied the midday meal but otherwise left serfs to fend for themselves. In Malawi, serfs work their landowners’ estates six months a year. Other arrangements resemble serfdom in obliging workers to surrender their labor for a fixed duration. In the 16th century, the Spanish compelled peasants to toil for a year in the silver mines of Bolivia. In South Africa, the discovery of diamonds in 1867 led the British to press men into working the mines for six month at a time. These arrangements were not peonage because they did not arise from debt. Likewise, they were not indentured servants, because they did not arise from a laborer’s debt for payment of his migration to the worksite and they did not reward a laborer with land or another commodity, as was the case in British North America, upon completion of service. Christopher Cumo See also: Alexander II; Peonage.

Further Readings Bush, Michael L. Servitude in Modern Times. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2000. Bush, Michael L, ed. Serfdom and Slavery: Studies in Legal Bondage. New York: Longman, 1996. Okpewho, Isidore, Carole Boyce Davies, and Ali A. Mazrui, eds. The African Diaspora: African Origins and New World Identities. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.

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Servile Marriage Servile marriage involves the disposing of girls or women without their consent in marriages that may be exploitative and demeaning. The girl’s or woman’s parents or guardians arrange the union for money or other forms of payment. In certain cultures, upon her husband’s death, a wife in a servile marriage may be inherited by his brother (a tradition known as the levirate) or even sold. Servile marriage, which persists as a traditional element of marital negotiations, particularly in certain African and Asian countries, inducts women into arranged marriages in which they may function as virtual slaves. The United Nations Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery (1956) has dubbed servile marriage “a practice similar to slavery.” Article 1 of the 1956 convention prohibits any institution or practice whereby a woman, without the right to refuse, is promised or given in marriage in exchange for money or other considerations; it also prohibits a husband or his family or his clan from transferring that woman to another party in exchange for money or other considerations; and a widow cannot be inherited by another person. Several recent international agreements, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) address, in part, the suppression of servile marriage.

The 1979 convention specifies in Article 5 that signatories shall take “all appropriate measures . . . to modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and women, with a view to achieving the elimination of prejudices and customs and all other practices which are based on the idea of the inferiority or superiority of either of the sexes or on stereotyped roles for men and women.” Article 6 calls for the suppression of all forms of traffic in women. Article 16 calls for the end of discrimination in all matters relating to marriage and family relations and specifies that “the betrothal and marriage of a child shall have no legal effect, and all necessary action, including legislation, shall be taken to specify a minimum age for marriage and to make the registration of marriages in an official registry compulsory.” The 1989 convention establishes the attainment of majority of a child at 18 years of age, and specifies in Article 35 that signatories “shall take all appropriate . . . measures to prevent the abduction of, the sale of or traffic in children for any purpose or in any form.” Cultures that honor the traditional practice of recruiting wives by bestowing a bride-price (money or gifts) on the women’s parents or guardians are the cultures most likely to countenance the continuation of servile marriage. For example, in Ethiopia, Ghana, Cameroon, India, and Nepal, among other countries, certain ethnic, caste, or tribal groups continue the tradition of servile marriage despite domestic


and international laws aimed at its suppression. In Ethiopia a man may rape a minor girl (whose value as a potential wife to another man is thereby diminished) and then demand that her father let him marry her. If she ever wishes to marry, she is trapped into accepting her rapist’s proposal. In Ghana and other African nations, minor girls are given as pledges to priests in order to atone for offenses committed by family members. In Cameroon some tribal groups practice the levirate (the transfer of a widow to her deceased husband’s brother), a tradition linked to the belief that the bride-price initially paid to a woman’s family is a type of lien, which the husband’s family retains upon his death. Of course, a widow without means of support may well be forced to comply with the marital arrangements made by her deceased husband’s family, and only the reform of inheritance practices is likely secure the independence of such women in the future. In India and Nepal, girls of lowcaste status are especially vulnerable to the form of exploitation known locally as “selling daughters.” At about 13 years of age, these girls are purchased through bride-price negotiations, without their consent, and inducted into servile marriages. Susan B. Iwanisziw See also: Bride-Price; Caste; Concubines; Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW); Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989); Trokosi.

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Further Readings Cameron, Mary M. On the Edge of the Auspicious: Gender and Caste in Nepal. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998. Servile Marriage. The Feminist Sexual Ethics Project. http://www.brandeis. edu/projects/fse/Pages/servilemarriage. html 8/24/2005. United Nations. Bringing International Human Rights Home: Judicial Colloquium on the Domestic Application of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. New York: United Nations, 2000.

Sex Workers Union of Cambodia There are two organized groups of sex workers in Cambodia, the Cambodian Prostitutes Union (CPU), which is a project of the Cambodian Women’s Development Association (founded 1992), and Women’s Network for Unity (WNU), an independent national registered sex worker organization managed by a collective of elected sex workers founded in 2002. Members of CPU work in the red-light area of Toul Kork in Phnom Penh. WNU has a national membership of women, transgenders, and men and holds most of its meetings in Phnom Penh. Both CPU and WNU address poor working conditions in the sex industry and slavery in the sex industry. The CPU and Cambodian Women’s Development Association presented information about modern slavery

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in the sex industry in Cambodia to promote a rights-based approach to trafficking in persons at a 1998 nongovernmental consultation with the United Nations Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery, alongside the Global Alliance against Traffic in Women and the International Human Rights Law Group (now called Global Rights). Human trafficking into the sex industry, particularly using debt bondage, is not uncommon in Cambodia, primarily involving teenage girls migrating from Vietnam and rural areas of Cambodia to the larger cities of Cambodia for work. However, corruption and low wages in Cambodia make law enforcement an inappropriate way to address modern slavery since most poor people, including trafficked persons, do not have the money needed to pay the police to investigate their cases. In the instances where arrests have been made, it is common for those arrested to pay police officers to release them. Other responses to trafficking into prostitution in Cambodia include referrals to the Cambodian Women’s Crisis Center, which offers shelter. Melissa Ditmore See also: Cambodia.

Further Readings Altink, Sietske. Stolen Lives: Trading Women into Sex and Slavery. New York: Harrington Park Press, 1995. Lean-Lim, L., ed. The Sex Sector: The Economic and Social Bases of Prostitution in Southeast Asia. Geneva: International Labour Organization.

“Sex Worker Demands Rights and Recognition.” Phnom Penh Post 8, no. 19 (September 17–30, 1999).

Sexual Abuse Sexual abuse is a loose term that refers to exploitative, coerced sexual actions that form a continuum that ranges from street hassling and gestures to rape and incest. This form of violence occurs in all societies, ethnic and racial groups, and socioeconomic classes. It is defined as intentional or knowingly touching, fondling, or looking, including penetration, by the perpetrator of the victim, directly or indirectly through clothing, of the sex organs, anus, or breasts of either the victim or the abuser. Other forms of sexual abuse, in an incomplete list, include sexual harassment, up-skirt pictures, female circumcision, prostitution, pornography, sex trafficking, sex tourism, date rape, stalking, exposure by the abuser, and mail-order brides. In children, coercing and forcing a child to look at pornography and voyeurism are also sexual abuse. The psychological and emotional impact of sexual abuse on the victim is not necessarily proportional to the severity of the abuse, the closeness of the victim to the abuser, the age when the abuse begins, or the number of abusers. It depends on the combination of these factors. Abuse can cause low self-esteem, a lack of trust in others, the inability to stay out of abuse or dysfunctional relationships, interpersonal difficulties, sexual dysfunction, substance abuse, eating disorders, phobias, pelvic pain, backaches, skin disorders, genitourinary

Sexual Abuse

problems, an inability to concentrate, a distorted self-image, long-term flashbacks, regular nightmares, a change in personality, insecurities, aggressiveness or being overly compliant, an inability to fully feel one’s emotions, depression, anxiety, self-abuse, self-mutilation, difficulty in experiencing pleasure, shame, sexually transmitted diseases, suicide, mood disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, and unwanted pregnancies. In addition, in children, a drop in school grades is not uncommon; it is also a cause of running away, inappropriate sexual behavior, regression, and bed-wetting. Most of the sexually abused individuals are women and girls; however, men and boys are also abused. Most sexual abuse of children is perpetrated by someone whom the victim knows. Because of the silence surrounding sexual abuse, accurate statistics are difficult to obtain, but the World Health Organization estimates that by the age of 18 years old, the international legal age of adulthood, approximately 25 percent of children worldwide have been sexually abused. Some researchers believe that this figure is much too low. Child sexual abuse is possible because the child is dependent on the abuser, hierarchically subordinate, and generally ignorant about sexual matters. Children are also not emotionally or psychologically mature, therefore, it is relatively easy for an authoritative, dominant person to trick or force the child into the sexual act. Elements that impact how severe the trauma of sexual abuse is, whether in adults or children, depend to a large extent on its severity and duration, the extent of support by family and friends,

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the general capacity of the victim to cope, and his or her attitude. What has not been fully recognized by societies around the world is the impact of sexual abuse on public health. There is usually insufficient funding to cope with this serious problem. In fact, the problem is worsening. As societies transform and its elders are placed in an institutional care environment or are left to live alone, sexual abuse within that population is increasing. Economic globalization and the Internet have each fostered the growth and transnationalization of certain forms of sexual abuse. The Internet allows for the rapid spread of information about where victims can be bought. Globalization permits the easy crossing of borders for the stalking and purchasing of victims. Criminal rings and sex rings function more efficiently and effectively than the forces of order because they have transformed into transnational units. Chat rooms, newsgroups, and websites can be used to obtain victims and videoconferencing live sexual abuse via the Internet has become popular. Since the Internet remains unregulated, accountability for its misuse is impossible. This use of cyberspace for communication has spawned exploitative advertisement for such activities as prostitution tours. It has also led to the use of mail-order bride agencies covering for sex trafficking. Each year poverty and unemployment cause many thousands of women to become victims and to be bought with the use of credit cards over the Internet. The use of the Internet has also caused a spiraling demand for new and different kinds of

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abusive material because there is competition for increasingly violent forms of abuse. The sex industry, both legal and illegal, is one of the most important of the Internet businesses. It is also one of the largest purchasers of computer hardware and is on the cutting edge of new informational technology developments, including, for example, e-commerce. Loni Bramson See also: Female Genital Mutilation; Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation; Prostitution.

Further Readings Johnson, Jerry L., and George Grant Jr. Sexual Abuse. Boston: Pearson/Allyn & Bacon, 2007. Rowan, Edward L. Understanding Child Sexual Abuse. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2006. Russell, Diana. Sexual Exploitation: Rape, Child Sexual Abuse, and Workplace Harassment. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1984.

Sharecropping The abrupt end of slavery in the United States in 1865 left planter and freedman to craft a new economic relationship, one that favored the planter who had money and the force of law on his side. The sugar plantations of Louisiana and the rice plantations of the coastal Carolinas demanded, as they had in the antebellum period, gang labor, and nothing less than cash payment could induce blacks to work them. The

tobacco farms that ran north to south from Kentucky to South Carolina and the cotton lands that spread east to west from Georgia to Texas contained a mix of tenant farmers and sharecroppers. A tenant farmer owed rent to a landlord, while a sharecropper owed a portion of his crop. A planter subdivided his land into small lots in hopes of encouraging laborers to work them intensively. With land the fixed resource, the planter wanted to crowd as much labor onto it as he could. He offered these lots in annual contracts, but the duration of the contract worked against the single male. Planters were too uneasy about the possibility of his quitting to offer him more than daily wage labor. Instead they offered contracts to families that had been in the community for generations and had a reputation for diligence and subservience. These families would not, planters calculated, pull up stakes while a contract was in force. A freedman who had nothing but his labor and that of his family to sell, bought from a planter or local merchant farm equipment, seed, and fertilizer by pledging a portion of his crop, usually between one-third and two-thirds, as payment. A sharecropper was not of course free to farm as he wished. The landowner demanded that he grow a staple, cotton in most cases. The plight of the sharecropper resembled that of the Irish peasant. Both had little choice but to grow cash crops at the expense of sustenance. By concentrating production on cotton rather than food, sharecropping diminished the diversity that had

Sharecropping

characterized antebellum agriculture in the South. Corn production in the South plummeted from 29 bushels per person in 1860 to 17.3 bushels per person in 1880. The cotton-to-corn ratio more than doubled between 1850 and 1890. Once a net exporter of food, the South was, by 1880, a net importer. In decreasing the land planted to corn by one-half, the sharecropping system allowed corn and hog production to become concentrated in the Midwest. More worrisome, it put the freedmen at risk. Had the southern corn leaf blight swept the United States in 1870 rather than in 1970, African Americans might have starved as the Irish peasants had during the potato famine. The concentration of land, labor, and money in cotton occurred at the moment when the new agricultural and mechanical colleges were preaching the virtues of crop diversification. Planters oppressed sharecroppers in other ways. The landowner who doubled as merchant sold food and other items to sharecroppers at prices 30 percent above market value. Hemmed in on one side by exorbitant food prices and on the other side by falling cotton prices between 1868 and 1890, many sharecroppers found that the share of cotton they owed the planter did not cover their debts. Once indebted, a sharecropper was no longer free to seek a contract with another planter. Instead, debt obliged him to continue to toil for the same landowner. Unscrupulous planters rigged the books to keep sharecroppers in perpetual servitude. Rather than a path toward

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land ownership, sharecropping too often forced freedmen into peonage. In 1910, African Americans in Georgia owned fewer than 600,000 acres, just 2 percent of the land. Day laborers, tenant farmers, and sharecroppers farmed the rest. Despite the tendency of debt to anchor a person to land some sharecroppers fled their oppressors. In 1900, more than one-third of sharecroppers had been on the same land for less than two years and 80 percent had fewer than five years’ tenure. Not surprisingly, a sharecropper felt loyalty neither toward the planter who exploited him nor to land that was not his. He did the minimum to maintain soil fertility and to prevent erosion. The economics of sharecropping dissuaded him from buying fertilizer on credit, and he applied no more of it to the land than the planter demanded. Here again the sharecropping system worked against the pleas of the agricultural and mechanical colleges that farmers improve their land. Sharecropping exploited the land as well as freedmen. Christopher Cumo

Further Readings Byres, T. J. Sharecropping and Sharecroppers. London: F. Cass, 1983. Raper, Arthur F., and Ira De A. Reid. Sharecroppers All. New York: Russell and Russell, 1971. Royce, Edward. The Origins of Southern Sharecropping. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993.

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Shoishab

Shoishab Shoishab is an antislavery society that operates in Bangladesh and works to eliminate the practice of bonded labor and other forms of slavelike practices that continue in the modern era. Much of the nongovernmental organization’s efforts have been associated with child rights advocacy as it members have worked throughout the country to find and liberate child domestic workers since its founding in 1991. The organization estimates that as many as 300,000 child domestic laborers work in the capital city of Dhaka alone. With numbers so immense and resources scarce, activists who work with Shoishab try to use the most effective means to protect the children they can reach. Employers are often asked benignly if they will permit their child domestics to attend school for a few hours a day. This permits the group to educate the children about their rights. The organization has also established a network of village-based resource centers and serves as a clearinghouse for other human rights-based nongovernmental organizations that work to counter the efforts of regional labor traffickers in southern Asia and facilitate the social reintegration of former domestics and migrants who are liberated through the group’s efforts. For example, Shoishab has cooperated with other local advocates like the Association for Community Development (ACD) to support their ongoing efforts to eradicate human trafficking in Bangladesh.

The supporters of Shoishab recognize that both interregional and transnational approaches are necessary if the children of Bangladesh are to be protected in the new global economy. International boundaries are often porous, and the labor demands of economic globalization do produce a high demand for child domestics and other child laborers despite national legislation designed to prohibit such practices. Community members must be educated to be made aware of their rights, and, in turn, they must be made vigilant in their efforts to protect the most vulnerable from the snares of those who might otherwise enslave them. Shoishab has amassed a wealth of statistical data related to the persistence of child domestic servitude and other forms of unfree labor in Bangladesh. In addition, the group has collected powerful anecdotal testimony from former child slaves who have attested to the various forms of abuse to which they were subjected when they were held as domestic workers. The organization uses these resources in its educational campaigns that are designed to empower village residents. It also urges local police and other authorities to help end the persistence of slavery by effectively enforcing existing laws that outlaw such unfree labor practices. The organization has also instituted a Domestic Workers Forum in which adult laborers can discuss the common experiences that they shared as enslaved laborers. The concept is designed to encourage coalition formation

Shramajeevi Sanghatana

and capacity building among marginalized people who are often transformed by the experience into human rights advocacy. Junius P. Rodriguez See also: Child Labor; Domestic Workers.

Further Readings Bales, Kevin. New Slavery: A Reference Handbook. Santa Barbara, CA: ABCCLIO, 2000. Blanchet, Therese. Lost Innocence, Stolen Childhoods. Dhaka: University Press Ltd., 2001. Khair, Sumaiya. Bangladesh Child Domestic Workers in Dhaka City: Situation Analysis. Dhaka: International Labour Organization, 2004.

Shramajeevi Sanghatana Shramajeevi Sanghatana is a trade union that works to release bonded laborers in India since its creation in 1982. Efforts to create the organization were spearheaded by Vivek and Vidyullata Pandit, a husband-and-wife team of human rights organizers who have worked to help liberate bonded laborers in the Thane district of Maharastra, India, for more than two decades. Those affiliated with Shramajeevi Sanghatana claim that none of the laborers who have been liberated by the organization have ever returned to the bonded labor system again. In 1976 the Indian Parliament enacted the Bonded Labour System Abolition Act, but this much-heralded human rights legislation generated

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little real change. The system of bonded labor was well-established in the Indian subcontinent with cultural antecedents in history, tradition, and the sense of caste that still permeated Indian society. Public administrators at the federal and state level proved to be unwilling to enforce the new reform legislation, and without effective enforcement, the system of bonded labor persisted almost unabated. The increasing pressures of economic globalization that took shape in the 1980s placed a premium on reduced costs of production, and, as a result, reliance on bonded labor seemed to increase. Human Rights Watch (HRW) and other independent nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) estimated that India had as many as 10 million bonded laborers in the 1980s and that the system seemed to be expanding rather than contracting, despite the 1976 legislation. The apparent indifference of the Indian government to enforce its own legislation and the perpetuation and expansion of bonded labor prompted the creation of Shramajeevi Sanghatana. The union operated on the twin principles of education and agitation, believing that this strategy would be the most effective means of changing the culture that sustained bonded labor in India. Educational campaigns were launched to make tribal groups and marginalized castes aware of their basic human rights. In addition, a series of high-profile cases were brought forward to shame the government of India into enforcing its own laws.

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The work of Shramajeevi Sanghatana was recognized and honored in 1999 when the London-based human rights organization Anti-Slavery International awarded its prestigious AntiSlavery Award to Vivek and Vidyullata Pandit for their efforts on behalf of India’s bonded laborers. According to Vidyullata Pandit, “the three most important things people need to fight bonded labor are knowledge of the law, self-confidence to bring about change, and . . . conviction to ensure they don’t go back to bonded labor once they are released” (Bales, 2000). It appears that liberated bonded laborers have heeded the lessons learned. Today, Keshav Nankar a freed bonded labor whom the Pandits helped liberate in 1983, serves as the executive director of Shramajeevi Sanghatana. He credits the union with reforming Indian society, since it “gave us the strength to fight against all sorts of atrocities that have been committed against us for generations” (Bales, 2000). Junius P. Rodriguez See also: Bonded Labor; Caste; India; Pandit, Vidyullata; Pandit, Vivek.

Further Readings Anti-Slavery International. Contemporary Forms of Slavery Related to and Generated by Discrimination: Forced and Bonded Labor in India, Nepal, and Pakistan. London: Anti-Slavery International, 2003. Bales, Kevin. New Slavery: A Reference Handbook. Santa Barbara, CA: ABCCLIO, 2000.

Slavery Convention of 1926 The Slavery Convention of 1926 was the first international treaty against both slavery as well as the slave trade. It defined slavery as “the status or condition of a person over whom all or any of the powers attaching to the rights of ownership are exercised.” It bound signatories “to prevent and suppress the slave trade” and to “bring about progressively and as soon as possible the complete abolition of slavery in all its forms.” Moreover, signatories undertook to take “all necessary measures to prevent compulsory or forced labor from developing into conditions analogous to slavery.” This treaty was recommended to the League of Nations by the Temporary Slavery Commission of 1924–1925. This commission had recommended a treaty for the immediate abolition of the legal status of slavery “in all its forms.” It had defined the forms to include chattel slavery and serfdom, debt bondage and peonage, forced marriage of women, girls, and widows, and the exploitation of children. It thus began the process of changing the meaning of slavery at the international level. It had suggested that slave traders at sea should be treated as pirates, that signatories should grant each other rights to pursue slavers over land frontiers and in territorial waters, and that severe penalties should be imposed for slave raiding and trading. Most controversial of all, it urged that forced labor, which was widely used by the colonial powers, should be abolished except for essential public works.


Neither the British nor the other colonial governments had any desire for such a treaty, but the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society advocated it, and the British government had recently assured Parliament that it was still committed to leading the antislavery campaign, which commanded wide public support. Therefore, the British drew up an emasculated version of the commission’s proposals and presented them to the Sixth Commission of the League Assembly in September 1925. It caused consternation among the colonial powers, each of which set out to protect its own practices and interests. The French refused to allow slave trading at sea to be treated as piracy or to allow the British or any other nation the right to search ships flying their flag. This impasse was solved by a clause stating that powers in whose areas the slave trade was active would take all possible measures to end slaving under their flags and would negotiate agreements giving each other special rights to search their ships. Moreover, the French hinted that searches could be made ostensibly for arms, and if slaves were found on board, the vessel could be arrested and taken to the nearest port of the nation whose flag it was flying. All Britain’s existing maritime treaties remained in force. The convention was weakened because signatories were only bound to end slavery progressively, and the powers in whose territories and on whose waters the traffic flourished never negotiated the special agreements necessary to help each other track down slavers.

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Forced labor was used by all the colonial powers in varying degrees for projects, such as providing labor for concessionaire companies, for building public works, for the growing of export crops, to provide labor for private companies and individuals, for porterage, and for the army. It might last from a few days to a lifetime, and at its worst included men, women, and children. After long discussions, the treaty stipulated that forced labor could only be used for “public purposes” in exceptional circumstances, and that it must be paid, and employed near home. However, neither the exceptional circumstances or public purposes nor the terms of service were defined. The convention was signed on September 26, 1926, by 36 members of the league and acceded to by the United States, which was not a member. Other powers also gradually signed or ratified it. Exceptions included the Soviet Union, which also did not belong to the league, and, more important at the time, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, in both of which slavery was still legal. The convention had serious weaknesses. It fixed no date for the end of slavery, and its definition of slavery based on degrees of ownership did not stand the test of time. The maritime powers in the slaving zones never signed the agreements stipulated. There was no monitoring system and no way to enforce the provisions of the convention, many of which were ignored for years. Moreover, signatories were allowed to exempt some of their territories from its provisions.

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Nevertheless, as the first international treaty against slavery it was an important landmark in the abolition movement. The signatories had at least agreed to end slavery as a legal status— albeit in their own time. By calling attention to the fact that forced labor could be a form of slavery, the treaty played a part in opening the way to the negotiation of the International Labour Organization’s convention against forced labor. Finally, the definition of slavery as forms of ownership, together with the recommendations of the Temporary Slavery Commission, began the international attack on other forms of exploitation, such as peonage, debt bondage, servile marriage, and the exploitation of children—all subjects of later treaties. The 1926 convention is still in force. It was taken over by the United Nations in 1953 and extended, but not replaced, by the United Nations Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery (1956). It now stands at the center of a network of later treaties for which it laid the groundwork. Suzanne Miers See also: League of Nations; League of Nations Covenant; United Nations Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery (1956).

Further Readings Brownlie, Ian, ed. Basic Documents on Human Rights, 3rd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998.

Miers, Suzanne. Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 2003.

Social Reintegration of Former Slaves The psychological and social aspects of the reintegration of ex-slaves have been addressed only recently. Most ancient forms of slavery sought to absorb conquered peoples, but with the rise of profit-driven mass slavery in Imperial Rome, Ottoman Turkey, and later in the Americas, slaveholders had little desire to integrate chattels into their societies. The transatlantic slave trade created easily distinguishable socioeconomic divisions. The removal of Africans from their homelands and the disruption of their cultures without absorption into their masters’ societies resulted in complex problems. The primary concerns generated by emancipation were with freed slaves’ legal standing and the provision of land, jobs, and other resources to promote new livelihoods. The U.S. formula of giving ex-slaves 40 acres and a mule proved unrealistic. The British conquest of Sudan in 1898 ended institutionalized Turkish slavery, but the replacement of forced labor with wage labor proved difficult. Such approaches are still evident in Mauritania’s El Hor movement, which since the 1970s has campaigned for the enforcement of antislavery laws, land reform, and the formation of agricultural cooperatives.


Following World War II, the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration’s reintegration of Nazi Germany’s 7 million slave laborers exposed further difficulties. By the second half of the 20th century, the limits of focusing only on the legal and economic status of former slaves were apparent. The U.S. civil rights movement further emphasized slavery’s profound long-term effects. As sociologist Kevin Bales would later argue, its mental bonds are at least as strong as its physical. Hence, various psychological and social initiatives developed to address the unanswered needs and complex dilemmas facing ex-slaves. Although these solutions differ by culture and vary according to the proportion of a slave’s life under servitude, some commonalties have emerged. Everywhere the immediate needs of freed slaves are for medical care, improved nutrition, and time to rest and define what their changed status means. For those who have known only slavery, this can take a long time. Former slaves require education and reorientation of their skills. Their one advantage is that they know how to work, and given opportunities to work for themselves, often rapidly achieve some economic stability. One experienced rehabilitation agency is the South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude. Their multifaceted program includes social development to promote human rights, responsibility, and accountability and to combat dowry abuse, child labor, and child marriage; conventional education to provide reading, writing, and mathematical skills,

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cultural pride, and a sense of unity, and promote health, personal hygiene, and etiquette; and vocational training for those over age 14. The complexity of slave reintegration is particularly evident in the tracing, documentation, and reunification activities of Sudan’s Commission for the Eradication of Abduction of Women and Children (CEAWC), which have been dogged by lack of planning, trained personnel, and standardized procedures; limited access to affected areas; and scant resources, including transport, food, water, medical care, cultivation tools, shelter, and structures for exchanging information and messages. CEAWC’s policy has been to return everyone identified as abducted to their places of origin without assessing individual circumstances. Based on interviews and casework, UNICEF and other agencies believe that a significant number of those returned were not voluntary. Most slaves are of Dinka origin, abducted into the northern Sudan’s Arabic-speaking, Muslim culture. Some required counseling as a result of brutal treatment, while others were reluctant to trade their situations for uncertain futures. The offspring of forced marriages and concubinage generated disputes over parental rights. Difficulties resulted from female genital mutilation, practiced in northern Sudan, but not among the Dinka. Some abductees were encouraged to return by misinformation about destinations and available services. Separated from their homes for years, many have little or no recollection of their relatives, culture,

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language, or place of origin. Vulnerable, unaccompanied children, some with attachments to northern families who provided for their needs, were moved great distances. The assumption that children whose families cannot be traced will be cared for by their community was not adequately researched. Not surprisingly, some returnees protested with hunger strikes or by running away. Given slavery’s profound, long-term impact, reintegration remains difficult. Preparation of affected persons and their families is essential to its success. Those working with former slaves require a diverse range of professional skills in research, documentation, communication, child care, health care, and social work. Yet nowhere is specific training available. Drawing on psychological, psychiatric, and social work with refugees and torture and rape victims, even the most effective agencies admit that they are inventing and adapting techniques as they go. Further research in many areas of this important field is sorely needed. Randall Fegley See also: Rehabilitation Programs; South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude (SACCS); Sudan.

Further Readings Bales, Kevin. “The Social Psychology of Modern Slavery.” Scientific American (April 2002). Labrador, David. “Mental Bonds.” Scientific American (March 2002). Sikainga, Ahmad Alawad. Slaves into Workers: Emancipation and Labor in

Colonial Sudan. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996.

SOS Esclaves (Mauritania) A member of the National Forum of Human Rights, of the World Organization against Torture, and an observer for the African Commission for Human and People Rights, SOS Esclaves is a nongovernmental organization that was founded in Mauritania in February 1995 by former slaves and former slaveholders. Its purpose is to eradicate traditional servitude in Mauritania, to promote human rights, and to inform about ethnical and sexual discriminations, but also to guarantee that the physical well-being of children and prisoners is respected. Initially tolerated by the government, the organization has been outlawed in the aftermath of a trial in 1998, during which its president, Boubacar Ould Messaoud, and four human rights activists, were sentenced to prison and fined, but have since been released thanks to an international campaign of solidarity among human rights activists. Nevertheless, this secular organization continues to publish a report each year on the state of civil liberties in Mauritania and to insist that the government enforce the third abolition decree, enacted in 1981, which officially abolished slavery in Mauritania. In spite of the repetitive attacks carried out by Ould Sid’Ahmed Taya’s regime, SOS Esclaves has exposed the persistence of the practice of slavery


in Mauritanian society and highlighted several of the various cases of runaway slaves. The organization has intervened many times on behalf of former slaves who sought to reunite with members of their families or gain access to land or inheritance from their own relatives. SOS Esclaves blames the government for hindering the work of any organizations that raise the question of slavery in Mauritania, while the government accuses the organization of discrediting the image of the country. In agreement with SOS Esclaves’ position, Amnesty International published a report in 2002 that stressed the numerous violations of human rights, particularly in cases involving slaves, that have been committed with impunity in Mauritania. Clara Palmiste See also: ‘Abd; Hassaniya Berbers; Mauritania.

Further Readings Cotton, Samuel. Silent Terror: A Journey into Contemporary African Slavery. New York: Harlem River Press, 1998. Ruf, Urs Peter. Ending Slavery: Hierarchy, Dependency and Gender in Central Mauritania. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 1999.

South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude (SACCS) The South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude (SACCS) was formed in July 1989 in New Delhi, India, during a regional conference on the issue of child labor and bonded labor. The creation of

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SACCS was proposed by the Bonded Labour Liberation Front (BLLF) of Pakistan because of the importance of establishing such a regional organization for the reduction of child servitude. SACCS was the first nongovernmental organization (NGO) that raised the issue of child servitude in South Asia along with United Nations in August 1989. SACCS has emerged as an organization of thousands of individual supporters under the banner of Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA) as well as a network of NGOs, trade unions, human rights organizations, and other groups, all dedicated toward the full elimination of child labor under the umbrella of SACCS. Some of the leading organizing activists within SACCS included Swami Agnivesh, president of BLLF India (Bonded Labour Liberation Front) and president of Bhatta Mazdoor Mohaz (BMM); Ghori Perdhan, secretary of CWA (Child Workers Asia) Nepal; Prakash Kaphley, INSEC Nepal; Ehsan Ullah Khan, president of BLLF Pakistan; Kailash Satyarthi, BLLF India; and Roslin Kosta, Caritas Bangladesh. In 1993, Swami Agnivesh retired and Kailash Satyarthi was elected president of SACCS; Prakash Kaphley became the secretary. It was decided that the main office should be opened in Nepal, but unfortunately, Prakash Kaphley died in an air crash in Katmandu in 1993. Prakash Kaphley was replaced by Sushil Pyakurel from INSEC, but the plans to open a SACCS secretariat in Nepal were not fulfilled. The organization undertook the first survey in South Asia and estimated that

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child labor makes up one-quarter of the unskilled labor force in the organized and unorganized sectors of South Asia. It is estimated that South Asia has more than 80 million children in servitude, 20 million of whom are classified as being in “chronic bondage.” Of India’s 140 million working children, some 55 million are in servitude and 10 million are bonded slaves to their employers. Due to political tensions in the region, up to 1993 SACCS could not be very successful except in maintaining the regional contacts and sharing information. SACCS is campaigning for free, compulsory, and meaningful education, sensitization of parents, communities and schoolchildren, coalition building with trade unions, teachers’ organizations, religious groups, political parties, and employers, consumer action like Rugmark Foundation, and ethical trade initiatives like Fair Play Campaign and several others. SACCS’s efforts in India released about 4,000 children from child servitude. The organization took charge of the Save the Childhood movement in 1995 by sponsoring a child labor march that covered a distance of 15 kilometers through the main child labor areas from Delhi to Rajasthan shortly after the murder of the carpet slave boy Iqbal Masih in Pakistan on April 16, 1995. The marchers, led by Kailash Satyarthi, chairperson of SACCS, included hundreds of freed bonded children, child workers, and social activists. BBA/SACCS is known for its innovative initiative and multifaceted intervention, including secret raids and

rescue operations to liberate slave children, making them leaders and liberators in Mukti Ashram, Bal Ashram, and Bal Mitra Gram Girls’ Collective rehabilitation centers. SACCS’s movement against child servitude resulted in a wider and global movement and network that took shape in the Global March against Child Labor held in The Hague, Netherlands, in 1997. Bayram Unal and Ann-Carin Landström See also: Bonded Labor; Bonded Labour Liberation Front.


Spain Spain was the last European nation to abolish slavery in the 19th century. The last recorded slave ship that arrived in Cuba did so in 1867, and by 1886 slavery had been abolished throughout the Spanish colonies.

State Law and Order Committee (SLORC)

Spain does not have any legal provision related to contemporary slavery, other than the standards identified in its criminal code. The articles 311, 312 and 316 of the criminal code, as generally presented, can be applied to any abusive behavior against any person. Slavery is a reality that is not legally recognized in modern Spain. The Comite Contra la Esclavitud Moderna en el Estado Español (Committee against Modern Slavery in Spain), created recently, has not yet been able to provide statistics on domestic slavery within the nation, but has assured that this form of slavery is not marginal in Spain. The U.S. State Department Trafficking in Persons Report of 2005 shows that Spain is a destination and transit country for persons trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation or forced labor. The victims, mainly women and immigrants, are deprived of their identity cards, and primarily come from Colombia, Nigeria, Ecuador, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Bulgaria, and Ukraine. They are often destined to Portugal, France, and Germany. The immigrants trafficked into forced labor are primarily found in the agricultural, construction, and domestic sectors. The Spanish government complies with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, insisting on campaigns of tracking and dismantling trafficking networks. Officially, the victims receive assistance, protection, and rehabilitation services. The severe laws on immigration in most European countries, in many cases, discourage the victim to reveal cases of labor,

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domestic, and sexual exploitation, because they are afraid of being repatriated to their country of origin. Regarding the sexual exploitation of women, the city of Madrid launched a program to reduce the demand, with an emphasis on the responsibility of the clients and the rights of the victims. In February 2005, the government modified its Aliens Law, making it easier for the victims of trafficking to obtain residency permits, under exceptional circumstances. Reports increased cooperation between the government and nongovernmental organizations, resulting in more effective training and information exchanges. Clara Palmiste See also: Human Trafficking for Labor Purposes; Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation; Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs).

Further Reading United States State Department Trafficking in Persons Report, June 2005.

State Law and Order Committee (SLORC) The State Law and Order Committee (SLORC) is a military government that assumed control of Burma (renaming it the Union of Myanmar) in November 1988 and ruled until November 1997, when it converted itself into the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), which has followed substantially the same policies. SLORC’s rule was oppressive and violent and featured

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the use of many thousands of people in forced labor and slavery. In 1988, General Ne Win ruled as president of the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP). The BSPP took leading roles in the constitutional institutions that had evolved after the independence achieved with the withdrawal of British colonial rule. The legacy of colonial rule included much division and bitterness between different classes and ethnic groups within Burmese society. When a worsening economic situation led to public disorder following the abrupt resignation of Ne Win, SLORC officers seized control of the country. An unknown number of people were killed during the coup, possibly more than 3,000 demonstrators. SLORC was controlled by the commander-in-chief of the Tatmadaw (Burmese army), General Saw Maung. The Tatmadaw has subsequently taken a leading role in the economy and governance of the country. It is likely that the SLORC was supported by the Chinese government in terms of armaments and support at international organizations such as the United Nations, where it has vetoed discussion of Burmese issues. However, the Tatmadaw has never been properly supplied and has had to rely on foraging and obtaining what it can from the Burmese people. This has led to military forces using forced labor (porterage), rape, and theft against the population at large and particularly against ethnic minority people who have been designated as rebels. This was partly the result of wishing to take punitive measures against the ethnic minority people and also because of the

need to take people to build infrastructure projects from comparatively close to the sites of those projects. The International Labour Organization (ILO) has complained about these practices and repeatedly requested amendments to Burmese law to prevent them recurring; they continued until the end of 2005 and ILO officers have been withdrawn. The United States passed a law in 1996 banning any further investment in the country, owing to its human rights record, and many international firms have withdrawn from the country, either voluntarily or as the result of outraged consumer response. Despite the presence of large amounts of fertile land and natural resources, including offshore oil and gas, precious stones, and teak, the majority of people remain very poor and are becoming poorer. Under colonization, Burma was one of the most prosperous Southeast Asian countries and, as a result of SLORC and SPDC policies, it has become one of the most impoverished. The secretive nature of the regime means that all official statistics should be treated with suspicion and independent surveys of the economy are strongly suppressed. It is widely assumed that SLORC officials led the way in illegal logging operations, narcotics smuggling, and other forms of unofficial trade, both to enrich themselves and also to ensure the troops remained fed and housed. The entire country was placed under martial law until 1992, by which time General Saw Maung had been replaced by his deputy, General Than Shwe, after having apparently suffered a nervous breakdown. Under martial law,


places of education were closed and free speech severely curtailed. Many authors and others accused of defaming the country, the government, or the army in any way have received lengthy sentences. Until 1997, there were several periods in which it appeared that oppressive rule was going to relent, but, ultimately, the SLORC was never willing to relax its stranglehold for fear of the consequences, and this stranglehold reached into every aspect of people’s lives. The victory in the national elections that should have seen Daw Aung San Suu Kyi named prime minister after the crushing victory for her National League for Democracy were never accepted, and she herself spent much of the period under house arrest. John Walsh See also: Burma.

Further Readings Allott, Anna J. Inked Over, Ripped Out: Burmese Storytellers and the Censors. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 1994. International Labour Organization. ILO Report on Burma (May 21, 1999). Available at http://www.burmalibrary.org/reg. burma/archives/199905/msg00398.html. South, Ashley. Mon Nationalism and Civil War in Burma: The Golden Sheldrake. Abingdon: Routledge, 2005.

State Regulations on the Reform through Labor (1954) In 1954, the communist leadership of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) instituted a plan known as State Regulations

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on the Reform through Labor to establish a systematic, nationwide program of state-sponsored slavery within the nation’s forced labor camps (laogai). The model for the Chinese program was the harsh labor regimen that had existed within the infamous system of gulags established by the Soviet Union (USSR) in April 1930 as Josef Stalin began to consolidate his power and eliminate his political opposition. In 1951, just two years after his successful revolution, Chinese leader Mao Zedong instituted the laogai system by establishing a series of forced labor camps that were designed to introduce “reform through labor” and pacify dissent within the PRC. Many of the individuals incarcerated in these labor camps were political prisoners who were put to work doing hard labor on massive public works projects that were meant to benefit the Chinese state. The policy was premised upon notions of physical and psychological control that would lead to “right thinking” in individuals who were otherwise indisposed to the social, economic, and political order that had been imposed within the PRC after Mao’s accession to power. Criticism of the laogai system in the Western world was strong as rumors of slave labor, brainwashing, and other human rights violations were rampant. Within the international community, the United Nations found it difficult to draft an international covenant on contemporary forms of slavery with both the gulag and laogai systems functioning in the USSR and the PRC. The State Regulations on the Reform through Labor initiative put in place a

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series of new regulations for the prison labor camps (laogai) that permitted the use of prisoners in any type of work for up to 10 hours per day. Under the terms of this policy shift, political prisoners could be hired out as virtual convict lease laborers and placed at tasks in the agricultural and industrial sectors, along with their previous work on state-sponsored projects that were deemed to be especially urgent. Some Chinese dissidents and former inmates of the laogai system have intimated that the reforms instituted in 1954 led to the use of prisoners as virtual guinea pigs for medical experimentation and other similar abuses. The use of the “reform through labor” concept was systematically applied to all parts of the PRC in the 1950s and its consequences were staggering. In 1957, the Committee on Forced Labour of the International Labour Organization (ILO) had investigated charges that slave labor practices were being used within the laogai system, and the ILO report concluded that “the People’s Republic of China had set up a very highly organized system of forced labor, in prisons and labor camps, for the purposes of political coercion and education and for economic purposes.” Two years later, the ILO warned that the system was becoming even more brutal, as “vagrants, persons who refuse to work, persons guilty of minor offenses, and those who, for various reasons, have no means of existence” had been turned into slave laborers. The government of the PRC has historically denied these charges, but

a number of Chinese dissidents have claimed that a “bamboo gulag” has functioned for more than a half-century now. These ideas can be found in the writings of Bao Ruo-wang’s Prisoner of Mao (1973), Hongda Harry Wu’s Bitter Winds: A Memoir of My Years in China’s Gulag (1993), and Liu Zongren’s Hard Time: 30 Months in a Chinese Labor Camp (1995). In addition to these works, the Laogai Research Foundation (LRF), founded by Harry Wu in 1992, has worked to educate individuals about China’s human rights practices and promote public advocacy on behalf of those who remain incarcerated and forced to labor as slaves. Junius P. Rodriguez Further Reading Saunders, Kate. Eighteen Layers of Hell: Stories from the Chinese Gulag. New York: Cassell Global Issues, 1996.

Sudan and South Sudan Sudan is an African nation that is bordered by Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, the Central African Republic, Chad, Libya, and South Sudan, the last of which seceded from Sudan in 2011 following a period of civil war. South Sudan’s neighbors additionally include Kenya, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The site of some of history’s earliest cultures, Sudan and South Sudan have experienced slavery and slave trading for more than 5,000 years. Slavery was an ever-present feature of ancient Sudan, then Kush and Nubia,


whether under Egyptian pharaohs or local rulers during the Kerma, the 25th or Kushite Dynasty, and later Meroitic periods. In 652 CE, the Baqt, a treaty between early Christian Nubia and Arab-controlled Egypt, provided the latter with 360 slaves a year. Chronicles note large numbers of Nubian slaves in the Tulunid army in the ninth century and some 50,000 in the Fatimid army by 1050. Slavery was also widespread in areas occupied by the Mamluk Turks in the 13th century. However, mass profit-driven slavery in Sudan dates from its 1820 invasion by the Ottoman Turks who imposed a heavy tax burden, paid in slaves, on the Sudanese living along the Nile. Uprisings, massacres, smallpox, drought, and famine depopulated the region. Turkish hegemony was established with professional soldiers of slave origins. By the 1840s, slave trading reached into the Upper Nile and Bahr el Ghazal regions of present-day South Sudan. Tens of thousands of slaves were yoked together and marched up the Nile in horrendous caravans whose mortality rates are believed to have equaled the transatlantic trade. Pressed by the British, the Turco-Egyptian government made half-hearted efforts to suppress the trade. One prominent northern Sudanese slaver, Zubeir Rahma Mansur, rose to be the most important commercial and military force first in the south and then by 1874 in much of the western region of Darfur. By 1881, religious leader Mohammed Ahmed declared himself to be the Mahdi, a messianic savior. His

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rebellion against the British-supported Turco-Egyptian regime swept the country. Britain found itself in a position of wanting to suppress the slave trade but having to deal with Zubeir, who also opposed the Mahdi. Victory by the British in 1898 established the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium, in theory joint British and Egyptian rule, but in practice, with Egypt as clearly a junior partner. By 1930, British policy makers separated the southern third of the country from the north administratively to limit Arab and Muslim influences in what had been the northerners’ slave-hunting ground. Slavery or equivalent variations of bonded labor continued in isolated areas. Hence, by the time of Sudan’s independence in 1956, the memory of slavery remained very much in the consciousness of the northern two-thirds of the country. Accompanying this were increasingly polarized ethnic and religious differences between the north and south. Northern Muslim dominance of Sudan’s political system, centered on the capital Khartoum, promoted oppression and neglect and many northerners still refer to southerners as abeed (slaves). In late 1955, the southern region of Sudan erupted in rebellion. By the early 1970s, civil war had claimed a half million lives. A 1969 coup by Gen. Jafa’ar Nimeiri brought negotiations and the fighting ended with the 1972 Addis Ababa Accords guaranteeing autonomy for the southern region and incorporating the Anya Nya separatist rebels into the Sudanese army. A fragile peace lasted until Nimeiri’s introduction of

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Islamic law in September 1983 proved to be the last straw in a series of divisive policies by the northern-dominated regime. The conflict resumed along new lines with the Arabic-speaking north becoming increasingly Islamist and the mainly Nilotic south becoming increasingly Christian. The rise of the National Islamic Front and the 1989 coup of Brig. (later Lt.) Gen. Omar Hassan alBashir intensified these trends. With renewed conflict, slavery reemerged in Sudan as a tool for oppressing non-Muslim southerners. Raids by government-backed muraheleen militias captured Nuba from a south-central highland zone considered part of the north and Dinka in the southern regions of Bahr El Ghazal and Upper Nile, which are associated with the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). For the regime, this was a low-cost tactic in an expensive war. Held in bondage in the north and often physically and sexually abused, the abductees were forced to herd cattle, work in fields, fetch water, dig wells, or do housework. Although Sudan’s 1991 criminal code does not specifically prohibit trafficking in persons, its constitution specifically prohibits slavery and forced labor, and Sudan has ratified the Slavery Convention of 1926 and other international instruments banning slavery. However, the Khartoum regime has not enforced its own laws against kidnapping, assault, and forced labor. Some agencies reported that war victims who fled to government-controlled peace

camps were subjected to forced labor. The regime, the SPLA, and other rebel armies forcibly conscripted men and boys into their forces. Dismissing criticism on the issue and claiming that it had little control over hostage-taking by rival groups, Sudanese leaders denied the findings of numerous reports documenting slavery, including ones relating the sale of children in alleged slave markets and the arming, transport, and assisting of slave-raiding militias. The government denied that slavery and forced labor existed but acknowledged that abductions occurred. Libyans have been implicated in the purchase of Sudanese slaves. Boys were reportedly trafficked to Qatar as camel jockeys, and to Saudi Arabia as domestic servants and menial laborers. Since 2003, fighting in the western region of Darfur has been reportedly accompanied by raids by governmentsupported janjaweed militias similar to the earlier muraheleen actions in the south. In January 2005, the Khartoum government and SPLA signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, ending the north-south civil war and laying the groundwork for South Sudan’s independence in 2011. However, intensified fighting in Darfur cast doubt over the prospects of a Sudan free from conflict. Reconstruction in South Sudan, the return and rehabilitation of former slaves and child soldiers, and national efforts in both countries to establish representative governance for all Sudanese and South Sudanese people remain daunting tasks, which limited resources

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and unlimited suspicions may derail, or at best delay, for many decades. Randall Fegley See also: ‘Abd; Bok, Francis Piol Bol; National Islamic Front; Sudan Peace Act (2002); Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army.

Further Readings Fluehr-Lobban, Carolyn, and Kharyssa Rhodes. Race and Identity in the Nile Valley. Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 2004. Human Rights Watch. Children of Sudan: Slaves, Street Children, and Child Soldiers. New York: Human Rights Watch, 1995. Idris, Amir H. Sudan’s Civil War: Slavery, Race and Formational Identities. London: Edwin Mellen Press, 2001. Lobban, Richard. “Slavery in the Sudan since 1989.” Arab Studies Quarterly 23, no. 2 (2001): 31–39. Sikainga, Ahmad Alawad. Slaves into Workers: Emancipation and Labor in Colonial Sudan. Austin: University of Texas, 1996.

Sudan Peace Act (2002) The 2002 Sudan Peace Act played a major role in ending 22 years of civil war, which had fostered slavery and slave trading. At the end of the 1990s, the Sudan Coalition, a broad grassroots alliance of churches, human rights organizations, and antislavery groups, formed to protest vigorously the atrocities that had accompanied Sudan’s civil war.

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By then, fighting between the government of Sudan (GOS) and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) had cost an estimated 2 million lives. The U.S. Congress, State Department, outgoing president Bill Clinton, and newly elected President George W. Bush were lobbied intensely by members of the Sudan Coalition. The result was several initiatives that culminated in the Sudan Peace Act of 2002. The Sudan Peace Bill (H.R. 5531, 108th Congress) passed the U.S. House of Representatives on October 7, 2002, by a vote of 359 to 8. Two days later, the U.S. Senate passed the bill by unanimous consent, and on October 21, 2002, President George W. Bush signed the Sudan Peace Act into law. Former slave Francis Bok, SPLM Representative Steven Wondu, and other exiled opponents of Sudan’s Islamist regime were present at the signing. Commending the efforts of the U.S. president’s special envoy, Senator John Danforth, the act sought to facilitate a comprehensive peace solution based on the July 1994 Declaration of Principles and the July 2002 Machakos Protocol. It called for “multilateralization of economic and diplomatic tools to compel Sudan to enter into a good faith peace process; support for democratic development in areas of Sudan outside government control; continued support for people-to-people reconciliation in non-government-controlled areas; strengthening of humanitarian relief mechanisms; and multilateral

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cooperation toward these ends.” Although it condemned violations of human rights on all sides of the conflict; it specifically focused on the Sudanese government’s human rights record; the slave trade; the use of militia and other forces by the GOS to support slave raiding; and the aerial bombardment of civilian targets. The act authorized aid to areas outside government control, amounting to $100 million for each of fiscal years 2003, 2004 and 2005, including support to civil administration, communications, education, health, and agriculture, in order to “prepare the population for peace and democratic governance.” It specified four sanctions against the Khartoum regime, if the president, after consultation with Congress, certified that Khartoum was not negotiating in good faith, or had “unreasonably interfered with humanitarian efforts.” The sanctions included opposing international loans, credits, and guarantees to Khartoum; downgrading diplomatic relations; denying Khartoum access to oil revenues to ensure that earnings were not used for military purposes; and seeking a United Nations Security Council resolution to impose an arms embargo on Khartoum. However, the act made no provision for direct sanctions against the SPLM/A, merely saying that if it was not conducting talks in good faith, any sanctions imposed on the GOS would be dropped. A previous attempt at similar legislation by U.S. lawmakers had stalled over proposed capital market sanctions on all companies doing business with Khartoum,

a feature that was not included in the final act. The reporting requirements of the act were numerous. The act required the president to certify every six months that the GOS and SPLM/A were negotiating in good faith; to report on the status of the peace process if negotiations were discontinued for 14 days or more; and to provide a comprehensive plan for denying the GOS access to oil revenues. It further required the secretary of state to collect information on the status of Sudan’s development and use of oil resources; the extent to which financing was secured in the United States or by U.S. citizens; and the estimated extent of the GOS’s aerial bombardment. The secretary of state was required to submit annual reports on GOS obstruction of UN airborne relief efforts, and on incidents that may constitute crimes against humanity, genocide, war crimes, and other violations of international humanitarian law by all parties to the conflict, subject to protection of sensitive sources or other national security interests. On a semiannual basis, the secretary of the Treasury was to report on U.S. steps to oppose loans, credits, or guarantees, if necessary. The Sudan Peace Act marked a change in an officially neutral U.S. stance toward Khartoum. The Sudanese government, through its embassy in Washington, strongly criticized the measure, as “unbalanced, hostile, biased and religiously motivated,” but U.S. pressure on the GOS played a major role in negotiations leading to the

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war’s end with the signing of the January 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement and the achievement of South Sudan’s independence in 2011. Randall Fegley See also: Bok, Francis Piol Bol; National Islamic Front; Sudan and South Sudan; Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/ Army.

Further Readings Petterson, Donald. Inside Sudan. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1999. U.S. Congress. H.R. 5531: The Sudan Peace Act, 108th Congress. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2002.

Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army In the 1990s, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) seized most of what is now the independent country of South Sudan, where thousands of slaves had been abducted. Following Sudanese President Nimeiri’s 1983 imposition of Islamic law, fighting erupted in non-Muslim southern Sudan, where civil war between 1955 and 1973 had claimed a half million lives. Sent to his home district of Bor to quell a mutiny of troops resisting transfer to the north, Lt. Col. John Garang de Mabior encouraged further rebellion against the regime. He created and led the Sudan People’s Liberation Army and chaired its political wing the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM). Receiving assistance from

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Ethiopia, Israel, and Libya, the SPLA had 12,500 soldiers organized into 12 battalions equipped with small arms by 1986, 30,000 by 1989, and 60,000 by 1991. But an almost fatal blow struck when its most important source of military hardware, Ethiopia’s Mengistu regime, was overthrown in May 1991. It was able to enlist the support of new governments in Uganda, Ethiopia, and Eritrea, which acted as conduits for supplies, including nearly $20 million of “non-lethal” aid, including radios, uniforms, boots and tents, from the United States, which branded the Khartoum regime as a state sponsor of terrorism in 1996. However, disunity plagued the highly centralized SPLM/A, which tended to be dominated by the Dinka tribe. In 1991, Nuer groups led by Riek Machar, split to form the SPLM/A-Nasir, renamed the South Sudan Independence Movement/ Army (SSIM/A) in 1994. Dissenting Shilluk leader Lam Akol took the name SPLM/A-United for his forces based in Tonga in west-central Upper Nile. Following an April 1997 agreement with the Islamist regime in Khartoum, the SSIM/A and SPLM/A-United merged with three other rebel groups to become the South Sudan Defense Forces (SSDF). Dinka unity was shattered by factions in Bahr-al-Ghazal led by Kerabino Kuany Bol and South Bor under Deng Kelay Riak. Nuer solidarity also cracked with Maj. Gen. Paulino Matip forming the South Sudan Unity Movement (SSUM/A) in western Upper Nile in 1998 and Dr. Michael Wal Dauny founding the South Sudan Liberation

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Soldiers of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) display their weapons as they march through a village in southern Sudan. (AFP/Getty Images)

Movement (SSLM) in Akobo in late 1999. Infighting among these groups detracted from the challenge they posed to the Khartoum regime. Nevertheless, those loyal to Garang remained the largest force. The SPLA and northern opponents of the regime formed in the National Democratic Alliance, whose military wing, the Sudan Allied Forces, successfully opened a new front in border areas with Ethiopia and Eritrea in 1997. Demanding the abolition of Islamic law, Garang favored the creation of a united, democratic, secular Sudan. This placed him

in opposition to those wanting an independent southern Sudan, particularly the remnants of Anya Nya II, southern separatists active between 1975 and 1991. As the war dragged on, slaving reemerged with raids by governmentbacked militias capturing Dinka women and children. Both sides forcibly conscripted children. With government policies continuing to be blatantly Islamist, Khartoum’s efforts to enlist southerners on its side failed. Dissatisfied with the regime’s response to southern issues, Machar formed the

Sudrat Srisang

Sudan People’s Democratic Forces (SPDF) from the SSDF in 2000. By January 2002 he realigned his forces with Garang, despite some Nuer dissension. Lam Akol reconciled with and rejoined the SPLM/A in October 2003. By then the SPLM had control of three-quarters of the south and had replaced military rule with civil governance in most areas. The Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Association and Relief Association for South Sudan, the humanitarian wings of the SPLM/A and the SPDF respectively, combined to form the Sudan Relief Rehabilitation Commission (SRRC). Charged with promoting the reconstruction and development of the south, these agencies have also overseen the return and rehabilitation of former slaves and child soldiers. Plagued by limited resources and the daunting scale of their tasks, their efforts have included successful demobilizations of child soldiers, support for controversial slave buyback schemes and attempts to rehabilitate returnees from the north. Recognizing that neither side had the ability to win militarily, Garang began talks with Khartoum. In July 2002, negotiations in Kenya led to the signing of the Machakos Protocol, which secured the right to self-determination for South Sudan. In January 2005, Garang and Sudanese Vice President Ali Othman Muhammad Taha signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, ending north-south fighting, integrating military and administrative structures within a government of national unity and setting a six-year deadline

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for a referendum on southern independence, which ultimately led to South Sudan’s secession in 2011. However, Garang’s death in a July 2005 helicopter accident and intensified fighting in the western region of Darfur cast doubt over the peace process. Randall Fegley See also: National Islamic Front; Sudan and South Sudan; Sudan Peace Act.

Further Readings Clapham, Christopher. African Guerrillas. Oxford: James Currey, 1998. Human Rights Watch. Children of Sudan: Slaves, Street Children, and Child Soldiers. New York: Human Rights Watch, 1995. Johnson, Douglas. The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars. Oxford: James Currey, 2003. Rolandsen, Øystein. Guerrilla Government. Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 2005.

Sudrat Srisang The Ecumenical Coalition on Third World Tourism (ECTWT) studied child prostitution in three South Asian countries—Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Thailand–when it launched a research project in 1988. The objectives of this investigation were to uncover the facts of child prostitution in these countries and to determine how tourism was linked to the increasing volume of child prostitution. It was assumed that the findings would lead to the pursuance of further action.

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In May 1990, a conference on child prostitution and tourism was held in Chiang Mai, Thailand, for five days and was attended by 68 participants including representatives from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the International Catholic Child Bureau (ICCB), government agencies, ecumenical bodies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), universities, and the press. The proceedings of this meeting along with the report on child prostitution in the concerned three Asian countries was published in the form of a book, Caught in Modern Slavery: Tourism and Child Prostitution in Asia. The participants at this international consultation were concerned by both the magnitude and severity of child prostitution in the region, and their concerns led the United Nations to call it a contemporary form of slavery and to launch an international campaign to eradicate such an evil practice. What resulted was a campaign that became known as End Child Prostitution in Asia Tourism (ECPAT). It was a three-year program from 1991 to 1993 that was designed to move against sexual exploitation of children. In 1995 a new group was subsequently founded in order to monitor the legal and judicial mechanisms in Thailand, and this coalition became known as Fight against Child Exploitation (FACE). Sudrat Sereewat (Srisang) was the founder and executive secretary of ECPAT from 1991 to 1993. In 1994 she became the ECPAT monitoring officer in the region. She has been involved in

the fight against child prostitution in Asian countries since 1988 and serves as the secretary general of FACE. FACE explores the possibility of collaboration with other local and international NGOs that work directly for the cause of children in connection with prevention and solution of the problems of child abuse and trafficking across borders. It also attempts to lobby legislators and others concerned to amend laws for the better protection of victimized children and to amend the loopholes in the existing legal mechanisms. In addition to these activities, FACE also publicly campaigns to raise awareness and consciousness by means of education, through the mass media and other government agencies and NGOs, both Thai and international, in order to protect the children from being trafficked, introduced, or coerced into prostitution. It undertakes studies and cooperates with other institutes for the purpose of research and publication of information useful to the public. It publicizes locally and internationally the results of cases of convicted child abusers and traffickers to inform the public of the penalties involved and deter possible future offenders. It also cooperates with government and nongovernment officers in other countries to coordinate the arrest, prosecution, and conviction of child sex offenders and traffickers. Patit Paban Mishra See also: ECPAT; Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation; Prostitution.

Survival International

Further Readings ECPAT website: http://www.ecpat.net/eng/ Ecpat_network/history1.asp. Human Rights Watch. A Modern Form of Slavery: Trafficking of Burmese Women and Girls into Brothels in Thailand. New York: Human Rights Watch, 1993. Lean-Lim, L. The Sex Sector: The Economic and Social Bases of Prostitution in Southeast Asia. Geneva: International Labour Organization, 1997. Williams, Phil, ed. Illegal Immigration and Commercial Sex: The New Slave Trade. Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1999.

Survival International Survival International is a human rights– based nongovernmental organization that is headquartered in London but operates worldwide. The organization is dedicated to protecting and preserving the rights of indigenous peoples whose survival and culture is often threatened by economic globalization and who often find themselves victimized by contemporary slave labor practices. Survival International monitors the activities of nations and acts as a watchdog group when legislation and policies are implemented that do not serve the best interests of indigenous people. Nations do not always act in the best interest of indigenous people, because the market forces of the modern world often place a premium on the acquisition of land and resources to empower and expand global trade. In order to accommodate the power of market forces, nations will sometimes enact measures that are cloaked in altruism, but essentially are aimed at marginalizing the

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power of indigenous people and limiting their rights. Supporters of Survival International believe that economic globalization and protection of tribal and indigenous rights can coexist if nations take steps to ensure that sustainable development occurs and that socially responsible policies are enacted and enforced. To this end, the organization stresses the importance of corporate social responsibility and lobbies national governments to hold corporate citizens accountable for their actions, particularly when they negatively impact the traditional rights and prerogatives of indigenous people. The mission of Survival International has long supported the concept of self-determination for all tribal and indigenous people worldwide, so that they can be valued stakeholders in their regions rather than passive actors who are easily marginalized and frequently exploited by more powerful interests. In the opinion of Survival International’s supporters, the notion that all persons have intrinsic rights to life, land ownership, and basic human rights should apply to tribal and indigenous people instead of outdated neocolonial views of trusteeship and paternalism that often manifest themselves in benighted policies that diminish the participatory capacity of such peoples. Due to its vocal and activist support for tribal and indigenous peoples’ rights, Survival International has been criticized by some corporate interests as being a “terrorist” organization, but such inflammatory accusations are baseless. As a human rights

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organization that seeks to provide a voice to the voiceless, Survival International works to ensure that the rights of tribal and indigenous people will be defended against the powerful interests that hope to subdue them. Both the physical enslavement of marginalized groups and their economic subjugation are matters of real concern to the activists who work for Survival International. Junius P. Rodriguez Further Readings Brazier, Chris. “Primitive Media.” New Internationalist 388 (2006): 22. Crook, Tony. “Indigenous Human Rights.” Anthropology Today 14, no. 1 (1998): 1819. “In the Steps of Columbus: Corporate Land Theft.” Earth Island Journal Winter92/93, Vol. 8 Issue 1: 20–22.

Sweatshop Watch In the wake of immense publicity concerning the ongoing problems facing working conditions experienced by sweatshop workers around the globe, the Coalition to Eliminate Sweatshop Conditions formed in 1992 as an umbrella organization dedicated to eliminating oppressive sweatshop conditions. In efforts to hold corporations accountable, which were increasingly shielding themselves from liability through their use of complex subcontracting chains, the coalition tirelessly fought to pass sweatshop

reform legislation in California. It proposed legislation to hold companies legally responsible for conditions experienced by workers in any factory in which their specific clothes were sewn. The idea of joint liability, which would have forced companies to be responsible for subcontractor labor practices, passed through California’s legislature on multiple occurrences in 1990, 1992 and 1994, only to be vetoed by the governor each time. These same coalition partners came together to form Sweatshop Watch to coordinate efforts to assist workers in El Monte, a southern California community where a sweatshop was discovered, in which 72 Thai immigrant workers were forced to sew clothes under slavelike working conditions (behind barbed wire and with armed guards). Joining forces with numerous community organizations, including the Asian American Pacific Legal Center and the Thai Community Development Center, the newly formed Sweatshop Watch pressured the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) into releasing these Thai workers, thus forcing their release. After assisting the workers to find housing, health care, and other necessities, Sweatshop Watch turned its attention back to owners of the El Monte sweatshop. It helped secure unpaid wages, overtime compensation, and pain and suffering damages for civil rights violations for each of the 72 workers. Still unsatisfied, Sweatshop Watch launched a retailer accountability campaign, pressuring retailers through demonstrations

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and letter-writing campaigns against those retailers and distributors who sold any clothing sewn in the El Monte sweatshop, ultimately assisting in the procurement of a settlement that netted workers $4 million for back wages and redress. More importantly in the sense of the broader movement, the El Monte case concretized this coalition into Sweatshop Watch as an organization of education, accountability, and redress for sweatshop workers throughout the world. Although initially focused on legislative initiatives in California, joining forces with organized labor and community and women’s organizations in an effort to increase California’s minimum wage from $4.25 per hour to $5.75 in 1996 and collaborating with UNITE to pass a “no sweat” resolution in the San Francisco City Council that prohibited the city from purchasing any goods made under sweatshop conditions, by 1997 Sweatshop Watch not only expanded its educational and monitoring efforts, but had expanded them nationally and internationally. In late 1997 the group issued a report critiquing the White House Apparel Industry Partnership, which is now the Fair Labor Association, simultaneously partnering with Working Assets (the phone company) to generate over 32,000 letters and phone calls to Liz Claiborne, the Partnership’s cochair, demanding an inclusion of a living wage within its code of conduct. Although unsuccessful, its efforts here brought national and international attention to widespread mistreatment of

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garment workers throughout the world. Riding this wave, Sweatshop Watch convened the Living Wage Working Summit in 1998, which brought together more than 50 participants from eight different countries, at which time they developed a draft formula for calculating living wages, successfully pushing for a focus on living wages within the antisweatshop movement. By 1999, a major point of organizing for Sweatshop Watch became colleges and universities. That year, it brought together a coalition of faculty, staff, community members, and students at the University of California at Berkeley to strengthen that university’s Code of Conduct for Trademark Licensees. It also increased its efforts to support the burgeoning antisweatshop movement on several other college campuses. It joined forces with Global Exchange in designing a model Code of Conduct for University Trademark Licensees, which sought to guarantee that all university-logo apparel would be made in humane and nonslavelike conditions. In 2000, Sweatshop Watch, Global Exchange, and others formalized this code of conduct with the establishment of the Workers Rights Consortium, a nonprofit organization formed to “assist in the enforcement of manufacturing Codes of Conduct adopted by colleges and universities” that protect workers from inhumane conditions. The following year, Sweatshop Watch assisted eight Los Angeles garment workers who, under slavelike conditions that had them laboring 12 hours per day, seven days a week, receiving

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subminimum wages, sewed university gear. Mobilizing student, alumni, and community support, Sweatshop Watch demanded that each of the universities involved live up to their codes of conducts; within a few months, the case was settled, with the owner of the sweatshop agreeing to pay back wages. Existing as a source of information regarding sweatshops and as a resource for activists, Sweatshop Watch continues to function as a national (although focused on California) and global coalition “committed to eliminating the exploitation that occurs in and the illegal and inhumane conditions that characterize sweatshops.” Supporting a multitude of efforts, using a spectrum of tactics and methods in both the streets and courtrooms, Sweatshop

Watch continues to be a force at protecting sweatshop workers and holding those who rely on and profit from the exploitation of garment workers under slavelike conditions. David J. Leonard See also: El Monte, California, Sweatshop Case.

Further Readings Featherstone, Liza. Students against Sweatshops: The Making of a Movement. New York: Verso, 2002. Louie, Miriam Chung. Sweatshop Warriors: Immigrant Women Workers Take On the Global Factory. Boston: South End Press, 2001. Sweatshop Watch website: http://www. sweatshopwatch.org.

T absence of men for this period of time, which customarily occurred outside of periods when men needed to work on rice farming, could be considerable. Additional labor requirements were met by warfare aimed at capturing villages or communities of artisans who would then be forcibly moved to a location under the control of the victor. Artisans were needed to produce goods that raised status, were in themselves useful, or else were desirable as trade items as local kings and rulers sought to become involved in international trade networks. Corvée labor gave rise to a fairly sophisticated system of slavery, in which both temporary and permanent forms of slavery were permitted. Permanent slavery could be inflicted on those conquered by warfare and was also considered justifiable in the case of some ethnic minorities, especially those minority peoples considered to be inferior. Successive waves of migration brought peoples, ultimately the Thais themselves, into contact with existing natives, who were customarily pushed out of favorable geographic locations to less favorable ones upland and subsequently may have been subject to economic exploitation, including slavery. Temporary slavery could be sought by individuals or parents selling their children to raise money to meet debts or

Thailand Thailand is located in mainland Southeast Asia, where it is the region’s most economically developed country and enjoys both parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy. A tropical rain forest country, it has benefited throughout history from abundant food and jungle products but suffered as a result of low population density, which has meant that control of labor rather than control of territory has been the principal goal of kings. The low population density, together with the geography of the country and political ideologies, often led to the creation of remote, small city-states (muangs) located in river valleys between the many mountain ranges, since these locations were the only places where wet rice agriculture could be established. In these remote settlements religious beliefs required the creation of religious monuments to gain merit and legitimacy for rulers, while civil engineering and military service made additional demands for labor. These were satisfied in part by systematic use of corvée labor, in which all men were required to work for either the king directly or a noble under his direction for up to several months per year. The impact on family and village life of the 517

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provide money for investment. Those becoming slaves could generally expect reasonable treatment, although the circumstances obviously varied. This system was very prevalent throughout the kingdom, and when it was ended by King Rama V (Chulalongkorn) in 1905, the great modernizer of Thailand, there were protests. Nevertheless, the rapid dissemination of Western ideas of progress and development within the Thai elite in the early decades of the 20th century, combined with the desire for Thai independence in the context of the colonization of the remainder of Southeast Asia and the unequal treaties that Thailand (known then as Siam) was obliged to sign with Western powers, gave rise to a sense of freedom among Thais for the first time. The words now used to describe freedom in the Thai language and the concept of Thai-ness date from this time. That sense of freedom only sporadically applies to other people or the less privileged. There are numerous reports of the ill treatment of domestic servants and workers from the impoverished region of northeastern Thailand known as Isaan and, more particularly, the legal and illegal migrant workers from neighboring countries, especially Burma (known officially as the Union of Myanmar). Burmese workers in the fishing, plantation, and sex industries all report abuses akin to slavery, since they frequently went unpaid, were treated to corporal punishment at the whim of employers, and were forcibly prevented from leaving. Burmese have been particularly vulnerable to this treatment owing to the oppressive

nature of their own government and the treatment they fear should they have been found to have entered Thailand. The plight of the Burmese workers may be judged by the fact that in the wake of the devastating tsunami of December 26, 2004, in which unknown numbers of Burmese fishermen perished, the remaining workers fled from the authorities rather than seek medical assistance for fear of being sent back to Burma. Despite this and notwithstanding the fact that slavery and human trafficking of people, particularly women and girls for work in the sex industry, does continue within Thailand, research suggests that migrant workers are more likely to be offered informed choices than they were in the past, that is, until the 1990s. Government action to crack down on forcible prostitution and on aspects of unfree labor such as child labor has led to considerable progress in minimizing these phenomena. The number of arrests and prosecutions of people involved in human trafficking has increased, as has the severity of sentences, but facilities to care for women rescued from bondage remain scarce, as are those overseas to care for Thai women suffering from providing unfree labor after having migrated. Moreover, some aspects of sex tourism have been displaced to neighboring countries, notably Cambodia and Vietnam, and Thailand remains a transit point for human trafficking. John Walsh See also: Chulalongkorn (Rama V), King; Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation.

Thirteenth Amendment

Further Readings Aphornsuvan, Thanet. “Slavery and Modernity: Freedom in the Making of Modern Siam.” In Asian Freedoms: The Idea of Freedom in East and Southeast Asia, ed. David Kelly and Anthony Reid. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Beesey, Allan. “Return and Reintegration: Female Migrants from Yunnan to Thailand.” In Female Labour Migration in South-East Asia: Change and Continuity, ed. Christina Wille and Basia Passel. Bangkok: Asian Research Centre for Migration, 2001. Bowie, Katherine A. “Slavery in Nineteenth-Century North Thailand.” In State Power and Culture in Thailand, ed. E. Paul Durrenberger. New Haven, CT: Yale Southeast Asia Studies Monographs, 1996. Feeny, David. “The Demise of Corvee and Slavery in Thailand, 1782–1913.” In Breaking the Chains: Slavery, Bondage, and Emancipation in Modern Africa and Asia, ed. Martin A. Klein. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993. Myint, Wai. A Memoir of Burmese Workers: From Slave Labour to Illegal Migrant Workers, ed. Subhatra Bhumiprabhas and Adisorn Kerdmongkol. Bangkok: Thai Action Committee for Democracy in Burma, 2004.

Thirteenth Amendment (1865) The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude in the United States. Adopted by twothirds of Congress in January 1865, and declared ratified by three-fourths of the states in December of that year, the measure declared in its first clause that “Neither slavery nor involuntary

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servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” In its second clause, the amendment added that “Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” The amendment represented a monumental, if largely unanticipated, consequence of the Civil War. In the first year of the war, political leaders of the Union promised not to interfere with slavery where it already existed, a promise that Abraham Lincoln and others of the Republican Party had made in the 1860 election campaign. Lincoln even supported a constitutional amendment, sometimes called the “first” Thirteenth Amendment, adopted by Congress in March 1861, which prohibited federal interference with slavery where it existed. The proposed amendment was signed by President Lincoln, on the day of his inauguration (March 4, 1861)— the only amendment ever signed by a president—and later that day was sent to all states for ratification. Three states actually ratified it and more might have had it not been for events unfolding in the South. As the war continued beyond the first year, more Northern whites accepted, if not encouraged, the use of emancipation as a war measure against the Confederacy. Union commanders, who during the first year of the war had been instructed by the Lincoln administration to return escaped slaves to their owners, began to follow the lead of General Benjamin Butler, who from the beginning of the war

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had refused to return African Americans and instead declared them “contraband” of war. Congress endorsed the contraband policy by passing Confiscation Acts in 1861 and 1862, which declared that all rebel property, including slaves, would be seized by the Union. The initiative taken by runaway slaves, by military commanders, and by Congress ultimately led President Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared “forever free” all slaves in rebellious areas. However, the proclamation exempted those slaves in Union-controlled regions of the South and Border States. Lincoln signed the final Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. After Lincoln signed the proclamation, abolitionists used petition drives to press for a broader act of emancipation. In April 1864, the U.S. Senate adopted a resolution for an antislavery amendment, but the House of Representatives failed to carry it in June. Lincoln ensured that the amendment was on the national platform of the Republican Party that summer. Lincoln and the Republicans scored victories in the fall elections, and the president claimed the vote as a popular endorsement of the amendment. He urged the House of Representatives to take up the measure again. Using informal cajoling as well as offers of patronage, Lincoln applied pressure to lame-duck Democratic congressmen to win their votes. Rumors floated through Washington that Lincoln’s agents were bribing congressmen on behalf of the amendment, but no evidence of bribery has ever

been uncovered. Enough Democrats changed their vote or absented themselves so that on January 31, 1865, the House of Representatives carried the amendment. States across the North immediately began to ratify the amendment, though some such as New Jersey initially voted against ratification. After Lincoln’s assassination and the end of the war, President Andrew Johnson made ratification a condition of Southern states’ readmission to the Union. On December 18, 1865, Secretary of State William Henry Seward issued a proclamation that the amendment had been ratified by three fourths of the states. Almost immediately, Congress began to debate the meaning of the amendment. While Democrats and conservative Republicans argued that it merely abolished chattel slavery and secured no rights to the freed people, moderate and Radical Republicans claimed that the measure guaranteed equal rights for African Americans. The argument for equality won the day: Republican congressmen used the amendment’s enforcement clause to create the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the first clause of which guaranteed “full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings” to African Americans. They also invoked the amendment to renew the Freedmen’s Bureau, which had been created in 1865. Congress carried both the act renewing the Freedmen’s Bureau and the Civil Rights Act of 1866 over the veto of President Andrew Johnson, who had begun to court the support of conservatives. Ultimately, the Thirteenth Amendment was eclipsed by the

Tippu Tip

Fourteenth Amendment, which was adopted in 1868 and added specificity to freedom by setting the terms of citizenship and explicitly prohibiting states from denying due process and equality before the law. The long-term effects of the Thirteenth Amendment were limited. The measure became an important weapon against various forms of involuntary servitude, but its phrasing allowed peonage, or debt slavery, to persist into the 20th century. The most common victims of this form of servitude were African Americans, the very people meant to benefit from the Thirteenth Amendment. Although the Thirteenth Amendment is overshadowed by the Fourteenth Amendment, the measure retains great significance. Civil rights lawyers still use the amendment, sometimes with success. In the Supreme Court case of Jones v. Mayer of 1968, for example, the Court accepted the Thirteenth Amendment as the basis for overturning discriminatory housing practices. The amendment remains a perpetual monument to the cause of freedom in the United States. Slavery, a word not used in the original Constitution, had long been protected by it. With the Thirteenth Amendment, slavery was officially abolished. Michael Vorenberg See also: Abolitionism; Lincoln, Abraham.

Further Readings Hyman, Harold M., and William M. Wiecek. Equal Justice Under Law:

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Constitutional Development, 1835– 1875. New York: Harper and Row, 1982. Tsesis, Alexander. The Thirteenth Amendment and American Freedom. New York: New York University Press, 2004. Vorenberg, Michael. Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Tippu Tip (ca. 1835–1905) Tippu Tip was an Arab-Swahili merchant of Zanzibar who is remembered as one of the great slave traders of East Africa in the 19th century. From 1859 to about 1890, he established himself as a reputable slave dealer in the interior of East Africa, where, through warfare, intrigue, and diplomacy, he boasted control of territory to the immediate west of Lake Tanganyika. Born as Hamed bin Mohammed bin Juma bin Rajad el Murjebu, Tippu Tip was raised in a modest family of slavers in Zanzibar. He gained experience as a slave dealer in the course of his father’s slave trading entourages into the interior of present-day Tanzania. During these journeys, he mastered the central trade route that ran from Zanzibar, through Bagamoyo, Tabora, Ujiji, to Nyangwe in present-day eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. By 1859, Tippu Tip was a trader in his own right, leading slave trading caravans into and from the African interior. In a period when interethnic feuds and succession disputes between African leaders were common, conditions were amenable for capturing and

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selling victims of these conflicts, an environment that Tippu Tip exploited. He reaped fortunes by selling firearms and gunpowder to those he considered allies in these feuds, in exchange for supplies of slaves from the vanquished. In this way, the Wasangu, for example, used the arms supplied by Tippu Tip for slave raiding incursions against the Wabena, Wakimbu, and Wahehe in the mid-1860s. Fearing rivalry from the emerging Nyamwezi lord Mirambo, Tippu Tip ardently turned him into an ally, so that he would have the largest Arab settlement at Tabora, then under Mirambo’s control, open to his slave trading ventures in the interior. Although he relied on allies to supply him with ivory and slaves, Tippu Tip did launch his own slave raiding activities. It is the ruthlessness with which these were executed that left a lasting impression of Tippu Tip on his victims. His escort of armed Arabs was frequently set on African villages along the trade routes, burning houses and taking men and women captive. It was in the course of these raids that he acquired his nickname due to the sound “tip, tip” that resonated from guns fired by his men that sent terror into his victims. Porters were a vital accompaniment of Tippu Tip’s caravan as vast caches of ivory had to be transported to the coast. The rigors of this exercise often led to desertions that Tippu Tip solved by attacking villages and forcing the elders to supply him with porters. Irked by his slaves and porters who once escaped while on a stopover, Tippu Tip developed a ruthlessness for his victims by requiring that slaves in

his caravan march in long files chained by neck yokes “some in . . . forks about six feet long, and many women . . . carrying babies on their backs.” Often in a filthy state and driven by hide whips, slaves endured more than 1,000 miles of travel from the Upper Congo to Zanzibar, living on rationed food; starvation and disease resulted in high slave mortality rates. Tippu Tip was well acquainted with the famous British explorer and anti– slave trade activist Dr. David Livingstone, who witnessed the horrors of the trade as he traversed East Africa and Central Africa, but whose criticism of the human trafficking the trader always ignored. He also twice served as an aide to the U.S. explorer Henry Morton Stanley in his exploration of the Upper Congo, through whom he also gained the governorship of the Stanley Falls District, that whole area in Eastern Congo that Tippu Tip had controlled as private territory, which King Leopold II of Belgium now claimed as part of the new Congo Free State in 1885. His tenure as governor (from 1887) was to last as long as, the Belgians demanded, Tippu Tip helped end the traffic of slaves to the East Coast, but the governorship seemed to have bestowed on Tippu Tip and the Arabs in the region the opportunity to enhance the trade. This led to bloody confrontations between Tippu Tip (supported by his Arab henchmen) and the Congo Free State that ended his hold on that region and its lucrative trade when the Belgians forced him out in 1894. Furthermore, he lost the support he had long enjoyed from the sultans of

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Africans captured by Tippu Tip await their fate of a lifetime of slavery, as witnessed by explorer Henry Morton Stanley, ca. 1850. (Library of Congress)

Zanzibar, especially after the death of Sultan Bargash in 1888. These developments, and the effectiveness of abolition campaigns in East Africa in the 1890s, as well as the increased missionary activities and territorial annexation of the region by Germany and Britain, led to Tippu Tip’s retirement to his native Zanzibar. Tippu Tip may have been a brave and daring adventurer, a good administrator, and a great leader, attributes that depict him as a hero; but he was not one since his deeds were accomplished with the cost of creating misery in the lives of fellow human beings. Martin S. Shanguhyia See also: Leopold II.

Further Readings Beachey, R. W. The Slave Trade of Eastern Africa. London: Rex Collings, 1976. Brode, Heinrich. Tippu Tip: The Story of His Career in Zanzibar and Central Africa. Zanzibar: Gallary Publications of Zanzibar, 2000. Farrant, Leda. Tippu Tip and the East African Slave Trade. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1975.

Trafficking Trafficking involves the movement of persons to exploit their labor. Trafficking in persons is a form of slavery and encompasses debt bondage, peonage, and involuntary servitude. Historically, trafficking of women and children was

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associated with the capture of young women and girls for forced prostitution. Trafficking was originally referred to as “white slavery” in the late 1800s, when the phenomenon was distinguished from the African slave trade as the sale of women and girls of European descent for sexual servitude. Because of this early definitional connection, many still conflate trafficking and prostitution. The definition of trafficking in persons is still disputed. Some groups, notably a section of the feminist movement, define trafficking as the buying and selling of women and children for sexual exploitation. This definition includes all forms of prostitution, pornography, and any labor in the sex industry and does not require a lack of consent by the women or children involved. This definition assumes that no woman would ever choose to engage in such activity without some form of economic or social coercion. The current international legal definition of trafficking in persons looks not to the industry in which a person works, but to the elements of force or coercion involved in the labor. This definition is much broader, in that it includes forced labor in any industry. However, voluntary consensual labor in the sex industry is not included in this definition of trafficking, given that the element of coercion is central to the current understanding of trafficking. Trafficking in persons is also often conflated with the smuggling of migrants. Smuggling generally involves one person paying a fee to another person to bring him or her safely across

an international border. In this way, smuggling of people is akin to smuggling of drugs or arms. Trafficking of persons may involve the elements of smuggling, but trafficked persons are transported for the purpose of subjection to labor against their will. The relationship between the trafficker and the victim continues far beyond the act of transportation. Smuggling and smuggling debts are often used by traffickers to gain control over their victims, but in a case of smuggling, the relationship between the parties ends once the smuggled person has reached the agreed destination. Mobility is a common feature of the sex industry, which can cause confusion between trafficking and smuggling and between trafficking and legitimate forms of labor. Work opportunities in the sex industry often require moving between the mainstream economy in the form of pornography work, stripping, or lap dancing to criminalized activities of prostitution. Prostitutes may also change their locations frequently, often on a circuit between cities or countries. As a result, a prostitute who decides to move to another country to increase her or his ability to find work may be considered by some to be trafficked, even if no or coercion was involved. Actual figures of the numbers of people trafficked vary widely. According to the United Nations, trafficking in persons involves anywhere from 700,000 to 4 million people worldwide and at least 1.2 million children. The U.S. State Department estimates that

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800,000 to 900,000 people are trafficked across international borders every year and that 18,000 to 20,000 of those enter the United States (State Department Trafficking in Persons Report, 2003). Most of these trafficked persons are women and children. Many of the figures do not distinguish between trafficking of persons for consensual or nonconsensual sexual services or between the sex industry and other forms of labor. Trafficked people come from almost every country and from almost every background. However, trafficked persons tend to be from more vulnerable populations within a country, such as ethnic or religious minorities, women, children, disabled persons, the poor, or new migrants to urban areas. Newly uprooted populations, such as persons displaced by armed conflict, natural disasters, or political uprisings, are also particularly vulnerable to trafficking. Social or cultural practices that discriminate against women often lead to an increase in trafficking of women from those areas. Trafficking occurs in all categories of labor. Besides sex work, people are trafficked for domestic service, agricultural labor, factory or sweatshop work, restaurant work, construction labor, professional services, and more. Trafficked persons may have legitimate work authorization in that country, or they may be undocumented. Traffickers may work alone or as a family, or they may be part of large criminal organizations. Trafficking may also occur within loose networks

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of people, and legitimate businesses or agencies may unwittingly play a part in trafficking. The United Nations estimates that trafficking in persons is the third most lucrative international criminal enterprise, after smuggling of drugs and arms. Traffickers gain control over their victims through a wide variety of methods. Some people are kidnapped or physically forced to follow the orders of their traffickers. Some are recruited through agencies in their home country that deceive them by promising them good jobs in a more prosperous country and by arranging for their travel, only to force them to work against their will on their arrival. Others are recruited more informally by someone familiar to them. This person may have experience living and working in another country and may be a family member, a boyfriend, or a person from the same town or village as the victim. Some people fall prey to unscrupulous smugglers who force their victims to work to pay off a smuggling debt after they have entered that country. Some people agree to servitude for a certain period of time to pay for a debt incurred by facilitated transportation and entry into another country. Some children are given to traffickers by their parents or guardians in exchange for money, goods, or promises of education, jobs, and a better life for that child. Trafficked persons are held in servitude to their traffickers by a variety of methods. Often, the traffickers will confiscate the passports or other documentation from their victims to make

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it difficult or impossible for that person to leave their situation. Traffickers will often use physical violence, such as physical or sexual assault, to gain compliance from their victims. Psychological coercion in the form of threats against the victim or the victim’s family are often effective. Threats to turn the person in to police or immigration authorities are common. Coercive debt practices also proliferate. Usually the debt is incurred for the transportation of the person to the promised country or promised work, and the victim is then held in the position by an inability to repay the loan immediately. In some cases, the loans may be paid off and the person freed once the debt is completed. In most cases, the traffickers will use excessively high interest rates, deductions from the victims’ pay for inflated room and board charges, or unreasonably high payments to ensure that they will be unable to repay that debt. Trafficking is a phenomenon found throughout the world, but trafficking routes tend to follow certain patterns. Poorer regions that have a net outflow of trafficked persons are known as countries of origin or sending countries, and wealthier regions that have a net inflow of trafficked persons are countries of destination or receiving countries. These areas may be within the same country or in two different countries. Certain countries are also countries of transit, where people are trafficked through, but not trafficked to or from. Some countries, such as Thailand or Mexico, are a combination of all three regions; their own citizens

are trafficked to wealthier neighboring countries or wealthier regions within the country, and citizens of poorer neighboring countries are trafficked to their economies and through their lands. Conflict areas often have increased trafficking for the sex industry into and out of the region. Women are often made more vulnerable to trafficking in conflict areas, and military bases are often magnets for voluntary prostitution and trafficked women and children. Because trafficking is an international problem, countries have developed multilateral treaties and agreements to deal with trafficking. These agreements have taken the form of international treaties such as the 1949 Convention on Sexual Exploitation and the United Nations Trafficking Protocol (2003). Methods to combat trafficking have also been agreed on in bilateral agreements between individual countries. Countries have attempted to prevent trafficking through national laws in a number of ways. One is to place restrictions on the travel of certain classes of their citizens, such as young women. In the United States, this took the form of the Mann Act, which criminalized the movement of women across state lines for illicit purposes. In Romania, this took the form of restrictions on international travel of young women. Another prevention attempt is the development of laws that specify a criminal offense of trafficking and the subsequent prosecution and punishment of offenders. A third response is the creation of better economic opportunities for people who are vulnerable

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to trafficking and the launching of public educational campaigns informing people of the problem. Others have required increased documentation from employers in receiving countries before granting exit visas to their citizens, to verify that the employment opportunity is legitimate. In most countries, few if any protections exist for trafficked persons. Countries often view trafficked persons simply as undesired illegal migrants, or as criminals, particularly if the trafficked person has been working in the sex industry. Most trafficked persons are summarily deported if discovered by law enforcement as illegal migrants; some countries detain them in prison or jails and may charge them criminally for activities such as working without permission or engaging in prostitution. Trafficked persons may also be subject to discriminatory practices on their return home. They may be imprisoned for having been deported from another country, for leaving the country without proper exit visas or permissions, or for having violated the laws of another country. Trafficked persons may also not have sufficient protections from being retrafficked or from suffering reprisals from the traffickers. A relatively new development in trafficking that reflects the more recent focus on human rights protections for trafficked persons is reporting on the phenomenon worldwide by governmental and nongovernmental organizations. Many human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch have researchers dedicated to reporting on

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trafficking in persons in certain regions of the world. Intergovernmental organizations such as the European Union and the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe have investigated trafficking within their regions. Governmental entities have also begun to create such reports. Signatories to the UN Trafficking Protocol are required to report on their country’s efforts to maintain compliance with that agreement. The United States, through the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Prevention Act of 2000, is now publishing reports on how every country is responding to trafficking in persons. The countries are ranked into three tiers as to the effectiveness of criminal and human rights laws and enforcement of those statutes, and the countries in the third tier are subject to economic sanctions until they meet certain minimum standards for the prevention of trafficking and the protection of trafficked persons. Melynda Barnhart See also: Human Trafficking for Labor Purposes; Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation; Illegal Migration; Organized Crime and Slavery.

Further Readings Global Alliance Against Trafficking in Women website. http://www.gaatw.org/. IHRLG Annotated Guide to the Complete United Nations Trafficking Protocol (PDF). http://www.hrlawgroup.org/initiatives/trafficking_persons/default.asp. Skrobanek, Siriporn, Nattaya Boonpakdi, and Chutima Janthakeero. The Traffic in Women. New York: Zed Books, 1997.

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Trafficked Persons Rights Project. Introduction to the VTVPA. http://www. tprp.org/resources/index.html. United States Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000: Trafficking in Persons Report. http://www. state.gov/g/tip/rls/tiprpt/2004. Wijers, Marjan, and Lin Lap Chew. Trafficking in Women: Forced Labour and Slavery-like Practices in Marriage, Domestic Labour, and Prostitution. Utrecht, the Netherlands: Foundation Against Trafficking in Women (STV), 1997.

Transnational Institute (TNI) The Transnational Institute (TNI) is an international human rights association that operates headquarters in both Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and in Norwich, Vermont. The TNI has maintained keen interest in researching and monitoring such various social and political issues as growing militarism, expansion of poverty, social wrongs, and environmental degradation in various world settings. In examining these key crisis issues, TNI staffers also explore various ancillary issues, like contemporary slavery, that stem from these root causes. The TNI has been studying these issues since its founding in 1974. The research findings of TNI fellows have demonstrated that human trafficking both for labor purposes and for sexual exploitation is one of the most common practices found in those nations faced with extreme poverty. In such world regions that experience the despair of poverty, there seldom exists a

social safety net to protect the economically marginalized from falling victim to those who seek to exploit them by preying on their misery. In addition, a social infrastructure is commonly lacking in these societies, because little investment in education, health care, and environmental protection is found and an increasingly poor and desperate population is forced to consider the lure of trafficking to what promises to be a better place. Much of the work of the TNI since the early 1990s has focused upon the social and economic conditions in the states of the former Soviet Union. In particular, the TNI has closely monitored affairs in Russia and in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) fashioned by the former Soviet republics after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The TNI has sponsored international faculty exchange programs in which hundreds of educators and other human rights activists from the United States have had an opportunity to visit Russia, while Russian counterparts have had an opportunity to visit Western Europe or the United States. These programs are designed to facilitate the free exchange of ideas and facilitate dialogue between nations in terms of the most effective means of combating social ills that threaten the social welfare of their citizens. Much of the important work of the TNI is related to its advocacy of public policy initiatives that are aimed at targeting human rights abuses worldwide. Rather than merely calling attention to

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social crisis issues where they occur, TNI staffers research issues within the constraints of circumstance and other development issues that might help or hinder proposed policy initiatives. TNI fellows maintain a statistical record that documents the incidence of human trafficking in the modern world and publishes its findings and policy proposals in pamphlets and books. Junius P. Rodriguez See also: Human Trafficking for Labor Purposes.

Further Reading Bales, Kevin. New Slavery: A Reference Handbook. Santa Barbara, CA: ABCCLIO, 2000.

Trokosi Trokosi, literally “wives of the spirit Kosi,” is a form of female religious bondage made necessary by debt obligations that is of decreasing prevalence in parts of Togo and Ghana in West Africa, particularly among the Ewe-speaking and Ewe-related communities. Although the origins of the institution are somewhat unclear, purportedly egregious cases of exploitation in the 1990s, highlighted by local and international human rights organizations, brought renewed attention to this form of slavery. From the mid1990s the governments of Ghana and Togo have made concerted efforts to stamp out the remaining practices of trokosi and mediate the relocation and retraining of individuals.

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The exact structure of the trokosi relationship is complicated and requires explication. Most scholars would agree that girl children, of no particular age but frequently five or six and up to and beyond puberty, are bonded to the shrine of a particular vodou (spirit), a shrine that is administered by a male priest (bokono). The shrine structure is often referred to in the vernacular as a “house,” and the priest is thus the “house father” (afeto). It is this way that the recipients of the title trokosi arrive at the translated term “wife” or “bride.” In the Ewe language there exists no term that can be rendered equating the English master-slave relationship. Bonded girls reside within the shrine compound, and may live as spouses of the priest. Before sexual maturity, girls perform domestic tasks, such as cooking, washing, sweeping, and household management, as well as numerous spiritual tasks. Indeed, some scholars would agree that as the title trokosi connotes a specific relationship with the deity, not the afeto, that all tasks serve the deity. After sexual maturity, in addition to these tasks, girls give birth to and raise children. The child’s family and the shrine community purportedly share the financial burden of the child, but this arrangement may be unstable. Of particular interest to extracommunity individuals and groups is the exact nature of the sexual relationship between the afeto and individual trokosi. One or a cluster of shrines may have many “wives,” some of whom are bonded by their parents in payment for personal debts or debts of their ancestors, others

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who may be the children of older trokosi who still live within the compound. Contemporary opponents of the religious bondage system frequently point to the sexual exploitation of the young girls, both prepubescent and postpubescent, as evidence of the backwardness and illegality of the structural order. Children bonded to the shrines are usually virgins, but they do not remain so, and frequently bear the children of the compounds’ priests. Ewe communities are patrilineal and polygynous and female children remain within the enclosure and may also become “brides” of the shrine. Male children may enter other religious functions or leave the shrine structure upon adolescence. The historical origins of the trokosi relationship are unclear and variants exist today pointing to multiple and overlapping foundations. During interviews some priests have expressed the view that debt bondage in this manner began with domesticated animals and over time was extended to incorporate children. In the precolonial past, children, usually girls, were given by family members to gorovodou (religious orders) as compensation for services rendered. Services mandating compensation included financial assistance during times of crisis (fiasidi), protection against slave raiders, and fertility blessings (dorflevi). Families frequented one or multiple shrines, and shrines were often located apart from villages, in lagoons, or on remote lacustrine islands. Children borne of the various forms of trokosi often have names or epithets connoting a relationship of debt. Not

all forms of trokosi require residency in the shrine; some, such as adherents of the deity Nyigbla, only gather at particular times of the year. In Ghana and Togo today, trokosi whose bond arose because of debts or punishment for a crime by a living or deceased relative attract the most attention. This relationship been interpreted by scholars as a method of redress, whereby the offended person commits the offender, whether known or not, to a deity. By seeking reparation, the offended party expresses the belief that the deity will cause a series of disasters, such as mysterious deaths, in the offending party’s family, thereby sparing the offended party further pain. Currently, international and domestic law outlaws any form of debt bondage that is equated with or mirrors trokosi relationships. Both Togo and Ghana have aggressive government and nongovernmental programs to extinguish the traditional practice. In some instances, programs “redeem” indebted children in much the same way as German Pietist missionaries first operated in Eweland in the 19th century. Other organizations reject buyback programs, preferring to create economic incentives for children to remove themselves from the shrines and seek retraining in other professions. In the late 1990s, government and independent human rights organizations estimated that as many as 7,000 to 9,000 girls and women from 5 to approximately 90 years in age were in trokosi bondage, with possibly another 3,000 having been released from their status

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because of various programs over the course of several years. Benjamin N. Lawrance See also: Sexual Abuse.

Further Readings Ameh, Robert K. “Trokosi (Child Slavery) In Ghana: A Policy Approach.” Ghana Studies 1 (1998): 35–62. Dovlo, Elom, and A. K. Adzoyi. Report on the Trokosi Institution. Legon, Ghana: Department of Religious Studies, University of Ghana, 1995. Greene, Sandra. Gender, Ethnicity, and Social Change on the Upper Slave Coast. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1996. Lawrance, Benjamin, ed. The Ewe of Togo and Benin. Handbook of Eweland, Volume Three. Accra, Ghana: Woeli Press, 2005. Rinaudo, Benjamin. “Trokosi Slavery: Injustice in the Name of Religion.” Proceedings of the African Studies Association Australasia and the Pacific 1–10 (2003). Rosenthal, Judy. Possession, Ecstasy, and Law in Ewe Voodoo. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1998.

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Ross. Hired out at age 5 as a domestic servant she was sickly and often abused; at the age of 12, Araminta was sent to the fields where the hard toil strengthened and instilled a love of nature in her. During her years in the fields, she suffered a terrible head wound from a lead weight, leveled by an overseer angry at another fieldhand. For months she was confined to bed, but she recovered. Hired out again, she chopped logs, and carried up to a half cord of timber a day and earned more money than she was required to give her owner. In 1844, at the age of 19, she married John Tubman, a free black man; he lived with her in slave quarters.

Tubman, Harriet (ca. 1821–1913) Harriet Tubman was a fugitive slave, mystic, underground railroad conductor, and spy whose efforts to rescue African Americans from slavery and improve their lives earned her the nickname “Moses.” Born around 1821, 1 of perhaps 12 children born to 2 slaves belonging to separate owners in Dorchester County, Maryland, she was named Araminta

Harriet Tubman earned the nickname “Moses” for her work leading slaves to freedom via the Underground Railroad. (Library of Congress)

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After her head wound, Araminta suffered powerful visions, sometimes several in a day. One of her primary fears was of kidnappers taking slave children. Although John wanted children, Araminta wanted freedom more; when her owner died in 1849, she decided to escape. Traveling by herself from Maryland to Pennsylvania, Araminta changed her name to Harriet, kept the surname Tubman, and settled with Quakers in Philadelphia, in the relative safety of other fugitives and abolitionists. Despite the risks, Harriet got word of her whereabouts to her family in Maryland. When the 1793 Fugitive Slave Law was strengthened by the passage of a Second Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, the fear of fugitives being returned to the South intensified. Many slaves escaped from the South and followed the socalled Underground Railroad to freedom in the northern states or in Canada. Notified in 1850 that a niece and her children were to be sold, Harriet utilized her connections, met them in Baltimore, and brought them to safety. A second trip in 1851 allowed her to rescue her brother and two other men. On her third trip she had hoped to bring her husband, however, John Tubman told her that he had another wife and never wished to see Harriet again. After, a devastated Harriet disclosed to friends that God personally had instructed her to become an agent on the Underground Railroad. Although she had declined, He insisted that it was Harriet’s destiny. Therefore, in December 1851, she made her formal commitment to the Underground Railroad.

Code named “Moses,” from 1852 onward, Harriet made one or two trips a year, primarily in the winter, helping slaves out of Maryland and Virginia. In the summer and fall, Harriet worked in Cape May, New Jersey, cooking for families and hotel kitchens, earning money toward her trips. Although illiterate, Tubman was brilliant. She took trains south and then returned north by foot and by boat. Using costumes, diversions, Gospel music, and spirituals as codes, but carrying a pistol, Harriet avoided suspicion. And by departing the South on Saturday nights, slaves would not be missed until Monday; therefore notices could not be posted promptly, affording her time on any chase. Beginning in November 1856 her whereabouts were unknown for months. She reappeared the following summer when she went to Maryland to retrieve her parents. Her father had been freed and had purchased her mother’s freedom. However, her father endangered them by harboring fugitive slaves. Since William Seward had sold Harriet a house in Auburn, New York as a reward for her service on the Underground Railroad, Tubman’s parents came to live there with her. Harriet prophesied meeting John Brown, which she eventually did, in Canada, in April 1858. Aware of his intention to create a slave uprising in the South, she became an ally of Brown’s, sharing her knowledge of the countryside and raising recruits for him. In the summer of 1859, she traveled to Boston to speak as “Moses,” earning money for

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Brown. In fact, she had intended to be on the raid, but when Brown moved early, Tubman was incapacitated in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and missed the failed attempt. Eerily, on the day of the attack (with no knowledge of its occurrence) Tubman experienced a premonition that they would soon hear bad news about John Brown. To this deeply religious woman, Brown embodied traits of Christ, and Harriet became convinced that his sacrifice would turn the nation against slavery. After recovering, Harriet helped rescue an arrested fugitive slave in Troy, New York. Her star continued to rise, speaking often (although under an assumed name), and performed one last Underground Railroad rescue in December 1860. When the U.S. Civil War broke out, Tubman attached herself to Union troops in Virginia, nursing, cooking, and assisting refugees, fugitives, and contrabands who flocked to the Union Army. She was beloved. After a while, Massachusetts Governor John Andrews asked Tubman to go to South Carolina in order to assist those still confined by slavery. Although she still had a price on her head, she consented. Sponsored by the New England Freedman’s Aid Society, she served as a domestic teacher, then assisted in the Freedman’s Hospital. Soldiers aware that she was “Moses” tipped their caps to her. By early spring 1863, Tubman began constructing a network of scouts for a former lieutenant of John Brown’s, James Montgomery. In fact, she was responsible for safely guiding those who

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undertook the Combahee River Raid in June 1863. Unfortunately, she was exposed as “Moses” on the front page of antislavery journal the same year and lost her invisibility. After incredible service, Tubman fell ill in the fall of 1863, requesting leave in May 1864. Despite surgery for narcolepsy at Massachusetts General Hospital, Tubman recuperated enough to return, at the request of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, to the hospital wards of Virginia. After a frustrating experience staffing with limited or no supplies, Tubman left the service, heading for home. On the train to Auburn, however, she was accosted by the conductor and four men who refused to believe a black woman would hold a soldier’s pass; they injured her moving her to the baggage car. After the war, Tubman resumed speaking at suffrage meetings. Unable to get a pension for her military service, she fell into poverty and had to rely on loans from friends. After her friend Sarah Bradford wrote her biography, which made $1,200, life marginally improved for Tubman. In fact, on March 18, 1869, at the age of approximately 45, she married a man 20 years her junior, Nelson Davis, who had served in the New York Eighth Regiment Colored Guard; they would be married for nearly 20 years. Bad luck plagued her as she fell victim to a gold scam, and her house burned in 1886. But Davis rebuilt the house in brick, and for the remainder of her life she was surrounded by family and strangers she wanted to help. Sadly, Davis fell ill in 1886 and

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died in October 1888. Her attempts to get a widow’s pension were thwarted until 1892, at which point she received a monthly widow’s pension of $8. Purchasing a local estate to serve as a permanent charity home, she further pressed the government for a pension for herself as a soldier and as a nurse. Finally she was granted $240 a year. In 1903, she donated her property to AME Zion Church, to be maintained for elderly colored people in need; it would take five years for the Harriet Tubman Home to open. A long illness befell her in 1911, and she never quite recovered. On March 10, 1913, she died and was buried with full military honors at the Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn, New York. Sally Hilgendorff See also: Underground Railroad.

Further Reading Bradford, Sarah. Harriet Tubman, the Moses of her People. Bedford, MA: Applewood Books, 1993 [1886]. Clinton, Catherine. Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom. New York: Little, Brown & Co., 2004. Humez, Jean McMahon. Harriet Tubman: The Life and the Life Stories. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003. Quarles, Benjamin. Black Abolitionists. New York: Oxford University Press, 1969.

Turabi, Hassan al- (1932–) As the leader of the National Islamic Front and speaker of the Sudanese

National Assembly, Hassan al-Turabi has been instrumental in shaping various Islamist regimes in Sudan, where civil war, slavery, and other humanitarian crises have destabilized national life for three decades. A descendant of a famous 18thcentury Islamic religious scholar, Hassan al-Turabi was born in 1932 in the eastern Sudanese town of Kassala. After completing degrees at the University of Khartoum’s School of Law, the University of London, and the Sorbonne, Dr. al-Turabi joined the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood and, in 1962, replaced Al-Rashid al-Tahir as its leader. In November 1964, while serving as dean of the University of Khartoum’s School of Law, he helped found the Islamic Charter Front, which would become the base from which future Islamist movements arose. An academician, lawyer, and Islamic scholar fluent in English, French, and Arabic, he masterminded the political and ideological development and eventually successful rise to power of Sudan’s Islamists. Opposing the military regime of Jafa’ar Nimeiri, the Islamic Charter Front was dissolved and al-Turabi was imprisoned from 1970 to 1977, but after reconciliation with Nimeiri, he was appointed attorney general in 1979 and became presidential foreign affairs adviser in 1983. He served as a member of the Politburo of the ruling Sudan Socialist Union from 1977 to 1985. With al-Turabi’s backing, Nimeiri instituted a severe form of Islamic sharia law in September 1983, and subsequent amputations, hangings,

Turabi, Hassan al-

and a high-profile execution for heresy contributed to Nimeiri’s overthrow and the reinstatement of parliamentary rule in 1985. In April 1985, al-Turabi and other Islamic scholars established the National Islamic Front (NIF), which polled third in the 1986 national assembly elections, but was initially excluded from power. However, by 1988, the NIF joined a coalition government headed by Umma Party leader Sadiq al-Mahdi, who appointed al-Turabi successively as minister of justice, minister of foreign affairs, and deputy prime minister. Hoping to realize its dream of creating an Islamic state, the NIF participated clandestinely in the 1989 military coup of Omar Hassan al-Bashir. Following the coup, however, al-Turabi was imprisoned with al-Mahdi and Democratic Unionist Party leader Muhammad Othman al-Mirghani. When he declared his willingness to work with the new regime in early 1990, he was released and soon became the power behind the throne. Elected a member of the National Assembly in 1996, he became its speaker. He was instrumental in the creation of an NIF police state to consolidate the power of the Islamists. Purging all possible opponents, the regime and its associated militias committed numerous human rights violations, including summary executions, torture, war crimes, arbitrary detentions, and denial of freedoms of speech, assembly, and religion, particularly in the non-Muslim south, where a civil war was waged from 1983 to 2005. During this period, despite denials by al-Turabi

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and other regime leaders, slavery reemerged in Sudan in a particularly brutal form as a tool to convert the south to Islam. In 1991, opposing the United States’ involvement in the Gulf War, al-Turabi established the Popular Arab Islamic Conference (PAIC), a regional umbrella group for Islamist militants that was headquartered in Khartoum. As PAIC secretary general, al-Turabi instituted Sudan’s open door policy for Arab militants, including Osama bin Laden, who made his base there from 1990 to 1996. Always controversial and opportunistic, al-Turabi fell out of favor with al-Bashir in 1999, after he signed an agreement with the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) opposing the regime’s “totalitarian course” and acknowledging the right of southern Sudanese to self-determination. Dismissed from the ruling National Congress Party in early 2000, he formed the rival Popular National Congress. Claiming to have committed himself to supporting democracy, al-Turabi was imprisoned in Khartoum North’s infamous Kober Prison and has been subject to house arrest several times since 2000, when the regime distanced itself from the PAIC. A charismatic figure among Islamists worldwide, al-Turabi has forged a large following inside and outside of Sudan with his prolific writings and long career as a provocative, unbending extremist. Randall Fegley See also: National Islamic Front; Sudan and South Sudan.

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Turabi, Hassan al-

Further Readings Burr, Millard, and Robert O. Collins. Revolutionary Sudan: Hasan Al-Turabi and the Islamist State, 1989–2000. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2003. Hamdi, Mohamed Elhachmi, and Hasan Turabi. The Making of an Islamic

Political Leader: Conversations with Hasan Al-Turabi. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998. Johnson, Douglas H. The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars. Oxford: James Currey, 2003. Khalid, Mansour. The Government They Deserve. London: KPI, 1990.

U many forced laborers to gulag camps, colonies, and special settlements. It accounted for the largest number of deportees of any region to special settlements during the exile of people labeled as kulaks from 1929 to 1931. The regime of Joseph Stalin confined the inhabitants of the special settlements to specific villages under OGPU (Unified State Political Administration—the Soviet political police) administration and surveillance. The OGPU then used these men and women as a captive labor force since the OGPU controlled the movement and labor of the special settlers. Special settlers worked in agriculture, felling trees, and even in heavy industry. By January 6, 1930, the OGPU had resettled 98,743 people from Ukraine out of a total of 342,545 deportees categorized as kulaks. In total during 1930 and 1931, Ukrainians accounted for 63,700 of the 388,336 families that were deported to special settlements during this time. The vast majority of these exiles ended up in special settlements in the Urals and Far North. During Stalin’s Great Purges of the late 1930s, Ukraine contributed its share of prisoners to the gulag camps. In 1937, Soviet labor camps held 138,318 Ukrainian inmates and by 1940 this number had grown to 196,283. These

Ukraine Ukraine gained its independence when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. It is slightly larger than 360,000 square miles in area or a little smaller than Texas, and the nation borders Russia, Belarus, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Moldova, Romania, and the Black Sea. The current territory of Ukraine became absorbed into the Russian Empire during the 18th century and after the disintegration of the empire in 1917, Ukraine briefly asserted its independence. It remained an independent state under a series of different governments for nearly three years. In 1920, Bolshevik Russia conquered Ukraine and the nation’s present borders are the result of three demarcations since that time. In 1922, the ruling communists created the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, and Ukraine still maintains these northern and eastern borders. When the Soviet Union invaded Poland in 1939, it annexed the ethnically Ukrainian portions of that country and attached them to the Ukrainian SSR. Finally, the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic attached the Crimean Oblast to the Ukrainian SSR in 1954. Ukraine, as the second largest republic of the Soviet Union, provided 537

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inmates worked in industrial construction, timber harvesting, and mining. After Russians, Ukrainians constituted the second largest nationality found in gulag camps as well as in the Soviet Union at large. After the end of World War II, strong guerrilla resistance to Soviet rule in western Ukraine emerged under the political leadership of OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists). In order to deprive these rebels of food and shelter, the NKVD (Peoples Commissariat of Internal Affairs—successor to the OGPU) resorted to deporting much of the civilian Ukrainian population in the region to special settlements in Siberia and other remote locations. They executed a particularly large operation in November 1947 that displaced over 75,000 Ukrainians from their homeland to eastern regions of the Soviet Union. By 1949, the number of Ukrainian special settlers in Siberia, the Urals, Kazakhstan, and Far North had reached 96,191 with the largest of these contingents residing in Kemerovo, Molotov, and Omsk oblasts. In total, the NKVD deported over 175,000 Ukrainians to special settlements in the Urals, Siberia, and other remote regions during the 1940s. Large numbers of Ukrainians remained confined to special settlements throughout the 1950s. In 1957, over 91,000 Ukrainians remained exiled as special settlers. Only in 1960 did the Soviet government resolve to release these men and women from the legal disabilities of the special settlement regime. Along with deportees from the Baltic States and Moldova,

they constituted the last contingents removed from the registers of the special settlement locations. During the late 1940s, the number of Ukrainians in gulag camps also increased dramatically as part of the Soviet struggle against OUN. From 1944 to 1947, Ukrainian prisoners increased from 73,832 to 180,294. The percentage of Ukrainians in the camp population increased from 11 percent to 22.9 percent. Western Ukrainians became one of the largest groups in the gulag camps during the late 1940s. In order to rebuild the Soviet Union after World War II, the NKVD forcibly mobilized ethnic Germans from Romania, Yugoslavia, Hungary, East Prussia, and Silesia into forced labor battalions. In total, the Stalin regime mobilized and transported 208,239 ethnic German civilians from these regions to the Soviet Union between January and March 1945. Ukraine served as the major destination for these civilian internees. By January 1, 1946, a total of 132,133 German internees remained alive in the Soviet Union and had been organized into 183 labor battalions with over threequarters of them working in Ukraine. The Soviet government employed most of these internees in coal and iron mines. A full 63 labor battalions with 49,452 internees (37.4 percent of the total) mined coal in Stalino Oblast. Another 30 battalions with 26,015 people (19.7 percent) mined coal in Voroshilovgrad Oblast. Finally, 27 battalions composed of 18,556 ethnic Germans (14 percent) worked in the iron mines of Dnepropetrovsk Oblast while


smaller numbers of interned Germans worked in Kharkov and Zaparozhye oblasts. The Soviet authorities released and repatriated the vast majority of these forced laborers either back to their home countries or to Germany in a piecemeal fashion from 1945 to 1950. From 1960 to the independence of Ukraine in 1991, forced labor remained largely a problem of the past. The use of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian prisoners and deportees for forced labor in Siberia, the Urals, and Kazakhstan had ended. Independence, however, brought new problems. After achieving independence in 1991, the trafficking of Ukrainian women for forced prostitution abroad became a major problem for the new state. Organized crime still continues to smuggle both Ukrainian women and foreign women through Ukraine to work in European and Middle Eastern brothels against their will. Law enforcement in Ukraine has been unable to stamp out this new form of slave trade. J. Otto Pohl See also: Gulag (Main Administration of Camps); Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation; Central Asia.

Further Readings Magocsi, Paul Robert. A History of Ukraine. Seattle: University of Washington Press. 1996. Pohl, J. Otto. The Stalinist Penal System. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1997. Polian, Pavel. Against Their Will: The History and Geography of Forced Migrations in the USSR. Budapest, Hungary: Central European Press, 2004.

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Subtenly, Orest. Ukraine: A History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000.

Underground Railroad From the 1830s to the U.S. Civil War (1861–1865), approximately 1,000 slaves a year escaped their bondage and found refuge in the northern states or Canada. Most succeeded by their own efforts, but some received help from other slaves, free blacks, and northerners opposed to slavery. Those who assisted escaping slaves, as well as their networks and organization, were designated the Underground Railroad. This enterprise had neither central organization nor clear lines of authority; it was a loose network of individuals with minimal contacts and ever-changing membership. But its very existence in the face of the federal fugitive slave law and its freedom of maneuver in many northern states infuriated slaveholders and their political representatives. The controversy over the Underground Railroad exaggerated its impact while adding to the acrimony of sectional politics. In 1831 a Kentucky slaveholder followed a runaway into Ohio and found that the trail suddenly went cold. In disgust he remarked that his slave must have taken flight on an underground railroad. This is the earliest, as well as the most plausible, origin of the term. It came to be used more and more and was, in the opinion of the historian David W. Blight (2004), in general use by the mid-1840s. Those who took part in the movement at times spoke of

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lines and stations and stationmasters, and Harriet Tubman spoke of never losing a passenger, but this was metaphor or political manifesto rather than exactitude. Although not metaphorical, the language of secret passages, code words, and marked trails has given the Underground Railroad an efficiency of organization and an air of adventure it rarely possessed. In the antebellum period in the United States at least 1,000 slaves a year permanently escaped their masters. This figure, obtained by the historian Larry Gara (1961) from census data, must be lower than the actual number, but there is no way to calculate the actual higher number. This is a tiny fraction of the total slave population (in 1860 there were nearly 4 million slaves in the southern states). Frederick Douglass in his Narrative (1845) chided western abolitionists for describing the Underground Railroad so minutely that the chances of later escapees were worsened. Douglass was correct on the details but perhaps missed the larger political point—continual discussion of assistance to escaping slaves was meant to familiarize the northern public with defiance of the federal fugitive slave law. In any case, Douglass gave some of the details of his escape, and more detail in the second edition of his autobiography (1855). Douglass’s account is instructive. Douglass made good his escape in 1838; he was then 20 years old. In 1836 he had planned a joint escape with several other young male slaves, but they had scarcely begun before they

were captured. Their newfound optimism may have given them away, or another slave may have informed the master. Douglass expected to be sold into the Deep South, but was taken to Baltimore, Maryland, and allowed to rent himself out, working as a caulker in the shipyard. He left Baltimore on his own, made his way to New York City, and there contacted David Ruggles, the director of the New York Vigilance Committee. Douglass remained in hiding at Ruggles’s home for a few days. His fiancée, Ann Murray, a free black woman whom he had met in Baltimore, joined him, and they were married. Ruggles directed the couple to New Bedford, Massachusetts, a safer place for a fugitive and a port where Douglass’s skills as a caulker would be useful. Ruggles gave Douglass a letter of introduction to Nathan Johnson of New Bedford, who assisted the Douglasses. Douglass was a unique and extraordinary individual, but his escape has some elements typical of the successful escape. Douglass escaped from the Upper South; he escaped alone; he had a pass (written by himself ); he had help in Baltimore, New York City, and New Bedford. William “Box” Brown was nailed in a crate and shipped to freedom; his escape was truly unique, while Douglass’s was more typical. Ripley, Ohio, just across the Ohio River from the slave state of Kentucky, was well-known in the 1840s as a center of the Underground Railroad. John Rankin, an Evangelical preacher who had been forced to leave the South, lived in Ripley and coordinated the


efforts of his five sons, other antislavery ministers, and white abolitionists. Rankin had sheltered the fugitive who was allegedly the model for the character Eliza in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852). Also active in Ripley was the free black John P. Parker, who left a detailed account of his activities. Parker recorded rowing fugitives across the Ohio River to freedom, dodging the slaveholders and slave catchers active on both sides of the river, hiding fugitives in his home. Ripley’s residents were proslavery as well as antislavery, so Parker went armed with pistol and knife. After enactment of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, the Underground Railroad became more visible and more salient politically. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel invited Americans to sympathize with the fugitive Eliza. William and Ellen Craft, who were on the lecture circuit describing their dramatic escape from slavery, were defended by Boston’s free blacks until they could leave for England. Boston’s free blacks were also able to seize Shadrack Minkins from Boston’s courthouse and get him to Canada, but three fugitives captured in Boston, Thomas Sims, Sandy Swam, and Anthony Burns, were returned to slavery because of elaborate federal intervention. The fugitive “Jerry” (William McHenry) was seized by abolitionists from federal custody in Syracuse, New York, and conducted to Canada. Another fugitive, held by federal officials in Oberlin, Ohio, was freed by a mob and sent to Canada. Such cases showed that while federal

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and local officials were willing to act— often strenuously—to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law, they could succeed only on occasion. The efforts to aid escaping slaves, once secretive enough to be called an underground activity, were now open and there was sometimes violent resistance to federal laws and the institution of slavery. Spencer Davis See also: Douglass, Frederick.

Further Readings Blight, David W., ed. Passages to Freedom: The Underground Railroad in History and Memory. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2004. Blockson, Charles L. The Underground Railroad: First-Person Narratives of Escapes to Freedom in the North. New York: Harper & Row, 1987. Bordewich, Fergus M. Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America. New York: Harper Collins, 2005. Buckmaster, Henrietta. Let My People Go: The Story of the Underground Railroad and the Growth of the Abolition Movement. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993. Douglass, Frederick. My Bondage and My Freedom. New York: Barnes and Noble Classics, 2005. Originally published 1855. Gara, Larry. The Liberty Line: The Legend of the Underground Railroad. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1961. Sprague, Stuart Seely, ed. His Promised Land: The Autobiography of John P. Parker, Former Slave and Conductor in the Underground Railroad. New York: W. W. Norton, 1996.

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Undocumented Aliens

Undocumented Aliens Undocumented aliens are foreign nationals who are in a country without possession of legal documentation or authorization to be in that country. Migration scholars tend to refer to undocumented aliens as irregular migrants, while others may refer to such persons as irregular migrants, illegal immigrants, unauthorized aliens, or illegal aliens. The term “undocumented alien” covers a variety of categories of foreign nationals without legal documentation or authorization to be in a country for various reasons. Undocumented aliens include asylum seekers, refugees, and tourists or temporary workers who have overstayed their authorization. There are two broad categories of undocumented aliens: (a) those that entered a country without legal authorization or with false documentation for a variety of purposes, and (b) those that entered a country legally with time-specific authorization and then fail to depart the country when their authorization expires. Undocumented aliens may be in a country for a variety of reasons: to work, to seek asylum, to marry a partner, to gain citizenship, or to continue on to another country as a final destination. Undocumented aliens who clandestinely enter countries usually do so at great risk to themselves. The high demand for migration from less developed countries to capital-rich countries and the increased restrictions on legal immigration to capital-rich countries has created a black market for

migration services. People smugglers are entrepreneurs dedicated to moving people illicitly across borders for profit. Smuggled migrants, however, risk their lives in perilous conditions to surreptitiously cross international borders. Migrants have suffocated in cargo containers of trains, trucks, and boats. They face drowning while floating on rafts across rough waters. They march for days across deserts risking dehydration or exposure. International borders of industrialized countries, such as the U.S.-Mexico border, the Strait of Gibraltar between Spain and Morocco, and the Channel Tunnel between France and Great Britain have become points of conflict and debate over security and the human rights of migrants. An undocumented alien’s position may also not be voluntary, such as asylum seekers and trafficked persons. Asylum seekers are compelled to move to escape persecution or conflict in their home countries. Trafficked migrants may have voluntarily migrated, often as asylum seekers, but during the course of their journey or at their destination, the traffickers confiscate their legal documents, thereby making the migrant’s status “illegal.” Trafficked migrants may also have been coerced to migrate through force, fraud, or other coercion. Such persons did not migrate voluntarily nor are they willfully in a country without authorization, but they may seek to remain for asylum and protection. Estimates on undocumented alien populations in countries around the world are not exact. Estimates are

Undocumented Aliens

U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian McClatchie stands in front of a casket manufacturer’s truck used to smuggle people across the U.S.-Mexico border in 1986. Many dangerous forms of transportation are used to bring people across the border. In this case, 43 migrants were hidden in the spaces between the caskets. (AP/WideWorld Photos)

imprecise because data collection involves counting a hidden population. In the United States, analyses of the 2000 census strongly suggest that some 9 million undocumented aliens lived in the United States. Western Europe is thought to have over 3 million undocumented aliens. The size of the undocumented alien population in other regions is impossible to estimate since data on migrant populations is unrecorded and not reflected in official statistics (Castles and Miller, 2003). Undocumented aliens frequently make up low-wage, unskilled workers

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in legal and informal economic sectors. In industrialized or industrializing countries, undocumented aliens are unofficially employed most frequently in agriculture, domestic work, construction, retail stores, restaurants, and the sex industry. Such migrants are particularly vulnerable to enslavement. Undocumented or irregular migrants may incur debts during their migration, which must be repaid to the conditions of brokers who assisted migrants to their destination. Irregular migrants may also have their documents confiscated, may be tricked, or may be coerced to work against their will. Undocumented aliens are extremely disadvantaged in their host countries. Usually they lack all rights to settlement and legal protections. The undocumented immigrant’s access to legal jobs, education, local language development, and integrative services are severely limited in most countries. The undocumented status usually means that state (governmental) benefits for legal aliens (such as refugees and some guest workers) are unavailable. Undocumented aliens working in their host countries tend to be paid less than the normal wage of legal workers, work excessive hours with no overtime remuneration, and have no entitlements to welfare or social security benefits. They are at the greatest risk of exploitation in the forms of human trafficking and enslavement. Undocumented aliens frequently turn to informal social networks and underground economies for integrative resources that may help them survive in their destination country.

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UNIFEM: Women’s Human Rights Programme

Undocumented aliens seeking asylum have limited rights and legal protection by having to prove that they left their countries because of persecution. The process of gaining legal refugee status is lengthy and complex. It can take several years, during which time an asylum seeker may or may not be granted permission to work, must be housed in transitional or temporary shelter, may or may not allow their family to be reunited with them, and in the end, may or may not be granted full legal rights to benefits and protections if their application is rejected. The costs for underground services may be exorbitant and, when facilitated through organized crime, may result in debt, exploitation, violence, and sometimes enslavement. Female undocumented aliens are particularly vulnerable to sexual abuse, servitude in private homes, and forced work in the sex industry. Steven Lize See also: Human trafficking for Labor Purposes; Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation; Illegal Migration; International Organization for Migration; Migrant Workers.

Further Readings Castles, Stephen, and Mark J. Miller. The Age of Migration. 3rd ed. New York: Guilford Press, 2003. Ehrenreich, Barbara, and Arlie R. Hochschild, eds. Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2003. International Organization for Migration. World Migration Report 2010—The Future of Migration: Building Capacities

for Change. Geneva: International Organization for Migration, 2010. Kyle, David, and Rey Koslowski, eds. Global Human Smuggling: Comparative Perspectives. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.

UNIFEM: Women’s Human Rights Programme UNIFEM, an abbreviation of the United Nations Development Fund for Women, was first established as the United Nations Voluntary Fund for the Decade for Women (VFDW) in the UN Secretariat by the General Assembly in 1976, immediately following the first World Conference on Women, held in Mexico City in 1975. The World Plan of Action that was accepted at the conference underlined the three crucial aspects of gender inequality. The first was the integration of women into the development process. The second was the strengthening of women in peace making and peace keeping. The third was the building of basic standards for the access of women to education, employment, political participation as well as health and family planning, all of which it was hoped should be reached within the next five years. Although the following 10 years after the conference was declared the International Decade on Women and Development (1976– 1985), the conference simultaneously recommended creating the VFDW in order to finance activities during the women’s decade. By 1984, the VFDW was converted to UNIFEM by the UN General Assembly as a separate and identifiable entity

UNIFEM: Women’s Human Rights Programme

in autonomous association with United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Mainstreaming development activities, supporting national and regional priorities, and strengthening women’s empowerment were adopted as basic strategic objectives of UNIFEM. After the years following the adoption of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) by the General Assembly in 1979, UNIFEM has been assisting governments in implementing the convention in order to advance gender equality at all levels, including reinforcement of the cooperation between governments and civil society, especially women’s organizations. The fourth World Conference of Women, which was held in Beijing in 1995, and its main policy document, the Beijing Platform of Action, reshaped the objectives of UNIFEM activities. The activities formulated and implemented by the Development Fund for Women in order to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women have concentrated on the three thematic areas: strengthening women’s economic capacity, engendering governance and leadership, and promoting women’s human rights and the elimination of all forms of violence against women. The CEDAW principles and the Beijing Platform of Action infuse all of UNIFEM’s work on women’s human rights today. UNIFEM’s support for advancing women’s human rights starts with consistent connections to rights across its four fundamental programming areas: reducing feminized

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poverty, ending violence against women, halting the spread of HIV/ AIDS, and achieving gender equality in democratic governance, including ensuring that attention goes first to the most marginalized groups. Some UNIFEM programs that focus specifically on CEDAW have been continuing in several countries and regions across the world. For example, UNIFEM gave the Mexico Ministry of Health technical support and advocacy in order to make visible the range of domestic violence in Mexico, initiating a comprehensive survey of domestic violence in 2003. In addition, the UNIFEM-supported Southern African Women’s Judge’s Network attempts to adjust gender biases in judicial systems, thus increasing women’s representation in the judiciary and encouraging the national embrace of international human rights standards. In cooperation with UNIFEM, the Nepal government established mandatory predeparture sessions to inform women migrant workers who have faced routine violations on their rights under labor laws. Another regional project aimed to build awareness of CEDAW within the Arab states by 2005. For instance, by forming an alliance with the Syrian Women’s Union, UNIFEM has contacted ministry officials, lawyers, journalists, and nongovernmental organizations. Ozlem Sahin See also: Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)

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Further Reading Sadik, Nafis, Roberto Bissio, and Richard Jolly. Organizational Assessment: UNIFEM Past, Present, and Future. New York and Geneva: United Nations, 2005.

United Nations. See UNIFEM; United Nations Ad Hoc Committee on Slavery (1950–1951); United Nations and Antislavery; United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF); United Nations Protocol (1953); United Nations Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery (1956); United Nations Trafficking Protocol; Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948).

United Nations Ad Hoc Committee on Slavery (1950–1951) The United Nations Ad Hoc Committee on Slavery (1950–1951) was a research and investigative body that examined the state of slavery worldwide in the mid-20th century and made recommendations to the United Nations General Assembly on the basis of its findings. The work of the ad hoc committee resulted in the promulgation and adoption of the United Nations Protocol Amending the Slavery Convention (1953). The findings of the committee were historically significant as the group acknowledged the persistence of slavery and other forms of unfree labor in a time when many imagined that such practices had long ceased to exist.

The League of Nations had been the first international body of the 20th century to draft legislation condemning slavery and formulating procedures for its elimination. Upon adoption of its Slavery Convention of 1926, the League of Nations reaffirmed earlier antislavery commitments that had been issued by the community of nations in the Berlin Act (1885), the Brussels Act (1890), and the Convention of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1919) that had all condemned slavery. The Slavery Convention of 1926 established a system of procedures and mechanisms whereby slavery systems, once discovered, could be dismantled under the authority of the League of Nations. When the League of Nations ceased to be a viable international body in the early 1940s, the effectiveness of its international policy instruments, including the Slavery Convention of 1926, also became virtually powerless. Since the enforcement mechanisms included in the convention were dependent on offices and agencies of the League of Nations that no longer functioned, the destruction of the League of Nations removed the effective functioning of international law with respect to slavery. Coincidentally, the rise of various slave labor regimes— such as those that emerged in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and communist China—all occurred during the era when enforcement of the Slavery Convention of 1926 had been halted. After adopting its Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the member states of the United Nations began to reevaluate the specter of slavery


worldwide, considered to be perhaps the most egregious violation of human rights in the contemporary world. It was this concern that prompted the UN General Assembly to ask the secretary general to appoint the Ad Hoc Committee on Slavery (1950–1951) and charge it with investigating and making recommendations to the international body. For two years the ad hoc committee worked in conjunction with the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to investigate the persistence, extent, and consequences of the various forms of unfree labor that were being utilized in all parts of the world. The members of the ad hoc committee soon realized that unlike the chattel slavery of the 19th century, the manifestations of slavery in the 20th century were varied and included many different types of work arrangements that were exploitative in nature. The members of the ad hoc committee worked to draft antislavery language that was representative of and inclusive enough to identify and condemn the many forms of modern slavery that had arisen. The work of the United Nations Ad Hoc Committee on Slavery was extremely valuable to contemporary efforts to combat slavery worldwide. The committee lent credence to the charges that slavery still existed despite noble efforts of abolitionist campaigners and legislative proscriptions that had taken place in the previous century. By acknowledging the persistence of slavery in the contemporary world, the ad hoc

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committee raised the issue of unfree labor to the level of an international concern rather than allowing it to languish in the shadows of obscurity. In drafting the language of the United Nations Protocol Amending the Slavery Convention (1953), the ad hoc committee formulated the basis of modern international law that is still in use today as nations continue the struggle to end the scourge of contemporary slavery. Junius P. Rodriguez See also: League of Nations; United Nations Protocol (1953).

Further Readings United Nations. Human Rights: A Compilation of International Instruments. New York and Geneva: United Nations, 1994. United Nations. The Suppression of Slavery: Memorandum Submitted by the Secretary-General. New York: United Nations, 1951.

United Nations and Antislavery The United Nations (UN) was formed immediately after the end of World War II. Like its predecessor, the League of Nations, its purpose was to ensure peace by preventing wars and promoting human welfare. Its charter, issued in 1945, stated that one of its aims was to promote “universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex or language or religion.” Although slavery was not

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specifically mentioned, its eradication was clearly implied. However, like the league, it ruled out interference in the domestic affairs of member states. Hence, it could negotiate covenants but had no means of enforcing them, even in the case of members that had signed and ratified them. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, its subsidiary bodies were formed in an atmosphere of rising tension created by the Cold War—the intense hostility between the communist bloc led by the Soviet Union and the Western democracies led by the United States. These were the only remaining great powers, as one by one, the European colonial empires disintegrated and the newly independent states took their places at the United Nations. To the Western bloc, human rights included freedom of expression, of assembly, of information, of religion, and freedom from arbitrary arrest and other components of the rule of law, while the Soviet bloc stressed freedom from want and discrimination, the right to education, equal opportunity, and other economic and social rights. The abolition of slavery became a pawn in the battle between the Western democracies and the Soviet Union and its allies to win over world public opinion. The Commission on Human Rights (CHR), a subsidiary of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. The Russians maintained that slavery meant only the chattel slavery that was still legal only in the Aden

Protectorate and the small sheikdoms on the Persian Gulf under British protection, and in the independent states of Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Hence, they proposed that Article 4 of the Universal Declaration should declare that “no one shall be held in slavery or servitude: and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.” To the Western bloc, however, “slavery in all its forms” included the forced labor practiced in the gulags of the Soviet Union and the other practices included in the report of the League of Nations Temporary Slavery Commission and referred to in the Slavery Convention of 1926. The Universal Declaration, however, was simply a declaration of principles. Covenants were needed to implement it and these were many years in coming. The secretary of the British Antislavery Society began to pressure the United Nations to appoint a permanent slavery committee as early as 1946. The result, after much disagreement and discussion, was the appointment of the Ad Hoc Committee on Slavery (1950–1951). Two years later, the UN took over the Slavery Convention of 1926, including its unsatisfactory definition of slavery. This in turn led to the negotiation of the Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery in 1956. This treaty confirmed that these practices included debt bondage, serfdom, forced labor, the adoption of children under 18 in order to exploit them, as well as forced marriage, the forced transfer of married women, and the inheritance


of widows. To prevent child marriage, signatories undertook to set a minimum age for marriages, to register them, and to ensure that consent should be freely expressed by both parties before competent authorities. These provisions were incorporated into the Convention on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage, and Registration of Marriages of 1962. This was followed by a recommendation of the UN General Assembly in 1965, which suggested that 15 should be the minimum age for marriage. Similarly, the UN General Assembly issued the Declaration on the Rights of the Child in 1959, proclaiming that children must be assured a “happy childhood” free from discrimination, and insecurity. They had a right to free and compulsory education, and must be allowed time for recreation. They should not be employed below a minimum age, or engaged in any occupation dangerous to their health and development. Thus, by the 1960s, the United Nations had negotiated important human rights covenants and declarations, but it had no means of enforcing them. During the next few years, the antislavery campaign must be seen against the background of increasing tension as each side in the Cold War sought support from the newly independent unaligned former European colonies. The revulsion of these new countries against colonialism increased as South Africa’s policy of apartheid became ever more brutal, as Rhodesia declared independence from Britain and

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tightened its racial policies, and as Africans turned to guerrilla warfare against South Africa, Rhodesia, and the Portuguese colonies. Fuel was added to the fire by the United States’ embroilment in war between South Vietnam and the communist North Vietnam, and by Israel’s humiliating victory in the 1967 war against its Arab neighbors. The slavery question at the United Nations was put on the agenda of ECOSOC in 1960 by a group of closely allied nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) led by the Anti-Slavery Society and including women’s organizations. They demanded the establishment of a UN commission of inquiry or a committee of experts on slavery. The slavery question assumed political importance when President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt emerged as a leading abolitionist denouncing chattel slavery in Arabia. Saudi Arabia and Yemen outlawed it in 1962. Thus, the only areas in which chattel slavery was legal were the Aden Protectorate and the Trucial States, both under forms of British protection, and Oman, whose sultan was a close ally of Britain. However, many of the practices designated as forms of slavery in the 1956 and subsequent treaties were still practiced in the newly independent former colonies. By the end of 1962, only 44 of the 104 members of the UN had acceded to the 1956 treaty. A compromise was reached at the UN with the appointment of a special rapporteur on slavery, rather than the committee wanted by the NGOs. The rapporteur, Dr. Mohammed Awad, an Egyptian scholar,

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began work in 1964, sending out questionnaires asking governments to report on the situation in their countries. Most of the replies were less than honest. In his report, discussed in the social committee of ECOSOC in 1966, Awad advocated the appointment of a UN slavery committee with its own secretariat. He wanted it to have the power to promote and supervise the activities of specialized agencies and NGOs, as well as to cooperate with, and advise, governments on action they might take. He even hinted that the committee might send experts to investigate conditions and offer advice to countries needing help. The proposal was strongly opposed. The USSR claimed it was unnecessary. The United States objected to the expense. Many of the newly independent states had no desire for investigations into such questions as marriage customs, cult slavery, child labor, debt bondage, and so forth. The Latin American nations had no wish to tackle peonage or the plight of their indigenous minorities. The British, to placate Parliament, the Anti-Slavery Society and the public, were reluctantly prepared to support such a committee, but suggested that it should be purely advisory. However, the coup de grâce came when Tanzania and other former colonies succeeded in passing a resolution that included the “slavery-like practices of apartheid and colonialism” as forms of servitude and called on the Commission on Human Rights to consider ways to end them, effectively and immediately. This was opposed by Britain, and the proposal for the committee died.

In the years that followed, the slavery issue was kept alive by NGOs led by the Anti-Slavery Society. In 1967, the CHR, to whom ECOSOC had referred the question, passed it on to its Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and the Protection of Minorities (SPDPM). This was a committee of so-called independent experts appointed by the CHR but approved by their governments. How independent they were depended on their governments. Originally most were lawyers, sociologists, and other academics, but from 1969, as their numbers were increased to give more representation to Africans, Asians, and Latin Americans, more diplomats and civil servants were appointed and the appointments became more politicized. The members represented the five areas into which the UN divided the world. They had a large mandate—to protect minorities and prevent discrimination and other infringements of human rights. Henceforth, this was the body that dealt with slavery questions. Although the appointment of a special committee to deal with slavery was for the time being a dead issue, the UN issued a number of declarations and negotiated conventions dealing with various forms of servitude. In 1968, for instance, ECOSOC declared trafficking in persons for prostitution to be a form of slavery, and called on such specialized agencies as the International Labour Organization (ILO), the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the


UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to rehabilitate the women and girls who were freed. The Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and the Exploitation of Others had replaced earlier treaties in 1949, but for legal and other reasons, its provisions could not be effectively implemented. In 1969, a further Awad report was commissioned. Awad was particularly urged to seek information from the specialized agencies as well as NGOs and such intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) as the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the Arab League, and the Organization of American States (OAS). He was also asked to investigate specific manifestations of apartheid, such as sweated labor and the denial of trade union rights to Africans. Meanwhile, the Anti-Slavery Society formed an All Party Group in the British Parliament to pressure the government into taking stronger action at the UN. The group, however, was particularly interested in the welfare of indigenous peoples such as Amerindians in South America and the Bushmen in southern Africa. The definition of slavery was constantly expanding. Various agencies and increasing numbers of NGOs were being drawn into the abolition struggle, but there was no organization to oversee their efforts, and action depended entirely on government cooperation. Moreover, when Awad presented his final report in 1970, it was disappointing. The UN special agencies that relied on the cooperation of governments for

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their work had not wanted to be drawn into the antislavery campaign, and many governments had still ignored or failed to ratify the conventions. In many cases, they had outlawed slavery and denied that it existed; hence, they were reluctant now to admit that their laws were not being carried out. Britain’s dilemma over chattel slavery was reduced when the rulers of the Trucial States were induced to sign a decree stating that it had long been forbidden in their territories. In the Aden Protectorate, where British control was nonexistent in some areas, slavery was still practiced to an unknown extent. This problem was solved when Britain withdrew from Aden in disarray late in 1967, and the extreme socialist government that took over outlawed slavery. In Oman, closely allied to Britain, slavery ended when a British-supported coup replaced the existing ruler with his son in 1970. By this time, South Africa had left the British Commonwealth on the issue of apartheid, and the only colonies remaining under British rule continued to do so by their own choice. Henceforth, Britain had no difficulty submitting to the demands of the Anti-Slavery Society and its supporters, who urged the government to pressure the UN to establish some mechanism to foster and supervise action against slavery. At the UN, pressure from more than 20 NGOs and revelations that a number of Africans were being smuggled into Europe and ill-treated, led to the appointment of the Working Group on Slavery in 1974. It consisted of five members of the subcommission, one

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from each of the areas into which the United Nations had divided the world. The Soviets, however, stipulated that it was only to meet for three days every other year. It could not carry out investigations, and it had no authority to see that the advice it was expected to provide was carried out. Its membership, constantly changing, was unlikely to produce any experts on slavery. It was thus a small toothless committee established to end contemporary forms of slavery that in the last years of the 20th and early ones of the 21st centuries were constantly taking new forms. Some of the group’s early defects were remedied in the next few years due to intense NGO pressure. It became a permanent body, meeting annually first for five days and then for eight. Most importantly, its meetings were held in public with simultaneous translation into English, French, Russian, and Spanish. Moreover, NGOs and specialized agencies were invited to attend and give evidence. By 1992, its meetings were held long enough before the meeting of the subcommission for the latter to have time to read its reports and act upon them. However, it lacked secretarial support and could not conduct its own investigations on the ground or enforce its recommendations. It was thus dependent on the information that was brought to it by the UN secretariat and NGOs, as well as the UN special agencies, many of which did not attend its meetings regularly. Its early meetings were highly politicized as members defended their own regions. The Cold War introduced

a competitive atmosphere in which the Soviet and Asian blocs in particular flatly denied the various charges brought against them. The communists, for instance, claimed there was no prostitution in their countries. When Ethiopia was accused of hijacking people off the streets of Addis Ababa to work in the sesame fields as forced labor, a Russian representative claimed that the accusation was untrue and that the evidence was produced by the Western bloc to embarrass the Ethiopian communist government. When debt bondage in India was denounced, the chairman complained that his area of the world was being “picked on.” Members wandered in and out of the meetings and appeared to have little interest in the proceedings. Moreover, there was rarely any press coverage, which was what hard-pressed, underfunded NGOs craved. With the end of the Cold War and of apartheid in South Africa, following the dissolution of the European colonial empires, the atmosphere at the Working Group on Slavery became less politicized. Another big change was that public awareness of the various forms of modern servitude heightened as these abuses attracted more attention in the press. By the last decade of the 20th century, the number of NGOs had proliferated and more and more of them came to the meetings of the group. It was one institution at which they were sure of being heard. Although its powers were extremely limited, the group was responsible for the appointment of several special rapporteurs, particularly


on the exploitation of children. It also initiated the establishment of the UN Trust Fund on Contemporary Forms of Slavery, financed by government donations. This fund brought local NGOs and sometimes victims of contemporary slavery to Geneva to provide firsthand accounts of abuse. By the end of the 20th century, chattel slavery had almost disappeared. It still existed illegally in Mauritania and in some of the neighboring countries in the Sahel. The subcommission sent out a committee to investigate the situation in Mauritania in 1984. Progress was slow; in the 1990s, many slaves, especially men, had been freed, but owners were still trying to keep women and children. Slave raiding and slaveholding also revived in Sudan as the result of the war between the north and the south. A special rapporteur was sent out by the UN, and such agencies as UNICEF, tried to trace abducted women and children in order to rehabilitate them. The UN was also involved in trying to broker peace in the Sudan. In most of its sessions, however, the Working Group on Slavery found itself hearing about more and more practices that had not in the past been defined as slavery, or had been called “slaverylike practices.” After much discussion, it decided in 1987 to change its name to the Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery. The subcommission defined slavery as the “exploitation of man by man,” and maintained that, as this was constantly changing its forms, the definition of slavery could not be a static concept.

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Under this rubric, the group collected more and more information on practices that differed from chattel slavery in certain important features. The emphasis changed from ownership to control, and often to temporary control, as for instance, slave children grew up and forced prostitutes grew old or ill. Moreover, slaves were no longer acquired by raids. Some were still kidnapped, but many came willingly in search of jobs and on arrival found the job they had been promised did not exist and were then forced into various forms of servitude through debt bondage or brutalization or threats. Thus, people were recruited in the slums of Brazil to work in Amazonia, only to find on arrival that they were in debt to the people who had transported them. The debts could not be repaid, and, hence, they were forced to work in gold mines or other jobs. Women and girls found themselves forced into prostitution. Similar scams were practiced in areas as different as Eastern Europe and West Africa. Parents sold their children on the promise of a good job or an education, only to find that they were worked like slaves on plantations and quarries, or as domestic servants or prostitutes in their own countries or abroad. Debt bondage was an old form of servitude, particularly in South Asia, where it was often hereditary. It took the form of peonage in the Americas. It now increasingly spread to new areas and played an intrinsic part in the rising flow of labor from the poor areas of the world to the rich ones.

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The exploitation of child labor was the subject of special UN reports in the 1980s and 1990s. Children were especially vulnerable to exploitation, and the problem was worldwide but particularly widespread in poor countries. Children worked in mines, factories, cottage industries, stone quarries, brick kilns, agriculture, and domestic service. Small boys from South Asia were recruited to ride as camel jockeys in the United Arab Emirates (formerly the Trucial States). Some children worked with their parents, others worked away from home. Criminal gangs used street children for prostitution, drug trafficking, and theft, and even mutilated them to turn them into beggars. Many were victims of sex tourism, forced prostitution, and child pornography. Child soldiers were widely recruited, mostly in rebel armies, and in some cases were forced to commit atrocities, killing or mutilating even children, as in Sierra Leone. Much information on these iniquities was brought to the Working Group, before and after the signing of the Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989. In the 1990s, the group drew up a plan of action to be sent to governments. The Commission on Human Rights appointed special rapporteurs to deal with child slavery. Finally, the ILO established the International Program on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) and in 1999, negotiated the Convention against the Worst Forms of Child Labour (no. 182). Some of the many cases brought before the Working Group on Con-

temporary Forms of Slavery bore little or no relation to slavery as generally conceived. These cases included female genital excision (also called cutting or circumcision), the honor killings of Muslim girls by their relatives in the belief that they had disgraced them, the murder of persons to use their organs in transplants, as well as incest and other iniquities. As a result, by the late 1990s, the Working Group was in danger of losing its focus. Some forms of servitude, however, were transferred to other UN working groups. Legal foreign migrant laborers were often denied the benefits due to citizen workers. Moreover, they lived away from their families, and faced violence and racism. Illegal alien migrants were particularly vulnerable to abuses such as extortion by the criminal groups who smuggled them into the richer nations. Thus, Chinese triads extorted money from them as well as their families under threat of violence. Some illegal aliens were forced into sweatshops, which were virtual prisons. At best, these economic refugees faced resentment from local workers, fearful of losing their jobs. To protect them, the Convention on the Protection of the Rights of all Migrant Workers and Their Families was signed in 1990. Seven years later, the Commission on Human Rights established a working group to consider the protection of migrants. Similarly, the Working Group on the Protection of Indigenous Populations (WGIP) was established in order to protect their rights to lands, and ensure


they did not become victims of serfdom, debt bondage, forced labor, and discrimination. This UN group attracted wide support. It drafted a universal declaration on the rights of indigenous minorities and helped establish the Permanent Indigenous Forum under ECOSOC. It also established a trust fund to bring spokespersons to meetings at which governments exchanged information on indigenous peoples. In sum, the United Nations through its various committees, working groups, and specialized agencies was actively involved in the suppression of the various forms of slavery that evolved in the 20th century, as well as in ending the remaining vestiges of chattel slavery. It remains to be seen how successful it has been. The distinction between forced labor and slavery has not been clearcut since forced labor was included in the definition of slavery by the League of Nations Temporary Slavery Commission. However, although the Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery has heard evidence on the question, it was the ILO that negotiated the various forced labor conventions. Many of the problems the United Nations has attacked are almost intractable, as they are the result of dire poverty in some regions of the world in contrast to the great wealth of others. The result has been a steady flow of migrants, both free and in servitude, from the poor areas to the rich areas. Globalization is still in its infancy. The problem of protecting the vulnerable from exploitation by employers and criminal gangs became

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more difficult with the increasing ease of communications, with money laundering, and widespread official corruption, as well as the growth of organized crime. On paper much has been achieved. Conventions have been signed. Wide publicity has been given to various forms of contemporary slavery. However, some serious problems remain. Governments do not have to sign or ratify the conventions. If they do sign them, and if they pass the laws needed to implement them, they are often too poor or too corrupt to enforce them. Moreover, if treaties are to be carried out, an up-todate definition of slavery is needed. At present, it is still defined as in 1926 as a question of ownership. Thus, in spite of considerable UN efforts, many forms of contemporary slavery have continued into the early 21st century. Suzanne Miers Further Readings Anti-Slavery Reporter and Aborigines Friend, 1946–1980, and thereafter published as Anti-Slavery Reporter, published by Anti-Slavery International, London. Korey, William. NGOs and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: A Curious Grapevine. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. Miers, Suzanne. Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 2003. Reports of the Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery, published annually by the United Nations together with other United Nations reports and Human Rights conventions.

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United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF)

United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) was founded in December 1946 by unanimous vote at the first session of the United Nations General Assembly. At the beginning, UNICEF aimed at providing short-term relief in post–World War II Europe. Its name was shortened to the United Nations Children Fund in 1953, when it became a permanent part of the United Nations. But the acronym based on its old name was popular and it continues to be identified with the acronym UNICEF. Its headquarter is in New York, but it has numerous offices and national committees in different parts of the world. Beside these, the Innocenti Research Center in Florence, Italy, was founded in 1988. It is the main research center of UNICEF and aims to make original research in order to “monitor the changing situation of children, highlight the chronic and continuing gaps in child-related data, support and expand efforts to fill these gaps, influence policy decisions in favour of children” (UNICEF, 2006). UNICEF’s primary focus areas include: child survival and development; basic free and compulsory education and gender equality; prevention of children from HIV/AIDS, including elimination of transmission of the disease from parent to child and supporting orphans who have lost one or both parents to AIDS; protection of children from

violence, exploitation, and abuse; and policy analysis to understand the conditions in which children and women live around the world and, in turn, to develop new policy approaches and actions for children and women all over the world. UNICEF is one of the international organizations aimed at detecting and removing obstacles that threaten the physical and mental development and freedom of children as well as women as their mothers. In relation to the first focus area, UNICEF’s Medium Term Strategic Plan for 2006–2009 deals with young child survival and development as the first right of the child. UNICEF, in collaboration with governments, national and international agencies, and different organizations in civil society, works to undertake essential actions at “each phase of the life cycle of the child, including in pregnancy, early childhood, preschool and school-going years, and in adolescence” (UNICEF, 2006). Beside this, UNICEF takes action to prevent neonatal and young child death and also maternal deaths. The second focus area of the organization is related with providing basic education for all children without discrimination. Education as a basic human right should be provided to all children. UNICEF aims to take actions toward inequalities in the societies that are deep-rooted and often genderbased and excludes millions of children, particularly girls, from school. Together with the organization, target aims specified in the Millennium Development Goals and the Education for

United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF)

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From left to right: Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai, Madagascar’s President Marc Ravalomanana, Queen Rania of Jordan, Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, child activist Aminata Palmer, 11, of Sierra Leone, and UNICEF Executive Director Ann Veneman attend the Child Survival Symposium on September 18, 2006. This Child Survival Symposium brought world leaders together to focus on reducing the mortality rate for children under five. (AP/Wide World Photos)

All Declaration become guides for the work of UNICEF on this issue. In parallel to the third focus area, UNICEF undertakes action against HIV/AIDS and its impact on children. The main points in this action include: “preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV and providing pediatric treatment; preventing infection among adolescents and young people; and protecting and supporting children affected by HIV/AIDS” (UNICEF, 2006). Another focus area is on protection of children from violence, exploitation, and abuse, including “the worst forms of child labor in communities, schools

and institutions: during armed conflict: and to harmful practices such as female genital mutilation/cutting and child marriage” (UNICEF, 2006). As an action, UNICEF in collaboration with other institutions and organizations supports the creation of a “protective environment,” including national child protection systems, protective social practices, and children’s own empowerment coupled with good oversight and monitoring. As the fifth focus area, UNICEF analyses economic, social, and legal policies of different countries, especially in respect to the position of children and

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women. These analyses become the basis for determination of new policy approaches and actions directed to provide the well-being of children as well as women. (UNICEF, 2006). In general, strategic plans and numerous international human rights agreements, the Convention on the Rights of Child (1989), UN Declaration on the Rights of the Child (1959), and the Millennium Development Goals can be listed as the main instruments employed by UNICEF in its work. Tugba Asrak Hasdemir See also: Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989); Declaration on the Rights of the Child (1959).

Further Reading UNICEF. http//www.unicef.org.

United Nations Protocol (1953) The United Nations Protocol Amending the Slavery Convention (1953) was an effort to update the Slavery Convention of 1926, which was a League of Nations instrument and not one of the early instruments adopted by the United Nations. As a consequence, some procedural measures included in the earlier convention’s language were obsolete because the League of Nations and the office of its secretary general no longer existed. Thus, international parties could not accede to the convention.

The United Nations Ad Hoc Committee on Slavery, which had been appointed in December 1949, suggested that the United Nations take over that convention. This was done by a protocol executed in 1953, and all member states were invited to adhere to it. It was approved by United Nations General Assembly Resolution 794 (VIII), adopted on October 23, 1953. On the face of it, this action seems so ordinary as to require hardly any comment at all, but the significance of this is wider than one can imagine. When the United Nations was established in 1945, many thought that slavery was dying out, even though it was still legal in parts of the Arabian Peninsula, and vestiges of slavery persisted in parts of colonial Africa. The adoption of the protocol meant that the United Nations accepted that slavery was not really dying out of its own accord without the need for any action by the United Nations. Paul Bravender-Coyle See also: League of Nations; United Nations Ad Hoc Committee on Slavery (1950–1951).

Further Readings United Nations. Human Rights: A Compilation of International Instruments. New York and Geneva: United Nations, 1994. United Nations. The Suppression of Slavery: Memorandum Submitted by the Secretary-General. New York: United Nations, 1951.

United Nations Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery

United Nations Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery (1956) The United Nations Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery, drafted in 1956 and passed in 1957, was a landmark in international antislavery law. The supplementary convention complimented earlier international antislavery laws, specifically the League of Nations Slavery Convention of 1926 and the International Labour Organization Forced Labour Convention of 1930, by expanding the definition of slavery to include peonage, debt bondage, forced marriage, and exploitative adoption. Whereas earlier attempts to define and outlaw slavery had focused mainly on chattel slavery in Africa and the Middle East, the supplementary convention’s broadened definition of slavery marked a first step in the modern movement to “end slavery in all its forms.” Since its passage the supplementary convention has been ratified by nearly every country in the world. Although the supplementary convention did not provide for an enforcement mechanism, it has laid the foundation for further developments in national and international legislation against slavery. The supplementary convention was the product of both long-term and short-term developments. From one

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perspective, it can be seen as the result of decades of efforts by groups like the British Anti-Slavery Society to focus international attention on slavery and to broaden the legal definition of slavery to include a variety of forms of human bondage. From another perspective, the supplementary convention was very much a product of its time. The experience of World War II, particularly the revelations of genocide and forced labor under the Nazis, gave added impetus to the need for the international protection of human rights. The promise of the United Nations and its early efforts to create international human rights standards, such as the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), were quickly implicated in two other developments in the post– World War II period: the beginning of the Cold War and decolonization of African and Asian nations. Although Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights specified that “no one shall be held in slavery or servitude,” a variety of reformers led by Charles Greenidge, the new president of the Anti-Slavery Society, continued to press for international antislavery machinery. The United Nations had not taken over the League of Nations Slavery Convention, partly out of a conviction that chattel slavery was dead. Greenidge, noting that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was not a binding international treaty, argued that slavery “in all its forms” was still alive and that a permanent advisory committee on slavery should be organized.

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Greenidge successfully lobbied for the creation of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) committee on slavery. Aided by an ad hoc committee appointed by the UN secretary general as well as the offices of the ILO, the ECOSOC committee recommended that the UN take over the League of Nations Convention against slavery and that the UN should pass another convention expanding the definition of slavery. The drafting of a supplementary convention against slavery soon began in earnest. Negotiations among human rights nongovernmental organizations, national governments, and UN agencies focused on how best to deal with slavery in places still under colonial rule, and debates between such newly independent nations as India and Egypt merged with the concerns of Soviet bloc countries to nearly derail the process. Nevertheless, the British government made important concessions, such as limiting enforcement powers, and the convention was signed by 31 countries, including the Soviet Union but not the United States, which did not pass the convention until 1967. Despite the passage of the supplementary convention, however, many observers in the West criticized the exclusion of a forced labor clause and the convention’s minimal enforcement powers, especially since the issue of forced labor in the Soviet Union had become a hot issue in the early years of the Cold War. In light of these limitations, in 1957 the ILO passed the Abolition of Forced Labour Convention, although this had

minimal effect on the Soviet Union, which was not party to the ILO. On a longer-term level, the supplementary convention gave a renewed impetus to the antislavery movement, as the broadened definition of slavery enabled various antislavery groups to merge goals and tactics with the growing number of human rights organizations, and it laid the groundwork for the establishment of permanent UN machinery for slavery in the 1970s. Patrick Sharma See also: United Nations Ad Hoc Committee on Slavery (1950–1951); United Nations and Antislavery; United Nations Protocol (1953).

Further Readings Gutteridge, Joyce A. C. “Supplementary Slavery Convention, 1956.” International and Comparative Law Quarterly 6 (1957): 449–471. Miers, Suzanne. Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 2003. United Nations. Human Rights: A Compilation of International Instruments. New York and Geneva: United Nations, 2002. Zoglin, Kathryn. “United Nations Action against Slavery: A Critical Evaluation.” Human Rights Quarterly 8 (1986): 306–339.

United Nations Trafficking Protocol The United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking


in Persons, Especially Women and Children (hereinafter, the UN Trafficking Protocol, also commonly referred to as the United Nations Optional Protocol or UNOP), is the primary international agreement addressing the issue of trafficking—the transport and trade in human beings for the purpose of exploitation. It is one of three supplementary protocols to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, along with protocols on the smuggling of migrants and the illicit manufacturing and trafficking in firearms. The UN Trafficking Protocol and the main convention were adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in November 2000 and opened for signature in Palermo, Italy, the following month (the protocol is sometimes referred to as the Palermo Protocol). The protocol entered into force in December 2003, after reaching the necessary 40 state ratifications. The convention and supplementary protocols were negotiated in response to intense international concern about the threat posed to national security by transnational organized crime, including the crime of trafficking in persons. During the 1990s, trafficking in persons—and particularly the traffic in women and children for sexual purposes—attracted growing attention from governments and civil society worldwide, resulting in numerous national, bilateral, and regional antitrafficking policies and programs. The UN Trafficking Protocol represents the first major international agreement on the actions states should take to combat this problem.

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Negotiated at the headquarters of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and the Trafficking Protocol are primarily law enforcement documents. States Parties are obligated to take a number of steps in areas such as cross-state information sharing, measures to combat money laundering and corruption, the criminalization of organized crime groups, and the confiscation of the proceeds from crime. In addition, the protocol and convention include provisions related to assisting and protecting victims and ensuring them access to justice and compensation. These provisions offer a framework for establishing an appropriate state response to the rights and needs of trafficked persons, though the language in such paragraphs is generally vague and nonbinding. Another important function of the UN Trafficking Protocol is providing an authoritative international definition of trafficking in persons. Earlier international conventions, such as the 1949 Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Women and Children and the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, condemn trafficking, but without explicitly defining the term. Renewed attention to the issue of trafficking was accompanied by significant definitional debates, and the Trafficking Protocol responds to some of these disputes. According to paragraph 3(a), “ ‘Trafficking in persons’ shall mean

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the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude, or the removal of organs” (A/RES/55/25, annex II). The protocol thus makes it clear that for an act to qualify as trafficking, persons engaged in the facilitation of migration must use some kind of coercive or deceptive tactic. (An exception is made for children, who are presumed to be trafficked if transported for the purpose of exploitation, regardless of the tactics used.) The protocol goes on to emphasize that if such a tactic is used, the initial “consent” of the victim to the act of migration is irrelevant. And the definition confirms that despite the common emphasis on “sex trafficking,” persons can be trafficked into slaverylike conditions in any labor sector. However, the protocol does not resolve the most contentious definitional issue—the question of what constitutes “the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation.” The legal status of prostitution and of other commercial sexual activities varies significantly between, and

often within, countries. Where prostitution is legal, it may be treated like other labor sectors or subject to additional regulations, such as compulsory medical checks. Where illegal, there may be penalties on all participants and all actions or only, for example, on persons who profit from another’s prostitution or from the act of soliciting clients. Similarly, women’s groups and other nongovernmental organizations hold widely divergent positions on the proper legal treatment of prostitution, and these disagreements have resulted in a sharp divide among those engaged in antitrafficking efforts. During the drafting of the UN Trafficking Protocol, state delegates on one side of the debate held that for the purpose of defining trafficking, the term “exploitation” should be reserved for situations in which coercion is used to extract a person’s labor, sexual or not. In this view, migrant women who voluntarily engage in prostitution should not be considered victims of trafficking. (Note that this argument was applied only to adults; there is wide agreement that a child cannot consent to sex work or other types of work understood to be injurious to a child’s health or development.) Other delegates held that all prostitution should qualify as exploitation because it is inherently abusive, and a woman cannot legitimately consent to engage in it. The compromise reached between these two positions is described in the protocol’s official interpretative notes (travaux préparatoires). According to the notes, “the exploitation of the prostitution of others”

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and “sexual exploitation” are not defined, and the protocol is “without prejudice to how States Parties address prostitution in their respective domestic laws” (A/55/383/Add.1, note 64). Kinsey Alden Dinan See also: Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Women and Children (1949); Trafficking.

Further Readings Ditmore, Melissa Hope. “Trafficking in Lives: How Ideology Shapes Policy.” In Trafficking and Prostitution Reconsidered, ed. Kamala Kempadoo. Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2005. Jordan, Ann D. The Annotated Guide to the Complete UN Trafficking Protocol. Washington, DC: International Human Rights Law Group, 2002. http://www.globalrights.org/site/ PageServer?pagename=wwd_index_49. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. The United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and Its Protocols. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime website http://www.unodc.org/unodc/ en/crime_cicp_convention.html.

United States The United States has made aggressive efforts to address modern slavery as an issue both within its own borders and in countries abroad since 2000. The U.S. State Department reports that there are an estimated 14,000 to 17,000 persons trafficked annually within the United States. Men, women, and children are

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working in a variety of industries as forced laborers in the agricultural, domestic services, garment, hotel, pornographic, prostitution, and restaurant industries—particularly those located in California, Florida, New York, and Texas. However, trafficked persons forced to labor in these industries have also been discovered in some Midwestern states as well as in the U.S. territories of Guam, Saipan, and American Samoa. Although the majority of these are undocumented immigrants from Asian and Latin American countries such as China and Mexico, there is evidence of a growing number of U.S. citizens who are trafficked primarily for sexual exploitation. The United Nations Global Programme against Trafficking (GPAT) in 1999 was an important catalyst for change in the United States. This international initiative encourages state, regional, and nonstate actors such as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to work together to combat trafficking in persons worldwide. The UN adopted the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, a year later at Palermo, Italy, in 2000. It not only provided a common definition of “trafficking in persons” but it also placed a heavy responsibility on countries to implement policies to end modern- day slavery. Following the UN’s lead, the United States passed the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (VTVPA) in 2000 and later the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) in 2003. The United States mirrored

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the UN’s dual approach in dealing with modern-day slavery as both an international organized crime as well as a human rights issue. Until recently, the United States focused primarily on what it considered to be the most severe form of slavery, the trafficking of women and children into the sex trade by international organized crime networks. In addition, the VTVPA uses a three-pronged attack to deal with modern slavery that focuses on protecting victims trafficked to the United States, penalizing traffickers, and preventing future trafficking within U.S. borders and abroad. The VTVPA also established an antitrafficking network in the United States that consists of several federal agencies headed by the Department of State. It includes the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Office of Homeland Security, the Office of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Department of Justice, the Department of Labor, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and several NGOs based in the United States and abroad. The cabinetlevel Interagency Task Force to Combat and Monitor Trafficking in Persons headed by the secretary of state was created in 2001. Later in the same year, the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons was established within the State Department. This office is responsible for publishing an annual Trafficking in Persons Report. The VTVPA has made some important policy changes in U.S. immigration, criminal, human rights, and foreign

policy. Previously, U.S. immigration policy treated trafficking victims as undocumented immigrants, but under the VTVPA victims are no longer criminalized and penalized; rather, it seeks to assist and protect victims. One of the most important services available is the new T visa issued by the Department of Homeland Security. This special nonimmigrant visa removes the risk of deportation so trafficking victims can remain in the country to assist federal prosecutors in their cases against traffickers. The VTVPA links sex trafficking with international criminal organizations so there are stiffer penalties for crimes such as sex trafficking, sex tourism, and child prostitution in particular. It also allows the Department of Homeland Security, other federal agencies, and regional task forces located throughout the country to initiate investigations and offer training for such law enforcement personnel as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Homeland Security, and embassy employees stationed in origin and destination countries abroad. The U.S. State Department has initiated a media campaign to help citizens and law enforcement identify victims and to provide information to victims about their legal rights and the social services available in the United States. The VTVPA has also transformed U.S. foreign policy. The act outlines how the United States will work to halt the flow of sex trafficking victims from origin and transit countries in Africa, Asia, Central Europe, and Latin America. The State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons Report includes


detailed assessments of other countries’ efforts to combat modern slavery. Countries are classified into three tiers, depending on their efforts and success in stemming the flow of trafficking victims. The Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development then in turn use this information as part of their criteria either to award foreign assistance or to impose economic sanctions against countries that have not taken sufficient action to halt trafficking within and across their borders. There have also been several recent developments since the passage of the VTVPA. The U.S. Department of Justice now publicizes information on prosecutions on its website and antitrafficking bulletin. The U.S. State Department also keeps an extensive list of international antitrafficking programs it has funded, and it established a new Human Smuggling and Trafficking Center in 2004. The fifth Trafficking in Persons Report, released in 2005, draws greater attention to the plight of forced laborers. It also highlights the best practices of federal agencies, NGOs, and other countries to halt trafficking in persons in the United States and contains an updated list of tier placements. It also discusses legislation such as the Trafficking Victim Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) and the PROTECT Act (Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to End the Exploitation of Children Today) passed in 2003. The PROTECT Act allows the State Department to combat sex

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tourism by promoting activities to halt crimes involving the commercial sexual exploitation of children, such as prosecuting U.S. citizens who travel outside the country to engage unlawfully in sexual relations with a minor. Leslie Fadiga-Stewart See also: Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation; Illegal Migration; Palermo Protocol (2003); Pornography and Children; Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000; United Nations Trafficking Protocol.

Further Readings Bales, Kevin. “Hidden Slaves: Forced Labor in the United States.” Berkeley Journal of International Law 23 (2005): 47–111. United Nations. “Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, Supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime.” UN General Assembly Resolution 55/25, annex II, U.N. GAOR, 55th sess., Supp. no. 49, at 60, UN Doc. A/45/55 (vol. 1). United States Congress, House of Representatives. Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000. HR 3244. 106thCong. (Oct 28, 2000). Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2000. United States Department of State. Trafficking in Persons Report. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2005.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) Adopted by unanimous vote of the United Nations General Assembly on

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December 10, 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) has been described as one of the monumental achievements of the 20th century. Included in the declaration is a list of entitlements that are considered to be “inherent,” “universal,” inalienable,” and “indivisible” for all peoples. As a declaration, it is not a legally binding document and contains no mechanisms for enforcement, but stands instead as a statement of accepted standards allowing human beings to live in peace, security, freedom, and respect. Its legal force is presented in two separate later treaties: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. When the United Nations was established in 1945, several nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) submitted draft proposals for an international bill of rights. One of these drafts was submitted by the American Law Institute after having been prepared at an international conference of NGOs. After being introduced by the Panamanian delegation at the first session of the UN General Assembly, this particular draft officially made the creation of an international bill of rights a priority for the UN. In June 1946, the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) created the first official Commission on Human Rights, which was chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt and featured 17 other prominent members including vice chairman P.C. Chang (China), René Cassin (France), Charles Malik (Lebanon), and

Hernán Santa Cruz (Chile). Over the following three years, the commission worked to develop the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They were assisted by John Peters Humphrey, a Canadian lawyer and professor at McGill University, who was the director of the Human Rights Division of the UN Secretariat. It was Humphrey who wrote the lengthy 408-page outline that helped to guide the commission as it went about completing its arduous task. The outline contained various proposals that had been submitted by the Chilean, Cuban, Panamanian, UK, and U.S. governments, as well as a variety of elements from the constitutions of 55 nations. Based on this outline, René Cassin was asked to prepare a working draft of the declaration. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is composed of two sections: the preamble, which explains the reasons for which the declaration was created, and a list of 30 articles enumerating the rights that have been mutually agreed upon by the member states. These rights fall into six different categories: political rights, civil rights, equality rights, economic rights, social rights, and cultural rights. Before its adoption, there was much debate over what form the document should take. Many nations suggested that it should be legally binding, while others preferred the idea of a morally persuasive declaration. On Eleanor Roosevelt’s suggestion, both drafts were prepared, but as things progressed, the debate seemed to favor the


declaration format, and it was agreed that the document would not have legal force at that time. After 81 meetings of the General Assembly’s Third Committee and after 168 formal resolutions on the issue, the declaration was sent to the full UN General Assembly, where, after a long debate, it was accepted without a single dissenting vote. Forty-eight countries voted in favor of the declaration, eight countries abstained (the Soviet bloc countries, South Africa, and Saudi Arabia), and two countries were absent. John Peters Humphrey later said, “The adoption of the Declaration without dissenting vote was therefore a great achievement—something indeed

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in the nature of a miracle. One wonders whether it could be done now.” Michael McGowan See also: International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966); International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (1966).

Further Readings Glendon, Mary Ann. A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. New York: Random House, 2001. Humphrey, John Peters. Human Rights and the United Nations: A Great Adventure. New York: Transnational Publishers, 1984.

V meet the definition of a victim of a severe form of trafficking, which is defined in two parts: “(A) sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age; or (B) the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery” (sec.103[8]). A person who is trafficked for commercial sexual activity could possibly meet either part of this definition; however, there is no clear distinction made and certified victims of trafficking are eligible for the same services regardless of which part of the severe forms of trafficking definition is met. A victim of a severe form of trafficking is defined as a person who meets the definitions under sec.103(8), and a victim of trafficking is defined as a person who meets the definitions under either sec.103(8) or (9) (sec.103[13][14]). Thus, the definition of sex trafficking is much broader and does not require the use of force, fraud, or coercion. Sex trafficking under the law only requires the movement of a person for commercial sexual activity.

Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (VTVPA) of 2000 The Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (VTVPA) of 2000 was passed by the U.S. Congress in October 2000. The purpose of the act was threefold: to prevent trafficking in persons via public awareness and economic development programs in other countries; to protect the human rights of trafficked persons in the United States; and to prosecute traffickers through new criminal laws. One of the main focuses of this law was trafficking into the international sex trade (sec.102 [b][2]). The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) was passed by the U.S. Congress in January 2004 and amended several of the original provisions. The VTVPA defines a commercial sex act as “any sex act on account of which anything of value is given to or received by any person” (sec.103[3]). Sex trafficking is considered the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act (sec.103 [9]). For a person who has been trafficked for sexual activity to be considered for immigration or other federal benefits, the person must also 569

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Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act

Under the section dealing with prevention of trafficking, the act sets out the details for annual country reports on trafficking in persons. Countries that do not meet certain standards of combating trafficking are subject to economic sanctions. Some critics describe political use of the annual reports and sanctions. The act created an interagency task force to monitor and combat trafficking in persons and also created an office to monitor and combat trafficking within the State Department. Under the TVPRA, the chair of this office is now a member of the president’s cabinet. Finally, the president is required to create initiatives in collaboration with nongovernmental organizations to increase economic opportunities for potential trafficking victims in their home countries and to increase public awareness of the problem. The victim protection section of the act looked first at protection of trafficked persons in other countries and required the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development to create programs to assist victims of trafficking in other countries. The act created an entirely new federal program for trafficked persons in the United States, focusing on immigration relief and access to federal benefits for trafficked persons who have been “certified” as such by the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). Federal assistance is offered to certified victims of a severe form of trafficking. When a person has received the status of “continued presence,” the

immigration authorities send a request to ORR for certification of that person for benefits. Another method of certification is a request made by Citizenship and Immigration Services based on a bona fide application for a T visa. The third method, added by the TVPRA, involves a local or state law enforcement agent requesting certification on behalf of a person who is cooperating in a reasonable way in the investigation or prosecution of state or local crimes relating to a situation of trafficking. The act requires that such certified victims of trafficking be given certain benefits from the federal government, including appropriate shelter and care, access to legal assistance and translation services, and all other federal benefits available to incoming refugees. Therefore, certified trafficking victims may access social services through currently established refugee-resettlement service providers. Grants were established for both local governments and nonprofit organizations to expand their services to include trafficked persons. Finally, the prosecution of traffickers was enhanced by the creation of a new federal crime of trafficking, following the definition of severe forms of trafficking. The act also enhanced penalties for existing federal crimes relating to trafficking, such as peonage and slavery. The maximum penalties for these crimes is now 20 years, with life imprisonment for violations that result in death or involve kidnapping, aggravated sexual abuse, sex trafficking involving force, fraud or coercion of children under the age of

Vidhayak Sansad

14, or attempted homicide. The act also criminalized the possession or destruction of identification or immigration documents of individuals in order to restrict their movement. The offense of trafficking was added to federal racketeering statutes, and the law allows the federal court to order full restitution for victims. Aside from the changes noted, the TVPRA also created the possibility for trafficked persons to sue their traffickers in federal court for the damage caused them by the trafficking. Thus, trafficked persons may now seek compensation for personal or monetary injuries done to them by their traffickers. Melynda Barnhart See also: Trafficking.

Further Reading Trafficked Persons Rights Project. “Introduction to the VTVPA.” http://www. tprp.org/resources/index.html.

Vidhayak Sansad Vidhayak Sansad, which translates as “the constructive parliament,” is an organization that offers educational training and rehabilitative support to former bonded laborers that was founded in Dahisar, India, in 1979. Efforts to create the organization were spearheaded by Vivek and Vidyullata Pandit, a husband-and-wife team of human rights organizers who have worked to help liberate thousands of bonded laborers in the Thane district of Maharastra, India, for nearly three decades. The Pandits

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believed that children would be less vulnerable if they knew of their rights and if they learned skills that they could use in productive lives as free laborers. Those affiliated with Vidhayak Sansad claim that none of the child laborers who have been liberated through the efforts of the Pandits have ever returned to the bonded labor system again. In 1976 the Indian Parliament enacted the Bonded Labour System Abolition Act, but this much-heralded human rights legislation generated little real change. The system of bonded labor was well established in the Indian subcontinent with cultural antecedents in history, tradition, and the sense of caste that still permeated Indian society. Public administrators at the federal and state level proved to be unwilling to enforce the new reform legislation, and without effective enforcement, the system of bonded labor persisted almost unabated. The increasing pressures of economic globalization that took shape in the 1980s placed a premium on reduced costs of production, and as a result, reliance upon bonded labor seemed to increase. Human Rights Watch (HRW) and other independent nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) estimated that India had as many as 10 million bonded laborers in the 1980s and that the system seemed to be expanding rather than contracting, in spite of the 1976 legislation. The apparent indifference of the Indian government to enforce its own legislation and the perpetuation and expansion of bonded labor prompted the creation of Vidhayak Sansad. The organization has operated on the twin principles of

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providing education and emotional support, believing that this strategy would be the most effective means of changing the culture that sustained bonded labor in India. Educational outreach campaigns were launched to make tribal groups and marginalized castes aware of their basic human rights. In addition, Vidhayak Sansad has helped facilitate the social reintegration of former bonded laborers who were liberated through the Pandits’ efforts. The important work of Vidhayak Sansad was recognized and honored in 1999 when the London-based human rights organization Anti-Slavery International awarded its prestigious AntiSlavery Award to Vivek and Vidyullata Pandit for their efforts on behalf of India’s bonded laborers. According to Vidyullata Pandit, “the three most important things people need to fight bonded labor are knowledge of the law, self-confidence to bring about change, and … conviction to ensure they don’t go back to bonded labor once they are released” (Bales, 2000). In recent years, Vidhayak Sansad has begun programs that create schools to educate the children of migrant laborers who work within the brick kiln sector. The program to create mukta shalas (free schools) has been immensely successful, and the group has also founded bhonga shalas (migrating schools) that educate children where they are as their parents move across the countryside in search of work. Junius P. Rodriguez See also: Bonded Labor; Caste; India; Pandit, Vidyullata; Pandit, Vivek.

Further Readings Anti-Slavery International. Contemporary Forms of Slavery Related to and Generated by Discrimination: Forced and Bonded Labor in India, Nepal, and Pakistan. London: Anti-Slavery International, 2003. Bales, Kevin. New Slavery: A Reference Handbook. Santa Barbara, CA: ABCCLIO, 2000.

Violence against Sex Workers Violence against sex workers is pervasive around the world and is a common theme in academic literature and popular fiction and in political debates about prostitution, but the hidden and criminalized nature of prostitution means that reliable statistics are hard to come by. Examples are given here from many parts of the world, but local experience varies with social policy, police practice, and the structure of the sex industry. Sex workers experience violence from those they encounter while working, such as clients, robbers, and vigilantes; from those who organize or control sex work, such as brothel managers, traffickers, and police; and from other sex workers, drug dealers, acquaintances, and partners. However, sex workers’ risk of violence is variable and depends greatly on the individuals’ methods of work (whether indoors or outdoors, whether alone or with others). It also depends on the response of police and courts to these crimes, on the extent to which legislation exposes sex workers to violence, and on societal attitudes toward them.


Most research focuses on female sex workers, but violence, including serial killings, against male and transgender sex workers has also been documented.

Legal Frameworks To avoid police attention, street-based sex workers make hurried deals with clients, leaving little time to negotiate prices and services (disagreements later can lead to violence) or to assess whether the client is likely to turn violent. If they have nowhere else to take clients for sex, they are forced into dark, isolated places where they can be attacked with impunity. A recent survey of street workers in New York City found that 80 percent had experienced either violence or threats in the course of their work (Thukral and Ditmore, 2003). More than 80 percent of Ugandan sex workers said clients had used violence to force them into unsafe sex (Sentumbwe, Nakkazi, and Nantege, 2002), and similarly high rates have been found in many other places. Indoor work is usually safer, especially if there are other people close by to help if there is trouble. But antibrothel legislation criminalizes group working, and receptionists and “minders” can be prosecuted for controlling or profiting from prostitution. Consequently, many sex workers operate alone. Thus, laws aimed at eliminating or controlling prostitution promote sex workers’ vulnerability by forcing them to operate in risky ways and in dangerous places. Such laws also inhibit them from reporting violence to the police, allowing for repeat victimization and escalation of attacks.

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Laws that relate to sexual violence can also fail to offer sex workers protection or redress. Most legal codes define a sexual assault in terms of the victim’s lack of consent to a sexual act. When a sex worker alleges sexual assault against a client, the assailant will claim consent was given. Police, courts, and jurors may believe that, by offering sex for sale, the victim has forfeited the right to refuse any partner or any sexual practice. Although such beliefs are not reflected in modern legal principles, they frequently underlie acquittals or lenient sentences when the victim is a sex worker.

Law Enforcement Tactics Antiprostitution drives, even when intended to tackle abuse within the sex industry, frequently increase sex workers’ vulnerability to violence. Sex workers often change their place or style of working in response to crackdowns, so that the benefits of experience in identifying dangerous people or situations are lost. Sex workers may also be forced into environments that are intrinsically more dangerous. For example, in 2003, reports of widespread gang rapes of sex workers in Cambodia were linked to a government campaign to close brothels, forcing many more sex workers onto the streets. In some countries, police target clients instead of (or as well as) sex workers, but when client numbers are reduced, sex workers have to take more risks, working longer hours and in more dangerous places, to make up for loss of earnings; clients may commit revenge

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attacks on sex workers whom they blame because they have been arrested or because they have been robbed by sex workers made desperate by the reduction in numbers of clients.

Social Attitudes: Impact on Vulnerability Those who attack or kill sex workers often rationalize their violence with beliefs that sex workers are worthless human beings and deserving of punishment. Sometimes these beliefs are linked to religion; for example, in Iran in 2001, Saeed Hanaie, later hanged for killing 16 sex workers, said he “killed the women for the sake of God, and for the protection of my religion because they were prostitutes and were corrupting other people.” Fear of AIDS, often fueled by antivice and educational campaigns that blame sex workers for HIV transmission, can also lead to violence against sex workers. In Nepal, researchers found that fear-based messages, emphasizing links between trafficking, prostitution, and HIV, resulted in condemnation of trafficked women and girls for bringing HIV/AIDS into their communities on their return, to the extent that “94.0% of adolescent girls report that communities regard returnees with hate” (Sharma Mahendra, 2002). The common antiprostitution rhetoric of “respectable citizens” may also promote a climate of hate toward sex workers, making attacks more likely. Lowman (2000) described this “discourse of disposal,” such as the

demands to “clean up the streets” used by Canadian media and action groups opposed to street prostitution. He found associations between the intensity of such rhetoric and the incidence of sexworker murders, suggesting that the social acceptability of using language that equates sex workers with rubbish, polluting the rest of society, legitimizes the actions of those who attack and kill them. Attackers who claim to be on a mission to “cleanse society” can be highly dangerous, as can those who derive sexual satisfaction from hurting another person. However, aggression from clients during sexual encounters is more commonly related to disputes about sexual practice, money, or condom use, all of which suggest that the attacker resents the commercial nature of the transaction, refusing to accept the sex worker’s rules on what she or he will do, for how long, and for how much. Clients’ alcohol or drug use, often leading to inability get an erection or ejaculate, may also trigger attacks. Despite these rationalizations, many attacks happen for no apparent reason. The strong associations between violence and sex workers’ isolated situations when working suggests that those who attack sex workers do so because there is no one to stop them and the environment allows it; they do it because they can.

Murders of Sex Workers American research has found that sex workers are far more likely to be murdered than other people (Potterat


et al., 2003). (Potterat et al. may underestimate total numbers of sex workers, making the homicide rate seem very high. They assume that all sex workers will have been identified by police or health departments.) Not all are killed by clients: in both Canada and Britain, more than 40 percent of sexworker homicides have been attributed to acquaintances, partners, robbers, and the like. Even those classified as clients may never have paid for sex, although they may have approached their victims in this role, taking advantage of sex workers’ vulnerability and criminalized situations. Serial killings of sex workers have occurred in many countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Canada, Kazakhstan, Ghana, Iran, and South Africa. These cases grab headlines and lead to common assumptions that most sex-worker murders are committed by serial killers and that such killers do not target other people. British research (Kinnell, 2004) indicates that both these assumptions are incorrect. Of those convicted of killing sex workers, 63 percent had also attacked other people, including men and children. Only 25 percent had other convictions for homicide, and half of the other victims were not sex workers. Only one man was convicted of more than two sex-worker murders in 15 years. This may reflect relatively vigorous investigations following sexworker murders in Britain, reducing the likelihood of serial killings by interrupting offenders’ criminal careers at an early stage. However, even in Britain, more sex-worker murders remain

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unsolved than any other category of victim.

Police Abuse and Violence Sex workers in many countries report victimization by police, from demands for unpaid sexual services to sexual abuse and humiliation, rape, physical violence, and extortion. This behavior is not confined to police who abuse their power while off duty, but is reported as happening during arrests and in police custody. It is evident that, even where police abuse is rare and complaints against police are taken seriously, any such experience will deter sex workers from reporting attacks or expecting any help from police.

Responses to Violence Sex workers have many strategies for defending themselves: working collectively, watching out for each other on the street, noting car registration numbers, sharing safety tips, carrying personal alarms or whistles, taking selfdefense classes, and sharing information about attackers. Sex workers know that someone who attacks one sex worker is likely to attack another, so they have developed many verbal and other warning systems. Descriptions of attackers are distributed through “bad trick sheets” (printed flyers), newsletters, and multiple text messaging and through the Internet. However, attacks are rarely reported to police: victims may be unwilling to identify themselves or their workplace, and they may fear arrest and prosecution

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for prostitution or other offenses or deportation if they are in the country illegally. Many sex workers do not expect prosecution of violent clients, and in areas where police abuse of sex workers is common, victims may fear the police more than they fear repeat victimization by other attackers. Even when sex workers do report attacks, investigations may be halfhearted, courts may not regard sex workers as credible witnesses, and even a guilty verdict may bring a more lenient sentence than if the victim had not been a sex worker. Violence against sex workers is intimately related to hostile legislation, law enforcement, and public attitudes. Society’s abhorrence of commercial sex, even when voiced by those who regard all sex workers as victims, results in laws and law enforcement strategies that prevent neither violence nor exploitation or even public nuisance. Instead, the legal framework makes all forms of sex work more dangerous, and proposals for making sex work safer are rejected lest they encourage prostitution, indicating that many view violence against sex workers as an important deterrent to discourage the sale of sex and a punishment for those who do sell it. Hilary Kinnell See also: Prostitution; Sexual Abuse.

Further Readings BBC News. “More Iranian Prostitutes Murdered,” July 30, 2001. http://news.bbc. co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1464990. stm. Kinnell, Hilary. ‘Murder made easy: the final solution to prostitution?’ in Rosie Campbell and Maggie O’Neill (eds) Sex Work Now, Cullompton, Devon: Willan, 2006), 141–168. Lowman, John. “Violence and the Outlaw Status of (Street) Prostitution in Canada.” Violence against Women 6, no 9 (September 2000). Potterat, J. J., D. D. Brewer, et al. “Mortality in a Long-term Open Cohort of Prostitute Women.” American Journal of Epidemiology 159, no. 8 (2004). Sentumbwe, S., D. S. Nakkazi, and N. Nantege. “Legislation and Vulnerability to HIV/AIDS among Commercial Sex Workers in Kampala City.” International Conference on HIV/AIDS, 2002, abstract TuOrE1202. Sharma Mahendra, V., et al. “Over-Emphasizing HIV/AIDS Risk in AntiTrafficking Programs Can Contribute to Increasing Stigma and Discrimination— Lessons from Nepal.” International Conference on HIV/AIDS, 2002, abstract ThPeE7910. Thukral, Juhu, and Melissa Ditmore. Revolving Door: An Analysis of StreetBased Prostitution in New York City. New York: Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center, 2003. http:// www.sexworkersproject.org/reports/ RevolvingDoor.html.

W initiatives are implemented across the continent. Even though African nations have laws in place designed to protect children against those who might prey upon them, the laws are unevenly enforced and the children themselves are often powerless to prevent their own exploitation. WAO-Afrique operated on the principle that the children need advocates and allies who will protect them against the insidious forces of modern traffickers who target the weak and vulnerable. The antislavery activities of WAOAfrique are manifold and varied. The organization campaigns directly to pressure African nations to enact and enforce laws that will protect the rights of children. In addition to this type of political advocacy, the group also works with other human rights organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and local police forces to educate individuals in methods and tactics that can be instituted to reduce the prevalence of human trafficking in children. Individuals so educated can recognize the incidence of exploitation that often transpires in plain sight of those who should be protecting the rights of children. WAO-Afrique also recognizes that a transnational approach is necessary if the children of Africa are to be protected. International boundaries are

Wao-Afrique The protection of children against all forms of societal abuse and neglect is the foremost goal of the human rights organization WAO-Afrique. Formed in 1990 when it became autonomous from the World Association of Orphans (WAO), a Belgian-based nongovernmental organization, WAO-Afrique has focused its attention on the plight of Africa’s children. Operating from its headquarters in Lomé, Togo, the West African group recognizes that children represent the group that is most at risk of falling prey to modern forms of enslavement. This recognition came firsthand to Cléophas Mally, the group’s founder, who was himself a victim of child domestic servitude, and this sense of direct understanding animates the mission, goals, and ongoing efforts of the organization. WAO-Afrique recognizes that human trafficking in children is a growing concern in many regions of modern Africa. Due to the combination of changing demographics resulting from HIV/AIDS, recurring civil strife, and a burgeoning population of youth, human rights activists acknowledge that children are increasingly at risk, and it is expected that this condition will likely increase unless greater child advocacy 577

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often porous, and the labor demands of economic globalization do produce a high demand for child domestics and other child laborers in spite of national legislation designed to prohibit such practices. The group has lobbied the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in an effort to have member nations regularize and standardize legislation and enforcement efforts related to child rights. Like most other human rights organizations, WAO-Afrique employs the twin tools of advocacy and education in order to further its mission and protect Africa’s children. Educational materials are provided to schools, and outreach coordinators take the educational programs into urban neighborhoods and rural villages alike. The group has recognized that grassroots efforts in which communities are educated and empowered are often the most effective means of combating the varied means through which child exploitation occurs. One measure of its success is that children who have been liberated and protected through the efforts of WAO-Afrique have become some of the group’s most effective organizers and advocates. Junius P. Rodriguez

Further Readings Abbink, J., and Ineke van Kessel. Vanguard or Vandals: Youth, Politics, and Conflict in Africa. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005. Bales, Kevin. New Slavery: A Reference Handbook. Santa Barbara, CA: ABCCLIO, 2000.

White Slave Traffic Act (1910) The protection of women and girls from forced prostitution surfaced during the Progressive Era in the United States in conjunction with other reform movements such as temperance. The law to protect “white slaves” was spurred by Edward W. Sims, a federal prosecutor in Chicago, and public concern was motivated by journalists, who wrote about criminal gangs drugging and abducting women to serve as prostitutes. The White Slave Traffic Act, also known as the Mann Act, was introduced by Illinois Representative James R. Mann. The act followed the International Agreement for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic (1904), which the United States formally acknowledged in 1908. The thousands of prostitutes in Chicago, and in other large cities, had arrived there as a consequence of massive immigration, growing industrialization, and urbanization; how many were inducted into prostitution by violence or fraud remains a matter of conjecture. The White Slave Traffic Act, as far as it concerns white slavery, was designed to prevent the movement of prostitutes into the United States and across state lines. Its least vigorously enforced section (Section 6) focused on alien immigration. The act followed the 1904 international agreement in designating an authority (in this case the commissioner general of immigration) to obtain information concerning the international trafficking of

White Slavery

women for prostitution. Those individuals who harbored or maintained any alien women for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery were required to file detailed statements about the origin of these women. These statements could be passed on to state prosecutors for filing pandering or prostitution charges or for closing brothels. Failure to file a statement was a misdemeanor carrying a maximum fine of $2,000 or two years imprisonment, or both. Initially, the act targeted nonnationals, who were alleged to be importing immigrant women to work as prostitutes; as such, it worked in tandem with the U.S. Immigration Service. Most major cities established vice commissions to investigate local operations, but, while prostitution flourished, little evidence surfaced to indicate the existence of conspiracy or organized crime in the trafficking of women and girls. Other sections of the act established fines and imprisonment as penalties for persuading or coercing girls and women, regardless of consent, to engage in interstate prostitution or debauchery; and for persuading or coercing females under the age of 18 years to cross state lines for the purpose of prostitution. Ultimately, the court cases involving actual coercion were few: as of 1914, some 71 percent of White Slave Traffic Act convictions involved the transportation of willing prostitutes rather than the coercion of innocent women or girls. The New York Times helped lead the crusade against traffickers by printing several articles about white slavery, but probably identified only a few

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genuine cases. The first case to be prosecuted under the act in 1910 concerned two young women (suspected of being underage) who were supposedly purchased by investigators from a madam and a brothel owner. It turned out that the so-called victims were adults and willing prostitutes, who had volunteered to travel from their place of employment to a new brothel in Seattle, Washington, and their employers had simply claimed a finder’s fee. The newspaper soon declared white slavery a myth. Real cases of coercion and trafficking were frequently hard to identify and even more difficult to prosecute successfully. Susan B. Iwanisziw See also: International Agreement for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic (1904); White Slavery.

Further Readings Langum, David J. Crossing the Line: Legislating Morality and the Mann Act. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Stange, Margit. Personal Property: Wives, White Slaves, and the Market in Women. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.

White Slavery White slavery is the term used by 19thcentury feminists in their combat against the state regulation of prostitution. They considered it a form of slavery that was approved by the state. European countries, for instance, had organized prostitution to serve the needs of the military

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troops that were stationed in the colonies. The trafficking in prostitutes became an issue when white European women were exported to colonies in Africa and Asia as prostitutes. This became known as “white slave traffic.” Josephine Butler (d. 1906) was one of the main feminist leaders in this fight. She supported the abolition of prostitution and founded the International Abolitionist Federation. Butler’s work found success in 1883 when the British Contagious Diseases Act, applicable to prostitutes, was suspended. In 1886, the act was repealed. Again in Britain, in 1885, the Criminal Law Amendment Act raised the age of consent necessary to become a prostitute to 16 years old. In addition, procurers and brothel owners could be punished. In 1904, the French government led the treaty negotiations for the International Agreement for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic, which was followed by the International Convention for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic (1910). These treaties created a system for the international coordination of information related to the trafficking of women and girls. The signatory countries promised to exchange information, uncover the traffickers, and repatriate the prostitutes. The treaties distinguished between women who were deemed to have chosen to be trafficked and those who did not. Only procurers who forced women into prostitution could be charged. White slavery was considered such a public problem that it was included in the League of Nations Covenant, Article

23(c). Two women were especially important in bringing this problem to the attention of politicians, Madame Avril de Sainte Croix and Marcelle Legrand Falco. The League of Nations created several committees that worked on this problem. Conferences were organized, and the league conducted investigations into trafficking. The studies linked prostitution, trafficking, and pornography. This effort culminated in the International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children (1921). Boys were included in this treaty and the means to fight trafficking were strengthened. The League of Nations subsequently established the International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women of Full Age (1933). Now any woman of any age could be protected by the law, and states were given more power to seek out and punish traffickers. These treaties focused solely on international trafficking. They had no authority over what occurred within national boundaries. Experts appointed by the League of Nations in 1927 to study the problem determined that the trafficking of white women could not be ended unless prostitution unrelated to trafficking ended. In 1932, other experts came to the same conclusion that the existence of brothels made it impossible to end trafficking. Since these brothels were state-regulated, an international movement began to end the regulationist system of prostitution. The League of Nations started to draft a treaty, but then World War II erupted.


After the war, in 1946, the United Nations Economic and Social Council continued the work begun earlier by the League of Nations concerning the trafficking of women and children. Building on the work begun by the League of Nations to end white slavery in the late 1930s, the UN passed the Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Women and Children (1949). This treaty supports the abolitionist approach to ending prostitution, as opposed to the regulationist system that tries to control it. For the first time in an international instrument, ending prostitution was linked to establishing the dignity of all human beings. Prostitution endangers the individual, the family, and the community. The treaty condemns international prostitution and prostitution within national borders. Signatories of the treaty consider both forms of prostitution necessary to eradicate. They also agree to end all state systems of regulating prostitution. Procurers are to be punished. Prostitutes are to be considered victims, rehabilitated, and reintegrated into society. This convention also equates prostitution to slavery and slavery-like practices. Another new element in international law is that with this treaty, the prostitute no longer has the burden of proof that she has not consented to being trafficked. The procurers and traffickers are required to prove that the woman has consented to being prostituted and trafficked. The treaty also requires signatory countries to take steps to prevent trafficking and

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prostitution. Further, they are to protect migrants, especially women and children, from being prostituted. Employment agencies are specifically singled out as sometime covers for trafficking. Loni Bramson See also: Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of Women and Children (1949); Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation; International Agreement for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic (1904); International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children; White Slave Traffic Act (1910).

Further Reading Stange, Margit. Personal Property: Wives, White Slaves, and the Market in Women. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.

Wilberforce, William (1759–1833) William Wilberforce was one of the most active and influential British abolitionists in the 18th and 19th centuries. Wilberforce was born in Hull to a prosperous Yorkshire merchant/banking family on August 24, 1759. The Elizabethan house of his birth is now the Wilberforce House Museum. A serious and scholarly youth, it is said his campaign against slavery began at the age of 14 when he wrote a letter to the Yorkshire Gazette condemning the institution. At age 17, he entered Cambridge University, where he met William Pitt, the future prime minister, who would be a friend throughout his life.

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William Wilberforce, a politician and active abolitionist, used his influence to end the British slave trade. (Library of Congress)

His affluent background gave him the freedom to pursue his political ambitions. At age 21, he became a member of Parliament for Hull, advancing four years later to occupy the more important county seat of Yorkshire. His initial parliamentary career as a backbencher was not particularly distinguished, although he was noted for his spirit, charm, and impressive oratory. The turning point in his life and politics came with his acceptance of evangelical Christianity in 1785. From this time on, Wilberforce’s politics were driven by morality. He waged campaigns for criminal law reform and the suppression of vice as well as the improvement of public manners. Following the suggestion of William Pitt, he became parliamentary leader of the abolition movement, although he did not join the Abolition Society until 1794.

Working with Thomas Clarkson, Wilberforce reviewed the accumulated evidence against the slave trade. He then presented this evidence to the Privy Council in 1788 at a time when abolitionist feelings had grown. This hearing went poorly, and other political crises pushed slavery off center stage. Nevertheless, in 1789, Wilberforce presented his Abolition Bill to Parliament. His speech on this occasion was celebrated as one of the most eloquent ever delivered. The slave trade abolition bill faced many delays and was sent to a select committee for additional review. A new general election pushed the matter further from the forefront of politics. It was not until April 18, 1791, that Wilberforce again put his bill before Parliament. However, Parliament failed to endorse the measure, and the abolition bill failed. He next took the matter forward on April 2, 1792. This effort was compromised through the efforts of Henry Dundas, and immediate abolition became gradual. This compromised measure did pass, with the slave trade set to end in 1796. Delaying tactics again, led by West Indian interests along with war with France and the rise of Napoleon, pushed abolition aside. Yet Wilberforce did not surrender. The cause of trade abolition improved after 1804, and the Abolition Society was reformed, drawing new converts while maintaining the old parliamentary guard. The bill again failed in 1804 and 1805, but Wilberforce stood firm and wrote an important abolitionist tract in 1806 that stirred public sentiment. In January 1807, the


bill was introduced once more and received positive endorsements by the Whig government and by the new Irish members. On February 23, 1807, Parliament finally voted in favor of abolition. The Abolition Act received royal assent on March 25, 1807, and became law. Wilberforce’s untiring efforts for this cause reached fruition, and he was readily applauded by the House of Commons and by the nation for his achievement. The slave trade was now illegal in British ships, but the problem of slavery remained, and enforcement was difficult. Wilberforce knew that the only real solution was the end of slavery. Unfortunately, total and immediate emancipation lacked political support. During this time, Wilberforce, now in his fifties, took up such other causes as Catholic emancipation and the Corn Laws. In 1812, suffering from poor health, he gave up his demanding Yorkshire seat and took on a less stressful seat in the Bramber pocket borough. He also worked on a slave registration bill that was necessary for slave trade regulation. Wilberforce made little progress in this campaign and after 1815 gave up compromise and demanded a complete end to slavery. Unfortunately, his poor health diminished his ardor, but he still managed to attack slavery in public and in the House of Commons. In 1823, he published a pamphlet denouncing slavery and through this effort helped in the establishment of the Anti-Slavery Society. The goal was now complete emancipation in all British colonies.

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In 1825, Wilberforce resigned from Parliament and retired to his home at Mill Hill, 10 miles north of London. The parliamentary leadership in the slavery campaign now passed to Thomas Fowell Buxton. Wilberforce’s last public engagement was to chair an Anti-Slavery Society meeting in 1830. The Emancipation Bill’s final reading came on July 26, 1833. Wilberforce lived to witness the event, but three days later, on July 29, 1833, he died and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Under terms of the act, the slave masters were handsomely compensated with £20 million, whereas the slaves received only graduated freedom and a life of continued plantation labor. Yet British emancipation gave courage to U.S. abolitionists who also saw the drive to end slavery as a moral crusade. Theodore W. Eversole

Further Readings Cowie, Leonard W. William Wilberforce, 1759–1833, a Bibliography. London: Greenwood Press, 1992. Furneaux, Robin. William Wilberforce. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1974. Hochschild, Adam. Bury the Chains: The British Struggle to Abolish Slavery. London: Macmillan, 2004. Lean, Garth. God’s Politician: William Wilberforce’s Struggle. London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1980. Pollock, John. William Wilberforce. London: Constable, 1977. Warner, Oliver. William Wilberforce and His Times. London: B. T. Batsford, 1962.

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World Anti-Slavery Convention (1840) An extended meeting held June 12–24, 1840, in London, England, the World Anti-Slavery Convention aimed to coordinate the efforts of diverse abolitionist leaders and activists for the shared goal of eliminating slavery. Official attendance records at the convention included 409 persons, coming from Great Britain, the United States, France, the West Indies, and other British colonies. Among the convention’s effects, it was significant for advancing the antislavery struggles of the era, urging specific actions against slavery, and publicizing reports about the statistics and realities of slavery. Another important result of the convention was demonstrating that common causes of justice and human rights could be advanced by organizing internationally into agencies, assemblies, and conferences, bringing together global resources not restricted to one nation’s interests. The convention also influenced the development of the women’s rights movement in the United States. The primary organizer of the World Anti-Slavery Convention was Joseph Sturge, an English Quaker, author, and advocate of immediate emancipation who believed that a new, more efficient antislavery organization was needed in order to achieve the global abolition of slavery. The British and Foreign AntiSlavery Society had been established in 1839. The executive committee of the society formed the London Committee that organized the world convention to unite antislavery efforts.

Much gathering of data about slavery and the slave trade around the world was done prior to the convention so that statistics could be analyzed during the meeting and used to mobilize action against slavery, or institutionalized human unfreedom. Sessions were focused either on presenting information or on planning specific actions. Publicity plans were organized so that the antislavery causes would be constant topics in newspapers and public debate. The convention also urged specific actions by the governments and the citizens in numerous countries, but particularly in the United States. The two most discussed and controversial issues at the convention were the role of the church in the antislavery movement and the promotion of free labor in place of slave labor. When the convention adopted various resolutions or statements of principle, slavery was identified as a sin against God, and churches were urged not to condone slavery or the ownership of slaves by church members. Asking churches in the United States to disallow slaveholders from membership was a major success of the convention. The concern was repeatedly expressed that churches in the United States were accepting slavery and thus allowing it to increase. Resolutions also urged the use of free labor, which it was hoped would replace the use of slave labor in producing such crops as cotton and sugar. Plans to undermine slavery included boycotts against slave-grown products, lobbying against products used in the slave trade, and advocat-


ing for economic sanctions against the slave trade. The convention issued specific resolutions about issues in U.S. slavery. A resolution about the Amistad case to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1841 expressed sympathy for the slave rebels and criticized the legal delays. Another resolution criticized the Republic of Texas for separating from Mexico and encouraging slavery and urged that the Republic of Texas not be recognized if it allowed slavery and the slave trade. Furthermore, the convention denounced the method of colonizing former slaves, a policy associated with the American Colonization Society that urged relocating freed slaves to Africa or the West Indies. The convention condemned the idea of compensating masters for the financial value of their freed slaves and the continuation of the internal slave trade in the United States. The British government was asked not to return fugitive U.S. slaves into slavery. In addition to its influence on abolitionism, the World Anti-Slavery Convention is famous for its debate about whether women would be permitted to participate. The refusal to allow women delegates to participate and speak challenged the activist women to find common cause between their plight and that of the slaves. After the London Committee that planned the meeting issued the invitations for groups to send delegates to the convention, antislavery societies in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania selected some women delegates. But other antislavery leaders did not want

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the women’s rights issue to become associated with their cause of ending slavery, for they feared it would distract from their aims, diluting the focus on abolition. The London Committee shared the discomfort with women’s actively participating in reform movements and with associating antislavery and women’s rights issues, but attempts to stave off confrontation failed. Although distinguished women delegates such as Lucretia Mott were urged in advance “to accept exclusion from the meeting without controversy,” they would not do so. The seven women delegates had to sit in the visitors gallery, separated by a curtain from the rest of the meeting, and women could not participate in the meeting. Supporters such as abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and Charles Lenox Remond, an African American orator, sat with the women. The disagreement with this policy of exclusion contributed to the mobilization of antislavery activists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, who first met at the convention, to hold a public meeting devoted to women’s rights. In 1848, they organized the Seneca Falls Convention, famous as the first women’s rights convention in the United States. As Susan B. Anthony later said, the movement for women’s right to vote in the United States and England began at the World Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840. As successful conventions attest, the emphasis on overcoming public apathy by raising and agitating sentiment about a cause was a prominent method among advocates of both abolition and women’s rights. The

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transatlantic abolitionist movement was important for the development of feminism, because women learned from the antislavery advocates how to turn perceptions of injustice into a widespread political movement. Amy Cummins See also: Abolitionism; Antislavery and Labor Movements; Garrison, William Lloyd.

Further Readings Maynard, Douglas H. “The World’s AntiSlavery Convention of 1840.” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 47, no. 3 (1960): 452–471. Sklar, Kathryn Kish. “ ‘Women Who Speak for an Entire Nation’: American and British Women at the World Anti-Slavery Convention, London, 1840.” In The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political

Culture in Antebellum America, ed. Jean Yellin and John Van Horne. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994.

World Bank The World Bank was created along with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) at the end of World War II as part of the Bretton Woods agreements that were aimed at providing stability to the international financial order. Whereas the role of the IMF was to assist governments with short-term financial difficulties resulting from sudden exchange rate movements, the World Bank’s role was to facilitate lending at preferential rates to developing countries that wished to borrow money for various approved developmental

Delegates from 44 nations meet on July 2, 1944 to form the Bretton Woods agreements, which created the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to stabilize the financial industry internationally. (Corel)

World Bank

projects, generally related to the building of infrastructure. The World Bank is located in New York and, by convention, is headed by an American, while a European heads the IMF. In its initial years, the World Bank was hampered by the lack of interest in borrowing by its natural constituency, and it was not until the presidency of Robert McNamara, perhaps better known for his role in orchestrating the U.S. War in Vietnam, that the bank was able massively to expand the range and scope of its operations. Previous bank directors had adopted a prudent approach to lending and had restricted their funding to comparatively small-scale projects that were primarily aimed at economic infrastructure. McNamara challenged this prudence by arguing that it meant that the very poorest, those who needed lending the most, were being completely bypassed under current arrangements. His new policies not only increased lending to very poor countries but also greatly increased the size and scope of bank expertise and, hence, staff and expenses. Since the poorest countries had less technical capability to administer bank loans, to monitor their application and to enact their benefits, it was necessary to engage World Bank officials (permanently or on contract) to help in training and upgrading technical capacity. Recipient officials became insiders, therefore, and benefited directly from bank projects, through employment or opportunities for overseas travel. This has often acted as an incentive for recipient officials to fail to be entirely objective about the values and success of bank lending projects.

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The World Bank has been criticized, often trenchantly, on many different grounds. At the heart of most criticism is the charge that the bank imposes loan projects on developing countries that are not only insensitive to local needs but that may in fact be counterproductive to local people. This accusation is often accompanied by the charge that projects surreptitiously open the way for the furtherance of Western, specifically U.S., goals of market opening, deregulation, and the destruction of institutions aimed at protecting local cultures. It is certainly true that a number of bank projects that have had substantial environmental impact remain bitterly contested and many international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have published research detailing negative impacts of such projects. Notable examples of this include large dams, many of which were funded on the basis of economic and social analysis that may be flawed. To deal with complaints that environmental concerns were insufficiently regarded, World Bank officials have massively increased technical capacity in this regard and have created a comprehensive series of technical assistance and training programs that act to integrate recipient officials and civilians into the methods and discourse created by the bank. By controlling the language used to describe the environment and the concepts used to measure and evaluate it, bank officials make it impossible for recipients to think in any other terms. Consequently, when often glaring examples of projects failing to meet their stated objectives come under scrutiny, they must nevertheless be accounted successful, because they

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have met the targets that bank officials have approved. The World Bank has been incredibly successful in positioning itself as the central repository of wisdom about development knowledge. It is almost impossible to enter into intellectual debate about development without being aware of or using World Bank created knowledge and vocabulary. However, it is less clear whether value for money is received from all the many projects the bank has undertaken. John Walsh See also: Nongovernmental Organizations.

Further Readings Goldman, Michael. Imperial Nature: The World Bank and Struggles for Social Justice in the Age of Globalization. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005. McClure, Paul, ed. A Guide to the World Bank. New York: World Bank Publications, 2003. McNamara, Robert. One Hundred Countries, Two Billion People: The Dimensions of Development. New York: Praeger Publications, 1973. Wade, Robert. “Showdown at the World Bank.” New Left Review 7 (January– February 2001): 124–137. World Bank website: http://www.worldbank.org.

World Congress against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (1996) The World Congress against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children convened in Stockholm, Sweden,

on August 28, 1996. The international human rights event was sponsored by the Government of Sweden, the United Nation’s International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), and the human rights campaign End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography, and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (today known as ECPAT International, a nongovernmental organization based in New York). More than 1,000 delegates from 124 nations attended the World Congress. Key action taken by the delegates included adoption of the Declaration of Stockholm, whereby signatories pledged themselves to working toward adoption of national plans of action within the next five years to combat the growing crisis of commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC). Although delegates acknowledged that CSEC was a problem that had been ignored for far too long, they also recognized that the unholy alliance between economic globalization and the proliferation of the Internet had fashioned a perfect storm that increasingly placed the world’s children at risk of sexual exploitation in a manner that dwarfed previous decades of concern. Delegates agreed that concerted efforts by the nations represented at the World Congress were necessary to stem this growing crisis. Effective measures would involve legislative efforts within nations and the formulation of transnational cooperation to fashion a true global network to combat CSEC. When the 2001 deadline for national plans of action had passed, only 30


nations had complied with the pledge and about 20 others were studying the issue and planning to take legislative action. The slow pace of response was caused by many factors. Religious, ethnic, and cultural differences within and among nations made it difficult to find common language to describe the nature of the problem and prescribe universal remedies that would meet with local approval. For example, several of the nations of Southeast Asia that were considered central to the burgeoning economic activity of sexual tourism denied the epidemic nature of CSEC and were reluctant to seek legislative remedies. Sadly, CSEC constitutes a multimillion dollar sector in the modern global economy that, while often despised, is nonetheless lucrative and tremendously profitable. In many parts of the world, police and public authorities are hesitant to challenge the entrenched power of the purveyors of CSEC, because these individuals often operate with the backing of leaders within the political, military, and business establishment of many nations who are on the take and profit from these illicit activities. Delegates to the World Congress recognized that children themselves must be empowered to defend their own interests, and much emphasis was placed on the value of inculcating rights-based education programs into curricula. Although this idea has merit, the dearth of educational opportunity in some parts of the world and the autonomous nature of curriculum development makes such a strategy unworkable. In addition, any type of rights-based educational

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program would be considered contrary to the interest of more authoritarian regimes. Some critics of the proposal charged that the emphasis on empowering children was a shallow one, since children constituted only 17 delegates out of the more than 1,000 who attended the meeting. Despite its shortcomings and the modest successes of its reform agenda, the World Congress against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children did draw international attention to a burgeoning human rights crisis and move some nations to take positive action to stem the problem. Perhaps most importantly, the World Congress made the world community acknowledge that the commodification of children persists in the modern era in spite of such international child rights pronouncements as the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of a Child (1959) and Convention on the Rights of Child (1989). Junius P. Rodriguez See also: Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation; Pornography; Prostitution.

Further Readings Barnitz, Laura. “Effectively Responding to the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children: A Comprehensive Approach to Prevention, Protection, and Reintegration Services.” Child Welfare 80, no. 5 (2001): 597–610. ECPAT International. 1996–1997 Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children: A Report on the Implementation of the Agenda for Action Adopted at the First World Congress against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children,

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Stockholm, Sweden, 28 August 1996. New York: ECPAT International, 1997. ECPAT International. 1997–1998. Moving to Action: A Second Report on the Implementation of the Agenda for Action Adopted at the First World Congress against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children, Stockholm, Sweden, 28 August 1996. New York: ECPAT International, 1998.

World Muslim Congress, Sixth (1964) The organization known as Motamar alAlam al-Islami, or the World Muslim Congress, was first established in 1926. when leading Muslim clerics gathered in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the holiest city in the Islamic world. Over the years, the World Muslim Congress has become affiliated with consultative status to the United Nations through the branch agencies of the United Nations Economic, Social, and Cultural Organization (ECOSOC) and the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF). The group also maintains observer status with the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC), which is based today in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The World Muslim Congress was established by leaders who hoped that the organization would actively shape the social agenda of the Muslim world in a time of great transformation and tremendous stress. Amin Al Husseini, the exiled leader of Palestine, served as a founder and president of the organization for several decades. Religious leaders hoped that the congress could provide stability to the Muslim ummah

(community) at a time when the Western-imposed mandate system and the origins of nation-states were starting to threaten whatever unity had preexisted in much of the Muslim world. Periodic meetings were held by the World Muslim Congress to discuss what were considered matters of importance of the day. The Sixth World Muslim Congress was held in Mecca in 1964. During its deliberations, the body pledged its support to the growing call for ending slavery in those places where the practice persisted. The Muslim leaders vowed to support antislavery efforts worldwide since slavery was perceived as a vestige of imperialism. In an era during which decolonization was sweeping much of the world, it seemed inconsistent to maintain support for slavery. This decision was a controversial one, as many within the Muslim world maintained that aspects of slavery were recognized by the Koran as a legitimate social practice and popular consensus recognized the validity of the masterslave relationship. Notwithstanding these concerns, several nations of the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Mauritania, either adopted antislavery statutes or proclamations or reaffirmed earlier statements against slavery in the wake of the World Muslim Congress’s recommendation. The Sixth World Muslim Congress was one of the last to be held where a degree of unity remained apparent within the community of participants. In the years following the 1964 meeting, rival gatherings often took place


between factions in Cairo and Mecca, in which Arab interests were pitted against Islamic interests. In addition to this increasing political polarization, sectarian differences within the Muslim community made it increasingly difficult for the World Muslim Congress to speak with one voice on behalf of Muslim interests worldwide. Despite efforts by the World Muslim Congress to lend its support to antislavery efforts in 1964, the practice persisted in many parts of the Muslim community into the 21st century. All nations of the world today have antislavery laws in place, but centuries of custom, practice, and tradition, along with a lax system of enforcement make it possible for slavery to persist in the modern era. Junius P. Rodriguez Further Readings Clarence-Smith, William G. Islam and the Abolition of Slavery. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Kramer, Martin. Islam Assembled: The Advent of the Muslim Congresses. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. Landau, Jacob. The Politics of Pan-Islam: Ideology and Organization. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. Piscatori, James P. Islam in a World of Nation-States. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

World Trade Organization The World Trade Organization (WTO) is the body entrusted with regulating

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international trade and resolving any differences between international trading partners. The WTO was founded in 1995 as the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which had been created in the post–World War II years to lead the process of tariff reduction, which, it was believed, would help reduce the likelihood of another economic depression like that of the 1930s. The WTO has attracted nearly 150 members, which include the great majority of the significant exporters of the world. The members abide by the WTO’s rules of trade, which are based on the most-favored-nation (MFN) principle, which means that any trade privilege extended to one partner must automatically be extended to every other member of the organization. The WTO must be accounted a success, insofar as its period of authority has coincided with the rapid multiplication of the amount and nature of goods traded around the world. Trade in merchandise is now exceeded by trade in financial goods, while the rise in trade in services has become a notable feature. However, in recent years, the one nation, one vote principle, together with increasing and intense scrutiny of trade deals by people critical of the terms of international trade agreements, have made it increasingly difficult for complex deals to be completed. The degree of complexity and the urgency of lobbying in terms of sensitive items, particularly in the case of agricultural goods, make negotiations lengthy and often fraught.

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The WTO is based in Geneva and has a full time secretariat of more than 600 people, who report to Director General Pascal Lamy. Its functions include administering WTO trade agreements, being a forum for trade negotiations, handling trade disputes, monitoring national trade policies, providing technical assistance and training for developing countries and facilitating cooperation with other international organizations. The introduction of the TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property) agreements into WTO negotiations has added an additional layer of complexity to trade negotiations. This is because the issue of the protection of intellectual property has become integrated with the desire to produce cheap, generic pharmaceuticals to deal with the HIV/AIDS crisis from which most countries suffer, as well as other health issues. Developed countries wish generally to extend intellectual property protection, since an increasing proportion of their exports derive from this type of product. Those same developed countries continue to resist opening of the markets of the types of more basic commodities on which less developed countries rely and, in many cases, provide substantial subsidies to their own industries, contrary to international trade rules. These issues have provoked popular protests at all recent large-scale WTO meetings, which have further placed strain on the ability of delegates to reach agreements. Nevertheless, the Doha and Hong Kong

Ministerial Meetings of the WTO have, inspired by popular action and the leadership of British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, with celebrity support, accepted a “development” agenda that promotes the interests of its poorer members. The Group of 77, which is a semiformal organization of those countries that act together in international forums, has been receiving the support of China and has become an influential voice in shaping WTO debate. The tendency for a number of countries to begin to enter into bilateral and regional free trade agreements indicates the desirable nature of arrangements and also the increasing difficulty of organizing them through the offices of the WTO. Labor standards are not currently enforced under WTO rules. Consequently, no investigation into the rights of workers or abuses against them is accounted for by international trade negotiations. It is often argued that causing countries to liberalize their trade regimes without making provision for labor standards will inevitably lead to a drive to the bottom in terms of low cost production that will endanger (or at the very least not improve) health and safety conditions and democratization of the workplace. It is already clear that several countries permit low levels of regulation of labor forces and, in extreme cases, even predate on their people. Joining the WTO and abiding by its rules might provide an incentive to such states to lower labor force protection. The WTO has held consultations with the International La-


bour Organization (ILO) with a view to tackling this problem. John Walsh See also: Economic Globalization.

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Further Readings Group of 77 official website: http://www. g77.org/. World Trade Organization official website: http://www.wto.org/.

Documents

Alien Tort Claims Act (1789)

Found within the Judiciary Act (1789) Section 9: And be it further enacted, that the district court shall have, exclusively of the courts of the several States, cognizance of all crimes and offences that shall be cognizable under the authority of the United States, committed within their respective districts, or upon the high seas; where no other punishment than whipping, not exceeding thirty stripes, a fine not exceeding one hundred dollars, or a term of imprisonment not exceeding six months, is to be inflicted; and shall also have exclusive original cognizance of all civil causes of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction, including all seizures under laws of impost, navigation or trade of the United States, where the seizures are made on waters which are navigable from the sea by vessels of ten or more tons burthen, within their respective districts as well as upon the high seas; saving to suitors, in all cases, the right of a common law remedy, where the common law is competent to give it; and shall also have exclusive original cognizance of all seizures on land, or other waters than as aforesaid, made, and of all suits for penalties and forfeitures incurred, under current with the courts of the several States, or the circuit courts, as the case may be, of all causes where an alien sues for a tort only in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States. And shall also have cognizance, concurrent as last mentioned, of all suits at common law where the United States sue, and the matter in dispute amounts, exclusive of costs, to the sum or value of one hundred dollars. And shall also have jurisdiction exclusively of the courts of the several States, of all suits against consuls or vice-consuls, except for offences above the description aforesaid. And the trail of issues in fact, in the district courts, in all causes except civil cause of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction, shall be by jury. Source: United States Statutes at Large 1 (1789): 73.

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The British Abolition Act (1833)

AN ACT FOR THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY THROUGHOUT THE BRITISH COLONIES; FOR PROMOTING THE INDUSTRY OF THE MANUMITTED SLAVES; AND FOR COMPENSATING THE PERSONS HITHERTO ENTITLED TO THE SERVICES OF SUCH SLAVES. —[28th August, 1833.] Whereas divers persons are holden in slavery within divers of His Majesty’s colonies, and it is just and expedient that all such persons should be manumitted and set free, and that a reasonable compensation should be made to the persons hitherto entitled to the services of such slaves for the loss which they will incur by being deprived of their right to such services: And whereas it is also expedient that provision should be made for promoting the industry and securing the good conduct of the persons so to be manumitted, for a limited period after such their manumission: And whereas it is necessary that the laws now in force in the said several colonies should forthwith be adapted to the new state and relations of society therein which will follow upon such general manumission as aforesaid of the said slaves; and that, in order to afford the necessary time for such adaptation of the said laws, a short interval should elapse before such manumission should take effect; Be it therefore enacted by the King’s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords spiritual and temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, That from and after the first day of August one thousand eight hundred and thirty-four all persons who in conformity with the laws now in force in the said colonies respectively shall on or before the first day of August one thousand eight hundred and thirty-four have been duly registered as slaves in any such colony, and who on the said first day of August one thousand eight hundred and thirty-four shall be actually within any such colony, and who shall by such registries appear to be on the said first day of August one thousand eight hundred and thirty-four of the full age of six years or upwards, shall by force and virtue of this act, and without the previous Execution of any Indenture of Apprenticeship, or other Deed or Instrument for that purpose, become and be apprenticed labourers; provided that, for the purposes aforesaid, every slave engaged in his ordinary occupation on the seas shall be deemed and taken to be within the colony to which such slave shall belong. 598


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II. And be it further enacted, That during the continuance of the apprenticeship of any such apprenticed labourer such person or persons shall be entitled to the services of such apprenticed labourer as would for the time being have been entitled to his or her services as a slave if this act had not been made. III. Provided also, and be it further enacted, That all slaves who may at any time previous to the passing of this act have been brought with the consent of their possessors, and all apprenticed labourers who may hereafter with the like consent be brought, into any part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, shall from and after the passing of this act be absolutely and entirely free to all intents and purposes whatsoever. IV. And whereas it is expedient that all such apprenticed labourers should, for the purposes herein-after mentioned, be divided into three distinct classes, the first of such classes consisting of praedial apprenticed labourers attached to the soil, and comprising all persons who in their state of slavery were usually employed in agriculture, or in the manufacture of colonial produce or otherwise, upon lands belonging to their owners; the second of such classes consisting of praedial apprenticed labourers not attached to the soil, and comprising all persons who in their state of slavery were usually employed in agriculture, or in the manufacture of colonial produce or otherwise, upon lands not belonging to their owners; and the third of such classes consisting of non praedial apprenticed labourers and comprising all apprenticed labourers not included within either of the two preceding classes: Be it therefore enacted, that such division as aforesaid of the said apprenticed labourers into such classes as aforesaid shall be carried into effect in such manner and form and subject to such rules and regulations as shall for that purpose be established under such authority, and in and by such acts of assembly, ordinances, or Orders in Council, as herein after mentioned: Provided always, that no person of the age of twelve years and upwards shall by or by virtue of any such act of assembly, ordinance, or Order in Council be included in either of the said two classes of praedial apprenticed labourers unless such person shall for twelve calendar months at the least next before the passing of this present act have been habitually employed in agriculture or in the manufacture of colonial produce. V. And be it further enacted, That no person who by virtue of this act, or of any such act of assembly, ordinance, or Order in Council as aforesaid, shall become a praedial apprenticed labourer, whether attached or not attached to the soil, shall continue in such apprenticeship beyond the first day of August one thousand eight hundred and forty; and that during such his or her apprenticeship no such praedial apprenticed labourer, whether attached or not attached to the soil, shall be bound or liable, by virtue of such apprenticeship, to perform any labour in the service of his or her employer or employers for more than forty-five hours in the whole in any one week.

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VI. And be it further enacted, That no person who by virtue of this act or of any such act of assembly, ordinance, or Order in Council as aforesaid, shall become a non-praedial apprenticed labourer, shall continue in such apprenticeship beyond the first day of August one thousand eight hundred and thirty-eight. VII. And be it further enacted, That if before any such apprenticeship shall have expired the person or persons entitled for and during the remainder of any such term to the services of such apprenticed labourer shall be desirous to discharge him or her from such apprenticeship, it shall be lawful for such person or persons so to do by any deed or instrument to be by him, her, or them for that purpose made and executed; which deed or instrument shall be in such form, and shall be executed and recorded in such manner and with such solemnities, as shall for that purpose be prescribed under such authority, and in and by such acts of assembly, ordinances, or Orders in Council, as herein-after mentioned: Provided nevertheless, that if any person so discharged from any such apprenticeship by any such voluntary act as aforesaid shall at that time be of the age of fifty years or upwards, or shall be then labouring under any such disease or mental or bodily infirmity as may render him or her incapable of earning his or her subsistence, then and in every such case the person or persons so discharging any such apprenticed labourer as aforesaid shall continue and be liable to provide for the support and maintenance of such apprenticed labourer during the remaining term of such original apprenticeship, as fully as is such apprenticed labourer had not been discharged therefrom. ... Source: The Anti-Slavery Reporter, 6:6 (December 26, 1833).

The Factory Act (1833)

. . . Be it enacted that no person under eighteen years of age shall be allowed to work in the night—that is to say, between the hours half-past eight o’clock in the evening and half-past five in the morning—in or about any cotton, woolen, worsted, hemp, flax, tow, linen, or silk mill or factory, wherein steam or water or any other mechanical power is or shall be used to propel or work the machinery . . . And be it further enacted that no person under the age of eighteen years shall be employed in any such mill or factory more than twelve hours in any one day, nor more than sixty-nine hours in any one week. . . . And be it further enacted that there shall be allowed in the course of every day not less than one and a half hours for meals to every such person . . . And be it enacted that it shall not be lawful for any person whatsoever to employ in any factory or mill as aforesaid, except in mills for the manufacture of silk, any child who shall not have completed his or her ninth year of age. Source: Statutes of the United Kingdom, LXXIII, 985 f.: 3–4 William IV, c. 103.

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Richard Oastler’s Testimony on “Yorkshire Slavery” (1833)

Question: Has your mind been latterly directed to the consideration of the condition of the children and young persons engaged in the mills and factories of this country, with a view to affording them permanent legislative relief? Answer: It has. . . . The immediate circumstance which led my attention to the facts, was a communication made to me by a very opulent spinner that it was the regular custom, to work children in factories 13 hours a day and only allow them half an hour for dinner; that that was the regular custom, and that in many factories they were worked considerably more. I had previously observed a difference in the working classes of the West Riding of the county of York, I mean in the clothing districts. I had observed an amazing difference from what they are now, in comparison of what they were when I was a youth; but I must say that my attention had not been particularly called to the subject of the factory system, until I had that fact communicated to me. . . . I resolved from that moment that I would dedicate every power of body and mind to this object, until these poor children were relieved from that excessive labour; and from that moment, which was the 29th of September 1830, I have never ceased to use every legal means, which I had it in my power to use, for the purpose of emancipating these innocent slaves. The very day on which the fact was communicated to me, I addressed a letter to the public in the Leeds Mercury upon the subject. I have since that had many opponents to contend against; but not one single fact which I have communicated has ever been contradicted, or ever can be. . . . I have refrained from exposing the worst parts of the system, for they are so gross that I dare not publish them. The demoralising effects of the system are as bad, I know it, as the demoralising effects of slavery in the West Indies. I know that there are instances and scenes of the grossest prostitution among the poor creatures who are the victims of the system, and in some cases are the objects of the cruelty and rapacity and sensuality of their master. These things I never dared to publish, but the cruelties which are inflicted personally upon the little children not to mention the immensely long hours which they are subject to work, are such as I am very sure would disgrace a West Indian plantation. 602


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On one occasion I was very singularly placed; I was in the company of a West India slave master and three Bradford spinners; they brought the two systems into fair comparison, and the spinners were obliged to be silent when the slave-owner said, “well, I have always thought myself disgraced by being the owner of black slaves, but we never, in the West Indies thought it was possible for any human being to be so cruel as to require a child of 9 years old to work 12½ hours a day; and that, you acknowledge, is your regular practice.” I have seen little boys and girls of 10 years old, one I have in my eye particularly now, whose forehead has been cut open by the thong; whose cheeks and lips have been laid open, and whose back has been almost covered with. black stripes; and the only crime that that little boy, who was 10 years and 3 months old, had committed, was that he retched three cardings, which are three pieces of woollen yarn, about three inches long. The same boy told me that he had been frequently knocked down with the billy-roller, and that on one occasion, he had been hung up by a rope round the body, and almost frightened to death; but I am sure it is unnecessary for me to say anything more upon the bodily sufferings that these poor creatures are subject to. I have seen their bodies almost broken down, so that they could not walk without assistance, when they have been 17 or 18 years of age. I know many cases of poor young creatures who have worked in factories, and who have been worn down by the system at the age of 16 and 17, and who, after living all their lives in this slavery, are kept in poor-houses, not by the masters for whom they have worked, as would be the case if they were negro slaves, but by other people who have reaped no advantage from their labour. These are the particular facts which I wish to state; and one which I would also call the attention of the Committee to, is the domestic system of manufacture which obtained in the West Riding of Yorkshire, when I was a boy; it was the custom for the children at that time, to mix learning their trades with other instruction and with amusement, and they learned their trades or their occupations, not by being put into places, to stop there from morning to night, but by having a little work to do, and then some time for instruction, and they were generally under the immediate care of their parents; the villages about Leeds and Huddersfield were occupied by respectable little clothiers, who could manufacture a piece of cloth or two in the week, or three or four or five pieces, and always had their family at home: and they could at that time make a good profit by what they sold; there were filial affection and parental feeling, and not over-labour; but that race of manufacturers has been almost completely destroyed; there are scarcely any of the old-fashioned domestic manufacturers left, and the villages are composed of one or two or in some cases of three or four, mill-owners, and the rest, poor creatures, who are reduced and ground down to want, and in general are compelled to live upon the labour of their little ones; it is almost the general system for the little children in these manufacturing villages to know nothing of their parents at all excepting that in a morning very

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early, at 5 o’clock, very often before 4, they are awakened by a human being that they are told is their father, and are pulled out of bed (I have heard many a score of them give an account of it) when they are almost asleep, and lesser children are absolutely carried on the backs of the older children asleep to the mill, and they see no more of their parents generally speaking, till they go home at night, and are sent to bed. Now that system must necessarily prevent the growth of filial affection. It destroys the happiness in the cottage family, and leads both parents and children not to regard each other in the way that Providence designed they should. . . . With regard to the fathers, I have heard many of them declare that it is such a pain to them to think that they are kept by their little children, and that their little children are subjected to so many inconveniences that they scarcely know how to bear their lives; and I have heard many of them declare that they would much rather be transported than be compelled to submit to it. I have heard mothers, more than on 10 or 11 occasions, absolutely say that they would rather that their lives were ended than that they should live to be subjected to such misery. The general effect of the system is this, and they know it, to place a bonus upon crimes; because their little children, and their parents too, know that if they only commit theft and break the laws, they will be taken up and put into the House of Correction, and there they will not have to work more than 6 or 7 hours a day. Such being the general state of things in the manufacturer’s cottage, I think we need not be surprised at the present discontented, nay, one might almost say the disaffected state of’ the working classes. I think that arises from no other circumstance but that complete inversion of the law of nature making the little children into slaves to work for their fathers and mothers, and leaving their fathers destitute in the streets to mourn over their sorrows; I believe that is the foundation of the disaffection and unpleasantness of the present age . . . Report from the Committee on the Bill to regulate the labour of children in the mills and factories . . . Source: Parliamentary Papers, 1831–1832, xv, pp. 454–5.

Emancipation of the Serfs (1861) Manifesto of His Majesty the Emperor

By the grace of God, we, Alexander II, Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias, King of Poland, Grand Duke of Finland, &c., to all our faithful subjects make known: Called by Divine Providence and by the sacred right of inheritance to the throne of our ancestors, we took a vow in our innermost heart so to respond to the mission which is entrusted to us as to surround with our affection and our imperial solicitude all our faithful subjects of every rank and of every condition, from the warrior who nobly bears arms for the defence of the country, to the humble artisan devoted to the works of industry; from the official in the career of the high offices of the State to the labourer whose plough furrows the soil. In considering the various classes and conditions of which the State is composed, we come to the conviction that the legislation of the empire having wisely provided for the organization of the upper and middle classes, and having defined with precision their obligations, their rights, and their privileges, has not attained the same degree of efficiency as regards the peasants attached to the soil (krépostnyé), thus designated because either from ancient laws or from custom, they have been hereditarily subjected to the authority of the proprietors, on whom it was incumbent at the same time to provide for their welfare. The rights of the proprietors have been hitherto very extended, and very imperfectly defined by the law, which has been supplied by tradition, custom, and the good pleasure of the proprietors. In the most favourable cases this state of things has established patriarchal relations founded upon a solicitude sincerely equitable and benevolent on the part of the proprietors, and on an affectionate submission on the part of the peasants; but in proportion as the simplicity of morals diminished, as the diversity of the mutual relations became complicated, as the paternal character of the relations between the proprietors and the peasants became weakened, and moreover, as the seigneurial authority fell sometimes into hands exclusively occupied with their personal interests, those bonds of mutual goodwill slackened, and a wide opening was made for an arbitrary sway, which weighed upon the peasants, was unfavourable to their welfare, and made them indifferent to all progress under the conditions of their existence. These facts had already attracted the notice of our predecessors of glorious memory, and they had taken measures for improving the condition of the peasants; 605

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Emancipation of the Serfs (1861) Manifesto

but among those measures some were not stringent enough, insomuch as they remained subordinate to the spontaneous initiative of such proprietors who shewed themselves animated with liberal intentions; and others, called forth by peculiar circumstances, have been restricted to certain localities, or simply adopted as an experiment. It was thus that Alexander I published the regulations for the free cultivators, and that the late Emperor Nicholas, our beloved father, promulgated that one which concerns the peasants bound by contract. In the Western Governments regulations called “inventaires” had fixed the territorial allotments due to the peasants, as well as the amount of their rent dues; but all these reforms have only been applied in a very restricted manner. We thus came to the conviction that the work of a serious improvement of the condition of the peasants was a sacred inheritance bequeathed to us by our ancestors; a mission which, in the course of events, Divine Providence called upon us to fulfil. We have commenced this work by an expression of our imperial confidence towards the nobility of Russia, which has given us so many proofs of its devotion to the throne, and of its constant readiness to make sacrifices for the welfare of the country. It is to the nobles themselves, conformable to their own wishes, that we have reserved the task of drawing up the propositions for the new organization of the peasants; propositions which make it incumbent upon them to limit their rights over the peasants, and to accept the onus of a reform which could not be accomplished without some material losses. Our confidence has not been deceived. We have seen the nobles assembled in committees in the districts, through the medium of their confidential agents, making the voluntary sacrifice of their rights as regards the personal servitude of the peasants. These committees, after having collected the necessary data, have formulated their propositions concerning the new organization of the peasants attached to the soil (krépostnyé) in their relations with the proprietors. These propositions having been found very diverse, as was to be expected from the nature of the question, they have been compared, collated, and reduced to a regular system, then rectified and completed in the superior committee instituted for that purpose; and these new dispositions, thus formulated relative to the peasants and domestics (dvorovyé) of the proprietors, have been examined in the Council of the Empire. Having invoked the Divine assistance, we have resolved to carry this work into execution. In virtue of the new dispositions above mentioned, the peasants attached to the soil (attachés à la glèbe) will be invested within a term fixed by the law, with all the rights of free cultivators. The proprietors retaining their rights of property on all land belonging to them, grant to the peasants, for a fixed regulated rental, the full enjoyment of their close


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(enclos); and, moreover, to ensure their livelihood, and to guarantee the fulfillment of their obligations towards the Government, the quantity of arable land is fixed by the said dispositions, as well as other rural appurtenances (ougodié). But, in the enjoyment of these territorial allotments, the peasants are obliged, in return, to acquit the rentals fixed by the same dispositions to the profit of the proprietors. In this state, which must be a transitory one, the peasants shall be designated as “temporarily bound” (temporairement obligés). At the same time they are granted the right of purchasing their close (enclos), and, with the consent of the proprietors, they may acquire in full property the arable lands and other appurtenances which are allotted to them as a permanent holding (jouissance). By the acquisition in full property of the quantity of land fixed, the peasants are free from their obligations towards the proprietors for land thus purchased, and they enter definitively into the condition of free peasants—landholders (paysans libres—propriétaires). By a special disposition concerning the domestics (gens de la domesticité— dvorovyé) a transitory state is fixed for them adapted to their occupations and the exigencies of their position. On the expiration of a term of two years, dating from the day of the promulgation of these dispositions, they shall receive their full enfranchisement and some temporary immunities. It is according to these fundamental principles that the dispositions have been formulated which define the future organization of the peasants and of the domestics (dvorovyé), which establish the order of the general administration of this class, and specify in all their details the rights given to the peasants and to the domestics, as well as the obligations imposed upon them towards the Government and towards the proprietors. Although these dispositions, general as well as local, and the special supplementary rules for some particular localities, for the lands of small proprietors, and for the peasants who work in the manufactories and establishments (usines) of the proprietors, have been, as far as was possible, adapted to economical necessities and local customs, nevertheless, to preserve the existing state where it presents reciprocal advantages, we leave it to the proprietors to come to amicable terms with the peasants, and to conclude transactions relative to the extent of the territorial allotment, and to the amount of rental to be fixed in consequence, observing at the same time the established rules to guarantee the inviolability of such agreements. As the new organization, in consequence of the inevitable complexity of the changes which it necessitates, cannot be immediately put into execution; as a lapse of time is necessary, which cannot be less than two years or thereabouts, to avoid all misunderstanding, and to protect public and private interests during this interval, the system (régime) actually existing on the properties of landowners (seigneurs) will be maintained up to the moment when a new system shall have been instituted by the completion of the required preparatory measures.

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For which end we have deemed it advisable to ordain: 1.

To establish in each district (gouvernement) a special Court for the question of the peasants; it will have to investigate the affairs of the rural communes established on the land of the lords of the soil (seigneurs).

2.

To appoint in each district justices of the peace to investigate on the spot all misunderstandings and disputes which may arise on the occasion of the introduction of the new regulation, and to form district assemblies with these justices of the peace.

3.

To organize in the seigneurial properties communal administrations, and to this end to leave the rural communes in their actual composition, and to open in their large villages district administrations (provincial boards) by uniting the small communes under one of these district administrations.

4.

To formulate, verify, and confirm, in each rural district or estate, a charter of rules (une charte réglementaire—oustavnaía gramota), in which shall be enumerated on the basis of the Local Statute, the amount of land reserved to the peasants in permanent enjoyment, and the extent of the charges which may be exacted from them for the benefit of the proprietor, as well for the land as for other advantages granted by him.

5.

To put these charters of rules into execution as they are gradually confirmed in each estate, and to introduce their definitive execution within the term of two years, dating from the day of publication of the present manifesto.

6.

Up to the expiration of this term the peasants and domestics (gens de la domesticité) are to remain in the same obedience towards their proprietors, and to fulfil their obligations without scruple.

7.

The proprietors will continue to watch over the maintenance of order on their estates, with the right of jurisdiction and of police, until the organization of the districts (volosti) and of the district tribunals has been effected.

Aware of all the difficulties of the reform we have undertaken, we place, above all things, our confidence in the goodness of Divine Providence, who watches over the destinies of Russia. We also count upon the generous devotion of our faithful nobility, and we are happy to testify to that body the gratitude it has deserved from us, as well as from the country, for the disinterested support it has given to the accomplishment of our designs. Russia will not forget that the nobility, acting solely upon its respect for the dignity of man, and its love for its neighbour, has spontaneously renounced rights given to it by serfdom actually abolished, and laid the foundation of a new future, which is thrown open to the peasants. We also entertain the firm hope that it will also nobly exert its ulterior efforts to carry out the new regulation by maintaining


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good order, in a spirit of peace and benevolence, and that each proprietor will complete within the limits of his property the great civic act accomplished by the whole body, by organizing the existence of the peasants domiciliated on his estates, and of his domestics, under mutual advantageous conditions, thereby giving to the country population the example of a faithful and conscientious execution of the regulations of the State. The numerous examples of the generous solicitude of the proprietors for the welfare of their peasants, and of the gratitude of the latter for the benevolent solicitude of their lords, give us the hope that a mutual understanding will settle the majority of complications, in some cases inevitable, in the partial application of general rules to the different conditions under which isolated estates are placed; that in this manner the transition from the ancient order of things to the new will be facilitated; and that the future will strengthen definitively mutual confidence, a good understanding, and the unanimous impulsion towards public utility. To render the transactions between the proprietors and the peasants more easy, in virtue of which the latter may acquire in full property their close (enclos— homestead) and the land they occupy, the Government will advance assistance according to a special regulation, by means of loans or a transfer of debts encumbering an estate. We thus confidently rely upon the upright feeling of the nation. When the first news of this great reform, meditated by the Government, became diffused among the rural populations, who were scarcely prepared for it, it gave rise in some instances to misunderstandings among individuals more intent upon liberty than mindful of the duties which it imposes. But generally the good sense of the country has not been wanting. It has not misunderstood either the inspirations of natural reason, which says that every man who accepts freely the benefits of society owes it in return the fulfillment of certain positive obligations; nor the teachings of the Christian law, which enjoins that “every one be subject unto the higher powers” (St. Paul to the Romans, xiii. 1); and to “render to all their dues,” and, above all to whomsoever it belongs, tribute, custom, respect, and honour (Ibid., 7 v.). It has understood that the proprietors would not be deprived of rights legally acquired, except for a fit and sufficient indemnity, or by a voluntary concession on their part; that it would be contrary to all equity to accept this enjoyment of the lands conceded by the proprietors without accepting also towards them equivalent charges. And now we hope with confidence that the freed serfs, in the presence of the new future which is opened before them, will appreciate and recognize the considerable sacrifices which the nobility have made on their behalf. They will understand that the blessing of an existence supported upon the base of guaranteed property, as well as a greater liberty in the administration of their goods, entails upon them, with new duties towards society and themselves, the obligation of justifying the protecting designs of the law by a loyal and judicious use of the rights which are now accorded

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to them. For if men do not labour themselves to insure their own well-being under the shield of the laws, the best of those laws cannot guarantee it to them. It is only by assiduous labour, a rational employment of their strength and their resources, a strict economy, and, above all, by an honest life, a life constantly inspired by the fear of the Lord, that they can arrive at prosperity, and insure its development. The authorities intrusted with the duty of preparing by preliminary measures the execution of the new organization, and of presiding at its inauguration, will have to see that this work is accomplished with calmness and regularity, taking into account the requirements of the seasons, in order that the cultivator may not be drawn away from his agricultural labours. Let him apply himself with zeal to those labours, that he may be able to draw from an abundant granary the seed which he has to confide to that land which will be given him for permanent enjoyment, or which he has acquired for himself as his own property. And now, pious and faithful people, make upon thy forehead the sacred sign of the cross, and join thy prayers to ours to call down the blessing of the Most high upon thy first free labourers, the sure pledge of thy personal wellbeing and of the public prosperity. Given at St. Petersburgh the 19th day of February (March 3), of the Year of Grace 1861, and the seventh of our reign. Alexander Source: The Anti-Slavery Reporter (New Series), 9:7 (July 1, 1861).

Abraham Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address (1861)

Fellow-Citizens of the United States: In compliance with a custom as old as the Government itself, I appear before you to address you briefly and to take in your presence the oath prescribed by the Constitution of the United States to be taken by the President “before he enters on the execution of this office.” I do not consider it necessary at present for me to discuss those matters of administration about which there is no special anxiety or excitement. Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that by the accession of a Republican Administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that— I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this and many similar declarations and had never recanted them; and more than this, they placed in the platform for my acceptance, and as a law to themselves and to me, the clear and emphatic resolution which I now read: Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes. I now reiterate these sentiments, and in doing so I only press upon the public attention the most conclusive evidence of which the case is susceptible that the property, peace, and security of no section are to be in any wise endangered by the now incoming Administration. I add, too, that all the protection which, consistently with the Constitution and the laws, can be given will be cheerfully given to all the 611

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States when lawfully demanded, for whatever cause—as cheerfully to one section as to another. There is much controversy about the delivering up of fugitives from service or labor. The clause I now read is as plainly written in the Constitution as any other of its provisions: No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due. It is scarcely questioned that this provision was intended by those who made it for the reclaiming of what we call fugitive slaves; and the intention of the lawgiver is the law. All members of Congress swear their support to the whole Constitution— to this provision as much as to any other. To the proposition, then, that slaves whose cases come within the terms of this clause “shall be delivered up” their oaths are unanimous. Now, if they would make the effort in good temper, could they not with nearly equal unanimity frame and pass a law by means of which to keep good that unanimous oath? There is some difference of opinion whether this clause should be enforced by national or by State authority, but surely that difference is not a very material one. If the slave is to be surrendered, it can be of but little consequence to him or to others by which authority it is done. And should anyone in any case be content that his oath shall go unkept on a merely unsubstantial controversy as to how it shall be kept? Again: In any law upon this subject ought not all the safeguards of liberty known in civilized and humane jurisprudence to be introduced, so that a free man be not in any case surrendered as a slave? And might it not be well at the same time to provide by law for the enforcement of that clause in the Constitution which guarantees that “the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States”? I take the official oath to-day with no mental reservations and with no purpose to construe the Constitution or laws by any hypercritical rules; and while I do not choose now to specify particular acts of Congress as proper to be enforced, I do suggest that it will be much safer for all, both in official and private stations, to conform to and abide by all those acts which stand unrepealed than to violate any of them trusting to find impunity in having them held to be unconstitutional. It is seventy-two years since the first inauguration of a President under our National Constitution. During that period fifteen different and greatly distinguished citizens have in succession administered the executive branch of the Government. They have conducted it through many perils, and generally with great success. Yet, with all this scope of precedent, I now enter upon the same task for the brief constitutional term of four years under great and peculiar difficulty. A disruption of the Federal Union, heretofore only menaced, is now formidably attempted.


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I hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination. Continue to execute all the express provisions of our National Constitution, and the Union will endure forever, it being impossible to destroy it except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself. Again: If the United States be not a government proper, but an association of States in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a contract, be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made it? One party to a contract may violate it—break it, so to speak—but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it? Descending from these general principles, we find the proposition that in legal contemplation the Union is perpetual confirmed by the history of the Union itself. The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was further matured, and the faith of all the then thirteen States expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in 1778. And finally, in 1787, one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution was “to form a more perfect Union.” But if destruction of the Union by one or by a part only of the States be lawfully possible, the Union is less perfect than before the Constitution, having lost the vital element of perpetuity. It follows from these views that no State upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union; that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void, and that acts of violence within any State or States against the authority of the United States are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances. I therefore consider that in view of the Constitution and the laws the Union is unbroken, and to the extent of my ability, I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States. Doing this I deem to be only a simple duty on my part, and I shall perform it so far as practicable unless my rightful masters, the American people, shall withhold the requisite means or in some authoritative manner direct the contrary. I trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as the declared purpose of the Union that it will constitutionally defend and maintain itself. In doing this there needs to be no bloodshed or violence, and there shall be none unless it be forced upon the national authority. The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere. Where hostility to the United States in any interior locality shall be so great and universal as to prevent competent resident citizens from holding

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the Federal offices, there will be no attempt to force obnoxious strangers among the people for that object. While the strict legal right may exist in the Government to enforce the exercise of these offices, the attempt to do so would be so irritating and so nearly impracticable withal that I deem it better to forego for the time the uses of such offices. The mails, unless repelled, will continue to be furnished in all parts of the Union. So far as possible the people everywhere shall have that sense of perfect security which is most favorable to calm thought and reflection. The course here indicated will be followed unless current events and experience shall show a modification or change to be proper, and in every case and exigency my best discretion will be exercised, according to circumstances actually existing and with a view and a hope of a peaceful solution of the national troubles and the restoration of fraternal sympathies and affections. That there are persons in one section or another who seek to destroy the Union at all events and are glad of any pretext to do it I will neither affirm nor deny; but if there be such, I need address no word to them. To those, however, who really love the Union may I not speak? Before entering upon so grave a matter as the destruction of our national fabric, with all its benefits, its memories, and its hopes, would it not be wise to ascertain precisely why we do it? Will you hazard so desperate a step while there is any possibility that any portion of the ills you fly from have no real existence? Will you, while the certain ills you fly to are greater than all the real ones you fly from, will you risk the commission of so fearful a mistake? All profess to be content in the Union if all constitutional rights can be maintained. Is it true, then, that any right plainly written in the Constitution has been denied? I think not. Happily, the human mind is so constituted that no party can reach to the audacity of doing this. Think, if you can, of a single instance in which a plainly written provision of the Constitution has ever been denied. If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might in a moral point of view justify revolution; certainly would if such right were a vital one. But such is not our case. All the vital rights of minorities and of individuals are so plainly assured to them by affirmations and negations, guaranties and prohibitions, in the Constitution that controversies never arise concerning them. But no organic law can ever be framed with a provision specifically applicable to every question which may occur in practical administration. No foresight can anticipate nor any document of reasonable length contain express provisions for all possible questions. Shall fugitives from labor be surrendered by national or by State authority? The Constitution does not expressly say. May Congress prohibit slavery in the Territories? The Constitution does not expressly say. Must Congress protect slavery in the Territories? The Constitution does not expressly say.


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From questions of this class spring all our constitutional controversies, and we divide upon them into majorities and minorities. If the minority will not acquiesce, the majority must, or the Government must cease. There is no other alternative, for continuing the Government is acquiescence on one side or the other. If a minority in such case will secede rather than acquiesce, they make a precedent which in turn will divide and ruin them, for a minority of their own will secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such minority. For instance, why may not any portion of a new confederacy a year or two hence arbitrarily secede again, precisely as portions of the present Union now claim to secede from it? All who cherish disunion sentiments are now being educated to the exact temper of doing this. Is there such perfect identity of interests among the States to compose a new union as to produce harmony only and prevent renewed secession? Plainly the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy. A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible. The rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left. I do not forget the position assumed by some that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court, nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding in any case upon the parties to a suit as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by all other departments of the Government. And while it is obviously possible that such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect following it, being limited to that particular case, with the chance that it may be overruled and never become a precedent for other cases, can better be borne than could the evils of a different practice. At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal. Nor is there in this view any assault upon the court or the judges. It is a duty from which they may not shrink to decide cases properly brought before them, and it is no fault of theirs if others seek to turn their decisions to political purposes. One section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute. The fugitive-slave clause of the Constitution and the law for the suppression of the foreign slave trade are each as well enforced, perhaps, as any law can ever be in a community where the moral sense of the people imperfectly

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supports the law itself. The great body of the people abide by the dry legal obligation in both cases, and a few break over in each. This, I think, can not be perfectly cured, and it would be worse in both cases after the separation of the sections than before. The foreign slave trade, now imperfectly suppressed, would be ultimately revived without restriction in one section, while fugitive slaves, now only partially surrendered, would not be surrendered at all by the other. Physically speaking, we can not separate. We can not remove our respective sections from each other nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other, but the different parts of our country can not do this. They can not but remain face to face, and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them. Is it possible, then, to make that intercourse more advantageous or more satisfactory after separation than before? Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends? Suppose you go to war, you can not fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions, as to terms of intercourse, are again upon you. This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it. I can not be ignorant of the fact that many worthy and patriotic citizens are desirous of having the National Constitution amended. While I make no recommendation of amendments, I fully recognize the rightful authority of the people over the whole subject, to be exercised in either of the modes prescribed in the instrument itself; and I should, under existing circumstances, favor rather than oppose a fair opportunity being afforded the people to act upon it. I will venture to add that to me the convention mode seems preferable, in that it allows amendments to originate with the people themselves, instead of only permitting them to take or reject propositions originated by others, not especially chosen for the purpose, and which might not be precisely such as they would wish to either accept or refuse. I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution—which amendment, however, I have not seen—has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable. The Chief Magistrate derives all his authority from the people, and they have referred none upon him to fix terms for the separation of the States. The people themselves can do this if also they choose, but the Executive as such has nothing to do with it. His duty is to administer the present Government as it came to his hands and to transmit it unimpaired by him to his successor.


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Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world? In our present differences, is either party without faith of being in the right? If the Almighty Ruler of Nations, with His eternal truth and justice, be on your side of the North, or on yours of the South, that truth and that justice will surely prevail by the judgment of this great tribunal of the American people. By the frame of the Government under which we live this same people have wisely given their public servants but little power for mischief, and have with equal wisdom provided for the return of that little to their own hands at very short intervals. While the people retain their virtue and vigilance no Administration by any extreme of wickedness or folly can very seriously injure the Government in the short space of four years. My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well upon this whole subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time. If there be an object to hurry any of you in hot haste to a step which you would never take deliberately, that object will be frustrated by taking time; but no good object can be frustrated by it. Such of you as are now dissatisfied still have the old Constitution unimpaired, and, on the sensitive point, the laws of your own framing under it; while the new Administration will have no immediate power, if it would, to change either. If it were admitted that you who are dissatisfied hold the right side in the dispute, there still is no single good reason for precipitate action. Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulty. In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to “preserve, protect, and defend it.” I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. Source: Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1989.

Emancipation Proclamation (1863)

By the President of the United States of America: A Proclamation Whereas on the 22nd day of September, A.D. 1862, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit: That on the 1st day of January, A.D. 1863, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom. That the executive will on the 1st day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof, respectively, shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State or the people thereof shall on that day be in good faith represented in the Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such States shall have participated shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State and the people thereof are not then in rebellion against the United States. Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-In-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this 1st day of January, A.D. 1863, and in accordance with my purpose so to do, publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days from the first day above mentioned, order and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof, respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States the following, to wit: Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (except the parishes of St. Bernard, Plaque mines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, Ascension, Assumption, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the city of New Orleans), 618

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Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkeley, Accomac, Northhampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Anne, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth), and which excepted parts are for the present left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued. And by virtue of the power and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States and parts of States are, and henceforward shall be, free; and that the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons. And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defense; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages. And I further declare and make known that such persons of suitable condition will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service. And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God. Source: Lincoln, Abraham. Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863. Presidential Proclamations, 1791–1991, Record Group 11, General Records of the United States Government, National Archives.

The Civil War Amendments (1865, 1868, and 1870)

Amendment XIII (1865) SECTION 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. SECTION 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Amendment XIV (1868) SECTION 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. SECTION 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State. SECTION 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the 620

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Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability. SECTION 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations, and claims shall be held illegal and void. SECTION 5. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Amendment XV (1870) SECTION 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. SECTION 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Source: “The Civil War Amendments to the United States Constitution.” In Documents of American History, ed. Henry Steele Commager. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1963. Available at http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript .html.

Congress Considers Slave Reparations Bill (1867)

H.R. 29

In the House of Representatives March 11, 1867. Read twice, Committed to the Committee of the Whole House, and ordered to be printed. Mr. STEVENS, on leave, introduced the following bill: A Bill Relative to damages done to loyal men, and for other purposes. Whereas it is due to justice, and as an example to future times, that some proper punishment should be inflicted on the people who constituted the “Confederate States of America,” both because they, declaring an unjust war against the United States for the purpose of destroying republican liberty and permanently establishing slavery, as well as for the cruel and barbarous manner in which they conducted said war, in violation of all the laws of civilized warfare, and also to compel them to make some compensation for the damages and expenditures caused by said war: Therefore— Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representative of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That all the public lands belonging to the ten States that formed the government of the so-called “Confederate States of America” shall be forfeited by said States and become forthwith vested in the United States. SEC. 2. And be it further enacted, That the President shall forthwith proceed to cause the seizure of such of the property belonging to the belligerent enemy as is deemed forfeited by the act of seventeenth July, anno Domini eighteen hundred and sixty-two, and hold and appropriate the same as enemy’s property, and to proceed to condemnation with that already seized. SEC. 3. And be it further enacted, That in lieu of the proceeding to condemn the property thus seized, as enemy’s property, as is provided by the act of July seventeen, anno Domini eighteen hundred and sixty-two, two commissions or more, as by him may be necessary, shall be appointed by the President for each of the said “confederate States,” to consist of three persons each, one of whom shall be an 622


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officer of the late or presant army, and two shall be civilians, neither of whom shall be citizens of the State for which they shall be appointed; and that the said commissions shall proceed to adjudicate and condemn the property aforesaid, under such forms and proceedings as shall be prescribed by the Attorney General of the United States; whereupon the title to said property shall become vested in the United States. SEC. 4. And be it further enacted, That out of the lands thus seized and confiscated, the slaves who have been liberated by the operations of the war and the amendment to the Constitution, or otherwise, who resided in said “Confederate States” on the fourth day of March, anno Domini eighteen hundred and sixty-one, or since, shall have distributed to them as follows, namely: to each male person who is the head of a family, forty acres; to each adult male, whether the head of a family or not, forty acres; to each widow, who is the head of a family, forty acres; to be held by them in fee simple, but to be inalienable for the next ten years after they become seized thereof. For the purpose of distributing and allotting said land the Secretary of War shall appoint as many commissions in each State as he shall deem necessary, to consist of three members each, two of whom at least shall not be citizens of the state for which he is appointed. Each of said commissioners shall receive a salary of three thousand dollars annually, and all his necessary expenses. Each commission shall be allowed one clerk, whose salary shall be two thousand dollars per annum. The title to the homestead aforesaid shall be vested in trustees for the use of the liberated persons aforesaid; trustees shall be appointed by the Secretary of War, and shall receive such salary as he shall direct, not exceeding three thousand dollars per annum. At the end of ten years the absolute title to said homesteads shall be conveyed to said owners or to the heirs of such as are then dead. SEC. 5. And be it further enacted, That out of the balance of the property thus seized and confiscated there shall be raised, in the manner hereinafter provided, a sum equal to fifty dollars, for each homestead, to be applied by the trustees, hereinafter mentioned, towards the erection of buildings on the said homesteads, for the use of said slaves; and the further sum of five hundred millions of dollars, which shall be appropriated as follows, to wit: two hundred millions shall be invested in United States six per centum securities; and the interest thereof shall be semi-annually added to the pensions allowed by law to pensioners who have become so by reason of the late war; three hundred millions, or so much thereof as may be needed, shall be appropriated to pay damages done to loyal citizens by the civil or military operations of the government lately called the “Confederate States of America.” SEC. 6. And be it further enacted, That in order that just discrimination may be made, the property of no one shall be seized whose estate on the fourth day of March, anno Domini eighteen hundred and sixty-five, was not worth more than five thousand dollars, to be valued by the said commission, unless he shall have voluntarily become an officer or employee in the military or civil service of the

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“Confederate States of America,” or in the civil or military service of some one of said States, and in enforcing all confiscations the sum or value of five thousand dollars in real or personal property shall be left or assigned to the delinquent. SEC. 7. And be it further enacted, That the commission shall put a just and impartial valuation on all the property thus seized and forfeited, and when such valuation shall be completed in the several States, all the said commissioners shall meet in the city of Washington and assess the five hundred millions aforesaid, as well as the allowances for homestead buildings, pro rata, on each of the properties or estates thus seized, and shall give notice of such assessment and apportionment by publication for sixty days in two daily newspapers in the city of Washington, and in two daily newspapers in the capitals of each of the said “Confederate States.” SEC. 8. And be it further enacted, That if the owners of said seized and forfeited estates shall, within ninety days after the first of said publications, pay into the treasury of the United States the sum assessed on their estates respectively, all of their estates and lands not actually appropriated to the liberated slaves shall be released and restored to their owners. SEC. 9. And be it further enacted, That all the land, estates, and property, of whatever kind, which shall not be redeemed as aforesaid, within ninety days, shall be sold and converted into money, in such time and manner as may be deemed by the said commissioners most advantageous to the United States: Provided, that no arable land shall be sold in larger tracts than five hundred acres: And provided further, That no longer credit shall be given than three years. Source: Library of Congress. H.R. 29 [40th Congress]. Available at http://memory.loc.gov/ cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llhb&fileName=040/llhb040.db&recNum=75.

The Law of the Free Womb (1871)

Princess Imperial, Regent, in the name of His Majesty the Emperor Senhor D. Pedro II, makes known to all the subjects of the Empire, that the General Assembly has decreed, and that she has sanctioned, the following Law: Art. I. The children of women slaves that may be born in the Empire from the date of this Law shall be considered to be free. 1.

The said minors shall remain with and be under the dominion of the owners of the mother, who shall be obliged to rear and take care of them until such children shall have completed the age of eight years. On the child of the slave attaining this age, the owner of its mother shall have the option either of receiving from the State the indemnification of 600 dollars, or of making use of the services of the minor until he shall have completed the age of twenty-one years. In the former event the Government will receive the minor, and will dispose of him in conformity with the provisions of the present Law. The pecuniary indemnification above fixed shall be paid in Government bonds, bearing interest at six per cent per annum, which will be considered extinct at the end of thirty years. The declaration of the owner must be made within thirty days, counting from the day on which the minor shall complete the age of eight years; and should he not do so within that time it will be understood that he embraces the option of making use of the service of the minor.

2.

Any one of those minors may ransom himself from the onus of servitude, by means of a previous pecuniary indemnification, offered by himself, or by any other person, to the owner of his mother, calculating the value of his services for the time which shall still remain unexpired to complete the period, should there be no agreement on the quantum of the said indemnification.

3.

It is also incumbent on owners to rear and bring up the children which the daughters of their female slaves may have while they are serving the same owners.

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Such obligation, however, will cease as soon as the service of the mother ceases. Should the latter die within the term of servitude the children may be placed at the disposal of the Government. 4.

Should the female slave obtain her freedom, her children under eight years of age who may be under the dominion of her owners shall, by virtue of 1, be delivered up, unless she shall prefer leaving them with him, and he consents to their remaining.

5.

In case of the female slave being made over to another owner her free children under twelve years of age shall accompany her, the new owner of the said slave being invested with the rights and obligations of his predecessor.

6.

The services of the children of female slaves shall cease to be rendered before the term marked in 1, if by decision of the Criminal judge it be known that the owner of the mothers ill-treat the children, inflicting on them severe punishments.

7.

The right conferred on owners by 1 shall be transferred in cases of direct succession; the child of a slave must render his services to the person to whose share in the division of property the said slave shall belong.

Art. II. The Government may deliver over to associations which they shall have authorized, the children of the slaves may be born from the date of this Law forward, and given up or abandoned by the owners of said slaves, or taken away from them by virtue of Articles I, VI. 1.

The said associations shall have a right to the gratuitous services of the minors, until they shall have completed the age of twenty-one years, and may hire out their services, but shall be bound— 1st. To rear and take care of the said minors. 2ndly. To save a sum for each of them, out of the amount of wages, which for this purpose is reserved in the respective statutes. 3rdly. To seek to place them in a proper situation when their term of service shall be ended.

2.

The associations referred to in the previous paragraph shall be subject to the inspection of judges of the Orphans’ Court, in as far as affects minors.

3.

The disposition of this Article is applicable to foundling asylums, and to the persons whom the judges of the Orphans’ Court charge with the education of the said minors, in default of associations or houses established for that purpose.

4.

The Government has the free right of ordering the said minors to be taken into the public establishments, the obligations imposed by 1 on the authorised associations being in this case transferred to the State.


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Art. III. As many slaves as correspond in value to the annual disposable sum from the emancipation fund shall be freed in each province of the Empire. 1.

The emancipation fund arises from— 1st. The tax on slaves. 2ndly. General tax on transfer of the slaves as property. 3rdly. The proceeds of six lotteries per annum, free of tax, and the tenth part of those which may be granted from this time forth, to be drawn in the capital of the Empire. 4thly. The fines imposed by virtue of this Law. 5thly. The sums which may be marked in the general budget, and in those of the provinces and municipalities. 6thly. Subscriptions, endowments, and legacies for that purpose.

2.

The sums marked in the provincial and municipal budgets, as also the subscriptions, endowments, and legacies for the local purpose, shall be applied for the manumission of slaves in the provinces, districts, municipalities, and parishes designated.

Art. IV. The slave is permitted to form a saving fund from what may come to him through gifts, legacies, and inheritances, and from what, by consent of his owner, he may obtain by his labor and economy. The Government will see to the regulations as to the placing and security of said savings. 1.

By the death of the slave half of his savings shall belong to his surviving widow, if there be such, and the other half shall be transmitted to his heirs in conformity with civil law. In default of heirs the savings shall be adjudged to the emancipation fund of which Article III treats.

2.

The slave who, through his savings, may obtain means to pay his value has a right to freedom. If the indemnification be not fixed by agreement it shall be settled by arbitration. In judicial sales or inventories the price of manumission shall be that of the valuation.

3.

It is further permitted the slave, in furtherance of his liberty, to contract with a third party the hire of his future services, for a term not exceeding seven years, by obtaining the consent of his master, and approval of the judge of the Orphans’ Court.

4.

The slave that belongs to joint proprietors, and is freed by one of them, shall have a right to his freedom by indemnifying the other owners with the share of the amount which belongs to them. This indemnification may be paid by

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services rendered for a term not exceeding seven years, in conformity with the preceding paragraph. 5.

The manumission, with the clause of services during a certain time, shall not become annulled by want of fulfilling the said clause, but the freed man shall be compelled to fulfil, by means of labour in the public establishments, or by contracting for his services with private persons.

6.

Manumissions, whether gratuitous or by means of onus, shall be exempted from all duties, emoluments, or expenses.

7.

In any case of alienation or transfer of slaves, the separation of husband and wife, and children under twelve years of age from father or mother, is prohibited under penalty of annulment.

8.

If the division of property among heirs or partners does not permit the union of a family, and none of them prefers remaining with the family by replacing the amount of the share belonging to the other interested parties, the said family shall be sold and the proceeds shall be divided among the heirs.

9.

The ordination, Book 4th, title 63, in the part which revokes freedom, on account of ingratitude, is set aside.

Art. V. The Emancipation Societies which are formed, and those which may for the future be formed, shall be subject to the inspection of the Judges of the Orphans’ Court. Sole paragraph. The said societies shall have the privilege of commanding the services of the slaves whom they may have liberated, to indemnify themselves for the sum spent in their purchase. Art. VI. The following shall be declared free: 1.

The slaves belonging to the State, the Government giving them such employment as they may deem fit.

2.

The slaves given in usufruct to the Crown.

3.

The slaves of unclaimed inheritances.

4.

The slaves who have been abandoned by their owners. Should these have abandoned the slaves from the latter being invalids they shall be obliged to maintain them, except in case of their own penury, the maintenance being charged by the judge of the Orphans’ Court.

5.

In general the slaves liberated by virtue of this Law shall be under the inspection of Government during five years. They will be obliged to hire themselves under pain of compulsion; if they lead an idle life they shall be made to work in the public establishments.


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The compulsory labour, however, shall cease so soon as the freed man shall exhibit an engagement of hire. Art. VII. In trials in favour of freedoms— 1.

The process shall be summary.

2.

There shall be appeal ex officio when the decisions shall be against the freedom.

Art. VIII. The Government will order the special registration of all the slaves existing in the Empire to be proceeded with, containing a declaration of name, sex, age, state, aptitude for work, and filiation of each, if such should be known. 1.

The date on which the registry ought to commence closing shall be announced beforehand, the longest time possible being given for preparation by means of edicts repeated, in which shall be inserted the dispositions of the following paragraph.

2.

The slaves who, through the fault or omission of the parties interested, shall not have been registered up to one year after the closing of the register, shall, de facto, be considered as free.

3.

For registering each slave the owner shall pay, once only, the emolument of 500 reis, if done within the term marked, and one dollar should that be exceeded. The produce of those emoluments shall go towards the expenses of registering, and the surplus to the emancipation fund.

4.

The children of a slave mother, who by this Law became free, shall also be registered in a separate book. Those persons who have become remiss shall incur a fine of 100 dollars to 200 dollars, repeated as many times is there may be individuals omitted: and for fraud, in the penalties of Article CLXXIX of the Criminal Code.

5.

The parish priests shall be obliged to have special books for the registry of births and deaths of the children of slaves born from and after the date of this law. Each omission will subject the parish priest to a fine of 100 dollars.

Art. IX. The Government, in its regulations, can impose fines of as much as 100 dollars, and the penalty of imprisonment up to one month. Art. X. All contrary dispositions are revoked. Therefore, order all authorities to whom, &c. Given at the Palace of Rio de Janeiro, on the 28th September, IL 871. 50th of the Independence and of the Empire. Princess Imperial, Regent. Theodoro Machado Freire Pereira da Silva. Source: Pedro II, Dom (Pedro de Alcântara), emperor of Brazil, “The Law of Free Birth.” In A Documentary History of Brazil, ed. E. Bradford Burns. New York: Knopf, 1966.

Memorial to the Marquis of Salisbury on the Slave-Trade and Slavery in Afghanistan (1874) To the Right Honourable the Marquis of Salisbury, Her Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for India My Lord,—The Committee of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society beg respectfully to call your Lordship’s attention to the slave-trade and slavery, as existing very extensively throughout the Affghan territories, the Ameer of which receives annually a large subsidy from the British Indian Government. Your Memorialists are informed that slave-marts, some of which are very large, are found in most of the principal cities, where the slaves are bought and sold like cattle, while at times the most revolting cruelties are practised. To meet the demand for slaves, raids are made by the Ameer’s soldiers on adjacent territory, and by merchants and traders on the weaker tribes near Chitral, the Hindu Kush, and other localities. These slave-hunts are carried out on a very extensive scale, as may be instanced in the case of a late Governor of Faizabad, Mir Ghulam Bey, who had eight thousand horse[sic!] in his employ, whose only occupation was to scour the country for the purpose of kidnapping. The Sunni merchants of Badakhshan also capture all whom they can seize, and not only sell the shiahs, who are considered infidels, and therefore legitimate subjects for sale, but also compel their Sunni co-religionists to undergo the severest torments to induce them to avow themselves shiahs and so become liable for sale. Your Memorialists would especially and earnestly solicit your Lordship’s attention to the slave-hunts by the Affghans against the Siah Posh Kafirs, supposed to be a colony of about three hundred thousand white persons planted in the Hindu Kush mountains by Alexander the Great, and to possess some knowledge of the Christian religion, in which they have been further instructed by native Christian evangelists. These people have had to suffer lamentably from the kidnapping expeditions of the Affghans. Your Memorialists learn that, so long as their invaders possessed only the ordinary weapons of the country, the Siah Posh Kafirs resisted the forces of the Affghan chiefs. Since, however, the Ameer has become a feudatory of the Indian Government, and received yearly large sums of money, and several thousands of the latest improved fire-arms, it is feared the colony will eventually be subdued and enslaved;

630

Memorial to the Marquis of Salisbury on the Slave-Trade and Slavery

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a calamity the more to be deplored, as it will thus be brought about by the aid afforded to a Mahommedan ruler from a Christian nation whose policy has been to exterminate the slave-trade and slavery wherever found. Your Memorialists would also observe, that the said raid against the Siah Posh Kafirs, and their consequent retaliation on Mahommedan travelers, renders the roads in the direct route between Turkistan and the Punjab so insecure as to stop commercial intercourse altogether, or to compel merchants and traders to make a long detour, either via Yarkand or Kabul, in their journeys, involving a serious loss of time and property. Your Memorialists learn with much satisfaction that since His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of Russia has been pleased to induce the Khans of Khiva and Bokhara to suppress the slave-trade and slavery in their territories, a very great check has been given to the slave-hunts in the exposed districts. Your Memorialists respectfully submit that as the Ameer, Sheer Ali, is a feudatory of, and is in the receipt annually of a considerable subsidy of money and arms from Her Majesty’s Government in India, that his attention should be called to the subject, and that Her Majesty’s Government should use their influence, as promptly as practicable, with the Sovereign of Affghanistan for the extinction of slavery in his dominions. In thus respectfully urging this important subject on the attention of your Lordship, the Committee feel assured that the object they have in view will meet with your Lordship’s sympathy and interest, and with that of the British nation at large. On behalf of the Committee of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, We are, very respectfully, JOSEPH COOPER, EDMUND STURGE,| Hon. Secs. ROBERT ALSOP, BENJAMIN MILLARD, Sec. 27, New Broad Street, London, 12th March, 1874 Source: The Anti-Slavery Reporter, 19:2 (April 1, 1874).

Resolutions Adopted by the Association for the Reform and Codification of the Law of Nations (1883) Association for the Reform & Codification of the Law of Nations Conference on International Law, Held at Milan, September 11th to 14th, 1883

Resolutions 1.

The Conference expresses the desire that the Slave-trade be assimilated in international law to piracy.

2.

Slavery being contrary to natural law, every nation is justified according to international law in refusing in any way to recognise the institution, alike in the case of foreigners who are within its own territory as in the case of its own subjects who have refused to recognise the institution of Slavery within the territory of another State.

3.

Every clause in any international treaty which binds a State to give up Slaves which have come within its territory is invalid with regard to international law.

4.

Where the extradition of an accused person who was a slave in the country seeking his extradition is requested, such extradition should only be accorded if the extradition of a free man would be accorded in the same case, nor should such extradition be accorded if the former Slave would be judged by a different judge, or punished by other penalties than if he had always been a free man.

5.

Every State should prohibit its subjects from possessing, buying, or selling Slaves in foreign countries, and from participating either directly or indirectly in any traffic of the same kind, or in any contract having Slaves for its object, and this prohibition should be enforced by such penalties as each State may enact. TRAVERS TWISS, President. CHARLES STUBBS, Hon. Sec.

Source: The Anti-Slavery Reporter, 4:4 (March 1884).

632

British Abolitionists Reflect upon Their Accomplishments during the Anti-Slavery Jubilee (1884) An interview with C. H. Allen, the Secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society “August 1, 1834, was a great day for England and for humanity,” said Mr. Allen, “and the popular rejoicings which took place on that occasion are among the most vivid recollections of my boyhood. Slavery was a terrible reality to us in those days, a monster, the horror and the shame of which was keenly felt by the nation. Half a century has rolled by, since then; in fifty years a new generation has grown up, which finds it difficult, not to say impossible, to recall the enthusiasm that animated our fathers. Slavery is to Englishmen a thing with which they have no personal concern. Its moral leprosy does not cleave to our garments, and we are therefore supposed to be free from any necessity to bestir ourselves in the matter. We paid £20,000,000. We liberated our slaves. That was our share. Let other nations follow our example. We have done enough. That in a rough way represents the feeling of Englishmen to-day. There is no longer among us a Clarkson or a Wilberforce, nor do we support the cause for which they laboured with anything approaching to the liberality and devotion which enabled them to carry their cause to victory in spite of almost insurmountable obstacles. The work of abolition was perhaps always more or less the work of a few. There was no doubt a very widespread sympathy for the cause in the abstract, but its chief promoters and sustainers were from the first a mere handful of public-spirited men, largely recruited from the Society of Friends; and although some of them are still with us they have not bequeathed their zeal to their successors. Were it not so our society would not be left to carry on the crusade against the sum of all villanies with an annual revenue of £200 a year, which has to be supplemented by liberal donations from a few generous supporters. There is a prejudice existing against our society in some quarters owing to the mistaken belief that we advocate war as a means of suppressing slavery. It is a total mistake. Quakers are not wont to found societies for waging war even against slavery, and as a matter of fact our constitution strictly provides that the extinction of slavery is to be sought by ‘the employment of those means which are of a moral, religious, and pacific character.’ The only basis for the popular calumny is that we have maintained, and as long as we continue to exist will continue to maintain, that wherever the British flag flies no slave shall breathe, and that the rights and interests 633

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British Abolitionists Reflect upon Their Accomplishments

of all emancipated slaves shall be cared for as sedulously as the property of their former owners. We do not seek to extend the sovereignty of England in the hope that the conqueror will prove an emancipator. We only insist that when the soldier has made his conquests the legislator shall not forget his responsibilities. In other words, that when England has exerted her power she shall not neglect her duty. Our society has been a sort of conscience to the empire, and it will be an evil day for the coloured man when England allows that conscience to be silenced by their neglect. Another delusion not less mischievous is the idea prevailing in some quarters that our work is done, that slavery is extinct, and that there is therefore no need of any further sacrifices to carry ‘the civilizing torch of freedom’ among the nations of the earth. Would that it were the case! No one would rejoice more than I if our society had attained that supreme object of its existence, and could cease to exist because there was no longer a slave to free. But surely the most careless cannot have forgotten Africa. That is one of the most populous of continents; but it is, from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, a continent of slaves. A great reservoir of slaves—a vast arena of slave raids; the hunting ground of slave traders, whose map is threaded by slave routes, and whose roads are marked by the bleaching skulls of the victims of the slaver. A dark continent truly, the mere overflow of which fills Moslem Asia with slaves. There is work in Africa alone for a dozen societies such as ours. But Africa is not the only continent where there is great and urgent need for the exertions of the Argus eye of organized philanthropy. Turn where we will, one can hardly fail to see some territory blighted by some form of slavery. Before passing in review the field yet to be won for freedom, I would like just to say a word upon the triumphs already attained. Briefly stated; we may say that all European Powers but Spain have recognized that the owning of slaves is an offence against humanity, not to be tolerated by any of their subjects. That is a great gain. Russia has emancipated all her serfs; slavery has ceased to be legal in British India; the legal status of slavery has been suppressed in West Africa; and the American Union has purged itself from the guilt of slavery in one of the most tremendous wars of modern times. Nor is it only civilized nations that have placed slavery outside the pale of the law. The Bey of Tunis abolished slavery before his dominions were absorbed by France. Emancipation follows the wake of Russian conquest in Central Asia. In Brazil and Cuba gradual emancipation offers a prospect of the entire extinction of slavery before many years are past. So that we may say with truth that civilization is now almost entirely free from the older forms of slavery and the slave trade. That is a great deal to be thankful for. But the world is not half civilised, and even in the civilised regions new forms of servitude are continually springing up which recall the worst horrors of the old Slavery. Look at China. There are probably at this moment fifty million Slaves in that great empire. We can do nothing for them, but at Hong Kong, at our treaty ports, and elsewhere we might do much more


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than we do to enforce the sound principle of personal freedom. We cannot hinder the Chinese having Slaves, but we might more vigorously punish British subjects who keep Slaves, and above all, we should repress the horrible custom, largely prevailing in Hong Kong, of importing female Slaves for immoral purposes. It is a veritable Slave-trade of the worst king. The girls are bought and sold like sheep, and their fate is unspeakable infamy. Yet this goes on every day under the British flag. At the Straits settlements, also, there prevails an elaborate system of domestic Slavery with which it is most difficult to deal. If a man gets into debt he can pawn himself, his wife, and all his children to his creditor, who becomes to all intents and purposes his owner. It is a bad system, and it is one of the many reasons for the necessity for constant vigilance. Another illustration of the need for watchfulness is afforded by the labour traffic of the Southern Seas. There under the British flag Englishmen have established a system of labour-recruiting which in many respects is identical with the Slave-trade. Efforts have been made to regulate it, but hitherto they have failed. Its total abolition seems the only way out of the difficulty. Whenever you have coloured men employed by whites you have a great temptation that the latter will reduce the former to a condition of vassalage indistinguishable from Slavery. Take the case of Queensland. We look with the gravest suspicion upon the attempts to import Cinghalese coolies to work the sugar plantations on the coast. Malabar blacks might do, but Cinghalese, who at home never work on their own coffee plantations, have been carried off to Brisbane and set to work which must be fatal. The whole of the coolie traffic requires the most vigorous overhauling. The regulations that have been framed in order to ensure that the coolie labourer knows where he is going and the terms of his engagement are much too laxly enforced; but we greatly doubt whether any system of coolie immigration can be framed which would not lead to gross abuse. In India we believe that male slavery has practically ceased since 1843 by the simple operation of abolishing the legal status of the slave. But among women in the secret recesses of the harem, into which no man can penetrate, a good deal of slavery lingers, to await exposure and extinction at the hands of some future Mrs. Fry. Traveling further west we come to the French colony of Réunion, where a form of slavery still exists under the euphemism of the engagée system. Thanks largely to the attention called to it by this society, Lord Hartington, when Secretary for India, entirely suppressed the emigration of coolies from India to the French colonies. We could get no security for their good treatment, and it was the right thing to do. But the immediate result was to precipitate the French upon Madagascar, where they hope to find a fresh recruiting ground for their planters. We have now come to Africa, the continent of the slave. The utmost that we can do seems less than nothing compared with the magnitude of the evil with which we are struggling. Our only hope of suppressing the slave trade in Africa is by stopping the demand for slaves in Egypt and outside the borders. No cruisers will be

636 |


able to prevent swift Arab dhows slipping across the Red Sea, laden to the gunwale with the wretched victims of slave traders in the Soudan. The law governing the seizure of slavers is shamefully lax. If a slaver can run his dhow ashore he can land his cargo beneath the guns of our cruisers, who can only make seizures on the high seas. Then, again, the slaver has only to secure a French flag, and he is free from all danger. If a captain make a technical mistake, although morally he may have been right, he is compelled to pay heavy damages to the rascally owner of the disguised slaver. Altogether it is a bad business. We do not believe in cruisers; but if you have a squadron detailed for the suppression of the slave trade, it should not be compelled to work under impossible conditions. Something might be done by holding the Red Sea ports, but our great reliance must always be on diminishing the demand. So far as one great slave market is concerned, it is not difficult. Egypt lies in the hollow of our hand. Why can we not do there as we do in India, and induce the Khedive to issue a decree declaring that the legal status of slavery is abolished, and thereby allowing all slaves to free themselves, if, and when they pleased? Sir Evelyn Baring objects to this, but if we wield supreme power in Egypt I hardly see how we can continue to evade our responsibilities. Pressure brought to bear on Turkey to increase the severity of the regulations against the slave trade might do something in Arabia; but so long as these regions remain Mahommedan, so long is it to be feared they will drain the life-blood of Africa, in spite of all that we can do. In Northern Africa slavery exists unabashed in Morocco, and our British Resident seldom lifts a finger to induce his Imperial protégé to suppress the slave markets which disgrace Tangiers. On the western coast the slave trade has ceased to exist in the cessation of the demand for slaves from the New World. Further south there is reason to fear that the Portuguese have established a system differing little from slavery—a strong reason for rejoicing that the recent attempt to extend her dominion to the Congo has been promptly checked. Across the Atlantic the emancipation of the slaves in the Southern States, although effected in the worst way, has been a great economical success. The free South raises more cotton than ever was raised by slave labour; and although the negro citizen is by no means perfect, he is, with all his faults, higher in the scale of manhood than when he was a slave. In Cuba we have one of the black spots of the world. It is cursed by slavery to this day, and the half-hearted attempts of the Spanish Government to rid the Pearl of the Antilles from this dark stain have met with a very partial success. In our own West Indian possessions the chief complaint is that the emancipated negro is too comfortable to work. He is not too comfortable to work for himself, nor would he refuse to work for others at a reasonable wage. That he is not reluctant to labour may be seen from the fact that thousands have flocked to the Panama Canal to work as navvies under M. de Lesseps. In South America slow but steady progress is being made in Brazil, the only slave State left in the New World. There are nearly 1,500,000 slaves still to be emancipated, and only one province in the empire is entirely free.


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To sum up, we have still to uproot slavery of the old kind from Cuba and Brazil. We have to suppress domestic slavery in the Straits Settlements and in Egypt; we have to put down the labour traffic in the Pacific, and to discountenance in every way the importation of coolie traffic to the Mauritius, Queensland, and the West Indies. We have to bring pressure to bear upon the French and Portuguese to prevent the re-establishment of slavery under a nominal apprenticeship, and we have to seek a modification of the laws which at present cripple the efficiency of our squadron on the East Coast of Africa. And, above all, we have to keep our eyes fixed on that open sore of the world, the African slave trade, and compel the civilised world to realise the horrors that are ceaselessly enacted on the Dark Continent. These things are beyond the strength of a society inadequately supported as ours. We do what we can; but if the work is to be kept up in a proper style, it will have to be properly supported. We sadly want a few hundred fresh annual subscribers of one guinea each. Surely rich anti-slavery England might furnish these.” Source: The Anti-Slavery Reporter (Series 4), 4 (October 1884).

African Clerics Respond to Pope Leo XIII (1888)

ROME, November 22, 1888.

My Lord I cannot but be delighted with your Lordship’s idea of introducing to notice in Manchester the Anti-Slavery crusade of our Holy Father POPE LEO XIII. I have already had the pleasure of preaching in London, and I can truly say that nowhere has this great ideal of humanity and justice found so benevolent and, I venture to say, so enthusiastic a reception. England indeed recognised in this new enterprise her most glorious souvenirs. It must never be forgotten that it was she who at the close of the last century and the first half of the present had the chief share in the work of abolishing colonial Slavery in the West Indies. She it was who, by the burning eloquence of BUXTON, WILBERFORCE, and so many others, excited the indignation of the civilised world against such barbarities. She it was who, by her statesmen, decided Europe, first at the Congress of Vienna, afterwards at the Conference of Verona, to take in hand resolutely the cause of the poor blacks, and to treat as pirates those who, in the midst of so many scenes of carnage, did not blush to carry away entire populations from their native lands, from their families and their liberty, in order to transport them in the holds of their horrible vessels into the plantations and beneath the lash of the planters of America. She it was, in fine, who often undertook to carry out the decisions of Europe, and who often went so far as to constrain foreign nations to execute international conventions. And nowadays it is still she who, by means of LIVINGSTONE and her other explorers, calls the attention of Christian nations to the revival, in the interior of Africa and on the East Coast, of the Slave-trade, no longer indeed by planters, but by the Mussulmans of Asia and Northern Africa. Without doubt the African trade had never been interrupted; but after the great victory won over colonial Slavery it had been so to say, forgotten. The intrepid courage, the devotedness, the high probity and truthfulness of LIVINGSTONE, his repeated testimony to the dreadful scourge, his last wishes, immortalised by the English people by inscribing them on his tomb in Westminster Abbey, and after LIVINGSTONE’S time the testimony of so many others— BURTON, SPEKE, CAMERON, &c.—have produced on the entire world the 638

African Clerics Respond to Pope Leo XIII (1888)

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same impression as was created by those Anti-Slavery agitators who fifty years ago abolished the colonial Slave-trade. Missionaries have joined their voices to those of explorers and philanthropists. Our Catholic missionaries from Algiers, who little by little have spread themselves with heroic courage over the Mussulman regions of the Soudan and the table-lands of the great lakes, very soon made known to me personally the horrors which they had witnessed. The sovereign Pontiff could not fail to denounce these horrors to the entire world. Hence in the audience accorded to the African Pilgrimage at the end of last May, he uttered that strenuous appeal which has found so powerful an echo in England, without distinction of political opinion, or even religious confession. How much I should like, My Lord, to accept your invitation, and to repeat once more in Manchester the appeal of LEO XIII. It is a real disappointment to me to be so far from your Lordship on so important an occasion; but being in Rome I desired to at least make known to the Holy Father your noble intention, and to engage his sympathy for all the members of the meeting. He most gladly acceded to my wishes, and charges you to formally bestow in his name the Apostolic blessing upon all those who partake in this great work. He blesses them for their generous idea—those who belong to the Catholic Church, because they honour their religion by this act of faith and charity; those who do not, in order that He who is the Infinite Charity may, in return for their charity, pour upon them the most abundant graces of light and unity. I could prolong this letter by giving your Lordship interesting details of the constitution and character of the AntiSlavery work, but I prefer to forward several printed documents. You will be able to select from them better than I could what is most appropriate to your meeting. Your Lordship’s obedient and devoted brother in our Lord. (Signed) Ch. Cardinal LAVIGERIE, Archbishop of Carthage and Algiers. Source: The Anti-Slavery Reporter, 4:7 (November and December 1888).

The Law Abolishing Brazilian Slavery (1888)

May 13, 1888 The Princess Imperial Regent, in the name of His Majesty the Emperor Dom Pedro II, makes known to all subjects of the Empire that the General Assembly has decreed, and she has approved, the following Law:— Art. 1—From the date of this Law slavery is declared abolished in Brazil. 2. All contrary provisions are revoked. She orders, therefore, all the authorities to whom belong the knowledge and execution of the said Law to execute it, and cause it to be fully and exactly executed and observed. The Secretary of State for the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, and Public Works, and ad interim for Foreign Affairs, Bachelor Rodrigo Augusto da Silva, of the Council of His Majesty the Emperor, will cause it to be printed, published, and circulated. Given in the Palace of Rio de Janeiro, May 13, 1888, the 67th year of Independence and of the Empire. PRINCESS IMPERIAL REGENT RODRIGO AUGUSTO DA SILVA Source: The Anti-Slavery Reporter (Series 4), 8 (May and June 1888).

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Libertas: On the Nature of Human Liberty (1888)

Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII, June 20, 1888 To the Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, and Bishops of the Catholic World in Grace and Communion with the Apostolic See. Liberty, the highest of natural endowments, being the portion only of intellectual or rational natures, confers on man this dignity—that he is “in the hand of his counsel and has power over his actions. But the manner in which such dignity is exercised is of the greatest moment, inasmuch as on the use that is made of liberty the highest good and the greatest evil alike depend. Man, indeed, is free to obey his reason, to seek moral good, and to strive unswervingly after his last end. Yet he is free also to turn aside to all other things; and, in pursuing the empty semblance of good, to disturb rightful order and to fall headlong into the destruction which he has voluntarily chosen. The Redeemer of mankind, Jesus Christ, having restored and exalted the original dignity of nature, vouchsafed special assistance to the will of man; and by the gifts of His grace here, and the promise of heavenly bliss hereafter, He raised it to a nobler state. In like manner, this great gift of nature has ever been, and always will be, deservingly cherished by the Catholic Church, for to her alone has been committed the charge of handing down to all ages the benefits purchased for us by Jesus Christ. Yet there are many who imagine that the Church is hostile to human liberty. Having a false and absurd notion as to what liberty is, either they pervert the very idea of freedom, or they extend it at their pleasure to many things in respect of which man cannot rightly be regarded as free. We have on other occasions, and especially in Our encyclical letter lmmortale Dei, in treating of the so-called modern liberties, distinguished between their good and evil elements; and We have shown that whatsoever is good in those liberties is as ancient as truth itself, and that the Church has always most willingly approved and practiced that good: but whatsoever has been added as new is, to tell the plain truth, of a vitiated kind, the fruit of the disorders of the age, and of an insatiate longing after novelties. Seeing, however, that many cling so obstinately to their own opinion in this matter as to imagine these modern liberties, cankered as they are, to be the greatest glory of our age, and the very basis of civil life, without which no perfect government can be conceived, We feel it a pressing duty, for the sake of the common good, to treat separately of this subject. 641

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It is with moral liberty, whether in individuals or in communities, that We proceed at once to deal. But, first of all, it will be well to speak briefly of natural liberty; for, though it is distinct and separate from moral liberty, natural freedom is the fountainhead from which liberty of whatsoever kind flows, sua vi suaque sponte. The unanimous consent and judgment of men, which is the trusty voice of nature, recognizes this natural liberty in those only who are endowed with intelligence or reason; and it is by his use of this that man is rightly regarded as responsible for his actions. For, while other animate creatures follow their senses, seeking good and avoiding evil only by instinct, man has reason to guide him in each and every act of his life. Reason sees that whatever things that are held to be good upon earth may exist or may not, and discerning that none of them are of necessity for us, it leaves the will free to choose what it pleases. But man can judge of this contingency, as We say, only because he has a soul that is simple, spiritual, and intellectual—a soul, therefore, which is not produced by matter, and does not depend on matter for its existence; but which is created immediately by God, and, far surpassing the condition of things material, has a life and action of its own—so that, knowing the unchangeable and necessary reasons of what is true and good, it sees that no particular kind of good is necessary to us. When, therefore, it is established that man’s soul is immortal and endowed with reason and not bound up with things material, the foundation of natural liberty is at once most firmly laid. As the Catholic Church declares in the strongest terms the simplicity, spirituality, and immortality of the soul, so with unequaled constancy and publicity she ever also asserts its freedom. These truths she has always taught, and has sustained them as a dogma of faith, and whensoever heretics or innovators have attacked the liberty of man, the Church has defended it and protected this noble possession from destruction. History bears witness to the energy with which she met the fury of the Manicheans and others like them; and the earnestness with which in later years she defended human liberty at the Council of Trent, and against the followers of Jansenius, is known to all. At no time, and in no place, has she held truce with fatalism. Liberty, then, as We have said, belongs only to those who have the gift of reason or intelligence. Considered as to its nature, it is the faculty of choosing means fitted for the end proposed, for he is master of his actions who can choose one thing out of many. Now, since everything chosen as a means is viewed as good or useful, and since good, as such, is the proper object of our desire, it follows that freedom of choice is a property of the will, or, rather, is identical with the will in so far as it has in its action the faculty of choice. But the will cannot proceed to act until it is enlightened by the knowledge possessed by the intellect. In other words, the good wished by the will is necessarily good in so far as it is known by the intellect; and this the more, because in all voluntary acts choice is subsequent to a judgment upon the truth of the good presented, declaring to which good preference should be given. No sensible man can doubt that judgment is an act of reason, not of the will. The


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end, or object, both of the rational will and of its liberty is that good only which is in conformity with reason. Since, however, both these faculties are imperfect, it is possible, as is often seen, that the reason should propose something which is not really good, but which has the appearance of good, and that the will should choose accordingly. For, as the possibility of error, and actual error, are defects of the mind and attest its imperfection, so the pursuit of what has a false appearance of good, though a proof of our freedom, just as a disease is a proof of our vitality, implies defect in human liberty. The will also, simply because of its dependence on the reason, no sooner desires anything contrary thereto than it abuses its freedom of choice and corrupts its very essence. Thus it is that the infinitely perfect God, although supremely free, because of the supremacy of His intellect and of His essential goodness, nevertheless cannot choose evil; neither can the angels and saints, who enjoy the beatific vision. St. Augustine and others urged most admirably against the Pelagians that, if the possibility of deflection from good belonged to the essence or perfection of liberty, then God, Jesus Christ, and the angels and saints, who have not this power, would have no liberty at all, or would have less liberty than man has in his state of pilgrimage and imperfection. This subject is often discussed by the Angelic Doctor in his demonstration that the possibility of sinning is not freedom, but slavery. It will suffice to quote his subtle commentary on the words of our Lord: “Whosoever committeth sin is the slave of sin.” “Everything,” he says, “is that which belongs to it naturally. When, therefore, it acts through a power outside itself, it does not act of itself, but through another, that is, as a slave. But man is by nature rational. When, therefore, he acts according to reason, he acts of himself and according to his free will; and this is liberty. Whereas, when he sins, he acts in opposition to reason, is moved by another, and is the victim of foreign misapprehensions. Therefore, ‘Whosoever committeth sin is the slave of sin’.” Even the heathen philosophers clearly recognized this truth, especially they who held that the wise man alone is free; and by the term “wise man” was meant, as is well known, the man trained to live in accordance with his nature, that is, in justice and virtue. Such, then, being the condition of human liberty, it necessarily stands in need of light and strength to direct its actions to good and to restrain them from evil. Without this, the freedom of our will would be our ruin. First of all, there must be law; that is, a fixed rule of teaching what is to be done and what is to be left undone. This rule cannot affect the lower animals in any true sense, since they act of necessity, following their natural instinct, and cannot of themselves act in any other way. On the other hand, as was said above, he who is free can either act or not act, can do this or do that, as he pleases, because his judgment precedes his choice. And his judgment not only decides what is right or wrong of its own nature, but also what is practically good and therefore to be chosen, and what is practically evil and therefore to be avoided. In other words, the reason prescribes to the will what it should

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seek after or shun, in order to the eventual attainment of man’s last end, for the sake of which all his actions ought to be performed. This ordination of reason is called law. In man’s free will, therefore, or in the moral necessity of our voluntary acts being in accordance with reason, lies the very root of the necessity of law. Nothing more foolish can be uttered or conceived than the notion that, because man is free by nature, he is therefore exempt from law. Were this the case, it would follow that to become free we must be deprived of reason; whereas the truth is that we are bound to submit to law precisely because we are free by our very nature. For, law is the guide of man’s actions; it turns him toward good by its rewards, and deters him from evil by its punishments. Foremost in this office comes the natural law, which is written and engraved in the mind of every man; and this is nothing but our reason, commanding us to do right and forbidding sin. Nevertheless, all prescriptions of human reason can have force of law only inasmuch as they are the voice and the interpreters of some higher power on which our reason and liberty necessarily depend. For, since the force of law consists in the imposing of obligations and the granting of rights, authority is the one and only foundation of all law—the power, that is, of fixing duties and defining rights, as also of assigning the necessary sanctions of reward and chastisement to each and all of its commands. But all this, clearly, cannot be found in man, if, as his own supreme legislator, he is to be the rule of his own actions. It follows, therefore, that the law of nature is the same thing as the eternal law, implanted in rational creatures, and inclining them to their right action and end; and can be nothing else but the eternal reason of God, the Creator and Ruler of all the world. To this rule of action and restraint of evil God has vouchsafed to give special and most suitable aids for strengthening and ordering the human will. The first and most excellent of these is the power of His divine grace, whereby the mind can be enlightened and the will wholesomely invigorated and moved to the constant pursuit of moral good, so that the use of our inborn liberty becomes at once less difficult and less dangerous. Not that the divine assistance hinders in any way the free movement of our will; just the contrary, for grace works inwardly in man and in harmony with his natural inclinations, since it flows from the very Creator of his mind and will, by whom all things are moved in conformity with their nature. As the Angelic Doctor points out, it is because divine grace comes from the Author of nature that it is so admirably adapted to be the safeguard of all natures, and to maintain the character, efficiency, and operations of each. What has been said of the liberty of individuals is no less applicable to them when considered as bound together in civil society. For, what reason and the natural law do for individuals that human law promulgated for their good, does for the citizens of States. Of the laws enacted by men, some are concerned with what is good or bad by its very nature; and they command men to follow after what is right and to shun what is wrong, adding at the same time a suitable sanction. But such laws


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by no means derive their origin from civil society, because, just as civil society did not create human nature, so neither can it be said to be the author of the good which befits human nature, or of the evil which is contrary to it. Laws come before men live together in society, and have their origin in the natural, and consequently in the eternal, law. The precepts, therefore, of the natural law, contained bodily in the laws of men, have not merely the force of human law, but they possess that higher and more august sanction which belongs to the law of nature and the eternal law. And within the sphere of this kind of laws the duty of the civil legislator is, mainly, to keep the community in obedience by the adoption of a common discipline and by putting restraint upon refractory and viciously inclined men, so that, deterred from evil, they may turn to what is good, or at any rate may avoid causing trouble and disturbance to the State. Now, there are other enactments of the civil authority, which do not follow directly, but somewhat remotely, from the natural law, and decide many points which the law of nature treats only in a general and indefinite way. For instance, though nature commands all to contribute to the public peace and prosperity, whatever belongs to the manner, and circumstances, and conditions under which such service is to be rendered must be determined by the wisdom of men and not by nature herself. It is in the constitution of these particular rules of life, suggested by reason and prudence, and put forth by competent authority, that human law, properly so called, consists, binding all citizens to work together for the attainment of the common end proposed to the community, and forbidding them to depart from this end, and, in so far as human law is in conformity with the dictates of nature, leading to what is good, and deterring from evil. From this it is manifest that the eternal law of God is the sole standard and rule of human liberty, not only in each individual man, but also in the community and civil society which men constitute when united. Therefore, the true liberty of human society does not consist in every man doing what he pleases, for this would simply end in turmoil and confusion, and bring on the overthrow of the State; but rather in this, that through the injunctions of the civil law all may more easily conform to the prescriptions of the eternal law. Likewise, the liberty of those who are in authority does not consist in the power to lay unreasonable and capricious commands upon their subjects, which would equally be criminal and would lead to the ruin of the commonwealth; but the binding force of human laws is in this, that they are to be regarded as applications of the eternal law, and incapable of sanctioning anything which is not contained in the eternal law, as in the principle of all law. Thus, St. Augustine most wisely says: “I think that you can see, at the same time, that there is nothing just and lawful in that temporal law, unless what men have gathered from this eternal law.” If, then, by anyone in authority, something be sanctioned out of conformity with the principles of right reason, and consequently hurtful to the commonwealth, such an enactment can have no binding force of law, as being no rule of justice, but certain to lead men away from that good which is the very end of civil society.

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Therefore, the nature of human liberty, however it be considered, whether in individuals or in society, whether in those who command or in those who obey, supposes the necessity of obedience to some supreme and eternal law, which is no other than the authority of God, commanding good and forbidding evil. And, so far from this most just authority of God over men diminishing, or even destroying their liberty, it protects and perfects it, for the real perfection of all creatures is found in the prosecution and attainment of their respective ends; but the supreme end to which human liberty must aspire is God. These precepts of the truest and highest teaching, made known to us by the light of reason itself, the Church, instructed by the example and doctrine of her divine Author, has ever propagated and asserted; for she has ever made them the measure of her office and of her teaching to the Christian nations. As to morals, the laws of the Gospel not only immeasurably surpass the wisdom of the heathen, but are an invitation and an introduction to a state of holiness unknown to the ancients; and, bringing man nearer to God, they make him at once the possessor of a more perfect liberty. Thus, the powerful influence of the Church has ever been manifested in the custody and protection of the civil and political liberty of the people. The enumeration of its merits in this respect does not belong to our present purpose. It is sufficient to recall the fact that slavery, that old reproach of the heathen nations, was mainly abolished by the beneficent efforts of the Church. The impartiality of law and the true brotherhood of man were first asserted by Jesus Christ; and His apostles re-echoed His voice when they declared that in future there was to be neither Jew, nor Gentile, nor barbarian, nor Scythian, but all were brothers in Christ. So powerful, so conspicuous, in this respect is the influence of the Church that experience abundantly testifies how savage customs are no longer possible in any land where she has once set her foot; but that gentleness speedily takes the place of cruelty, and the light of truth quickly dispels the darkness of barbarism. Nor has the Church been less lavish in the benefits she has conferred on civilized nations in every age, either by resisting the tyranny of the wicked, or by protecting the innocent and helpless from injury, or, finally, by using her influence in the support of any form of government which commended itself to the citizens at home, because of its justice, or was feared by their enemies without, because of its power. Moreover, the highest duty is to respect authority, and obediently to submit to just law; and by this the members of a community are effectually protected from the wrong-doing of evil men. Lawful power is from God, “and whosoever resisteth authority resisteth the ordinance of God”; wherefore, obedience is greatly ennobled when subjected to an authority which is the most just and supreme of all. But where the power to command is wanting, or where a law is enacted contrary to reason, or to the eternal law, or to some ordinance of God, obedience is unlawful, lest, while obeying man, we become disobedient to God. Thus, an effectual barrier being opposed to tyranny, the authority in the State will not have all its own way,


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but the interests and rights of all will be safeguarded—the rights of individuals, of domestic society, and of all the members of the commonwealth; all being free to live according to law and right reason; and in this, as We have shown, true liberty really consists. If when men discuss the question of liberty they were careful to grasp its true and legitimate meaning, such as reason and reasoning have just explained, they would never venture to affix such a calumny on the Church as to assert that she is the foe of individual and public liberty. But many there are who follow in the footsteps of Lucifer, and adopt as their own his rebellious cry, “I will not serve”; and consequently substitute for true liberty what is sheer and most foolish license. Such, for instance, are the men belonging to that widely spread and powerful organization, who, usurping the name of liberty, style themselves liberals. What naturalists or rationalists aim at in philosophy, that the supporters of liberalism, carrying out the principles laid down by naturalism, are attempting in the domain of morality and politics. The fundamental doctrine of rationalism is the supremacy of the human reason, which, refusing due submission to the divine and eternal reason, proclaims its own independence, and constitutes itself the supreme principle and source and judge of truth. Hence, these followers of liberalism deny the existence of any divine authority to which obedience is due, and proclaim that every man is the law to himself; from which arises that ethical system which they style independent morality, and which, under the guise of liberty, exonerates man from any obedience to the commands of God, and substitutes a boundless license. The end of all this it is not difficult to foresee, especially when society is in question. For, when once man is firmly persuaded that he is subject to no one, it follows that the efficient cause of the unity of civil society is not to be sought in any principle external to man, or superior to him, but simply in the free will of individuals; that the authority in the State comes from the people only; and that, just as every man’s individual reason is his only rule of life, so the collective reason of the community should be the supreme guide in the management of all public affairs. Hence the doctrine of the supremacy of the greater number, and that all right and all duty reside in the majority. But, from what has been said, it is clear that all this is in contradiction to reason. To refuse any bond of union between man and civil society, on the one hand, and God the Creator and consequently the supreme Law-giver, on the other, is plainly repugnant to the nature, not only of man, but of all created things; for, of necessity, all effects must in some proper way be connected with their cause; and it belongs to the perfection of every nature to contain itself within that sphere and grade which the order of nature has assigned to it, namely, that the lower should be subject and obedient to the higher. Moreover, besides this, a doctrine of such character is most hurtful both to individuals and to the State. For, once ascribe to human reason the only authority to decide what is true and what is good, and the real distinction between good and

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evil is destroyed; honor and dishonor differ not in their nature, but in the opinion and judgment of each one; pleasure is the measure of what is lawful; and, given a code of morality which can have little or no power to restrain or quiet the unruly propensities of man, a way is naturally opened to universal corruption. With reference also to public affairs: authority is severed from the true and natural principle whence it derives all its efficacy for the common good; and the law determining what it is right to do and avoid doing is at the mercy of a majority. Now, this is simply a road leading straight to tyranny. The empire of God over man and civil society once repudiated, it follows that religion, as a public institution, can have no claim to exist, and that everything that belongs to religion will be treated with complete indifference. Furthermore, with ambitious designs on sovereignty, tumult and sedition will be common amongst the people; and when duty and conscience cease to appeal to them, there will be nothing to hold them back but force, which of itself alone is powerless to keep their covetousness in check. Of this we have almost daily evidence in the conflict with socialists and members of other seditious societies, who labor unceasingly to bring about revolution. It is for those, then, who are capable of forming a just estimate of things to decide whether such doctrines promote that true liberty which alone is worthy of man, or rather, pervert and destroy it. There are, indeed, some adherents of liberalism who do not subscribe to these opinions, which we have seen to be fearful in their enormity, openly opposed to the truth, and the cause of most terrible evils. Indeed, very many amongst them, compelled by the force of truth, do not hesitate to admit that such liberty is vicious, nay, is simple license, whenever intemperate in its claims, to the neglect of truth and justice; and therefore they would have liberty ruled and directed by right reason, and consequently subject to the natural law and to the divine eternal law. But here they think they may stop, holding that man as a free being is bound by no law of God except such as He makes known to us through our natural reason. In this they are plainly inconsistent. For if—as they must admit, and no one can rightly deny— the will of the Divine Law-giver is to be obeyed, because every man is under the power of God, and tends toward Him as his end, it follows that no one can assign limits to His legislative authority without failing in the obedience which is due. Indeed, if the human mind be so presumptuous as to define the nature and extent of God’s rights and its own duties, reverence for the divine law will be apparent rather than real, and arbitrary judgment will prevail over the authority and providence of God. Man must, therefore, take his standard of a loyal and religious life from the eternal law; and from all and every one of those laws which God, in His infinite wisdom and power, has been pleased to enact, and to make known to us by such clear and unmistakable signs as to leave no room for doubt. And the more so because laws of this kind have the same origin, the same author, as the eternal law, are absolutely in accordance with right reason, and perfect the natural law. These laws it is that embody the government of God, who graciously guides and directs


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the intellect and the will of man lest these fall into error. Let, then, that continue to remain in a holy and inviolable union which neither can nor should be separated; and in all things—for this is the dictate of right reason itself—let God be dutifully and obediently served. There are others, somewhat more moderate though not more consistent, who affirm that the morality of individuals is to be guided by the divine law, but not the morality of the State, for that in public affairs the commands of God may be passed over, and may be entirely disregarded in the framing of laws. Hence follows the fatal theory of the need of separation between Church and State. But the absurdity of such a position is manifest. Nature herself proclaims the necessity of the State providing means and opportunities whereby the community may be enabled to live properly, that is to say, according to the laws of God. For, since God is the source of all goodness and justice, it is absolutely ridiculous that the State should pay no attention to these laws or render them abortive by contrary enactments. Besides, those who are in authority owe it to the commonwealth not only to provide for its external well-being and the conveniences of life, but still more to consult the welfare of men’s souls in the wisdom of their legislation. But, for the increase of such benefits, nothing more suitable can be conceived than the laws which have God for their author; and, therefore, they who in their government of the State take no account of these laws abuse political power by causing it to deviate from its proper end and from what nature itself prescribes. And, what is still more important, and what We have more than once pointed out, although the civil authority has not the same proximate end as the spiritual, nor proceeds on the same lines, nevertheless in the exercise of their separate powers they must occasionally meet. For their subjects are the same, and not infrequently they deal with the same objects, though in different ways. Whenever this occurs, since a state of conflict is absurd and manifestly repugnant to the most wise ordinance of God, there must necessarily exist some order or mode of procedure to remove the occasions of difference and contention, and to secure harmony in all things. This harmony has been not inaptly compared to that which exists between the body and the soul for the well-being of both one and the other, the separation of which brings irremediable harm to the body, since it extinguishes its very life. To make this more evident, the growth of liberty ascribed to our age must be considered apart in its various details. And, first, let us examine that liberty in individuals which is so opposed to the virtue of religion, namely, the liberty of worship, as it is called. This is based on the principle that every man is free to profess as he may choose any religion or none. But, assuredly, of all the duties which man has to fulfill, that, without doubt, is the chiefest and holiest which commands him to worship God with devotion and piety. This follows of necessity from the truth that we are ever in the power of God, are ever guided by His will and providence, and, having come forth from Him, must

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return to Him. Add to which, no true virtue can exist without religion, for moral virtue is concerned with those things which lead to God as man’s supreme and ultimate good; and therefore religion, which (as St. Thomas says) “performs those actions which are directly and immediately ordained for the divine honor,” rules and tempers all virtues. And if it be asked which of the many conflicting religions it is necessary to adopt, reason and the natural law unhesitatingly tell us to practice that one which God enjoins, and which men can easily recognize by certain exterior notes, whereby Divine Providence has willed that it should be distinguished, because, in a matter of such moment, the most terrible loss would be the consequence of error. Wherefore, when a liberty such as We have described is offered to man, the power is given him to pervert or abandon with impunity the most sacred of duties, and to exchange the unchangeable good for evil; which, as We have said, is no liberty, but its degradation, and the abject submission of the soul to sin. This kind of liberty, if considered in relation to the State, clearly implies that there is no reason why the State should offer any homage to God, or should desire any public recognition of Him; that no one form of worship is to be preferred to another, but that all stand on an equal footing, no account being taken of the religion of the people, even if they profess the Catholic faith. But, to justify this, it must needs be taken as true that the State has no duties toward God, or that such duties, if they exist, can be abandoned with impunity, both of which assertions are manifestly false. For it cannot be doubted but that, by the will of God, men are united in civil society; whether its component parts be considered; or its form, which implies authority; or the object of its existence; or the abundance of the vast services which it renders to man. God it is who has made man for society, and has placed him in the company of others like himself, so that what was wanting to his nature, and beyond his attainment if left to his own resources, he might obtain by association with others. Wherefore, civil society must acknowledge God as its Founder and Parent, and must obey and reverence His power and authority, justice therefore forbids, and reason itself forbids, the State to be godless; or to adopt a line of action which would end in godlessness—namely, to treat the various religions (as they call them) alike, and to bestow upon them promiscuously equal rights and privileges. Since, then, the profession of one religion is necessary in the State, that religion must be professed which alone is true, and which can be recognized without difficulty, especially in Catholic States, because the marks of truth are, as it were, engraven upon it. This religion, therefore, the rulers of the State must preserve and protect, if they would provide—as they should do—with prudence and usefulness for the good of the community. For public authority exists for the welfare of those whom it governs; and, although its proximate end is to lead men to the prosperity found in this life, yet, in so doing, it ought not to diminish, but rather to increase, man’s capability of attaining to the supreme good in which his everlasting happiness consists: which never can be attained if religion be disregarded.


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All this, however, We have explained more fully elsewhere. We now only wish to add the remark that liberty of so false a nature is greatly hurtful to the true liberty of both rulers and their subjects. Religion, of its essence, is wonderfully helpful to the State. For, since it derives the prime origin of all power directly from God Himself, with grave authority it charges rulers to be mindful of their duty, to govern without injustice or severity, to rule their people kindly and with almost paternal charity; it admonishes subjects to be obedient to lawful authority, as to the ministers of God; and it binds them to their rulers, not merely by obedience, but by reverence and affection, forbidding all seditions and venturesome enterprises calculated to disturb public order and tranquillity, and cause greater restrictions to be put upon the liberty of the people. We need not mention how greatly religion conduces to pure morals, and pure morals to liberty. Reason shows, and history confirms the fact, that the higher the morality of States, the greater are the liberty and wealth and power which they enjoy. We must now consider briefly liberty of speech, and liberty of the press. It is hardly necessary to say that there can be no such right as this, if it be not used in moderation, and if it pass beyond the bounds and end of all true liberty. For right is a moral power which—as We have before said and must again and again repeat—it is absurd to suppose that nature has accorded indifferently to truth and falsehood, to justice and injustice. Men have a right freely and prudently to propagate throughout the State what things soever are true and honorable, so that as many as possible may possess them; but lying opinions, than which no mental plague is greater, and vices which corrupt the heart and moral life should be diligently repressed by public authority, lest they insidiously work the ruin of the State. The excesses of an unbridled intellect, which unfailingly end in the oppression of the untutored multitude, are no less rightly controlled by the authority of the law than are the injuries inflicted by violence upon the weak. And this all the more surely, because by far the greater part of the community is either absolutely unable, or able only with great difficulty, to escape from illusions and deceitful subtleties, especially such as flatter the passions. If unbridled license of speech and of writing be granted to all, nothing will remain sacred and inviolate; even the highest and truest mandates of natures, justly held to be the common and noblest heritage of the human race, will not be spared. Thus, truth being gradually obscured by darkness, pernicious and manifold error, as too often happens, will easily prevail. Thus, too, license will gain what liberty loses; for liberty will ever be more free and secure in proportion as license is kept in fuller restraint. In regard, however, to all matter of opinion which God leaves to man’s free discussion, full liberty of thought and of speech is naturally within the right of everyone; for such liberty never leads men to suppress the truth, but often to discover it and make it known. A like judgment must be passed upon what is called liberty of teaching. There can be no doubt that truth alone should imbue the minds of men, for in it are found

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the well-being, the end, and the perfection of every intelligent nature; and therefore nothing but truth should be taught both to the ignorant and to the educated, so as to bring knowledge to those who have it not, and to preserve it in those who possess it. For this reason it is plainly the duty of all who teach to banish error from the mind, and by sure safeguards to close the entry to all false convictions. From this it follows, as is evident, that the liberty of which We have been speaking is greatly opposed to reason, and tends absolutely to pervert men’s minds, in as much as it claims for itself the right of teaching whatever it pleases—a liberty which the State cannot grant without failing in its duty. And the more so because the authority of teachers has great weight with their hearers, who can rarely decide for themselves as to the truth or falsehood of the instruction given to them. Wherefore, this liberty, also, in order that it may deserve the name, must be kept within certain limits, lest the office of teaching be turned with impunity into an instrument of corruption. Now, truth, which should be the only subject matter of those who teach, is of two kinds: natural and supernatural. Of natural truths, such as the principles of nature and whatever is derived from them immediately by our reason, there is a kind of common patrimony in the human race. On this, as on a firm basis, morality, justice, religion, and the very bonds of human society rest: and to allow people to go unharmed who violate or destroy it would be most impious, most foolish, and most inhuman. But with no less religious care must we preserve that great and sacred treasure of the truths which God Himself has taught us. By many and convincing arguments, often used by defenders of Christianity, certain leading truths have been laid down: namely, that some things have been revealed by God; that the only-begotten Son of God was made flesh, to bear witness to the truth; that a perfect society was founded by Him—the Church, namely, of which He is the head, and with which He has promised to abide till the end of the world. To this society He entrusted all the truths which He had taught, in order that it might keep and guard them and with lawful authority explain them; and at the same time He commanded all nations to hear the voice of the Church, as if it were His own, threatening those who would not hear it with everlasting perdition. Thus, it is manifest that man’s best and surest teacher is God, the Source and Principle of all truth; and the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, the Way, the Truth, and the Life, the true Light which enlightens every man, and to whose teaching all must submit: “And they shall all be taught of God.” In faith and in the teaching of morality, God Himself made the Church a partaker of His divine authority, and through His heavenly gift she cannot be deceived. She is therefore the greatest and most reliable teacher of mankind, and in her swells an inviolable right to teach them. Sustained by the truth received from her divine Founder, the Church has ever sought to fulfill holily the mission entrusted to her by God; unconquered by the difficulties on all sides surrounding her, she has never


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ceased to assert her liberty of teaching, and in this way the wretched superstition of paganism being dispelled, the wide world was renewed unto Christian wisdom. Now, reason itself clearly teaches that the truths of divine revelation and those of nature cannot really be opposed to one another, and that whatever is at variance with them must necessarily be false. Therefore, the divine teaching of the Church, so far from being an obstacle to the pursuit of learning and the progress of science, or in any way retarding the advance of civilization, in reality brings to them the sure guidance of shining light. And for the same reason it is of no small advantage for the perfecting of human liberty, since our Savior Jesus Christ has said that by truth is man made free: “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Therefore, there is no reason why genuine liberty should grow indignant, or true science feel aggrieved, at having to bear the just and necessary restraint of laws by which, in the judgment of the Church and of reason itself, human teaching has to be controlled. The Church, indeed—as facts have everywhere proved—looks chiefly and above all to the defense of the Christian faith, while careful at the same time to foster and promote every kind of human learning. For learning is in itself good, and praiseworthy, and desirable; and further, all erudition which is the outgrowth of sound reason, and in conformity with the truth of things, serves not a little to confirm what we believe on the authority of God. The Church, truly, to our great benefit, has carefully preserved the monuments of ancient wisdom; has opened everywhere homes of science, and has urged on intellectual progress by fostering most diligently the arts by which the culture of our age is so much advanced. Lastly, we must not forget that a vast field lies freely open to man’s industry and genius, containing all those things which have no necessary connection with Christian faith and morals, or as to which the Church, exercising no authority, leaves the judgment of the learned free and unconstrained. From all this may be understood the nature and character of that liberty which the followers of liberalism so eagerly advocate and proclaim. On the one hand, they demand for themselves and for the State a license which opens the way to every perversity of opinion; and on the other, they hamper the Church in divers ways, restricting her liberty within narrowest limits, although from her teaching not only is there nothing to be feared, but in every respect very much to be gained. Another liberty is widely advocated, namely, liberty of conscience. If by this is meant that everyone may, as he chooses, worship God or not, it is sufficiently refuted by the arguments already adduced. But it may also be taken to mean that every man in the State may follow the will of God and, from a consciousness of duty and free from every obstacle, obey His commands. This, indeed, is true liberty, a liberty worthy of the sons of God, which nobly maintains the dignity of man and is stronger than all violence or wrong—a liberty which the Church has always desired and held most dear. This is the kind of liberty the Apostles claimed for themselves

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with intrepid constancy, which the apologists of Christianity confirmed by their writings, and which the martyrs in vast numbers consecrated by their blood. And deservedly so; for this Christian liberty bears witness to the absolute and most just dominion of God over man, and to the chief and supreme duty of man toward God. It has nothing in common with a seditious and rebellious mind; and in no title derogates from obedience to public authority; for the right to command and to require obedience exists only so far as it is in accordance with the authority of God, and is within the measure that He has laid down. But when anything is commanded which is plainly at variance with the will of God, there is a wide departure from this divinely constituted order, and at the same time a direct conflict with divine authority; therefore, it is right not to obey. By the patrons of liberalism, however, who make the State absolute and omnipotent, and proclaim that man should live altogether independently of God, the liberty of which We speak, which goes hand in hand with virtue and religion, is not admitted; and whatever is done for its preservation is accounted an injury and an offense against the State. Indeed, if what they say were really true, there would be no tyranny, no matter how monstrous, which we should not be bound to endure and submit to. The Church most earnestly desires that the Christian teaching, of which We have given an outline, should penetrate every rank of society in reality and in practice; for it would be of the greatest efficacy in healing the evils of our day, which are neither few nor slight, and are the offspring in great part of the false liberty which is so much extolled, and in which the germs of safety and glory were supposed to be contained. The hope has been disappointed by the result. The fruit, instead of being sweet and wholesome, has proved cankered and bitter. If, then, a remedy is desired, let it be sought for in a restoration of sound doctrine, from which alone the preservation of order and, as a consequence, the defense of true liberty can be confidently expected. Yet, with the discernment of a true mother, the Church weighs the great burden of human weakness, and well knows the course down which the minds and actions of men are in this our age being borne. For this reason, while not conceding any right to anything save what is true and honest, she does not forbid public authority to tolerate what is at variance with truth and justice, for the sake of avoiding some greater evil, or of obtaining or preserving some greater good. God Himself in His providence, though infinitely good and powerful, permits evil to exist in the world, partly that greater good may not be impeded, and partly that greater evil may not ensue. In the government of States it is not forbidden to imitate the Ruler of the world; and, as the authority of man is powerless to prevent every evil, it has (as St. Augustine says) to overlook and leave unpunished many things which are punished, and rightly, by Divine Providence. But if, in such circumstances, for the sake of the common good (and this is the only legitimate reason), human law may


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or even should tolerate evil, it may not and should not approve or desire evil for its own sake; for evil of itself, being a privation of good, is opposed to the common welfare which every legislator is bound to desire and defend to the best of his ability. In this, human law must endeavor to imitate God, who, as St. Thomas teaches, in allowing evil to exist in the world, “neither wills evil to be done, nor wills it not to be done, but wills only to permit it to be done; and this is good.” This saying of the Angelic Doctor contains briefly the whole doctrine of the permission of evil. But, to judge aright, we must acknowledge that, the more a State is driven to tolerate evil, the further is it from perfection; and that the tolerance of evil which is dictated by political prudence should be strictly confined to the limits which its justifying cause, the public welfare, requires. Wherefore, if such tolerance would be injurious to the public welfare, and entail greater evils on the State, it would not be lawful; for in such case the motive of good is wanting. And although in the extraordinary condition of these times the Church usually acquiesces in certain modern liberties, not because she prefers them in themselves, but because she judges it expedient to permit them, she would in happier times exercise her own liberty; and, by persuasion, exhortation, and entreaty would endeavor, as she is bound, to fulfill the duty assigned to her by God of providing for the eternal salvation of mankind. One thing, however, remains always true—that the liberty which is claimed for all to do all things is not, as We have often said, of itself desirable, inasmuch as it is contrary to reason that error and truth should have equal rights. And as to tolerance, it is surprising how far removed from the equity and prudence of the Church are those who profess what is called liberalism. For, in allowing that boundless license of which We have spoken, they exceed all limits, and end at last by making no apparent distinction between truth and error, honesty and dishonesty. And because the Church, the pillar and ground of truth, and the unerring teacher of morals, is forced utterly to reprobate and condemn tolerance of such an abandoned and criminal character, they calumniate her as being wanting in patience and gentleness, and thus fail to see that, in so doing, they impute to her as a fault what is in reality a matter for commendation. But, in spite of all this show of tolerance, it very often happens that, while they profess themselves ready to lavish liberty on all in the greatest profusion, they are utterly intolerant toward the Catholic Church, by refusing to allow her the liberty of being herself free. And now to reduce for clearness’ sake to its principal heads all that has been set forth with its immediate conclusions, the summing up in this briefly: that man, by a necessity of his nature, is wholly subject to the most faithful and ever enduring power of God; and that, as a consequence, any liberty, except that which consists in submission to God and in subjection to His will, is unintelligible. To deny the existence of this authority in God, or to refuse to submit to it, means to act, not as a free man, but as one who treasonably abuses his liberty; and in such a disposition of mind the chief and deadly vice of liberalism essentially consists. The form,

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however, of the sin is manifold; for in more ways and degrees than one can the will depart from the obedience which is due to God or to those who share the divine power. For, to reject the supreme authority to God, and to cast off all obedience to Him in public matters, or even in private and domestic affairs, is the greatest perversion of liberty and the worst kind of liberalism; and what We have said must be understood to apply to this alone in its fullest sense. Next comes the system of those who admit indeed the duty of submitting to God, the Creator and Ruler of the world, inasmuch as all nature is dependent on His will, but who boldly reject all laws of faith and morals which are above natural reason, but are revealed by the authority of God; or who at least impudently assert that there is no reason why regard should be paid to these laws, at any rate publicly, by the State. How mistaken these men also are, and how inconsistent, we have seen above. From this teaching, as from its source and principle, flows that fatal principle of the separation of Church and State; whereas it is, on the contrary, clear that the two powers, though dissimilar in functions and unequal in degree, ought nevertheless to live in concord, by harmony in their action and the faithful discharge of their respective duties. But this teaching is understood in two ways. Many wish the State to be separated from the Church wholly and entirely, so that with regard to every right of human society, in institutions, customs, and laws, the offices of State, and the education of youth, they would pay no more regard to the Church than if she did not exist; and, at most, would allow the citizens individually to attend to their religion in private if so minded. Against such as these, all the arguments by which We disprove the principle of separation of Church and State are conclusive; with this super-added, that it is absurd the citizen should respect the Church, while the State may hold her in contempt. Others oppose not the existence of the Church, nor indeed could they; yet they despoil her of the nature and rights of a perfect society, and maintain that it does not belong to her to legislate, to judge, or to punish, but only to exhort, to advise, and to rule her subjects in accordance with their own consent and will. By such opinion they pervert the nature of this divine society, and attenuate and narrow its authority, its office of teacher, and its whole efficiency; and at the same time they aggrandize the power of the civil government to such extent as to subject the Church of God to the empire and sway of the State, like any voluntary association of citizens. To refute completely such teaching, the arguments often used by the defenders of Christianity, and set forth by Us, especially in the encyclical letter Immortale Dei, are of great avail; for by those arguments it is proved that, by a divine provision, all the rights which essentially belong to a society that is legitimate, supreme, and perfect in all its parts exist in the Church. Lastly, there remain those who, while they do not approve the separation of Church and State, think nevertheless that the Church ought to adapt herself to the


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times and conform to what is required by the modern system of government. Such an opinion is sound, if it is to be understood of some equitable adjustment consistent with truth and justice; in so far, namely, that the Church, in the hope of some great good, may show herself indulgent, and may conform to the times in so far as her sacred office permits. But it is not so in regard to practices and doctrines which a perversion of morals and a warped judgment have unlawfully introduced. Religion, truth, and justice must ever be maintained; and, as God has intrusted these great and sacred matters to her office as to dissemble in regard to what is false or unjust, or to connive at what is hurtful to religion. From what has been said it follows that it is quite unlawful to demand, to defend, or to grant unconditional freedom of thought, of speech, or writing, or of worship, as if these were so many rights given by nature to man. For, if nature had really granted them, it would be lawful to refuse obedience to God, and there would be no restraint on human liberty. It likewise follows that freedom in these things may be tolerated wherever there is just cause, but only with such moderation as will prevent its degenerating into license and excess. And, where such liberties are in use, men should employ them in doing good, and should estimate them as the Church does; for liberty is to be regarded as legitimate in so far only as it affords greater facility for doing good, but no farther. Whenever there exists, or there is reason to fear, an unjust oppression of the people on the one hand, or a deprivation of the liberty of the Church on the other, it is lawful to seek for such a change of government as will bring about due liberty of action. In such case, an excessive and vicious liberty is not sought, but only some relief, for the common welfare, in order that, while license for evil is allowed by the State, the power of doing good may not be hindered. Again, it is not of itself wrong to prefer a democratic form of government, if only the Catholic doctrine be maintained as to the origin and exercise of power. Of the various forms of government, the Church does not reject any that are fitted to procure the welfare of the subject; she wishes only—and this nature itself requires— that they should be constituted without involving wrong to any one, and especially without violating the rights of the Church. Unless it be otherwise determined, by reason of some exceptional condition of things, it is expedient to take part in the administration of public affairs. And the Church approves of every one devoting his services to the common good, and doing all that he can for the defense, preservation, and prosperity of his country. Neither does the Church condemn those who, if it can be done without violation of justice, wish to make their country independent of any foreign or despotic power. Nor does she blame those who wish to assign to the State the power of self-government, and to its citizens the greatest possible measure of prosperity. The Church has always most faithfully fostered civil liberty, and this was seen especially in Italy, in the municipal prosperity, and wealth, and glory which were

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obtained at a time when the salutary power of the Church has spread, without opposition, to all parts of the State. These things, venerable brothers, which under the guidance of faith and reason, in the discharge of Our Apostolic office, We have now delivered to you, We hope, especially by your cooperation with Us, will be useful unto very many. In lowliness of heart We raise Our eyes in supplication to God, and earnestly beseech Him to shed mercifully the light of His wisdom and of His counsel upon men, so that, strengthened by these heavenly gifts, they may in matters of such moment discern what is true, and may afterwards, in public and private at all times and with unshaken constancy, live in accordance with the truth. As a pledge of these heavenly gifts, and in witness of Our good will to you, venerable brothers, and to the clergy and people committed to each of you, We most lovingly grant in the Lord the apostolic benediction. Given at St. Peter’s in Rome, the twentieth day of June, 1888, the tenth year of Our Pontificate. Source: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_ 20061888_libertas_en.html.

In Plurimis: On the Abolition of Slavery (1888)

Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII, May 5, 1888 To the Bishops of Brazil, Amid the many and great demonstrations of affection which from almost all the peoples of the earth have come to Us, and are still coming to Us, in congratulation upon the happy attainment of the fiftieth anniversary of Our priesthood, there is one which moves Us in a quite special way. We mean one which comes from Brazil, where, upon the occasion of this happy event, large numbers of those who in that vast empire groan beneath the yoke of slavery, have been legally set free. And this work, so full of the spirit of Christian mercy, has been offered up in cooperation with the clergy, by charitable members of the laity of both sexes, to God, the Author and Giver of all good things, in testimony of their gratitude for the favor of the health and the years which have been granted to Us. But this was specially acceptable and sweet to Us because it lent confirmation to the belief, which is so welcome to Us, that the great majority of the people of Brazil desire to see the cruelty of slavery ended, and rooted out from the land. This popular feeling has been strongly seconded by the emperor and his august daughter, and also by the ministers, by means of various laws which, with this end in view, have been introduced and sanctioned. We told the Brazilian ambassador last January what a consolation these things were to Us, and We also assured him that We would address letters to the bishops of Brazil in behalf of these unhappy slaves. We, indeed, to all men are the Vicar of Christ, the Son of God, who so loved the human race that not only did He not refuse, taking our nature to Himself, to live among men, but delighted in bearing the name of the Son of Man, openly proclaiming that He had come upon earth “to preach deliverance to the captives” in order that, rescuing mankind from the worst slavery, which is the slavery of sin, “he might re-establish all things that are in heaven and on earth,” and so bring back all the children of Adam from the depths of the ruin of the common fall to their original dignity. The words of St. Gregory the Great are very applicable here: “Since our Redeemer, the Author of all life, deigned to take human flesh, that by the power of His Godhood the chains by which we were held in bondage being broken, He might restore us to our first state of liberty, it is most fitting that men by the concession of

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manumission should restore to the freedom in which they were born those whom nature sent free into the world, but who have been condemned to the yoke of slavery by the law of nations.” It is right, therefore, and obviously in keeping with Our apostolic office, that We should favor and advance by every means in Our power whatever helps to secure for men, whether as individuals or as communities, safeguards against the many miseries, which, like the fruits of an evil tree, have sprung from the sin of our first parents; and such safeguards, of whatever kind they may be, help not only to promote civilization and the amenities of life, but lead on to that universal restitution of all things which our Redeemer Jesus Christ contemplated and desired. In the presence of so much suffering, the condition of slavery, in which a considerable part of the great human family has been sunk in squalor and affliction now for many centuries, is deeply to be deplored; for the system is one which is wholly opposed to that which was originally ordained by God and by nature. The Supreme Author of all things so decreed that man should exercise a sort of royal dominion over beasts and cattle and fish and fowl, but never that men should exercise a like dominion over their fellow men. As St. Augustine puts it: “Having created man a reasonable being, and after His own likeness, God wished that he should rule only over the brute creation; that he should be the master, not of men, but of beasts.” From this it follows that “the state of slavery is rightly regarded as a penalty upon the sinner; thus, the word slave does not occur in the Bible until the just man Noah branded with it the sin of his son. It was sin, therefore, which deserved this name; it was not natural.” From the first sin came all evils, and specially this perversity that there were men who, forgetful of the original brotherhood of the race, instead of seeking, as they should naturally have done, to promote mutual kindness and mutual respect, following their evil desires began to think of other men as their inferiors, and to hold them as cattle born for the yoke. In this way, through an absolute forgetfulness of our common nature, and of human dignity, and the likeness of God stamped upon us all, it came to pass that in the contentions and wars which then broke out, those who were the stronger reduced the conquered into slavery; so that mankind, though of the same race, became divided into two sections, the conquered slaves and their victorious masters. The history of the ancient world presents us with this miserable spectacle down to the time of the coming of our Lord, when the calamity of slavery had fallen heavily upon all the peoples, and the number of freemen had become so reduced that the poet was able to put this atrocious phrase into the mouth of Caesar: “The human race exists for the sake of a few.” The system flourished even among the most civilized peoples, among the Greeks and among the Romans, with whom the few imposed their will upon the many; and this power was exercised so unjustly and with such haughtiness that a crowd of slaves was regarded merely as so many chattels—not as persons, but as things. They were held to be outside the sphere of law, and without even the claim to retain


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and enjoy life. “Slaves are in the power of their masters, and this power is derived from the law of nations; for we find that among all nations masters have the power of life and death over their slaves, and whatever a slave earns belongs to his master.” Owing to this state of moral confusion it became lawful for men to sell their slaves, to give them in exchange, to dispose of them by will, to beat them, to kill them, to abuse them by forcing them to serve for the gratification of evil passions and cruel superstitions; these things could be done, legally, with impunity, and in the light of heaven. Even those who were wisest in the pagan world, illustrious philosophers and learned juris-consults, outraging the common feeling of mankind, succeeded in persuading themselves and others that slavery was simply a necessary condition of nature. Nor did they hesitate to assert that the slave class was very inferior to the freemen both in intelligence and perfection of bodily development, and therefore that slaves, as things wanting in reason and sense, ought in all things to be the instruments of the will, however rash and unworthy, of their masters. Such inhuman and wicked doctrines are to be specially detested; for, when once they are accepted, there is no form of oppression so wicked but that it will defend itself beneath some color of legality and justice. History is full of examples showing what a seedbed of crime, what a pest and calamity, this system has been for states. Hatreds are excited in the breasts of the slaves, and the masters are kept in a state of suspicion and perpetual dread; the slaves prepare to avenge themselves with the torches of the incendiary, and the masters continue the task of oppression with greater cruelty. States are disturbed alternately by the number of the slaves and by the violence of the masters, and so are easily overthrown; hence, in a word, come riots and seditions, pillage and fire. The greater part of humanity were toiling in this abyss of misery, and were the more to be pitied because they were sunk in the darkness of superstition, when in the fullness of time and by the designs of God, light shone down upon the world, and the merits of Christ the Redeemer were poured out upon mankind. By that means they were lifted out of the slough and the distress of slavery, and recalled and brought back from the terrible bondage of sin to their high dignity as the sons of God. Thus, the Apostles, in the early days of the Church, among other precepts for a devout life taught and laid down the doctrine which more than once occurs in the Epistles of St. Paul addressed to those newly baptized: “For you are all the children of God by faith, in Jesus Christ. For as many of you as have been baptized in Christ, have put on Christ. There is neither Jew, nor Greek; there is neither bond, nor free; there is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.” “Where there is neither Gentile nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free. But Christ is all and in all.” “For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether bond or free; and in one Spirit we have all been made to drink.” Golden words, indeed, noble and wholesome lessons, whereby its old dignity is given back and with increase to the human race, and men of whatever land or tongue or class are bound

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together and joined in the strong bonds of brotherly kinship. Those things St. Paul, with that Christian charity with which he was filled, learned from the very heart of Him who, with much surpassing goodness, gave Himself to be the brother of us all, and in His own person, without omitting or excepting any one, so ennobled men that they might become participators in the divine nature. Through this Christian charity the various races of men were drawn together under the divine guidance in such a wonderful way that they blossomed into a new state of hope and public happiness; as with the progress of time and events and the constant labor of the Church the various nations were able to gather together, Christian and free, organized anew after the manner of a family. From the beginning the Church spared no pains to make the Christian people, in a matter of such high importance, accept and firmly hold the true teachings of Christ and the Apostles. And now through the new Adam, who is Christ, there is established a brotherly union between man and man, and people and people; just as in the order of nature they all have a common origin, so in the order which is above nature they all have one and the same origin in salvation and faith; all alike are called to be the adopted sons of God and the Father, who has paid the self-same ransom for us all; we are all members of the same body, all are allowed to partake of the same divine banquet, and offered to us all are the blessings of divine grace and of eternal life. Having established these principles as beginnings and foundations, the Church, like a tender mother, went on to try to find some alleviation for the sorrows and the disgrace of the life of the slave; with this end in view she clearly defined and strongly enforced the rights and mutual duties of masters and slaves as they are laid down in the letters of the Apostles. It was in these words that the Princes of the Apostles admonished the slaves they had admitted to the fold of Christ. “Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward.” “Servants, be obedient to them that are your lords according to the flesh, with fear and trembling in the simplicity of your heart, as to Christ. Not serving to the eye, but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart. With a good will serving as to the Lord, and not to men. Knowing that whatsoever good thing any man shall do, the same shall he receive from the Lord, whether he be bond or free.” St. Paul says the same to Timothy: “Whosoever are servants under the yoke, let them count their masters worthy of all honor; lest the name of the Lord and his doctrine be blasphemed. But they that have believing masters, let them not despise them because they are brethren, but serve them the rather, because they are faithful and beloved, who are partakers of the benefit. These things teach and exhort.” In like manner he commanded Titus to teach servants “to be obedient to their masters, in all things pleasing, not gainsaying. Not defrauding, but in all things showing good fidelity, that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things. Those first disciples of the Christian faith very well understood that this brotherly equality of all men in Christ ought in no way to diminish or detract from the


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respect, honor, faithfulness, and other duties due to those placed above them. From this many good results followed, so that duties became at once more certain of being performed, and lighter and pleasanter to do, and at the same time more fruitful in obtaining the glory of heaven. Thus, they treated their masters with reverence and honor as men clothed in the authority of Him from whom comes all power. Among these disciples the motive of action was not the fear of punishment or any enlightened prudence or the promptings of utility, but a consciousness of duty and the force of charity. On the other hand, masters were wisely counseled by the Apostle to treat their slaves with consideration in return for their services: “And you, masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatenings; knowing that the Lord both of them and you is in heaven, and there is not respect of persons with Him.” They were also told to remember that the slave had no reason to regret his lot, seeing that he is “the freeman of the Lord,” nor the freeman, seeing that he is “the bondman of Christ,” to feel proud, and to give his commands with haughtiness. It was impressed upon masters that they ought to recognize in their slaves their fellow men, and respect them accordingly, recognizing that by nature they were not different from themselves, that by religion and in relation to the majesty of their common Lord all were equal. These precepts, so well calculated to introduce harmony among the various parts of domestic society, were practiced by the Apostles themselves. Specially remarkable is the case of St. Paul when he exerted himself in behalf of Onesimus, the fugitive of Philemon, with whom, when he returned him to his master, he sent this loving recommendation: “And do thou receive him as my own bowels, not now as a servant, but instead of a servant a most dear brother . . . And if he have wronged thee in anything, or is in thy debt, put that to my account.” Whoever compare the pagan and the Christian attitude toward slavery will easily come to the conclusion that the one was marked by great cruelty and wickedness, and the other by great gentleness and humanity, nor will it be possible to deprive the Church of the credit due to her as the instrument of this happy change. And this becomes still more apparent when we consider carefully how tenderly and with what prudence the Church has cut out and destroyed this dreadful curse of slavery. She has deprecated any precipitate action in securing the manumission and liberation of the slaves, because that would have entailed tumults and wrought injury, as well to the slaves themselves as to the commonwealth, but with singular wisdom she has seen that the minds of the slaves should be instructed through her discipline in the Christian faith, and with baptism should acquire habits suitable to the Christian life. Therefore, when, amid the slave multitude whom she has numbered among her children, some, led astray by some hope of liberty, have had recourse to violence and sedition, the Church has always condemned these unlawful efforts and opposed them, and through her ministers has applied the remedy of patience. She taught the slaves to feel that, by virtue of the light of holy faith, and the character they received from Christ, they enjoyed a dignity which placed them above

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their heathen lords, but that they were bound the more strictly by the Author and Founder of their faith Himself never to set themselves against these, or even to be wanting in the reverence and obedience due to them. Knowing themselves as the chosen ones of the Kingdom of God, and endowed with the freedom of His children, and called to the good things that are not of this life, they were able to work on without being cast down by the sorrows and troubles of this passing world, but with eyes and hearts turned to heaven were consoled and strengthened in their holy resolutions. St. Peter was addressing himself specially to slaves when he wrote: “For this is thanks-worthy, if for conscience towards God a man endure sorrows, suffering wrongfully. For unto this you are called; because Christ also suffered for us, leaving you an example that you should follow his steps.” The credit for this solicitude joined with moderation, which in such a wonderful way adorns the divine powers of the Church, is increased by the marvelous and unconquerable courage with which she was able to inspire and sustain so many poor slaves. It was a wonderful sight to behold those who, in their obedience and the patience with which they submitted to every task, were such an example to their masters, refusing to let themselves be persuaded to prefer the wicked commands of those above them to the holy law of God, and even giving up their lives in the most cruel tortures with unconquered hearts and unclouded brows. The pages of Eusebius keep alive for us the memory of the unshaken constancy of the virgin Potamiana, who, rather than consent to gratify the lusts of her master, fearlessly accepted death, and sealed her faithfulness to Jesus Christ with her blood. Many other admirable examples abound of slaves, who, for their souls’ sake and to keep their faith with God, have resisted their masters to the death. History has no case to show of Christian slaves for any other cause setting themselves in opposition to their masters of joining in conspiracies against the State. Thence, peace and quiet times having been restored to the Church, the holy Fathers made a wise and admirable exposition of the apostolic precepts concerning the fraternal unanimity which should exist between Christians, and with a like charity extended it to the advantage of slaves, striving to point out that the rights of masters extended lawfully indeed over the works of their slaves, but that their power did not extend to using horrible cruelties against their persons. St. Chrysostom stands pre-eminent among the Greeks, who often treats of this subject, and affirms with exulting mind and tongue that slavery, in the old meaning of the word, had at that time disappeared through the beneficence of the Christian faith, so that it both seemed, and was, a word without any meaning among the disciples of the Lord. For Christ indeed (so he sums up his argument), when in His great mercy to us He wiped away the sin contracted by our birth, at the same time healed the manifold corruptions of human society; so that, as death itself by His means has laid aside its terrors and become a peaceful passing away to a happy life, so also has slavery been banished. Do not, then, call any Christian man a slave, unless, indeed,


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he is in bondage again to sin; they are altogether brethren who are born again and received in Christ Jesus. Our advantages flow from the new birth and adoption into the household of God, not from the eminence of our race; our dignity arises from the praise of our truth, not of our blood. But in order that that kind of evangelical brotherhood may have more fruit, it is necessary that in the actions of our ordinary life there should appear a willing interchange of kindnesses and good offices, so that slaves should be esteemed of nearly equal account with the rest of our household and friends, and that the master of the house should supply them, not only with what is necessary for their life and food, but also all necessary safeguards of religious training. Finally, from the marked address of Paul to Philemon, bidding grace and peace “to the church which is in thy house,” the precept should be held in respect equally by Christian masters and servants, that they who have an intercommunion of faith should also have an intercommunion of charity. Of the Latin authors, we worthily and justly call to mind St. Ambrose, who so earnestly inquired into all that was necessary in this cause, and so clearly ascribes what is due to each kind of man according to the laws of Christianity, that no one has ever achieved it better, whose sentiments, it is unnecessary to say, fully and perfectly coincide with those of St. Chrysostom. These things were, as is evident, most justly and usefully laid down; but more, the chief point is that they have been observed wholly and religiously from the earliest times wherever the profession of the Christian faith has flourished. Unless this had been the case, that excellent defender of religion, Lactantius, could not have maintained it so confidently, as though a witness of it. “Should any one say: Are there not among you some poor, some rich, some slaves, some who are masters; is there no difference between different persons? I answer: There is none, nor is there any other cause why we call each other by the name of brother than that we consider ourselves to be equals; first, when we measure all human things, not by the body but by the spirit, although their corporal condition may be different from ours, yet in spirit they are not slaves to us, but we esteem and call them brethren, fellow workers in religion.” The care of the Church extended to the protection of slaves, and without interruption tended carefully to one object, that they should finally be restored to freedom, which would greatly conduce to their eternal welfare. That the event happily responded to these efforts, the annals of sacred antiquity afford abundant proof. Noble matrons, rendered illustrious by the praises of St. Jerome, themselves afforded great aid in carrying this matter into effect; so that as Salvian relates, in Christian families, even though not very rich, it often happened that the slaves were freed by a generous manumission. But, also, St. Clement long before praised that excellent work of charity by which some Christians became slaves, by an exchange of persons, because they could in no other way liberate those who were in bondage. Wherefore, in addition to the fact that the act of manumission began to take place in churches as an act of piety, the Church ordered it to be proposed to the faithful

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when about to make their wills, as a work very pleasing to God and of great merit and value with Him. Therefore, those precepts of manumission to the heir were introduced with the words, “for the love of God, for the welfare or benefit of my soul.” Neither was anything grudged as the price of the captives, gifts dedicated to God were sold, consecrated gold and silver melted down, the ornaments and gifts of the basilicas alienated, as, indeed, was done more than once by Ambrose, Augustine, Hilary, Eligius, Patrick, and many other holy men. Moreover, the Roman Pontiffs, who have always acted, as history truly relates, as the protectors of the weak and helpers of the oppressed, have done their best for slaves. St. Gregory himself set at liberty as many as possible, and in the Roman Council of 597 desired those to receive their freedom who were anxious to enter the monastic state. Hadrian I maintained that slaves could freely enter into matrimony even without their masters’ consent. It was clearly ordered by Alexander III in the year 1167 to the Moorish King of Valencia that he should not make a slave of any Christian, because no one was a slave by the law of nature, all men having been made free by God. Innocent III, in the year 1190, at the prayer of its founders, John de Matha and Felix of Valois, approved and established the Order of the Most Holy Trinity for Redeeming Christians who had fallen into the power of the Turks. At a later date, Honorius III, and, afterwards, Gregory IX, duly approved the Order of St. Mary of Help, founded for a similar purpose, which Peter Nolasco had established, and which included the severe rule that its religious should give themselves up as slaves in the place of Christians taken captive by tyrants, if it should be necessary in order to redeem them. The same St. Gregory passed a decree, which was a far greater support of liberty, that it was unlawful to sell slaves to the Church, and he further added an exhortation to the faithful that, as a punishment for their faults, they should give their slaves to God and His saints as an act of expiation. There are also many other good deeds of the Church in the same behalf. For she, indeed, was accustomed by severe penalties to defend slaves from the savage anger and cruel injuries of their masters. To those upon whom the hand of violence had rested, she was accustomed to open her sacred temples as places of refuge to receive the free men into her good faith, and to restrain those by censure who dared by evil inducements to lead a man back again into slavery. In the same way she was still more favorable to the freedom of the slaves whom, by any means she held as her own, according to times and places; when she laid down either that those should be released by the bishops from every bond of slavery who had shown themselves during a certain time of trial of praiseworthy honesty of life, or when she easily permitted the bishops of their own will to declare those belonging to them free. It must also be ascribed to the compassion and virtue of the Church that somewhat of the pressure of civil law upon slaves was remitted, and, as far as it was brought about, that the milder alleviations of Gregory the Great, having been incorporated in the written law of nations, became of force. That, however, was done principally by the


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agency of Charlemagne, who included them in his “Capitularia,” as Gratian afterwards did in his “Decretum.” Finally, monuments, laws, institutions, through a continuous series of ages, teach and splendidly demonstrate the great love of the Church toward slaves, whose miserable condition she never left destitute of protection, and always to the best of her power alleviated. Therefore, sufficient praise or thanks can never be returned to the Catholic Church, the banisher of slavery and causer of true liberty, fraternity, and equality among men, since she has merited it by the prosperity of nations, through the very great beneficence of Christ our Redeemer. Toward the end of the fifteenth century, at which time the base stain of slavery having been nearly blotted out from among Christian nations, States were anxious to stand firmly in evangelical liberty, and also to increase their empire, this apostolic see took the greatest care that the evil germs of such depravity should nowhere revive. She therefore directed her provident vigilance to the newly discovered regions of Africa, Asia, and America; for a report had reached her that the leaders of those expeditions, Christians though they were, were wickedly making use of their arms and ingenuity for establishing and imposing slavery on these innocent nations. Indeed, since the crude nature of the soil which they had to overcome, nor less the wealth of metals which had to be extracted by digging, required very hard work, unjust and inhuman plans were entered into. For a certain traffic was begun, slaves being transported for that purpose from Ethiopia, which, at that time, under the name of “La tratta dei Negri,” too much occupied those colonies. An oppression of the indigenous inhabitants (who are collectively called Indians), much the same as slavery, followed with a like maltreatment. When Pius II had become assured of these matters without delay, on October 7, 1462, he gave a letter to the bishop of the place in which he reproved and condemned such wickedness. Some time afterwards, Leo X lent, as far as he could, his good offices and authority to the kings of both Portugal and Spain, who took care to radically extirpate that abuse, opposed alike to religion, humanity, and justice. Nevertheless, that evil having grown strong, remained there, its impure cause, the unquenchable desire of gain, remaining. Then Paul III, anxious with a fatherly love as to the condition of the Indians and of the Moorish slaves, came to this last determination, that in open day, and, as it were, in the sight of all nations, he declared that they all had a just and natural right of a threefold character, namely, that each one of them was master of his own person, that they could live together under their own laws, and that they could acquire and hold property for themselves. More than this, having sent letters to the Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo, he pronounced an interdict and deprival of sacraments against those who acted contrary to the aforesaid decree, reserving to the Roman Pontiff the power of absolving them. With the same forethought and constancy, other Pontiffs at a later period, as Urban VIII, Benedict XIV, and Pius VII, showed themselves strong asserters of liberty for the Indians and Moors and those who were even as yet not instructed in

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the Christian faith. The last, moreover, at the Council of the confederated Princes of Europe, held at Vienna, called their attention in common to this point, that that traffic in Negroes, of which We have spoken before, and which had now ceased in many places, should be thoroughly rooted out. Gregory XVI also severely censured those neglecting the duties of humanity and the laws, and restored the decrees and statutory penalties of the apostolic see, and left no means untried that foreign nations, also, following the kindliness of the Europeans, should cease from and abhor the disgrace and brutality of slavery. But it has turned out most fortunately for Us that We have received the congratulations of the chief princes and rulers of public affairs for having obtained, thanks to Our constant pleadings, some satisfaction for the long-continued and most just complaints of nature and religion. We have, however, in Our mind, in a matter of the same kind, another care which gives Us no light anxiety and presses upon Our solicitude. This shameful trading in men has, in-deed, ceased to take place by sea, but on land is carried on to too great an extent and too barbarously, and that especially in some parts of Africa. For, it having been perversely laid down by the Mohammedans that Ethiopians and men of similar nations are very little superior to brute beasts, it is easy to see and shudder at the perfidy and cruelty of man. Suddenly, like plunderers making an attack, they invade the tribes of Ethiopians, fearing no such thing; they rush into their villages, houses, and huts; they lay waste, destroy, and seize everything; they lead away from thence the men, women, and children, easily captured and bound, so that they may drag them away by force for their shameful traffic. These hateful expeditions are made into Egypt, Zanzibar, and partly also into the Sudan, as though so many stations. Men, bound with chains are forced to take long journeys, ill supplied with food, under the frequent use of the lash; those who are too weak to undergo this are killed; those who are strong enough go like a flock with a crowd of others to be sold and to be passed over to a brutal and shameless purchaser. But whoever is thus sold and given up is exposed to what is a miserable rending asunder of wives, children, and parents, and is driven by him into whose power he falls into a hard and indescribable slavery; nor can he refuse to conform to the religious rites of Mahomet. These things We have received not long since with the greatest bitterness of feeling from some who have been eyewitnesses, though tearful ones, of that kind of infamy and misery; with these, moreover, what has been related lately by the explorers in equatorial Africa entirely coincides. It is indeed manifest, by their testimony and word, that each year 400,000 Africans are usually thus sold like cattle, about half of whom, wearied out by the roughness of the tracks, fall down and perish there, so that, sad to relate, those traveling through such places see the pathway strewn with the remains of bones. Who would not be moved by the thought of such miseries. We, indeed, who are holding the place of Christ, the loving Liberator and Redeemer of all mankind, and who so rejoice in the many and glorious good deeds of the Church to all who are afflicted, can scarcely express how great is Our commiseration for those unhappy


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nations, with what fullness of charity We open Our arms to them, how ardently We desire to be able to afford them every alleviation and support, with the hope, that, having cast off the slavery of superstition as well as the slavery of man, they may at length serve the one true God under the gentle yoke of Christ, partakers with Us of the divine inheritance. Would that all who hold high positions in authority and power, or who desire the rights of nations and of humanity to be held sacred, or who earnestly devote themselves to the interests of the Catholic religion, would all, everywhere acting on Our exhortations and wishes, strive together to repress, forbid, and put an end to that kind of traffic, than which nothing is more base and wicked. In the meantime, while by a more strenuous application of ingenuity and labor new roads are being made, and new commercial enterprises undertaken in the lands of Africa, let apostolic men endeavor to find out how they can best secure the safety and liberty of slaves. They will obtain success in this matter in no other way than if, strengthened by divine grace, they give themselves up to spreading our most holy faith and daily caring for it, whose distinguishing fruit is that it wonderfully flavors and develops the liberty “with which Christ made us free.” We therefore advise them to look, as if into a mirror of apostolic virtue, at the life and works of St. Peter Claver, to whom We have lately added a crown of glory. Let them look at him who for fully forty years gave himself up to minister with the greatest constancy in his labors, to a most miserable assembly of Moorish slaves; truly he ought to be called the apostle of those whose constant servant he professed himself and gave himself up to be. If they endeavor to take to themselves and reflect the charity and patience of such a man, they will shine indeed as worthy ministers of salvation, authors of consolation, messengers of peace, who, by God’s help, may turn solicitude, desolation, and fierceness into the most joyful fertility of religion and civilization. And now, venerable brethren, Our thoughts and letters desire to turn to you that We may again announce to you and again share with you the exceeding joy which We feel on account of the determinations which have been publicly entered into in that empire with regard to slavery. If, indeed, it seemed to Us a good, happy, and propitious event, that it was provided and insisted upon by law that whoever were still in the condition of slaves ought to be admitted to the status and rights of free men, so also it conforms and increases Our hope of future acts which will be the cause of joy, both in civil and religious matters. Thus the name of the Empire of Brazil will be justly held in honor and praise among the most civilized nations, and the name of its august emperor will likewise be esteemed, whose excellent speech is on record, that he desired nothing more ardently than that every vestige of slavery should be speedily obliterated from his territories. But, truly, until those precepts of the laws are carried into effect, earnestly endeavor, We beseech you, by all means, and press on as much as possible the accomplishment of this affair, which no light difficulties hinder. Through your means let it be brought to pass that masters and slaves may mutually agree with the highest goodwill and best good faith, nor let

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there be any transgression of clemency or justice, but, whatever things have to be carried out, let all be done lawfully, temperately, and in a Christian manner. It is, however, chiefly to be wished that this may be prosperously accomplished, which all desire, that slavery may be banished and blotted out without any injury to divine or human rights, with no political agitation, and so with the solid benefit of the slaves themselves, for whose sake it is undertaken. To each one of these, whether they have already been made free or are about to become so, We address with a pastoral intention and fatherly mind a few salutary cautions culled from the words of the great Apostle of the Gentiles. Let them, then, endeavor piously and constantly to retain grateful memory and feeling towards those by whose council and exertion they were set at liberty. Let them never show themselves unworthy of so great a gift nor ever confound liberty with license; but let them use it as becomes well ordered citizens for the industry of an active life, for the benefit and advantage both of their family and of the State. To respect and increase the dignity of their princes, to obey the magistrates, to be obedient to the laws, these and similar duties let them diligently fulfill, under the influence, not so much of fear as of religion; let them also restrain and keep in subjection envy of another’s wealth or position, which unfortunately daily distresses so many of those in inferior positions, and present so many incitements of rebellion against security of order and peace. Content with their state and lot, let them think nothing dearer, let them desire nothing more ardently than the good things of the heavenly kingdom by whose grace they have been brought to the light and redeemed by Christ; let them feel piously towards God who is their Lord and Liberator; let them love Him, with all their power; let them keep His commandments with all their might; let them rejoice in being sons of His spouse, the Holy Church; let them labor to be as good as possible, and as much as they can let them carefully return His love. Do you also, Venerable Brethren, be constant in showing and urging on the freedmen these same doctrines; that, that which is Our chief prayer, and at the same time ought to be yours and that of all good people, religion, amongst the first, may ever feel that she has gained the most ample fruits of that liberty which has been obtained wherever that empire extends. But that that may happily take place, We beg and implore the full grace of God and motherly aid of the Immaculate Virgin. As a foretaste of heavenly gifts and witness of Our fatherly good will towards you, Venerable Brethren, your clergy, and all your people, We lovingly impart the apostolic blessing. Given at St. Peter’s, in Rome, the fifth day of May, 1888, the eleventh of Our Pontificate. Source: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_ 05051888_in-plurimis_en.html.

Declaration of the General Act of the Brussels Conference (1890)

The Powers assembled in Conference at Brussels, who have ratified the General Act of Berlin of the 26th February, 1885, or who have acceded thereto. After having drawn up and signed in concert, in the General Act of this day, a collection of measures intended to put an end to the Negro Slave Trade by land as well as by sea, and to improve the moral and material conditions of existence of the native races; Taking into consideration that the execution of the provisions which they have adopted with this object imposes on some of them who have possessions or Protectorates in the conventional basin of the Congo obligations which absolutely demand new resources to meet them; Have agreed to make the following Declaration:— The Signatory or adhering Powers who have possessions or Protectorates in the said conventional basin of the Congo are authorised, so far as they require any authority for the purpose, to establish therein duties on imported goods, the scale of which shall not exceed a rate equivalent to 10 per cent “ad valorem” at the port of entry, always excepting spirituous liquors, which are regulated by the provisions of Chapter VI of the General Act of this day. After the signature of the said General Act, negotiations shall be opened between the Powers who have ratified the General Act of Berlin or who have adhered to it, in order to draw up, within the maximum limit of 10 per cent “ad valorem” the conditions of the Customs system to be established in the conventional basin of the Congo. Nevertheless, it is understood: 1.

That no differential treatment or transit duty shall be established.

2.

That in applying the Customs system which may be agreed upon, each Power will undertake to simplify formalities as much as possible, and to facilitate trade operations;

3.

That the arrangement resulting from the proposed negotiations shall remain in force for fifteen years from the signature of the present Declaration.

At the expiration of this period, and failing a fresh Agreement, the Contracting Powers shall return to the conditions provided for by Article IV of the General Act 671

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Declaration of the General Act of the Brussels Conference (1890)

of Berlin, retaining the power of imposing duties up to a maximum of 10 per cent, upon goods imported into the conventional basin of the Congo. The ratifications of the present Declaration shall be exchanged at the same time as those of the General Act of this day. In witness whereof the undersigned Plenipotentiaries have drawn up the present Declaration, and have affixed thereto their seals. Done at Brussels, the 2nd day of the month of July, 1890. [L.S.] Vivian, John Kirk, Alvensleben, Goehring, R. Khevenhueller, Lambermont, E. Banning, Schack de Brockdorff, J. G. de Aguera, Edm. van Eetvelde, A. van Malgeghem, A. Bouree, G. Cogordan, F de Renzis, T. Catalani, L. Gericke, Henrique de Macedo, Pereiro Coutinho, L. Ouroussoff, Martens, Burenstam, Et. Caratheodory. Source: Wack, Henry Wellington. The Story of the Congo Free State. New York and London: Putnam, 1905, 552–553.

Rerum Novarum: On Capital and Labor (1891)

Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII, May 15, 1891 To Our Venerable Brethren the Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, Bishops, and other Ordinaries of Places having Peace and Communion with the Apostolic See. That the spirit of revolutionary change, which has long been disturbing the nations of the world, should have passed beyond the sphere of politics and made its influence felt in the cognate sphere of practical economics is not surprising. The elements of the conflict now raging are unmistakable, in the vast expansion of industrial pursuits and the marvelous discoveries of science; in the changed relations between masters and workmen; in the enormous fortunes of some few individuals, and the utter poverty of the masses; in the increased self-reliance and closer mutual combination of the working classes; as also, finally, in the prevailing moral degeneracy. The momentous gravity of the state of things now obtaining fills every mind with painful apprehension; wise men are discussing it; practical men are proposing schemes; popular meetings, legislatures, and rulers of nations are all busied with it—actually there is no question which has taken a deeper hold on the public mind. Therefore, venerable brethren, as on former occasions when it seemed opportune to refute false teaching, We have addressed you in the interests of the Church and of the common weal, and have issued letters bearing on political power, human liberty, the Christian constitution of the State, and like matters, so have We thought it expedient now to speak on the condition of the working classes. It is a subject on which We have already touched more than once, incidentally. But in the present letter, the responsibility of the apostolic office urges Us to treat the question of set purpose and in detail, in order that no misapprehension may exist as to the principles which truth and justice dictate for its settlement. The discussion is not easy, nor is it void of danger. It is no easy matter to define the relative rights and mutual duties of the rich and of the poor, of capital and of labor. And the danger lies in this, that crafty agitators are intent on making use of these differences of opinion to pervert men’s judgments and to stir up the people to revolt. In any case we clearly see, and on this there is general agreement, that some opportune remedy must be found quickly for the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class: for the ancient workingmen’s

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guilds were abolished in the last century, and no other protective organization took their place. Public institutions and the laws set aside the ancient religion. Hence, by degrees it has come to pass that working men have been surrendered, isolated and helpless, to the hardheartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition. The mischief has been increased by rapacious usury, which, although more than once condemned by the Church, is nevertheless, under a different guise, but with like injustice, still practiced by covetous and grasping men. To this must be added that the hiring of labor and the conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of comparatively few; so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself. To remedy these wrongs the socialists, working on the poor man’s envy of the rich, are striving to do away with private property, and contend that individual possessions should become the common property of all, to be administered by the State or by municipal bodies. They hold that by thus transferring property from private individuals to the community, the present mischievous state of things will be set to rights, inasmuch as each citizen will then get his fair share of whatever there is to enjoy. But their contentions are so clearly powerless to end the controversy that were they carried into effect the working man himself would be among the first to suffer. They are, moreover, emphatically unjust, for they would rob the lawful possessor, distort the functions of the State, and create utter confusion in the community. It is surely undeniable that, when a man engages in remunerative labor, the impelling reason and motive of his work is to obtain property, and thereafter to hold it as his very own. If one man hires out to another his strength or skill, he does so for the purpose of receiving in return what is necessary for the satisfaction of his needs; he therefore expressly intends to acquire a right full and real, not only to the remuneration, but also to the disposal of such remuneration, just as he pleases. Thus, if he lives sparingly, saves money, and, for greater security, invests his savings in land, the land, in such case, is only his wages under another form; and, consequently, a working man’s little estate thus purchased should be as completely at his full disposal as are the wages he receives for his labor. But it is precisely in such power of disposal that ownership obtains, whether the property consist of land or chattels. Socialists, therefore, by endeavoring to transfer the possessions of individuals to the community at large, strike at the interests of every wage-earner, since they would deprive him of the liberty of disposing of his wages, and thereby of all hope and possibility of increasing his resources and of bettering his condition in life. What is of far greater moment, however, is the fact that the remedy they propose is manifestly against justice. For, every man has by nature the right to possess property as his own. This is one of the chief points of distinction between man and the animal creation, for the brute has no power of self-direction, but is governed by two


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main instincts, which keep his powers on the alert, impel him to develop them in a fitting manner, and stimulate and determine him to action without any power of choice. One of these instincts is self-preservation, the other the propagation of the species. Both can attain their purpose by means of things which lie within range; beyond their verge the brute creation cannot go, for they are moved to action by their senses only, and in the special direction which these suggest. But with man it is wholly different. He possesses, on the one hand, the full perfection of the animal being, and hence enjoys at least as much as the rest of the animal kind, the fruition of things material. But animal nature, however perfect, is far from representing the human being in its completeness, and is in truth but humanity’s humble handmaid, made to serve and to obey. It is the mind, or reason, which is the predominant element in us who are human creatures; it is this which renders a human being human, and distinguishes him essentially from the brute. And on this very account—that man alone among the animal creation is endowed with reason—it must be within his right to possess things not merely for temporary and momentary use, as other living things do, but to have and to hold them in stable and permanent possession; he must have not only things that perish in the use, but those also which, though they have been reduced into use, continue for further use in after time. This becomes still more clearly evident if man’s nature be considered a little more deeply. For man, fathoming by his faculty of reason matters without number, linking the future with the present, and being master of his own acts, guides his ways under the eternal law and the power of God, whose providence governs all things. Wherefore, it is in his power to exercise his choice not only as to matters that regard his present welfare, but also about those which he deems may be for his advantage in time yet to come. Hence, man not only should possess the fruits of the earth, but also the very soil, inasmuch as from the produce of the earth he has to lay by provision for the future. Man’s needs do not die out, but forever recur; although satisfied today, they demand fresh supplies for tomorrow. Nature accordingly must have given to man a source that is stable and remaining always with him, from which he might look to draw continual supplies. And this stable condition of things he finds solely in the earth and its fruits. There is no need to bring in the State. Man precedes the State, and possesses, prior to the formation of any State, the right of providing for the substance of his body. The fact that God has given the earth for the use and enjoyment of the whole human race can in no way be a bar to the owning of private property. For God has granted the earth to mankind in general, not in the sense that all without distinction can deal with it as they like, but rather that no part of it was assigned to any one in particular, and that the limits of private possession have been left to be fixed by man’s own industry, and by the laws of individual races. Moreover, the earth, even though apportioned among private owners, ceases not thereby to minister to the needs of all, inasmuch as there is not one who does not sustain life from what the

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land produces. Those who do not possess the soil contribute their labor; hence, it may truly be said that all human subsistence is derived either from labor on one’s own land, or from some toil, some calling, which is paid for either in the produce of the land itself, or in that which is exchanged for what the land brings forth. Here, again, we have further proof that private ownership is in accordance with the law of nature. Truly, that which is required for the preservation of life, and for life’s well-being, is produced in great abundance from the soil, but not until man has brought it into cultivation and expended upon it his solicitude and skill. Now, when man thus turns the activity of his mind and the strength of his body toward procuring the fruits of nature, by such act he makes his own that portion of nature’s field which he cultivates—that portion on which he leaves, as it were, the impress of his personality; and it cannot but be just that he should possess that portion as his very own, and have a right to hold it without any one being justified in violating that right. So strong and convincing are these arguments that it seems amazing that some should now be setting up anew certain obsolete opinions in opposition to what is here laid down. They assert that it is right for private persons to have the use of the soil and its various fruits, but that it is unjust for any one to possess outright either the land on which he has built or the estate which he has brought under cultivation. But those who deny these rights do not perceive that they are defrauding man of what his own labor has produced. For the soil which is tilled and cultivated with toil and skill utterly changes its condition; it was wild before, now it is fruitful; was barren, but now brings forth in abundance. That which has thus altered and improved the land becomes so truly part of itself as to be in great measure indistinguishable and inseparable from it. Is it just that the fruit of a man’s own sweat and labor should be possessed and enjoyed by any one else? As effects follow their cause, so is it just and right that the results of labor should belong to those who have bestowed their labor. With reason, then, the common opinion of mankind, little affected by the few dissentients who have contended for the opposite view, has found in the careful study of nature, and in the laws of nature, the foundations of the division of property, and the practice of all ages has consecrated the principle of private ownership, as being pre-eminently in conformity with human nature, and as conducing in the most unmistakable manner to the peace and tranquility of human existence. The same principle is confirmed and enforced by the civil laws—laws which, so long as they are just, derive from the law of nature their binding force. The authority of the divine law adds its sanction, forbidding us in severest terms even to covet that which is another’s: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife; nor his house, nor his field, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is his.” The rights here spoken of, belonging to each individual man, are seen in much stronger light when considered in relation to man’s social and domestic obligations.


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In choosing a state of life, it is indisputable that all are at full liberty to follow the counsel of Jesus Christ as to observing virginity, or to bind themselves by the marriage tie. No human law can abolish the natural and original right of marriage, nor in any way limit the chief and principal purpose of marriage ordained by God’s authority from the beginning: “Increase and multiply.” Hence we have the family, the “society” of a man’s house—a society very small, one must admit, but none the less a true society, and one older than any State. Consequently, it has rights and duties peculiar to itself which are quite independent of the State. That right to property, therefore, which has been proved to belong naturally to individual persons, must in like wise belong to a man in his capacity of head of a family; nay, that right is all the stronger in proportion as the human person receives a wider extension in the family group. It is a most sacred law of nature that a father should provide food and all necessaries for those whom he has begotten; and, similarly, it is natural that he should wish that his children, who carry on, so to speak, and continue his personality, should be by him provided with all that is needful to enable them to keep themselves decently from want and misery amid the uncertainties of this mortal life. Now, in no other way can a father effect this except by the ownership of productive property, which he can transmit to his children by inheritance. A family, no less than a State, is, as We have said, a true society, governed by an authority peculiar to itself, that is to say, by the authority of the father. Provided, therefore, the limits which are prescribed by the very purposes for which it exists be not transgressed, the family has at least equal rights with the State in the choice and pursuit of the things needful to its preservation and its just liberty. We say, “at least equal rights”; for, inasmuch as the domestic household is antecedent, as well in idea as in fact, to the gathering of men into a community, the family must necessarily have rights and duties which are prior to those of the community, and founded more immediately in nature. If the citizens, if the families on entering into association and fellowship, were to experience hindrance in a commonwealth instead of help, and were to find their rights attacked instead of being upheld, society would rightly be an object of detestation rather than of desire. The contention, then, that the civil government should at its option intrude into and exercise intimate control over the family and the household is a great and pernicious error. True, if a family finds itself in exceeding distress, utterly deprived of the counsel of friends, and without any prospect of extricating itself, it is right that extreme necessity be met by public aid, since each family is a part of the commonwealth. In like manner, if within the precincts of the household there occur grave disturbance of mutual rights, public authority should intervene to force each party to yield to the other its proper due; for this is not to deprive citizens of their rights, but justly and properly to safeguard and strengthen them. But the rulers of the commonwealth must go no further; here, nature bids them stop. Paternal authority can be neither abolished nor absorbed by the State; for it has

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the same source as human life itself. “The child belongs to the father,” and is, as it were, the continuation of the father’s personality; and speaking strictly, the child takes its place in civil society, not of its own right, but in its quality as member of the family in which it is born. And for the very reason that “the child belongs to the father” it is, as St. Thomas Aquinas says, “before it attains the use of free will, under the power and the charge of its parents.” The socialists, therefore, in setting aside the parent and setting up a State supervision, act against natural justice, and destroy the structure of the home. And in addition to injustice, it is only too evident what an upset and disturbance there would be in all classes, and to how intolerable and hateful a slavery citizens would be subjected. The door would be thrown open to envy, to mutual invective, and to discord; the sources of wealth themselves would run dry, for no one would have any interest in exerting his talents or his industry; and that ideal equality about which they entertain pleasant dreams would be in reality the leveling down of all to a like condition of misery and degradation. Hence, it is clear that the main tenet of socialism, community of goods, must be utterly rejected, since it only injures those whom it would seem meant to benefit, is directly contrary to the natural rights of mankind, and would introduce confusion and disorder into the commonweal. The first and most fundamental principle, therefore, if one would undertake to alleviate the condition of the masses, must be the inviolability of private property. This being established, we proceed to show where the remedy sought for must be found. We approach the subject with confidence, and in the exercise of the rights which manifestly appertain to Us, for no practical solution of this question will be found apart from the intervention of religion and of the Church. It is We who are the chief guardian of religion and the chief dispenser of what pertains to the Church; and by keeping silence we would seem to neglect the duty incumbent on us. Doubtless, this most serious question demands the attention and the efforts of others besides ourselves—to wit, of the rulers of States, of employers of labor, of the wealthy, aye, of the working classes themselves, for whom We are pleading. But We affirm without hesitation that all the striving of men will be vain if they leave out the Church. It is the Church that insists, on the authority of the Gospel, upon those teachings whereby the conflict can be brought to an end, or rendered, at least, far less bitter; the Church uses her efforts not only to enlighten the mind, but to direct by her precepts the life and conduct of each and all; the Church improves and betters the condition of the working man by means of numerous organizations; does her best to enlist the services of all classes in discussing and endeavoring to further in the most practical way, the interests of the working classes; and considers that for this purpose recourse should be had, in due measure and degree, to the intervention of the law and of State authority.


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It must be first of all recognized that the condition of things inherent in human affairs must be borne with, for it is impossible to reduce civil society to one dead level. Socialists may in that intent do their utmost, but all striving against nature is in vain. There naturally exist among mankind manifold differences of the most important kind; people differ in capacity, skill, health, strength; and unequal fortune is a necessary result of unequal condition. Such inequality is far from being disadvantageous either to individuals or to the community. Social and public life can only be maintained by means of various kinds of capacity for business and the playing of many parts; and each man, as a rule, chooses the part which suits his own peculiar domestic condition. As regards bodily labor, even had man never fallen from the state of innocence, he would not have remained wholly idle; but that which would then have been his free choice and his delight became afterwards compulsory, and the painful expiation for his disobedience. “Cursed be the earth in thy work; in thy labor thou shalt eat of it all the days of thy life.” In like manner, the other pains and hardships of life will have no end or cessation on earth; for the consequences of sin are bitter and hard to bear, and they must accompany man so long as life lasts. To suffer and to endure, therefore, is the lot of humanity; let them strive as they may, no strength and no artifice will ever succeed in banishing from human life the ills and troubles which beset it. If any there are who pretend differently—who hold out to a hard-pressed people the boon of freedom from pain and trouble, an undisturbed repose, and constant enjoyment—they delude the people and impose upon them, and their lying promises will only one day bring forth evils worse than the present. Nothing is more useful than to look upon the world as it really is, and at the same time to seek elsewhere, as We have said, for the solace to its troubles. The great mistake made in regard to the matter now under consideration is to take up with the notion that class is naturally hostile to class, and that the wealthy and the working men are intended by nature to live in mutual conflict. So irrational and so false is this view that the direct contrary is the truth. Just as the symmetry of the human frame is the result of the suitable arrangement of the different parts of the body, so in a State is it ordained by nature that these two classes should dwell in harmony and agreement, so as to maintain the balance of the body politic. Each needs the other: capital cannot do without labor, nor labor without capital. Mutual agreement results in the beauty of good order, while perpetual conflict necessarily produces confusion and savage barbarity. Now, in preventing such strife as this, and in uprooting it, the efficacy of Christian institutions is marvelous and manifold. First of all, there is no intermediary more powerful than religion (whereof the Church is the interpreter and guardian) in drawing the rich and the working class together, by reminding each of its duties to the other, and especially of the obligations of justice.

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Of these duties, the following bind the proletarian and the worker: fully and faithfully to perform the work which has been freely and equitably agreed upon; never to injure the property, nor to outrage the person, of an employer; never to resort to violence in defending their own cause, nor to engage in riot or disorder; and to have nothing to do with men of evil principles, who work upon the people with artful promises of great results, and excite foolish hopes which usually end in useless regrets and grievous loss. The following duties bind the wealthy owner and the employer: not to look upon their work people as their bondsmen, but to respect in every man his dignity as a person ennobled by Christian character. They are reminded that, according to natural reason and Christian philosophy, working for gain is creditable, not shameful, to a man, since it enables him to earn an honorable livelihood; but to misuse men as though they were things in the pursuit of gain, or to value them solely for their physical powers—that is truly shameful and inhuman. Again justice demands that, in dealing with the working man, religion and the good of his soul must be kept in mind. Hence, the employer is bound to see that the worker has time for his religious duties; that he be not exposed to corrupting influences and dangerous occasions; and that he be not led away to neglect his home and family, or to squander his earnings. Furthermore, the employer must never tax his work people beyond their strength, or employ them in work unsuited to their sex and age. His great and principal duty is to give every one what is just. Doubtless, before deciding whether wages are fair, many things have to be considered; but wealthy owners and all masters of labor should be mindful of this—that to exercise pressure upon the indigent and the destitute for the sake of gain, and to gather one’s profit out of the need of another, is condemned by all laws, human and divine. To defraud any one of wages that are his due is a great crime which cries to the avenging anger of Heaven. “Behold, the hire of the laborers . . . which by fraud has been kept back by you, crieth; and the cry of them hath entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabbath.” Lastly, the rich must religiously refrain from cutting down the workmen’s earnings, whether by force, by fraud, or by usurious dealing; and with all the greater reason because the laboring man is, as a rule, weak and unprotected, and because his slender means should in proportion to their scantiness be accounted sacred. Were these precepts carefully obeyed and followed out, would they not be sufficient of themselves to keep under all strife and all its causes? But the Church, with Jesus Christ as her Master and Guide, aims higher still. She lays down precepts yet more perfect, and tries to bind class to class in friendliness and good feeling. The things of earth cannot be understood or valued aright without taking into consideration the life to come, the life that will know no death. Exclude the idea of futurity, and forthwith the very notion of what is good and right would perish; nay, the whole scheme of the universe would become a dark and unfathomable mystery. The great truth which we learn from nature herself is also the grand


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Christian dogma on which religion rests as on its foundation—that, when we have given up this present life, then shall we really begin to live. God has not created us for the perishable and transitory things of earth, but for things heavenly and everlasting; He has given us this world as a place of exile, and not as our abiding place. As for riches and the other things which men call good and desirable, whether we have them in abundance, or are lacking in them—so far as eternal happiness is concerned—it makes no difference; the only important thing is to use them aright. Jesus Christ, when He redeemed us with plentiful redemption, took not away the pains and sorrows which in such large proportion are woven together in the web of our mortal life. He transformed them into motives of virtue and occasions of merit; and no man can hope for eternal reward unless he follow in the blood-stained footprints of his Savior. “If we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him.” Christ’s labors and sufferings, accepted of His own free will, have marvelously sweetened all suffering and all labor. And not only by His example, but by His grace and by the hope held forth of everlasting recompense, has He made pain and grief more easy to endure; “for that which is at present momentary and light of our tribulation, worketh for us above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory.” Therefore, those whom fortune favors are warned that riches do not bring freedom from sorrow and are of no avail for eternal happiness, but rather are obstacles; that the rich should tremble at the threatenings of Jesus Christ—threatenings so unwonted in the mouth of our Lord—and that a most strict account must be given to the Supreme Judge for all we possess. The chief and most excellent rule for the right use of money is one the heathen philosophers hinted at, but which the Church has traced out clearly, and has not only made known to men’s minds, but has impressed upon their lives. It rests on the principle that it is one thing to have a right to the possession of money and another to have a right to use money as one ills. Private ownership, as we have seen, is the natural right of man, and to exercise that right, especially as members of society, is not only lawful, but absolutely necessary. “It is lawful,” says St. Thomas Aquinas, “for a man to hold private property; and it is also necessary for the carrying on of human existence.” But if the question be asked: How must one’s possessions be used?—the Church replies without hesitation in the words of the same holy Doctor: “Man should not consider his material possessions as his own, but as common to all, so as to share them without hesitation when others are in need. Whence the apostle saith, ‘Command the rich of this world . . . to offer with no stint, to apportion largely’.” True, no one is commanded to distribute to others that which is required for his own needs and those of his household; nor even to give away what is reasonably required to keep up becomingly his condition in life, “for no one ought to live other than becomingly.” But, when what necessity demands has been supplied, and one’s standing fairly taken thought for, it becomes a duty to give to the indigent out of what remains over. “Of that which remaineth, give alms.” It is duty, not of justice (save in extreme cases),

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but of Christian charity—a duty not enforced by human law. But the laws and judgments of men must yield place to the laws and judgments of Christ the true God, who in many ways urges on His followers the practice of almsgiving—“It is more blessed to give than to receive”; and who will count a kindness done or refused to the poor as done or refused to Himself—“As long as you did it to one of My least brethren you did it to Me.” To sum up, then, what has been said: Whoever has received from the divine bounty a large share of temporal blessings, whether they be external and material, or gifts of the mind, has received them for the purpose of using them for the perfecting of his own nature, and, at the same time, that he may employ them, as the steward of God’s providence, for the benefit of others. “He that hath a talent,” said St. Gregory the Great, “let him see that he hide it not; he that hath abundance, let him quicken himself to mercy and generosity; he that hath art and skill, let him do his best to share the use and the utility hereof with his neighbor.” As for those who possess not the gifts of fortune, they are taught by the Church that in God’s sight poverty is no disgrace, and that there is nothing to be ashamed of in earning their bread by labor. This is enforced by what we see in Christ Himself, who, “whereas He was rich, for our sakes became poor”; and who, being the Son of God, and God Himself, chose to seem and to be considered the son of a carpenter— nay, did not disdain to spend a great part of His life as a carpenter Himself. “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?” From contemplation of this divine Model, it is more easy to understand that the true worth and nobility of man lie in his moral qualities, that is, in virtue; that virtue is, moreover, the common inheritance of men, equally within the reach of high and low, rich and poor; and that virtue, and virtue alone, wherever found, will be followed by the rewards of everlasting happiness. Nay, God Himself seems to incline rather to those who suffer misfortune; for Jesus Christ calls the poor “blessed”; He lovingly invites those in labor and grief to come to Him for solace; and He displays the tenderest charity toward the lowly and the oppressed. These reflections cannot fail to keep down the pride of the well-to-do, and to give heart to the unfortunate; to move the former to be generous and the latter to be moderate in their desires. Thus, the separation which pride would set up tends to disappear, nor will it be difficult to make rich and poor join hands in friendly concord. But, if Christian precepts prevail, the respective classes will not only be united in the bonds of friendship, but also in those of brotherly love. For they will understand and feel that all men are children of the same common Father, who is God; that all have alike the same last end, which is God Himself, who alone can make either men or angels absolutely and perfectly happy; that each and all are redeemed and made sons of God, by Jesus Christ, “the first-born among many brethren”; that the blessings of nature and the gifts of grace belong to the whole human race in common, and that from none except the unworthy is withheld the inheritance of the kingdom of Heaven. “If sons, heirs also; heirs indeed of God, and co-heirs with Christ.”


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Such is the scheme of duties and of rights which is shown forth to the world by the Gospel. Would it not seem that, were society penetrated with ideas like these, strife must quickly cease? But the Church, not content with pointing out the remedy, also applies it. For the Church does her utmost to teach and to train men, and to educate them and by the intermediary of her bishops and clergy diffuses her salutary teachings far and wide. She strives to influence the mind and the heart so that all may willingly yield themselves to be formed and guided by the commandments of God. It is precisely in this fundamental and momentous matter, on which everything depends that the Church possesses a power peculiarly her own. The instruments which she employs are given to her by Jesus Christ Himself for the very purpose of reaching the hearts of men, and drive their efficiency from God. They alone can reach the innermost heart and conscience, and bring men to act from a motive of duty, to control their passions and appetites, to love God and their fellow men with a love that is outstanding and of the highest degree and to break down courageously every barrier which blocks the way to virtue. On this subject we need but recall for one moment the examples recorded in history. Of these facts there cannot be any shadow of doubt: for instance, that civil society was renovated in every part by Christian institutions; that in the strength of that renewal the human race was lifted up to better things—nay, that it was brought back from death to life, and to so excellent a life that nothing more perfect had been known before, or will come to be known in the ages that have yet to be. Of this beneficent transformation Jesus Christ was at once the first cause and the final end; as from Him all came, so to Him was all to be brought back. For, when the human race, by the light of the Gospel message, came to know the grand mystery of the Incarnation of the Word and the redemption of man, at once the life of Jesus Christ, God and Man, pervaded every race and nation, and interpenetrated them with His faith, His precepts, and His laws. And if human society is to be healed now, in no other way can it be healed save by a return to Christian life and Christian institutions. When a society is perishing, the wholesome advice to give to those who would restore it is to call it to the principles from which it sprang; for the purpose and perfection of an association is to aim at and to attain that for which it is formed, and its efforts should be put in motion and inspired by the end and object which originally gave it being. Hence, to fall away from its primal constitution implies disease; to go back to it, recovery. And this may be asserted with utmost truth both of the whole body of the commonwealth and of that class of its citizens—by far the great majority—who get their living by their labor. Neither must it be supposed that the solicitude of the Church is so preoccupied with the spiritual concerns of her children as to neglect their temporal and earthly interests. Her desire is that the poor, for example, should rise above poverty and wretchedness, and better their condition in life; and for this she makes a strong

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endeavor. By the fact that she calls men to virtue and forms them to its practice she promotes this in no slight degree. Christian morality, when adequately and completely practiced, leads of itself to temporal prosperity, for it merits the blessing of that God who is the source of all blessings; it powerfully restrains the greed of possession and the thirst for pleasure—twin plagues, which too often make a man who is void of self-restraint miserable in the midst of abundance; it makes men supply for the lack of means through economy, teaching them to be content with frugal living, and further, keeping them out of the reach of those vices which devour not small incomes merely, but large fortunes, and dissipate many a goodly inheritance. The Church, moreover, intervenes directly in behalf of the poor, by setting on foot and maintaining many associations which she knows to be efficient for the relief of poverty. Herein, again, she has always succeeded so well as to have even extorted the praise of her enemies. Such was the ardor of brotherly love among the earliest Christians that numbers of those who were in better circumstances despoiled themselves of their possessions in order to relieve their brethren; whence “neither was there any one needy among them.” To the order of deacons, instituted in that very intent, was committed by the Apostles the charge of the daily doles; and the Apostle Paul, though burdened with the solicitude of all the churches, hesitated not to undertake laborious journeys in order to carry the alms of the faithful to the poorer Christians. Tertullian calls these contributions, given voluntarily by Christians in their assemblies, deposits of piety, because, to cite his own words, they were employed “in feeding the needy, in burying them, in support of youths and maidens destitute of means and deprived of their parents, in the care of the aged, and the relief of the shipwrecked.” Thus, by degrees, came into existence the patrimony which the Church has guarded with religious care as the inheritance of the poor. Nay, in order to spare them the shame of begging, the Church has provided aid for the needy. The common Mother of rich and poor has aroused everywhere the heroism of charity, and has established congregations of religious and many other useful institutions for help and mercy, so that hardly any kind of suffering could exist which was not afforded relief. At the present day many there are who, like the heathen of old, seek to blame and condemn the Church for such eminent charity. They would substitute in its stead a system of relief organized by the State. But no human expedients will ever make up for the devotedness and self-sacrifice of Christian charity. Charity, as a virtue, pertains to the Church; for virtue it is not, unless it be drawn from the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ; and whosoever turns his back on the Church cannot be near to Christ. It cannot, however, be doubted that to attain the purpose we are treating of, not only the Church, but all human agencies, must concur. All who are concerned in the matter should be of one mind and according to their ability act together. It is


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with this, as with providence that governs the world; the results of causes do not usually take place save where all the causes cooperate. It is sufficient, therefore, to inquire what part the State should play in the work of remedy and relief. By the State we here understand, not the particular form of government prevailing in this or that nation, but the State as rightly apprehended; that is to say, any government conformable in its institutions to right reason and natural law, and to those dictates of the divine wisdom which we have expounded in the encyclical On the Christian Constitution of the State. The foremost duty, therefore, of the rulers of the State should be to make sure that the laws and institutions, the general character and administration of the commonwealth, shall be such as of themselves to realize public well-being and private prosperity. This is the proper scope of wise statesmanship and is the work of the rulers. Now a State chiefly prospers and thrives through moral rule, well-regulated family life, respect for religion and justice, the moderation and fair imposing of public taxes, the progress of the arts and of trade, the abundant yield of the land—through everything, in fact, which makes the citizens better and happier. Hereby, then, it lies in the power of a ruler to benefit every class in the State, and amongst the rest to promote to the utmost the interests of the poor; and this in virtue of his office, and without being open to suspicion of undue interference—since it is the province of the commonwealth to serve the common good. And the more that is done for the benefit of the working classes by the general laws of the country, the less need will there be to seek for special means to relieve them. There is another and deeper consideration which must not be lost sight of. As regards the State, the interests of all, whether high or low, are equal. The members of the working classes are citizens by nature and by the same right as the rich; they are real parts, living the life which makes up, through the family, the body of the commonwealth; and it need hardly be said that they are in every city very largely in the majority. It would be irrational to neglect one portion of the citizens and favor another, and therefore the public administration must duly and solicitously provide for the welfare and the comfort of the working classes; otherwise, that law of justice will be violated which ordains that each man shall have his due. To cite the wise words of St. Thomas Aquinas: “As the part and the whole are in a certain sense identical, so that which belongs to the whole in a sense belongs to the part.” Among the many and grave duties of rulers who would do their best for the people, the first and chief is to act with strict justice—with that justice which is called distributive—toward each and every class alike. But although all citizens, without exception, can and ought to contribute to that common good in which individuals share so advantageously to themselves, yet it should not be supposed that all can contribute in the like way and to the same extent. No matter what changes may occur in forms of government, there will ever

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be differences and inequalities of condition in the State. Society cannot exist or be conceived of without them. Some there must be who devote themselves to the work of the commonwealth, who make the laws or administer justice, or whose advice and authority govern the nation in times of peace, and defend it in war. Such men clearly occupy the foremost place in the State, and should be held in highest estimation, for their work concerns most nearly and effectively the general interests of the community. Those who labor at a trade or calling do not promote the general welfare in such measure as this, but they benefit the nation, if less directly, in a most important manner. We have insisted, it is true, that, since the end of society is to make men better, the chief good that society can possess is virtue. Nevertheless, it is the business of a well constituted body politic to see to the provision of those material and external helps “the use of which is necessary to virtuous action.” Now, for the provision of such commodities, the labor of the working class—the exercise of their skill, and the employment of their strength, in the cultivation of the land, and in the workshops of trade—is especially responsible and quite indispensable. Indeed, their co-operation is in this respect so important that it may be truly said that it is only by the labor of working men that States grow rich. Justice, therefore, demands that the interests of the working classes should be carefully watched over by the administration, so that they who contribute so largely to the advantage of the community may themselves share in the benefits which they create—that being housed, clothed, and bodily fit, they may find their life less hard and more endurable. It follows that whatever shall appear to prove conducive to the well-being of those who work should obtain favorable consideration. There is no fear that solicitude of this kind will be harmful to any interest; on the contrary, it will be to the advantage of all, for it cannot but be good for the commonwealth to shield from misery those on whom it so largely depends for the things that it needs. We have said that the State must not absorb the individual or the family; both should be allowed free and untrammeled action so far as is consistent with the common good and the interest of others. Rulers should, nevertheless, anxiously safeguard the community and all its members; the community, because the conservation thereof is so emphatically the business of the supreme power, that the safety of the commonwealth is not only the first law, but it is a government’s whole reason of existence; and the members, because both philosophy and the Gospel concur in laying down that the object of the government of the State should be, not the advantage of the ruler, but the benefit of those over whom he is placed. As the power to rule comes from God, and is, as it were, a participation in His, the highest of all sovereignties, it should be exercised as the power of God is exercised—with a fatherly solicitude which not only guides the whole, but reaches also individuals. Whenever the general interest or any particular class suffers, or is threatened with harm, which can in no other way be met or prevented, the public authority must step in to deal with it. Now, it is to the interest of the community, as well as


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of the individual, that peace and good order should be maintained; that all things should be carried on in accordance with God’s laws and those of nature; that the discipline of family life should be observed and that religion should be obeyed; that a high standard of morality should prevail, both in public and private life; that justice should be held sacred and that no one should injure another with impunity; that the members of the commonwealth should grow up to man’s estate strong and robust, and capable, if need be, of guarding and defending their country. If by a strike of workers or concerted interruption of work there should be imminent danger of disturbance to the public peace; or if circumstances were such as that among the working class the ties of family life were relaxed; if religion were found to suffer through the workers not having time and opportunity afforded them to practice its duties; if in workshops and factories there were danger to morals through the mixing of the sexes or from other harmful occasions of evil; or if employers laid burdens upon their workmen which were unjust, or degraded them with conditions repugnant to their dignity as human beings; finally, if health were endangered by excessive labor, or by work unsuited to sex or age—in such cases, there can be no question but that, within certain limits, it would be right to invoke the aid and authority of the law. The limits must be determined by the nature of the occasion which calls for the law’s interference—the principle being that the law must not undertake more, nor proceed further, than is required for the remedy of the evil or the removal of the mischief. Rights must be religiously respected wherever they exist, and it is the duty of the public authority to prevent and to punish injury, and to protect every one in the possession of his own. Still, when there is question of defending the rights of individuals, the poor and badly off have a claim to especial consideration. The richer class have many ways of shielding themselves, and stand less in need of help from the State; whereas the mass of the poor have no resources of their own to fall back upon, and must chiefly depend upon the assistance of the State. And it is for this reason that wage-earners, since they mostly belong in the mass of the needy, should be specially cared for and protected by the government. Here, however, it is expedient to bring under special notice certain matters of moment. First of all, there is the duty of safeguarding private property by legal enactment and protection. Most of all it is essential, where the passion of greed is so strong, to keep the populace within the line of duty; for, if all may justly strive to better their condition, neither justice nor the common good allows any individual to seize upon that which belongs to another, or, under the futile and shallow pretext of equality, to lay violent hands on other people’s possessions. Most true it is that by far the larger part of the workers prefer to better themselves by honest labor rather than by doing any wrong to others. But there are not a few who are imbued with evil principles and eager for revolutionary change, whose main purpose is to stir up disorder and incite their fellows to acts of violence. The authority of the law should

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intervene to put restraint upon such firebrands, to save the working classes from being led astray by their maneuvers, and to protect lawful owners from spoliation. When work people have recourse to a strike and become voluntarily idle, it is frequently because the hours of labor are too long, or the work too hard, or because they consider their wages insufficient. The grave inconvenience of this not uncommon occurrence should be obviated by public remedial measures; for such paralyzing of labor not only affects the masters and their work people alike, but is extremely injurious to trade and to the general interests of the public; moreover, on such occasions, violence and disorder are generally not far distant, and thus it frequently happens that the public peace is imperiled. The laws should forestall and prevent such troubles from arising; they should lend their influence and authority to the removal in good time of the causes which lead to conflicts between employers and employed. The working man, too, has interests in which he should be protected by the State; and first of all, there are the interests of his soul. Life on earth, however good and desirable in itself, is not the final purpose for which man is created; it is only the way and the means to that attainment of truth and that love of goodness in which the full life of the soul consists. It is the soul which is made after the image and likeness of God; it is in the soul that the sovereignty resides in virtue whereof man is commanded to rule the creatures below him and to use all the earth and the ocean for his profit and advantage. “Fill the earth and subdue it; and rule over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and all living creatures that move upon the earth.” In this respect all men are equal; there is here no difference between rich and poor, master and servant, ruler and ruled, “for the same is Lord over all.” No man may with impunity outrage that human dignity which God Himself treats with great reverence, nor stand in the way of that higher life which is the preparation of the eternal life of heaven. Nay, more; no man has in this matter power over himself. To consent to any treatment which is calculated to defeat the end and purpose of his being is beyond his right; he cannot give up his soul to servitude, for it is not man’s own rights which are here in question, but the rights of God, the most sacred and inviolable of rights. From this follows the obligation of the cessation from work and labor on Sundays and certain holy days. The rest from labor is not to be understood as mere giving way to idleness; much less must it be an occasion for spending money and for vicious indulgence, as many would have it to be; but it should be rest from labor, hallowed by religion. Rest (combined with religious observances) disposes man to forget for a while the business of his everyday life, to turn his thoughts to things heavenly, and to the worship which he so strictly owes to the eternal Godhead. It is this, above all, which is the reason and motive of Sunday rest; a rest sanctioned by God’s great law of the Ancient Covenant—“Remember thou keep holy the Sab-


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bath day,” and taught to the world by His own mysterious “rest” after the creation of man: “He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.” If we turn not to things external and material, the first thing of all to secure is to save unfortunate working people from the cruelty of men of greed, who use human beings as mere instruments for money-making. It is neither just nor human so to grind men down with excessive labor as to stupefy their minds and wear out their bodies. Man’s powers, like his general nature, are limited, and beyond these limits he cannot go. His strength is developed and increased by use and exercise, but only on condition of due intermission and proper rest. Daily labor, therefore, should be so regulated as not to be protracted over longer hours than strength admits. How many and how long the intervals of rest should be must depend on the nature of the work, on circumstances of time and place, and on the health and strength of the workman. Those who work in mines and quarries, and extract coal, stone and metals from the bowels of the earth, should have shorter hours in proportion as their labor is more severe and trying to health. Then, again, the season of the year should be taken into account; for not infrequently a kind of labor is easy at one time which at another is intolerable or exceedingly difficult. Finally, work which is quite suitable for a strong man cannot rightly be required from a woman or a child. And, in regard to children, great care should be taken not to place them in workshops and factories until their bodies and minds are sufficiently developed. For, just as very rough weather destroys the buds of spring, so does too early an experience of life’s hard toil blight the young promise of a child’s faculties, and render any true education impossible. Women, again, are not suited for certain occupations; a woman is by nature fitted for home-work, and it is that which is best adapted at once to preserve her modesty and to promote the good bringing up of children and the wellbeing of the family. As a general principle it may be laid down that a workman ought to have leisure and rest proportionate to the wear and tear of his strength, for waste of strength must be repaired by cessation from hard work. In all agreements between masters and work people there is always the condition expressed or understood that there should be allowed proper rest for soul and body. To agree in any other sense would be against what is right and just; for it can never be just or right to require on the one side, or to promise on the other, the giving up of those duties which a man owes to his God and to himself. We now approach a subject of great importance, and one in respect of which, if extremes are to be avoided, right notions are absolutely necessary. Wages, as we are told, are regulated by free consent, and therefore the employer, when he pays what was agreed upon, has done his part and seemingly is not called upon to do anything beyond. The only way, it is said, in which injustice might occur would be if the master refused to pay the whole of the wages, or if the workman should not complete the work undertaken; in such cases the public authority should intervene, to see that each obtains his due, but not under any other circumstances.

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To this kind of argument a fair-minded man will not easily or entirely assent; it is not complete, for there are important considerations which it leaves out of account altogether. To labor is to exert oneself for the sake of procuring what is necessary for the various purposes of life, and chief of all for self-preservation. “In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread.” Hence, a man’s labor necessarily bears two notes or characters. First of all, it is personal, inasmuch as the force which acts is bound up with the personality and is the exclusive property of him who acts, and, further, was given to him for his advantage. Secondly, man’s labor is necessary; for without the result of labor a man cannot live, and self-preservation is a law of nature, which it is wrong to disobey. Now, were we to consider labor merely in so far as it is personal, doubtless it would be within the workman’s right to accept any rate of wages whatsoever; for in the same way as he is free to work or not, so is he free to accept a small wage or even none at all. But our conclusion must be very different if, together with the personal element in a man’s work, we consider the fact that work is also necessary for him to live: these two aspects of his work are separable in thought, but not in reality. The preservation of life is the bounden duty of one and all, and to be wanting therein is a crime. It necessarily follows that each one has a natural right to procure what is required in order to live, and the poor can procure that in no other way than by what they can earn through their work. Let the working man and the employer make free agreements, and in particular let them agree freely as to the wages; nevertheless, there underlies a dictate of natural justice more imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man, namely, that wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well behaved wageearner. If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accept harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice. In these and similar questions, however—such as, for example, the hours of labor in different trades, the sanitary precautions to be observed in factories and workshops, etc.—in order to supersede undue interference on the part of the State, especially as circumstances, times, and localities differ so widely, it is advisable that recourse be had to societies or boards such as We shall mention presently, or to some other mode of safeguarding the interests of the wage-earners; the State being appealed to, should circumstances require, for its sanction and protection. If a workman’s wages be sufficient to enable him comfortably to support himself, his wife, and his children, he will find it easy, if he be a sensible man, to practice thrift, and he will not fail, by cutting down expenses, to put by some little savings and thus secure a modest source of income. Nature itself would urge him to this. We have seen that this great labor question cannot be solved save by assuming as a principle that private ownership must be held sacred and inviolable. The law, therefore, should favor ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many as possible of the people to become owners.


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Many excellent results will follow from this; and, first of all, property will certainly become more equitably divided. For, the result of civil change and revolution has been to divide cities into two classes separated by a wide chasm. On the one side there is the party which holds power because it holds wealth; which has in its grasp the whole of labor and trade; which manipulates for its own benefit and its own purposes all the sources of supply, and which is not without influence even in the administration of the commonwealth. On the other side there is the needy and powerless multitude, sick and sore in spirit and ever ready for disturbance. If working people can be encouraged to look forward to obtaining a share in the land, the consequence will be that the gulf between vast wealth and sheer poverty will be bridged over, and the respective classes will be brought nearer to one another. A further consequence will result in the great abundance of the fruits of the earth. Men always work harder and more readily when they work on that which belongs to them; nay, they learn to love the very soil that yields in response to the labor of their hands, not only food to eat, but an abundance of good things for themselves and those that are dear to them. That such a spirit of willing labor would add to the produce of the earth and to the wealth of the community is self-evident. And a third advantage would spring from this: men would cling to the country in which they were born, for no one would exchange his country for a foreign land if his own afforded him the means of living a decent and happy life. These three important benefits, however, can be reckoned on only provided that a man’s means be not drained and exhausted by excessive taxation. The right to possess private property is derived from nature, not from man; and the State has the right to control its use in the interests of the public good alone, but by no means to absorb it altogether. The State would therefore be unjust and cruel if under the name of taxation it were to deprive the private owner of more than is fair. In the last place, employers and workmen may of themselves effect much, in the matter We are treating, by means of such associations and organizations as afford opportune aid to those who are in distress, and which draw the two classes more closely together. Among these may be enumerated societies for mutual help; various benevolent foundations established by private persons to provide for the workman, and for his widow or his orphans, in case of sudden calamity, in sickness, and in the event of death; and institutions for the welfare of boys and girls, young people, and those more advanced in years. The most important of all are workingmen’s unions, for these virtually include all the rest. History attests what excellent results were brought about by the artificers’ guilds of olden times. They were the means of affording not only many advantages to the workmen, but in no small degree of promoting the advancement of art, as numerous monuments remain to bear witness. Such unions should be suited to the requirements of this our age—an age of wider education, of different habits, and of far more numerous requirements in daily life. It is gratifying to know that

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there are actually in existence not a few associations of this nature, consisting either of workmen alone, or of workmen and employers together, but it were greatly to be desired that they should become more numerous and more efficient. We have spoken of them more than once, yet it will be well to explain here how notably they are needed, to show that they exist of their own right, and what should be their organization and their mode of action. The consciousness of his own weakness urges man to call in aid from without. We read in the pages of holy Writ: “It is better that two should be together than one; for they have the advantage of their society. If one fall he shall be supported by the other. Woe to him that is alone, for when he falleth he hath none to lift him up.” And further: “A brother that is helped by his brother is like a strong city.” It is this natural impulse which binds men together in civil society; and it is likewise this which leads them to join together in associations which are, it is true, lesser and not independent societies, but, nevertheless, real societies. These lesser societies and the larger society differ in many respects, because their immediate purpose and aim are different. Civil society exists for the common good, and hence is concerned with the interests of all in general, albeit with individual interests also in their due place and degree. It is therefore called a public society, because by its agency, as St. Thomas of Aquinas says, “Men establish relations in common with one another in the setting up of a commonwealth.” But societies which are formed in the bosom of the commonwealth are styled private, and rightly so, since their immediate purpose is the private advantage of the associates. “Now, a private society,” says St. Thomas again, “is one which is formed for the purpose of carrying out private objects; as when two or three enter into partnership with the view of trading in common.” Private societies, then, although they exist within the body politic, and are severally part of the commonwealth, cannot nevertheless be absolutely, and as such, prohibited by public authority. For, to enter into a “society” of this kind is the natural right of man; and the State has for its office to protect natural rights, not to destroy them; and, if it forbid its citizens to form associations, it contradicts the very principle of its own existence, for both they and it exist in virtue of the like principle, namely, the natural tendency of man to dwell in society. There are occasions, doubtless, when it is fitting that the law should intervene to prevent certain associations, as when men join together for purposes which are evidently bad, unlawful, or dangerous to the State. In such cases, public authority may justly forbid the formation of such associations, and may dissolve them if they already exist. But every precaution should be taken not to violate the rights of individuals and not to impose unreasonable regulations under pretense of public benefit. For laws only bind when they are in accordance with right reason, and, hence, with the eternal law of God. And here we are reminded of the confraternities, societies, and religious orders which have arisen by the Church’s authority and the piety of Christian men. The


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annals of every nation down to our own days bear witness to what they have accomplished for the human race. It is indisputable that on grounds of reason alone such associations, being perfectly blameless in their objects, possess the sanction of the law of nature. In their religious aspect they claim rightly to be responsible to the Church alone. The rulers of the State accordingly have no rights over them, nor can they claim any share in their control; on the contrary, it is the duty of the State to respect and cherish them, and, if need be, to defend them from attack. It is notorious that a very different course has been followed, more especially in our own times. In many places the State authorities have laid violent hands on these communities, and committed manifold injustice against them; it has placed them under control of the civil law, taken away their rights as corporate bodies, and despoiled them of their property, in such property the Church had her rights, each member of the body had his or her rights, and there were also the rights of those who had founded or endowed these communities for a definite purpose, and, furthermore, of those for whose benefit and assistance they had their being. Therefore We cannot refrain from complaining of such spoliation as unjust and fraught with evil results; and with all the more reason do We complain because, at the very time when the law proclaims that association is free to all, We see that Catholic societies, however peaceful and useful, are hampered in every way, whereas the utmost liberty is conceded to individuals whose purposes are at once hurtful to religion and dangerous to the commonwealth. Associations of every kind, and especially those of working men, are now far more common than heretofore. As regards many of these there is no need at present to inquire whence they spring, what are their objects, or what the means they imply. Now, there is a good deal of evidence in favor of the opinion that many of these societies are in the hands of secret leaders, and are managed on principles illaccording with Christianity and the public well-being; and that they do their utmost to get within their grasp the whole field of labor, and force working men either to join them or to starve. Under these circumstances Christian working men must do one of two things: either join associations in which their religion will be exposed to peril, or form associations among themselves and unite their forces so as to shake off courageously the yoke of so unrighteous and intolerable an oppression. No one who does not wish to expose man’s chief good to extreme risk will for a moment hesitate to say that the second alternative should by all means be adopted. Those Catholics are worthy of all praise—and they are not a few—who, understanding what the times require, have striven, by various undertakings and endeavors, to better the condition of the working class by rightful means. They have taken up the cause of the working man, and have spared no efforts to better the condition both of families and individuals; to infuse a spirit of equity into the mutual relations of employers and employed; to keep before the eyes of both classes the precepts of duty and the laws of the Gospel—that Gospel which, by inculcating self-restraint,

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keeps men within the bounds of moderation, and tends to establish harmony among the divergent interests and the various classes which compose the body politic. It is with such ends in view that we see men of eminence, meeting together for discussion, for the promotion of concerted action, and for practical work. Others, again, strive to unite working men of various grades into associations, help them with their advice and means, and enable them to obtain fitting and profitable employment. The bishops, on their part, bestow their ready goodwill and support; and with their approval and guidance many members of the clergy, both secular and regular, labor assiduously in behalf of the spiritual interest of the members of such associations. And there are not wanting Catholics blessed with affluence, who have, as it were, cast in their lot with the wage-earners, and who have spent large sums in founding and widely spreading benefit and insurance societies, by means of which the working man may without difficulty acquire through his labor not only many present advantages, but also the certainty of honorable support in days to come. How greatly such manifold and earnest activity has benefited the community at large is too well known to require Us to dwell upon it. We find therein grounds for most cheering hope in the future, provided always that the associations We have described continue to grow and spread, and are well and wisely administered. The State should watch over these societies of citizens banded together in accordance with their rights, but it should not thrust itself into their peculiar concerns and their organization, for things move and live by the spirit inspiring them, and may be killed by the rough grasp of a hand from without. In order that an association may be carried on with unity of purpose and harmony of action, its administration and government should be firm and wise. All such societies, being free to exist, have the further right to adopt such rules and organization as may best conduce to the attainment of their respective objects. We do not judge it possible to enter into minute particulars touching the subject of organization; this must depend on national character, on practice and experience, on the nature and aim of the work to be done, on the scope of the various trades and employments, and on other circumstances of fact and of time—all of which should be carefully considered. To sum up, then, We may lay it down as a general and lasting law that working men’s associations should be so organized and governed as to furnish the best and most suitable means for attaining what is aimed at, that is to say, for helping each individual member to better his condition to the utmost in body, soul, and property. It is clear that they must pay special and chief attention to the duties of religion and morality, and that social betterment should have this chiefly in view; otherwise they would lose wholly their special character, and end by becoming little better than those societies which take no account whatever of religion. What advantage can it be to a working man to obtain by means of a society material well-being, if he endangers his soul for lack of spiritual food? “What doth it profit a man, if he gain the


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whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?” This, as our Lord teaches, is the mark or character that distinguishes the Christian from the heathen. “After all these things do the heathen seek . . . Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His justice: and all these things shall be added unto you.” Let our associations, then, look first and before all things to God; let religious instruction have therein the foremost place, each one being carefully taught what is his duty to God, what he has to believe, what to hope for, and how he is to work out his salvation; and let all be warned and strengthened with special care against wrong principles and false teaching. Let the working man be urged and led to the worship of God, to the earnest practice of religion, and, among other things, to the keeping holy of Sundays and holy days. Let him learn to reverence and love holy Church, the common Mother of us all; and hence to obey the precepts of the Church, and to frequent the sacraments, since they are the means ordained by God for obtaining forgiveness of sin and for leading a holy life. The foundations of the organization being thus laid in religion, We next proceed to make clear the relations of the members one to another, in order that they may live together in concord and go forward prosperously and with good results. The offices and charges of the society should be apportioned for the good of the society itself, and in such mode that difference in degree or standing should not interfere with unanimity and good-will. It is most important that office bearers be appointed with due prudence and discretion, and each one’s charge carefully mapped out, in order that no members may suffer harm. The common funds must be administered with strict honesty, in such a way that a member may receive assistance in proportion to his necessities. The rights and duties of the employers, as compared with the rights and duties of the employed, ought to be the subject of careful consideration. Should it happen that either a master or a workman believes himself injured, nothing would be more desirable than that a committee should be appointed, composed of reliable and capable members of the association, whose duty would be, conformably with the rules of the association, to settle the dispute. Among the several purposes of a society, one should be to try to arrange for a continuous supply of work at all times and seasons; as well as to create a fund out of which the members may be effectually helped in their needs, not only in the cases of accident, but also in sickness, old age, and distress. Such rules and regulations, if willingly obeyed by all, will sufficiently ensure the well-being of the less well-to-do; whilst such mutual associations among Catholics are certain to be productive in no small degree of prosperity to the State. Is it not rash to conjecture the future from the past. Age gives way to age, but the events of one century are wonderfully like those of another, for they are directed by the providence of God, who overrules the course of history in accordance with His purposes in creating the race of man. We are told that it was cast as a reproach on the Christians in the early ages of the Church that the greater number among them had to live by begging or by labor. Yet, destitute though they were of wealth and

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influence, they ended by winning over to their side the favor of the rich and the good-will of the powerful. They showed themselves industrious, hard-working, assiduous, and peaceful, ruled by justice, and, above all, bound together in brotherly love. In presence of such mode of life and such example, prejudice gave way, the tongue of malevolence was silenced, and the lying legends of ancient superstition little by little yielded to Christian truth. At the time being, the condition of the working classes is the pressing question of the hour, and nothing can be of higher interest to all classes of the State than that it should be rightly and reasonably settled. But it will be easy for Christian working men to solve it aright if they will form associations, choose wise guides, and follow on the path which with so much advantage to themselves and the common weal was trodden by their fathers before them. Prejudice, it is true, is mighty, and so is the greed of money; but if the sense of what is just and rightful be not deliberately stifled, their .fellow citizens are sure to be won over to a kindly feeling towards men whom they see to be in earnest as regards their work and who prefer so unmistakably right dealing to mere lucre, and the sacredness of duty to every other consideration. And further great advantage would result from the state of things We are describing; there would exist so much more ground for hope, and likelihood, even, of recalling to a sense of their duty those working men who have either given up their faith altogether, or whose lives are at variance with its precepts. Such men feel in most cases that they have been fooled by empty promises and deceived by false pretexts. They cannot but perceive that their grasping employers too often treat them with great inhumanity and hardly care for them outside the profit their labor brings; and if they belong to any union, it is probably one in which there exists, instead of charity and love, that intestine strife which ever accompanies poverty when unresigned and unsustained by religion. Broken in spirit and worn down in body, how many of them would gladly free themselves from such galling bondage! But human respect, or the dread of starvation, makes them tremble to take the step. To such as these Catholic associations are of incalculable service, by helping them out of their difficulties, inviting them to companionship and receiving the returning wanderers to a haven where they may securely find repose. We have now laid before you, venerable brethren, both who are the persons and what are the means whereby this most arduous question must be solved. Every one should put his hand to the work which falls to his share, and that at once and straightway, lest the evil which is already so great become through delay absolutely beyond remedy. Those who rule the commonwealths should avail themselves of the laws and institutions of the country; masters and wealthy owners must be mindful of their duty; the working class, whose interests are at stake, should make every lawful and proper effort; and since religion alone, as We said at the beginning, can avail to destroy the evil at its root, all men should rest persuaded that that main


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thing needful is to re-establish Christian morals, apart from which all the plans and devices of the wisest will prove of little avail. In regard to the Church, her cooperation will never be found lacking, be the time or the occasion what it may; and she will intervene with all the greater effect in proportion as her liberty of action is the more unfettered. Let this be carefully taken to heart by those whose office it is to safeguard the public welfare. Every minister of holy religion must bring to the struggle the full energy of his mind and all his power of endurance. Moved by your authority, venerable brethren, and quickened by your example, they should never cease to urge upon men of every class, upon the highplaced as well as the lowly, the Gospel doctrines of Christian life; by every means in their power they must strive to secure the good of the people; and above all must earnestly cherish in themselves, and try to arouse in others, charity, the mistress and the queen of virtues. For, the happy results we all long for must be chiefly brought about by the plenteous outpouring of charity; of that true Christian charity which is the fulfilling of the whole Gospel law, which is always ready to sacrifice itself for others’ sake, and is man’s surest antidote against worldly pride and immoderate love of self; that charity whose office is described and whose Godlike features are outlined by the Apostle St. Paul in these words: “Charity is patient, is kind, . . . seeketh not her own, . . . suffereth all things, . . . endureth all things.” On each of you, venerable brethren, and on your clergy and people, as an earnest of God’s mercy and a mark of Our affection, we lovingly in the Lord bestow the apostolic benediction. Given at St. Peter’s in Rome, the fifteenth day of May, 1891, the fourteenth year of Our Pontificate. Source: Available at: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/ hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum_en.html.

International Agreement for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic (1904) Article 2—Each of the Governments undertakes to have a watch kept, especially in railway stations, ports of embarkation, and en route, for persons in charge of women and girls destined for an immoral life. With this object instructions shall be given to the officials, and all other qualified persons, to obtain, within legal limits, all information likely to lead to the detection of criminal traffic. The arrival of persons who clearly appear to be the principals, accomplices in, or victims of, such traffic shall be notified, when it occurs, either to the authorities of the place of destination, or to the diplomatic or consular agents interested, or to any other competent authorities. Article 3—The Governments undertake, when the case arises, and within legal limits, to have the declarations taken of women or girls of foreign nationality who are prostitutes, in order to establish their identity and civil status, and to discover who has caused them to leave their country. The information obtained shall be communicated to the authorities of the country of origin of the said women and girls, with a view to their eventual repatriation. The Governments undertake, within legal limits, and as far as can be done, to entrust temporarily, and with a view to their eventual repatriation, the victims of a criminal traffic when destitute to public or private charitable institutions, or to private individuals offering the necessary security. . . . The Governments also undertake, within legal limits, and as far as possible, to send back to their country of origin those women and girls who desire it. Article 4—Where the woman or girl to be repatriated cannot herself repay the cost of transfer, and has neither husband, relations, nor guardian to pay for her, the cost of repatriation shall be borne by the country where she is in residence as far as the nearest frontier or port of embarkation in the direction of the country of origin, and by the country of origin as regards the rest. Source: 35 Stat. 1979, 1 L.N.T.S. 83, May 18, 1904, entered into force July 18, 1905.

698

Mann Act (1910)

CHAP. 395—An Act to further regulate interstate commerce and foreign commerce by prohibiting the transportation therein for immoral purposes of women and girls, and for other purposes. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the term “interstate commerce,” as used in this Act, shall include transportation from any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, and the term “foreign commerce,” as used in this Act, shall include transportation from any State or Territory or the District of Columbia to any foreign country and from any foreign country to any State or Territory or the District of Columbia. SEC. 2. That any person who shall knowingly transport or cause to be transported, or aid or assist in obtaining transportation for, or in transporting, in interstate or foreign commerce, or in any Territory or in the District of Columbia, any woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose, or with the intent and purpose to induce, entice, or compel such woman or girl to become a prostitute or to give herself up to debauchery, or to engage in any other immoral practice; or who shall knowingly procure or obtain, or cause to be procured or obtained, or aid or assist in procuring or obtaining, any ticket or tickets, or any form of transportation or evidence of the right thereto, to be used by any woman or girl in interstate or foreign commerce, or in any Territory or the District of Columbia, in going to any place for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose, or with the intent or purpose on the part of such person to induce, entice, or compel her to give herself up to the practice of prostitution, or to give herself up to the practice of debauchery, or any other immoral practice, whereby any such woman or girl shall be transported in interstate or foreign commerce, or in any Territory or the District of Columbia, shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and upon conviction thereof shall be punished by a fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment of not more than five years, or by both such fine and imprisonment, in the discretion of the court. SEC. 3. That any person who shall knowingly persuade, induce, entice, or coerce, or cause to be persuaded, induced, enticed, or coerced, or aid or assist in persuading, inducing, enticing or coercing any woman or girl to go from one place 699

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Mann Act (1910)

to another in interstate or foreign commerce, or in any Territory or the District of Columbia, for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose, or with the intent and purpose on the part of such person that such woman or girl shall engage in the practice of prostitution or debauchery, or any other immoral practice, whether with or without her consent, and who shall thereby knowingly cause or aid or assist in causing such woman or girl to go and be carried or transported as a passenger upon the line or route of any common carrier or carriers in interstate or foreign commerce, or any Territory or the District of Columbia, shall be deemed guilty of a felony and on conviction thereof shall be punished by a fine of not more than five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years, or by both fine and imprisonment, in the discretion of the court. SEC. 4. That any person who shall knowingly persuade, induce, entice or coerce any woman or girl under the age of eighteen years from any State or Territory or the District of Columbia to any other State or Territory or the District of Columbia, with the purpose and intent to induce or coerce her, or that she shall be induced or coerced to engage in prostitution or debauchery, or any other immoral practice, and shall in furtherance of such purpose knowingly induce or cause her to go and to be carried or transported as a passenger in interstate commerce upon the line or route of any common carrier or carriers, shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and in conviction there of shall be punished by a fine of not more than ten thousand dollars, or by imprisonment for a term not exceeding ten years, or by both such fine and imprisonment, in the discretion of the court. SEC. 5. That any violation of any of the above sections two, three, and four shall be prosecuted in any court having jurisdiction of crimes within the district in which said violation was committed, or from, through, or into which any such woman or girl may have been carried or transported as a passenger in interstate or foreign commerce, or in any Territory or the District of Columbia, contrary to the provisions of any of said sections. SEC. 6. That for the purpose of regulating and preventing the transportation in foreign commerce of alien women and girls for purposes of prostitution and debauchery, and in pursuance of and for the purpose of carrying out the terms of the agreement of project of arrangement for the suppression of the white-slave traffic, adopted July twenty-fifth, nineteen hundred and two, for submission to their respective governments by the delegates of various powers represented at the Paris conference and confirmed by a formal agreement signed at Paris on May eighteenth, nineteen hundred and four, and adhered to by the United States on June sixth, nineteen hundred and eight, as shown by the proclamation of the President of the United States, dated June fifteenth, nineteen hundred and eight, the CommissionerGeneral of Immigration is hereby designated as the authority of the United States to receive and centralize information concerning the procuration of alien women and girls with a view to their debauchery, and to exercise supervision over such alien

Mann Act (1910)

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women and girls, receive their declarations, establish their identity, and ascertain from them who induced them to leave their native countries, respectively; and it shall be the duty of said Commissioner-General of Immigration to receive and keep on file in his office the statements and declarations which may be made by such alien women and girls, and those which are hereinafter required pertaining to such alien women and girls engaged in prostitution and debauchery in this country, and to furnish receipts for such statements and declarations provided for in this act to the persons, respectively, making and filing them. Every person who shall keep, maintain, control, support or harbor in any house or place for the purpose of prostitution, or for any other immoral purpose, any alien woman or girl within three years after she shall have entered the United States from any country, party to the said arrangement for the suppression of the whiteslave traffic, shall file with the Commissioner-General of Immigration a statement in writing setting forth the name of such alien woman or girl, the place at which she is kept, and all facts as to the date of her entry into the United States, the port through which she entered, her age, nationality, and parentage, and concerning her procuration to come to this country within the knowledge of such person, and any person who shall fail within thirty days after such person shall commence to keep, maintain, control, support, or harbor in any house or place for the purpose of prostitution, or for any other immoral purpose, any alien woman or girl within three years after she shall have entered the United States from any of the countries, party to the said arrangement for the suppression of the white-slave traffic, to file such statement concerning such alien woman or girl with the Commissioner-General of Immigration, or who shall knowingly and willfully state falsely or fail to disclose in such statement any fact within his knowledge or belief with reference, to the age, nationality, or parentage of any such alien woman or girl, or concerning her procuration to come to this country, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and on conviction shall be punished by a fine of not more than two thousand dollars, or by imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years, or by both such fine and imprisonment, in the discretion of the court. In any prosecution brought under this section, if it appear that any such statement required is not on file in the office of the Commissioner-General of Immigration, the person whose duty it shall be to file such statement shall be presumed to have failed to file said statement, as herein required, unless such person or persons shall prove otherwise. No person shall be excused from furnishing the statement, as required by this section, on the ground or for the reason that the statement so required by him, or the information therein contained, might tend to criminate him or subject him to a penalty or forfeiture, but no person shall be prosecuted or subjected to any penalty or forfeiture under any law of the United States for or on account of any transaction, matter, or thing, concerning which he may truthfully report in such statement, as required by the provisions of this section.

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SEC. 7. That the term “Territory,” as used in this Act, shall include the district of Alaska, the insular possessions of the United States, and the Canal Zone. The word “person,” as used in this Act, shall be construed to import both the plural and the singular, as the case demands, and shall include corporations, companies, societies, and associations. When construing and enforcing the provisions of this Act, the act, omission, or failure of any officer, agent, or other person, acting for or employed by any other person or by any corporation, company, society, or association, within the scope of his employment or office, shall in every case be also deemed to be the act, omission, or failure of such other person, or of such company, society, or association as well of that of the person himself. SEC. 8. That this Act shall be known and referred to as the “White-Slave Traffic Act.” Approved, Sixty-First Congress, June 25, 1910. Source: United States Serial Set. “The White-Slave Traffic Act.” Sixty-First Congress. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1910.

International Convention for the Suppression of the White Slave Trade (1910) Article 1 Whoever, in order to gratify the passions of another person, has procured, enticed, or led away, even with her consent, a woman or girl under age, for immoral purposes, shall be punished, notwithstanding that the various acts constituting the offence may have been committed in different countries.

Article 2 Whoever, in order to gratify the passions of another person, has, by fraud, or by means of violence, threats, abuse of authority, or any other method of compulsion, procured, enticed, or led away a woman or girl over age, for immoral purposes, shall also be punished, notwithstanding that the various acts constituting the offence may have been committed in different countries.

Article 3 The Contracting Parties whose legislation may not at present be sufficient to deal with the offences contemplated by the two preceding Articles engage to take or to propose to their respective legislatures the necessary steps to punish these offences according to their gravity. Source: 2 U.S.T. 1999, 30 U.N.T.S. 23, entered into force June 21, 1951. Available at http:// www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/whiteslavetraffic1910.html.

703

Convention of Saint-Germainen-Laye (1919)

Article 1 For the purpose of the present Convention, the following definitions are agreed upon: (1)

Slavery is the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised.

(2)

The slave trade includes all acts involved in the capture, acquisition or disposal of a person with intent to reduce him to slavery; all acts involved in the acquisition of a slave with a view to selling or exchanging him; all acts of disposal by sale or exchange of a slave acquired with a view to being sold or exchanged, and, in general, every act of trade or transport in slaves.

Article 2 The High Contracting Parties undertake, each in respect of the territories placed under its sovereignty, jurisdiction, protection, suzerainty or tutelage, so far as they have not already taken the necessary steps: (1)

To prevent and suppress the slave trade;

(2)

To bring about, progressively and as soon as possible, the complete abolition of slavery in all its forms.

Source: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/slavery.htm.

704

Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World (1920)

Drafted and adopted at Convention held in New York, 1920, over which Marcus Garvey presided as Chairman, and at which he was elected Provisional President of Africa. Preamble: Be it Resolved, That the Negro people of the world, through their chosen representatives in convention assembled in Liberty Hall, in the City of New York and United States of America, from August 1 to August 31, in the year of our Lord, one thousand nine hundred and twenty, protest against the wrongs and injustices they are suffering at the hands of their white brethren, and state what they deem their fair and just rights, as well as the treatment they propose to demand of all men in the future. We complain: I. That nowhere in the world, with few exceptions, are black men accorded equal treatment with white men, although in the same situation and circumstances, but, on the contrary, are discriminated against and denied the common rights due to human beings for no other reason than their race and color. We are not willingly accepted as guests in the public hotels and inns of the world for no other reason than our race and color. II. In certain parts of the United States of America our race is denied the right of public trial accorded to other races when accused of crime, but are lynched and burned by mobs, and such brutal and inhuman treatment is even practiced upon our women. III. That European nations have parcelled out among themselves and taken possession of nearly all of the continent of Africa, and the natives are compelled to surrender their lands to aliens and are treated in most instances like slaves. IV. In the southern portion of the United States of America, although citizens under the Federal Constitution, and in some states almost equal to the whites in population and are qualified land owners and taxpayers, we are, nevertheless, denied all voice in the making and administration of the laws and are taxed without representation by the state governments, and at the same time compelled to do military service in defense of the country. V. On the public conveyances and common carriers in the Southern portion of the United States we are jim-crowed and compelled to accept separate and 705

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inferior accommodations and made to pay the same fare charged for first-class accommodations, and our families are often humiliated and insulted by drunken white men who habitually pass through the jim-crow cars going to the smoking car. VI. The physicians of our race are denied the right to attend their patients while in the public hospitals of the cities and states where they reside in certain parts of the United States. Our children are forced to attend inferior separate schools for shorter terms than white children, and the public school funds are unequally divided between the white and colored schools. VII. We are discriminated against and denied an equal chance to earn wages for the support of our families, and in many instances are refused admission into labor unions, and nearly everywhere are paid smaller wages than white men. VIII. In Civil Service and departmental offices we are everywhere discriminated against and made to feel that to be a black man in Europe, America and the West Indies is equivalent to being an outcast and a leper among the races of men, no matter what the character and attainments of the black man may be. IX. In the British and other West Indian Islands and colonies, Negroes are secretly and cunningly discriminated against, and denied those fuller rights in government to which white citizens are appointed, nominated and elected. X. That our people in those parts are forced to work for lower wages than the average standard of white men and are kept in conditions repugnant to good civilized tastes and customs. XI. That the many acts of injustice against members of our race before the courts of law in the respective islands and colonies are of such nature as to create disgust and disrespect for the white man’s sense of justice. XII. Against all such inhuman, unchristian and uncivilized treatment we here and now emphatically protest, and invoke the condemnation of all mankind. In order to encourage our race all over the world and to stimulate it to a higher and grander destiny, we demand and insist on the following Declaration of Rights: 1.

Be it known to all men that whereas, all men are created equal and entitled to the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and because of this we, the duly elected representatives of the Negro peoples of the world, invoking the aid of the just and Almighty God do declare all men, women and children of our blood throughout the world free citizens, and do claim them as free citizens of Africa, the Motherland of all Negroes.

2.

That we believe in the supreme authority of our race in all things racial; that all things are created and given to man as a common possession; that their should be an equitable distribution and apportionment of all such things, and in consideration of the fact that as a race we are now deprived of those things


3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11. 12. 13.

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that are morally and legally ours, we believe it right that all such things should be acquired and held by whatsoever means possible. That we believe the Negro, like any other race, should be governed by the ethics of civilization, and, therefore, should not be deprived of any of those rights or privileges common to other human beings. We declare that Negroes, wheresoever they form a community among themselves, should be given the right to elect their own representatives to represent them in legislatures, courts of law, or such institutions as may exercise control over that particular community. We assert that the Negro is entitled to even-handed justice before all courts of law and equity in whatever country he may be found, and when this is denied him on account of his race or color such denial is an insult to the race as a whole and should be resented by the entire body of Negroes. We declared it unfair and prejudicial to the rights of Negroes in communities where they exist in considerable numbers to be tried by a judge and jury composed entirely of an alien race, but in all such cases members of our race are entitled to representation on the jury. We believe that any law or practice that tends to deprive any African of his land or the privileges of free citizenship within his country is unjust and immoral, and no native should respect any such law or practice. We declare taxation without representation unjust and tyrannous, and there should be no obligation on the part of the Negro to obey the levy of a tax by any law-making body from which he is excluded and denied representation on account of his race and color. We believe that any law especially directed against the Negro to his detriment and singling him out because of his race or color is unfair and immoral, and should not be respected. We believe all men entitled to common human respect, and that our race should in no way tolerate any insults that may be interpreted to mean disrespect to our color. We deprecate the use of the term “nigger” as applied to Negroes, and demand that the word “Negro” be written with a capital “N.” We believe that the Negro should adopt every means to protect himself against barbarous practices inflicted upon him because of color. We believe in the freedom of Africa for the Negro people of the world, and by the principle of Europe for the Europeans and Asia for the Asiatics; we also demand Africa for the Africans at home and abroad.

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14. We believe in the inherent right of the Negro to possess himself of Africa, and that his possession of same shall not be regarded as an infringement on any claim or purchase made by any race or nation. 15. We strongly condemn the cupidity of those nations of the world who, by open aggression or secret schemes, have seized the territories and inexhaustible natural wealth of Africa, and we place on record our most solemn determination to reclaim the treasures and possession of the vast continent of our forefathers. 16. We believe all men should live in peace one with the other, but when races and nations provoke the ire of other races and nations by attempting to infringe upon their rights, war becomes inevitable, and the attempt in any way to free one’s self or protect one’s rights or heritage becomes justifiable. 17. Whereas, the lynching, by burning, hanging or any other means, of human beings is a barbarous practice, and a shame and disgrace to civilization, we therefore declared any country guilty of such atrocities outside the pale of civilization. 18. We protest against the atrocious crime of whipping, flogging and overworking of the native tribes of Africa and Negroes everywhere. These are methods that should be abolished, and all means should be taken to prevent a continuance of such brutal practices. 19. We protest against the atrocious practice of shaving the heads of Africans, especially of African women or individual of Negro blood, when placed in prison as a punishment for crime by an alien race. 20. We protest against segregated districts, separate public conveyances, industrial discrimination, lynchings and limitations of political privileges of any Negro citizen in any part of the world on account of race, color, or creed, and will exert our full influence and power against all such. 21. We protest against any punishment inflicted upon a Negro with severity, as against lighter punishment inflicted upon another of an alien race for like offense, as an act of prejudice injustice, and should be resented by the entire race. 22. We protest against the system of education in any country where Negroes are denied the same privileges and advantages as other races. 23. We declare it inhuman and unfair to boycott Negroes from industries and labor in any part of the world. 24. We believe in the doctrine of the freedom of the press, and we therefore emphatically protest against the suppression Negro newspapers and periodicals in various parts of the world, and call upon Negroes everywhere to employ all available means to prevent such suppression. 25. We further demand free speech universally for all men.


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26. We hereby protest against the publication of scandalous and inflammatory articles by an alien press tending to create racial strife and the exhibition of picture films showing the Negro as a cannibal. 27. We believe in the self-determination of all peoples. 28. We declare for the freedom of religious worship. 29. With the help of Almighty God, we declare ourselves the protectors of the honor and virtue of our women and children, and pledge our lives for their protection and defense everywhere, and under all circumstances from wrongs and outrages. 30. We demand the right of unlimited and unprejudiced education for ourselves and our posterity forever. 31. We declare that the teaching in any school by alien teachers to our boys and girls, that the alien race is superior to the Negro race, is an insult to the Negro people of the world. 32. Where Negroes form a part of the citizenry of any country, and pass the civil service examination of such country, we declare them entitled to the same consideration as other citizens as to appointments in such civil service. 33. We vigorously protest against the increasingly unfair and unjust treatment accorded Negro travelers on land and sea by the agents and employees of railroad and steamship companies and insist that for equal fare we receive equal privileges with travelers of other races. 34. We declare it unjust for any country, State or nation to enact laws tending to hinder and obstruct the free immigration of Negroes on account of their race and color. 35. That the right of the Negro to travel unmolested throughout the world be not abridged by any person or persons, and all Negroes are called upon to give aid to a fellow Negro when thus molested. 36. We declare that all Negroes are entitled to the same right to travel over the world as other men. 37. We hereby demand that the governments of the world recognize our leader and his representatives chosen by the race to look after the welfare of our people under such governments. 38. We demand complete control of our social institutions without interference by any alien race or races. 39. That the colors, Red, Black and Green, be the colors of the Negro race. 40. Resolved, That the anthem “Ethiopia, Thou Land of Our Fathers,” etc., shall be the anthem of the Negro race.

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41. We believe that any limited liberty which deprives one of the complete rights and prerogatives of full citizenship is but a modified form of slavery. 42. We declare it an injustice to our people and a serious impediment to the health of the race to deny to competent licensed Negro physicians the right to practice in the public hospitals of the communities in which they reside, for no other reason than their race and color. 43. We call upon the various governments of the world to accept and acknowledge Negro representatives who shall be sent to the said governments to represent the general welfare of the Negro peoples of the world. 44. We deplore and protest against the practice of confining juvenile prisoners in prisons with adults, and we recommend that such youthful prisoners be taught gainful trades under humane supervision. 45. Be it further resolved, that we as a race of people declare the League of Nations null and void as far as the Negro is concerned, in that it seeks to deprive Negroes of their liberty. 46. We demand of all men to do unto us as we would do unto them, in the name of justice; and we cheerfully accord to all men all the rights we claim herein for ourselves. 47. We declare that no Negro shall engage himself in battle for an alien race without first obtaining the consent of the leader of the Negro people of the world, except in a matter of national self-defense. 48. We protest against the practice of drafting Negroes and sending them to war with alien forces without proper training, and demand in all cases that Negro soldiers be given the same training as the aliens. 49. We demand that instructions given Negro children in schools include the subject of “Negro History,” to their benefit. 50. We demand a free and unfettered commercial intercourse with all the Negro people of the world. 51. We declare for the absolute freedom of the seas for all peoples. 52. We demand that our duly accredited representatives be given proper recognition in all leagues, conferences, conventions or courts of international arbitration wherever human rights are discussed. 53. We proclaim the 31st day of August of each year to be an international holiday to be observed by all Negroes. 54. We want all men to know we shall maintain and contend for the freedom and equality of every man, woman and child of our race, with our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor. These rights we believe to be justly ours and proper for the protection of the Negro race at large, and because of this belief we, on behalf of the four hundred million


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Negroes of the world, do pledge herein the sacred blood of the race in defense, and we hereby subscribe our names as a guarantee of the truthfulness and faithfulness hereof in the presence of Almighty God, on the 13th day of August, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and twenty. Marcus Garvey, James D. Brooks, James W. H. Eason, Henrietta Vinton Davis, Lionel Winston Greenidge, Adrion Fitzroy Johnson, Rudolph Ethelbert Brissaac Smith, Charles Augustus Petioni, Thomas H. N. Simon, Richard Hilton Tobitt, George Alexander McGuire, Peter Edward Baston, Reynold R. Felix, Harry Walters Kirby, Sarah Branch, Marie Barrier Houston, George L. O’Brien, F. O. Ogilvie, Arden A. Bryan, Benjamin Dyett, Marie Duchaterlier, John Phillip Hodge, Theophilus H. Saunders, Wilford H. Smith, Gabriel E. Stewart, Arnold Josiah Ford, Lee Crawford, William McCartney, Adina Clem. James, William Musgrave La Motte, John Sydney de Bourg, Arnold S. Cunning, Vernal J. Williams, Frances Wilcome Ellegor, J. Frederick Selkridge, Innis Abel Horsford, Cyril A. Crichlow, Samuel McIntyre, John Thomas Wilkins, Mary Thurston, John G. Befue, William Ware, J. A. Lewis, O. C. Thurston, Venture R. Hamilton, R. H. Hodge, Edward Alfred Taylor, Ellen Wilson, G.W. Wilson, Richard Edward Riley, Nellie Grant Whiting, G. W. Washington, Maldena Miller, Gertrude Davis, James D. Williams, Emily Christmas Kinch, D. D. Lewis, Nettie Clayton, Partheria Hills, Janie Jenkins, John C. Simons, Alphonso A. Jones, Allen Hobbs, Reynold Fitzgerald Austin, James Benjamin Yearwood, Frank O. Raines, Shedrick Williams, John Edward Ivey, Frederick August Toote, Philip Hemmings, F. F. Smith, E. J. Jones, Joseph Josiah Cranston, Frederick Samuel Ricketts, Dugald Augustus Wade, E. E. Nelom, Florida Jenkins, Napoleon J. Francis, Joseph D. Gibson, J. P. Jasper, J. W. Montgomery, David Benjamin, J. Gordon, Harry E. Ford, Carrie M. Ashford, Andrew N. Willis, Lucy Sands, Louise Woodson, George D. Creese, W. A. Wallace, Thomas E. Bagley, James Young, Prince Alfred McConney, John E. Hudson, William Ines, Harry R. Watkins, C. L. Halton, J. T. Bailey, Ira Joseph Touissant Wright, T. H. Golden, Abraham Benjamin Thomas, Richard C. Noble, Walter Green, C. S. Bourne, G. F. Bennett, B. D. Levy, Mary E. Johnson, Lionel Antonio Francis, Carl Roper, E. R. Donawa, Philip Van Putten, I. Brathwaite, Jesse W. Luck, Oliver Kaye, J. W. Hudspeth, C. B. Lovell, William C. Matthews, A. Williams, Ratford E. M. Jack, H. Vinton Plummer, Randolph Phillips, A. I. Bailey, duly elected representatives of the Negro people of the world. Sworn before me this 15th day of August, 1920. [Legal Seal] JOHN G. BAYNE. Notary Public, New York County. New York County Clerk’s No. 378; New York County Register’s No. 12102. Commission expires March 30, 1922. Source: UNIA Declaration of Rights of the African Peoples of the World, New York, August 13, 1920. Reprinted in The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Papers, vol. 2, ed. Robert Hill, 571–580. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.

International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children (1921) Article 2 The High Contracting Parties agree to take all measures to discover and prosecute persons who are engaged in the traffic in children of both sexes and who commit offences within the meaning of Article 1 of the Convention of 4 May 1910.

Article 3 The High Contracting Parties agree to take the necessary steps to secure the punishment of attempts to commit, and, within legal limits, of acts preparatory to the commission of, the offences specified in Articles 1 and 2 of the Convention of 4 May 1910.

Article 7 The High Contracting Parties undertake in connection with immigration and emigration to adopt such administrative and legislative measures as are required to check the traffic in women and children. In particular, they undertake to make such regulations as are required for the protection of women and children traveling on emigrant ships, not only at the points of departure and arrival, but also during the journey, and to arrange for the exhibition, in railway stations and in ports, of notices warning women and children of the danger of the traffic and indicating the places where they can obtain accommodation and assistance. Source: http://treaties.un.org/doc/Treaties/1921/09/19210930%2005-59%20AM/Ch_VII_3p. pdf.

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Rights of the Child (1924)

Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child of 1924, adopted Sept. 26, 1924. By the present Declaration of the Rights of the Child, commonly known as “Declaration of Geneva,” men and women of all nations, recognizing that mankind owes to the Child the best that it has to give, declare and accept it as their duty that, beyond and above all considerations of race, nationality or creed: (1)

The child must be given the means requisite for its normal development, both materially and spiritually;

(2)

The child that is hungry must be fed; the child that is sick must be nursed; the child that is backward must be helped; the delinquent child must be reclaimed; and the orphan and the waif must be sheltered and succored;

(3)

The child must be the first to receive relief in times of distress;

(4)

The child must be put in a position to earn a livelihood, and must be protected against every form of exploitation;

(5)

The child must be brought up in the consciousness that its talents must be devoted to the service of fellow men.

Source: League of Nations O.J. Special Supplement 21, at 43 (1924).

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League of Nations Slavery Convention (September 25, 1926)

ALBANIA, GERMANY, AUSTRIA, BELGIUM, THE BRITISH EMPIRE, CANADA, THE COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA, THE UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA, THE DOMINION OF NEW ZEALAND, AND INDIA, BULGARIA, CHINA, COLOMBIA, CUBA, DENMARK, SPAIN, ESTONIA, ABYSSINIA, FINLAND, FRANCE, GREECE, ITALY, LATVIA, LIBERIA, LITHUANIA, NORWAY, PANAMA, THE NETHERLANDS, PERSIA, POLAND, PORTUGAL, ROUMANIA, THE KINGDOM OF THE SERBS, CROATS AND SLOVENES, SWEDEN, CZECHOSLOVAKIA AND URUGUAY, Whereas the signatories of the General Act of the Brussels Conference of 1889-90 declared that they were equally animated by the firm intention of putting an end to the traffic in African slaves; Whereas the signatories of the Convention of Saint-Germain-en-Laye of 1919, to revise the General Act of Berlin of 1885, and the General Act and Declaration of Brussels of 1890, affirmed their intention of securing the complete suppression of slavery in all its forms and of the slave trade by land and sea; Taking into consideration the report of the Temporary Slavery Commission appointed by the Council of the League of Nations on June 12th, 1924; Desiring to complete and extend the work accomplished under the Brussels Act and to find a means of giving practical effect throughout the world to such intentions as were expressed in regard to slave trade and slavery by the signatories of the Convention of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and recognising that it is necessary to conclude to that end more detailed arrangements than are contained in that Convention; Considering, moreover, that it is necessary to prevent forced labour from developing into conditions analogous to slavery, Have decided to conclude a Convention and have accordingly appointed as their Plenipotentiaries: [40 names of diplomats follow, these are not included here] Who, having communicated their full powers, have agreed as follows:

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Article 1 For the purpose of the present Convention, the following definitions are agreed upon: (1)

Slavery is the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised.

(2)

The slave trade includes all acts involved in the capture, acquisition or disposal of a person with intent to reduce him to slavery; all acts involved in the acquisition of a slave with a view to selling or exchanging him; all acts of disposal by sale or exchange of a slave acquired with a view to being sold or exchanged, and, in general, every act of trade or transport in slaves.

Article 2 The High Contracting Parties undertake, each in respect of the territories placed under its sovereignty, jurisdiction, protection, suzerainty or tutelage, so far as they have not already taken the necessary steps: (a)

To prevent and suppress the slave trade;

(b)

To bring about, progressively and as soon as possible, the complete abolition of slavery in all its forms.

Article 3 The High Contracting Parties undertake to adopt all appropriate measures with a view to preventing and suppressing the embarkation, disembarkation and transport of slaves in their territorial waters and upon all vessels flying their respective flags. The High Contracting Parties undertake to negotiate as soon as possible a general Convention with regard to the slave trade which will give them rights and impose upon them duties of the same nature as those provided for in the Convention of June 17th, 1925, relative to the International Trade in Arms (Articles 12, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, and paragraphs 3, 4 and 5 of Section II of Annex II), with the necessary adaptations, it being understood that this general Convention will not place the ships (even of small tonnage) of any High Contracting Parties in a position different from that of the other High Contracting Parties. It is also understood that, before or after the coming into force of this general Convention the High Contracting Parties are entirely free to conclude between themselves, without, however, derogating from the principles laid down in the preceding paragraph, such special agreements as, by reason of their peculiar situation,

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might appear to be suitable in order to bring about as soon as possible the complete disappearance of the slave trade.

Article 4 The High Contracting Parties shall give to one another every assistance with the object of securing the abolition of slavery and the slave trade.

Article 5 The High Contracting Parties recognise that recourse to compulsory or forced labour may have grave consequences and undertake, each in respect of the territories placed under its sovereignty, jurisdiction, protection, suzerainty or tutelage, to take all necessary measures to prevent compulsory or forced labour from developing into conditions analogous to slavery. It is agreed that: (1)

Subject to the transitional provisions laid down in paragraph (2) below, compulsory or forced labour may only be exacted for public purposes.

(2)

In territories in which compulsory or forced labour for other than public purposes still survives, the High Contracting Parties shall endeavour progressively and as soon as possible to put an end to the practice. So long as such forced or compulsory labour exists, this labour shall invariably be of an exceptional character, shall always receive adequate remuneration, and shall not involve the removal of the labourers from their usual place of residence.

(3)

In all cases, the responsibility for any recourse to compulsory or forced labour shall rest with the competent central authorities of the territory concerned.

Article 6 Those of the High Contracting Parties whose laws do not at present make adequate provision for the punishment of infractions of laws and regulations enacted with a view to giving effect to the purposes of the present Convention undertake to adopt the necessary measures in order that severe penalties may be imposed in respect of such infractions.

Article 7 The High Contracting Parties undertake to communicate to each other and to the Secretary-General of the League of Nations any laws and regulations which


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they may enact with a view to the application of the provisions of the present Convention.

Article 8 The High Contracting Parties agree that disputes arising between them relating to the interpretation or application of this Convention shall, if they cannot be settled by direct negotiation, be referred for decision to the Permanent Court of International Justice. In case either or both of the States Parties to such a dispute should not be parties to the Protocol of December 16th, 1920 relating to the Permanent Court of International Justice, the dispute shall be referred, at the choice of the Parties and in accordance with the constitutional procedure of each State either to the Permanent Court of International Justice or to a court of arbitration constituted in accordance with the Convention of October 18th, 1907, for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes, or to some other court of arbitration.

Article 9 At the time of signature or of ratification or of accession, any High Contracting Party may declare that its acceptance of the present Convention does not bind some or all of the territories placed under its sovereignty, jurisdiction, protection, suzerainty or tutelage in respect of all or any provisions of the Convention; it may subsequently accede separately on behalf of any one of them or in respect of any provision to which any one of them is not a party.

Article 10 In the event of a High Contracting Party wishing to denounce the present Convention, the denunciation shall be notified in writing to the Secretary-General of the League of Nations, who will at once communicate a certified true copy of the notification to all the other High Contracting Parties, informing them of the date on which it was received. The denunciation shall only have effect in regard to the notifying State, and one year after the notification has reached the Secretary-General of the League of Nations. Denunciation may also be made separately in respect of any territory placed under its sovereignty, jurisdiction, protection, suzerainty or tutelage.

Article 11 The present Convention, which will bear this day’s date and of which the French and English texts are both authentic, will remain open for signature by the States Members of the League of Nations until April 1st, 1927.

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The Secretary-General of the League of Nations will subsequently bring the present Convention to the notice of States which have not signed it, including States which are not Members of the League of Nations, and invite them to accede thereto. A State desiring to accede to the Convention shall notify its intention in writing to the Secretary-General of the League of Nations and transmit to him the instrument of accession, which shall be deposited in the archives of the League. The Secretary-General shall immediately transmit to all the other High Contracting Parties a certified true copy of the notification and of the instrument of accession, informing them of the date on which he received them.

Article 12 The present Convention will be ratified and the instruments of ratification shall be deposited in the office of the Secretary-General of the League of Nations. The Secretary-General will inform all the High Contracting Parties of such deposit. The Convention will come into operation for each State on the date of the deposit of its ratification or of its accession. In faith whereof the Plenipotentiaries have signed the present Convention. DONE at Geneva the twenty-fifth day of September, One thousand nine hundred and twenty-six, in one copy, which will be deposited in the archives of the League of Nations. A certified copy shall be forwarded to each signatory State. Source: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/pdf/slavery.pdf.

Convention against Forced Prostitution (1933)

International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women of Full Age. His Majesty the King of the Albanians; the President of the German Reich; the Federal President of the Austrian Republic; His Majesty the King of the Belgians; His Majesty the King of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas, Emperor of India; His Majesty the King of the Bulgarians; the President of the Republic of Chile; the President of the National Government of the Republic of China; the President of the Polish Republic, for the Free City of Danzig; the President of the Spanish Republic; the President of the French Republic; the President of the Hellenic Republic; His Serene Highness the Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary; the President of the Latvian Republic; the President of the Republic of Lithuania; His Serene Highness the Prince of Monaco; His Majesty the King of Norway; the President of the Republic of Panama; Her Majesty the Queen of the Netherlands; the President of the Polish Republic; the President of the Portuguese Republic; His Majesty the King of Sweden; the Swiss Federal Council; the President of the Czechoslovak Republic; His Majesty the King of Yugoslavia, Being anxious to secure more completely the suppression of the traffic in women and children; Having taken note of the recommendations contained in the Report to the Council of the League of Nations by the Traffic in Women and Children Committee on the work of its twelfth session; Having decided to complete by a new Convention the Agreement of 18 May 1904 and the Conventions of 4 May 1910 and 30 September 1921 relating to the suppression of the traffic in women and children, Have appointed for this purpose as their Plenipotentiaries: Who, having communicated their full powers, found in good and due form, have agreed as follows:

Article 1 Whoever, in order to gratify the passions of another person, has procured, enticed or led away even with her consent, a woman or girl of full age for immoral purposes to be carried out in another country, shall be punished, notwithstanding that 719

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the various acts constituting the offence may have been committed in different countries. Attempted offences, and, within the legal limits, acts preparatory to the offences in question, shall also be punishable. For the purposes of the present Article, the term “country” includes the colonies and protectorates of the High Contracting Party concerned, as well as territories under his suzerainty and territories for which a mandate has been entrusted to him.

Article 2 The High Contracting Parties whose laws are at present inadequate to deal with the offences specified in the preceding Article agree to take the necessary steps to ensure that these offences shall be punished in accordance with their gravity.

Article 3 The High Contracting Parties undertake to communicate to each other in regard to any person of either sex who has committed or attempted to commit any of the offences referred to in the present Convention or in the Conventions of 1910 or 1921 on the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children, the various constituent acts of which were, or were to have been, accomplished in different countries, the following information (or similar information which it may be possible to supply under the laws and regulations of the country concerned): (a)

Records of convictions, together with any useful and available information with regard to the offender, such as his civil status, description, finger-prints, photograph and police record, his methods of operation, etc.

(b)

Particulars of any measures of refusal of admission or of expulsion which may have been applied to him.

These documents and information shall be sent direct and without delay to the authorities of the countries concerned in each particular case by the authorities named in Article 1 of the Agreement concluded in Paris on 18 May 1904 and, if possible, in all cases when the offence, conviction, refusal of admission or expulsion has been duly established.

Article 4 If there should arise between the High Contracting Parties a dispute of any kind relating to the interpretation or application of the present Convention or of the Conventions of 1910 and 1921, and if such dispute cannot be satisfactorily settled by


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diplomacy, it shall be settled in accordance with any applicable agreements in force between the Parties providing for the settlement of international disputes. In case there is no such agreement in force between the Parties, the dispute shall be referred to arbitration or judicial settlement. In the absence of agreement on the choice of another tribunal, the dispute shall, at the request of any one of the Parties, be referred to the Permanent Court of International Justice, if all the Parties to the dispute are Parties to the Protocol of 16 December 1920 relating to the Statute of that Court, and, if any of the Parties to the dispute is not a Party to the Protocol of 16 December 1920, to an arbitral tribunal constituted in accordance with the Hague Convention of 18 October 1907 for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes.

Article 5 The present Convention, of which the English and French texts are both authoritative, shall bear this day’s date, and shall until 1 April 1934 be open for signature on behalf of any Member of the League of Nations, or of any non-member State which was represented at the Conference which drew up this Convention or to which the Council of the League of Nations shall have communicated a copy of the Convention for this purpose.

Article 6 The present Convention shall be ratified. The instruments of ratification shall be transmitted to the Secretary-General of the League of Nations, who shall notify their receipt to all Members of the League and to the non-member States referred to in the preceding Article.

Article 7 As from 1 April 1934, the present Convention may be acceded to on behalf of any Member of the League of Nations or any non-member State mentioned in Article 5. The instruments of accession shall be transmitted to the Secretary-General of the League of Nations, who shall notify their receipt to all the Members of the League and to the non-member States mentioned in that Article.

Article 8 The present Convention shall come into force sixty days after the Secretary-General of the League of Nations has received two ratifications or accessions. It shall be registered by the Secretary-General on the day of its entry into force. Subsequent ratifications or accessions shall take effect at the end of sixty days after their receipt by the Secretary-General.

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Article 9 The present Convention may be denounced by notification addressed to the Secretary-General of the League of Nations. Such denunciation shall take effect one year after its receipt, but only in relation to the High Contracting Party who has notified it.

Article 10 Any High Contracting Party may, at the time of signature, ratification or accession, declare that, in accepting the present Convention, he does not assume any obligation in respect of all or any of his colonies, protectorates, overseas territories, territories under his suzerainty, or territories for which a mandate has been entrusted to him. Any High Contracting Party may subsequently declare to the Secretary-General of the League of Nations that the present Convention is to apply to all or any of the territories which have been made the subject of a declaration under the preceding paragraph. The said declaration shall take effect sixty days after its receipt. Any High Contracting Party may at any moment withdraw, in whole or in part, any declaration made under the second paragraph of this Article. Such withdrawal will take effect one year after its receipt by the Secretary-General of the League of Nations. The Secretary-General shall communicate to all the Members of the League, and to the non-member States mentioned in Article 5, the denunciations referred to in Article 9, and the declarations received under the present Article. Notwithstanding any declaration made under the first paragraph of the present Article, the third paragraph of Article 1 remains applicable. In faith whereof the abovementioned Plenipotentiaries have signed the present Convention. Done at Geneva, the eleventh day of October, one thousand nine hundred and thirty-three, in a single copy, which shall remain deposited in the archives of the Secretariat of the League of Nations, and certified true copies of which shall be delivered to all the Members of the League and to the non-member States referred to in Article 5. Source: International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women of Full Age, Oct. 11, 1933, 150 L.N.T.S. 431.

The Children (Pledging of Labour) Act (1933)

(Act No. 2 of 1933) —[24th February, 1933] An act to prohibit the pledging of labour of children Whereas it is expedient to prohibit the making of agreements to pledge the labour of children and the employment of children whose labour has been pledged; It is hereby enacted as follows: 1.

Short title, extent and commencement: (1) This act may be called the Children (Pledging of Labour) Act, 1933. (2) It extends to the whole of India (3) This section and Secs. 2 and 3 shall come into force at once, and the remaining sections of this act shall come into force on the first day of July, 1933.

2.

Definitions: In this act, unless there is anything repugnant in the subject or context—“an agreement to pledge the labour of a child” means in agreement, written or oral, express or implied, whereby the parent or guardian of a child, in return for any payment or benefit received by him, undertakes to cause or allow the services of the child to be utilized by him, undertakes to cause or allow the services of the child to be utilized in any employment: Provided that an agreement made without detriment to a child, and not made in consideration of any benefit other than reasonable wages to be paid for the child’s services, and terminable at not more than a week’s notice, is not an agreement within the meaning of this definition; “child” means a person who is under the age of fifteen years; and “guardian” includes any person having legal custody of or control over a child.

3.

Agreement contrary to the act to be void.—An agreement to pledge the labour of a child shall be void.

4.

Penalty for parent or guardian making agreement to pledge the labour of a child.-Whoever, being the parent or guardian of a child, makes an agreement

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The Children (Pledging of Labour) Act (1933)

to pledge the labour of that child, shall be punished with fine which may extend to fifty rupees. 5.

Penalty for making with a parent or guardian agreement to pledge the labour of a child.—Whoever makes with the parent or guardian of a child shall be punished with fine which may extend to two hundred rupees.

6.

Penalty for employing a child whose labour has been pledged.—Whoever, knowing or having reason to believe that an agreement has been made to pledge the labour of a child, in furtherance of such agreement employs such child, or permits such child to be employed in any premises or place under his control, shall be punishable with fine which may extend to two hundred rupees.

Source: http://indiacode.nic.in/fullact1.asp?tfnm=193302.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)

Written at the United Nations in 1948: Preamble WHEREAS recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world, WHEREAS disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people, WHEREAS it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law, WHEREAS it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations, WHEREAS the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom, WHEREAS Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms, WHEREAS a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge, Now, Therefore, The General Assembly proclaims This Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.

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Article 1 All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2 Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, nonselfgoverning or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Article 3 Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Article 4 No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

Article 5 No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Article 6 Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Article 7 All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

Article 8 Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.


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Article 9 No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Article 10 Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.

Article 11 (1)

Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.

(2)

No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.

Article 12 No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Article 13 (1)

Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State.

(2)

Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

Article 14 (1)

Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.

(2)

This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

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Article 15 (1)

Everyone has the right to a nationality.

(2)

No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

Article 16 (1)

Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as a marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.

(2)

Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.

(3)

The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

Article 17 (1)

Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.

(2)

No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Article 18 Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Article 19 Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Article 20 (1)

Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.

(2)

No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

Article 21 (1)

Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.

(2)

Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.


(3)

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The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of the government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

Article 22 Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

Article 23 (1)

Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

(2)

Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.

(3)

Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.

(4)

Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Article 24 Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Article 25 (1)

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing, and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age, or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

(2)

Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Article 26 (1)

Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory.

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Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit. (2)

Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.

(3)

Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

Article 27 (1)

Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.

(2)

Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Article 28 Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

Article 29 (1)

Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.

(2)

In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms and others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.

(3)

These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 30 Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein. Source: Available at http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml.

Slave Labor and War Crimes (1950)

Principles of International Law Recognized in the Charter of the Nüremberg Tribunal and in the Judgment of the Tribunal.

Principle I Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefor and liable to punishment.

Principle II The fact that international law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law.

Principle III The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible Government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law.

Principle IV The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.

Principle V Any person charged with a crime under international law has the right to a fair trial on the facts and law.

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Slave Labor and War Crimes (1950)

Principle VI The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law: (a)

Crimes against peace: (i)

(b)

Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances; (ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i). War crimes: Violations of the laws or customs of war include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave-labour or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war, of persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.

(c)

Crimes against humanity: Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhuman acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connexion with any crime against peace or any war crime.

Principle VII Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law. Source: United Nations Document. A/CN.4/SER.A/1950/Add.1 (1950). Used by permission of the United Nations.

Efforts to Suppress Traffic in Persons (1951)

Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others, entered into force July 25, 1951. PREAMBLE Whereas prostitution and the accompanying evil of the traffic in persons for the purpose of prostitution are incompatible with the dignity and worth of the human person and endanger the welfare of the individual, the family and the community, Whereas, with respect to the suppression of the traffic in women and children, the following international instruments are in force: (1)

International Agreement of 18 May 1904 for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic, as amended by the Protocol approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 3 December 1948,

(2)

International Convention of 4 May 1910 for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic, as amended by the above-mentioned Protocol,

(3)

International Convention of 30 September 1921 for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children, as amended by the Protocol approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 20 October 1947,

(4)

International Convention of 11 October 1933 for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women of Full Age, as amended by the aforesaid Protocol,

Whereas the League of Nations in 1937 prepared a draft Convention extending the scope of the above-mentioned instruments, and Whereas developments since 1937 make feasible the conclusion of a convention consolidating the above-mentioned instruments and embodying the substance of the 1937 draft Convention as well as desirable alterations therein: Now therefore The Contracting parties Here by agree as hereinafter provided:

Article 1 The Parties to the present Convention agree to punish any person who, to gratify the passions of another: 733

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(1)

Procures, entices or leads away, for purposes of prostitution, another person, even with the consent of that person;

(2)

Exploits the prostitution of another person, even with the consent of that person.

Article 2 The Parties to the present Convention further agree to punish any person who: (1)

Keeps or manages, or knowingly finances or takes part in the financing of a brothel;

(2)

Knowingly lets or rents a building or other place or any part thereof for the purpose of the prostitution of others.

Article 3 To the extent permitted by domestic law, attempts to commit any of the offences referred to in articles 1 and 2, and acts preparatory to the commission thereof, shall also be punished.

Article 4 To the extent permitted by domestic law, international participation in the acts referred to in articles 1 and 2 above shall also be punishable. To the extent permitted by domestic law, acts of participation shall be treated as separate offences whenever this is necessary to prevent impunity.

Article 5 In cases where injured persons are entitled under domestic law to be parties to proceedings in respect of any of the offences referred to in the present Convention, aliens shall be so entitled upon the same terms as nationals.

Article 6 Each Party to the present Convention agrees to take all the necessary measures to repeal or abolish any existing law, regulation or administrative provision by virtue of which persons who engage in or are suspected of engaging in prostitution are subject either to special registration or to the possession of a special document or to any exceptional requirements for supervision or notification.


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Article 7 Previous convictions pronounced in foreign States for offences referred to in the present Convention shall, to the extent permitted by domestic law, be taken into account for the purpose of: (1)

Establishing recidivism;

(2)

Disqualifying the offender from the exercise of civil rights.

Article 8 The offences referred to in articles 1 and 2 of the present Convention shall be regarded as extraditable offences in any extradition treaty which has been or may hereafter be concluded between any of the Parties to this Convention. The Parties to the present Convention which do not make extradition conditional on the existence of a treaty shall henceforward recognize the offences referred to in articles 1 and 2 of the present Convention as cases for extradition between themselves. Extradition shall be granted in accordance with the law of the State to which the request is made.

Article 9 In States where the extradition of nationals is not permitted by law, nationals who have returned to their own State after the commission abroad of any of the offences referred to in articles 1 and 2 of the present Convention shall be prosecuted in and punished by the courts of their own State. This provision shall not apply if, in a similar case between the Parties to the present Convention, the extradition of an alien cannot be granted.

Article 10 The provisions of article 9 shall not apply when the person charged with the offence has been tried in a foreign State and, if convicted, has served his sentence or had it remitted or reduced in conformity with the laws of that foreign State.

Article 11 Nothing in the present Convention shall be interpreted as determining the attitude of a Party towards the general question of the limits of criminal jurisdiction under international law.

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Article 12 The present Convention does not affect the principle that the offences to which it refers shall in each State be defined, prosecuted and punished in conformity with its domestic law.

Article 13 The Parties to the present Convention shall be bound to execute letters of request relating to offences referred to in the Convention in accordance with their domestic law and practice. The transmission of letters of request shall be effected: (1)

By direct communication between the judicial authorities; or

(2)

By direct communication between the Ministers of Justice of the two States, or by direct communication from another competent authority of the State making the request to the Minister of Justice of the State to which the request is made; or

(3)

Through the diplomatic or consular representative of the State making the request in the State to which the request is made; this representative shall send the letters of request direct to the competent judicial authority or to the authority indicated by the Government of the State to which the request is made, and shall receive direct from such authority the papers constituting the execution of the letters of request.

In cases 1 and 3 a copy of the letters of request shall always be sent to the superior authority of the State to which application is made. Unless otherwise agreed, the letters of request shall be drawn up in the language of the authority making the request, provided always that the State to which the request is made may require a translation in its own language, certified correct by the authority making the request. Each Party to the present Convention shall notify to each of the other Parties to the Convention the method or methods of transmission mentioned above which it will recognize for the letters of request of the latter State. Until such notification is made by a State, its existing procedure in regard to letters of request shall remain in force. Execution of letters of request shall not give rise to a claim for reimbursement of charges or expenses of any nature whatever other than expenses of experts. Nothing in the present article shall be construed as an undertaking on the part of the Parties to the present Convention to adopt in criminal matters any form or methods of proof contrary to their own domestic laws.


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Article 14 Each Party to the present Convention shall establish or maintain a service charged with the coordination and centralization of the results of the investigation of offences referred to in the present Convention. Such services should compile all information calculated to facilitate the prevention and punishment of the offences referred to in the present Convention and should be in close contact with the corresponding services in other States.

Article 15 To the extent permitted by domestic law and to the extent to which the authorities responsible for the services referred to in article 14 may judge desirable, they shall furnish to the authorities responsible for the corresponding services in other States the following information: (1)

Particulars of any offence referred to in the present Convention or any attempt to commit such offence;

(2)

Particulars of any search for any prosecution, arrest, conviction, refusal of admission or expulsion of persons guilty of any of the offences referred to in the present Convention, the movements of such persons and any other useful information with regard to them.

The information so furnished shall include descriptions of the offenders, their fingerprints, photographs, methods of operation, police records and records of conviction.

Article 16 The Parties to the present Convention agree to take or to encourage, through their public and private educational, health, social, economic and other related services, measures for the prevention of prostitution and for the rehabilitation and social adjustment of the victims of prostitution and of the offences referred to in the present Convention.

Article 17 The Parties to the present Convention undertake, in connection with immigration and emigration, to adopt or maintain such measures as are required, in terms of their obligations under the present Convention, to check the traffic in persons of either sex for the purpose of prostitution.

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In particular they undertake: (1)

To make such regulations as are necessary for the protection of immigrants or emigrants, and in particular, women and children, both at the place of arrival and departure and while en route;

(2)

To arrange for appropriate publicity warning the public of the dangers of the aforesaid traffic;

(3)

To take appropriate measures to ensure supervision of railway stations, airports, seaports and en route, and of other public places, in order to prevent international traffic in persons for the purpose of prostitution;

(4)

To take appropriate measures in order that the appropriate authorities be informed of the arrival of persons who appear, prima facie, to be the principals and accomplices in or victims of such traffic.

Article 18 The Parties to the present Convention undertake, in accordance with the conditions laid down by domestic law, to have declarations taken from aliens who are prostitutes, in order to establish their identity and civil status and to discover who has caused them to leave their State. The information obtained shall be communicated to the authorities of the State of origin of the said persons with a view to their eventual repatriation.

Article 19 The Parties to the present Convention undertake, in accordance with the conditions laid down by domestic law and without prejudice to prosecution or other action for violations there under and so far as possible: (1)

Pending the completion of arrangements for the repatriation of destitute victims of international traffic in persons for the purpose of prostitution, to make suitable provisions for their temporary care and maintenance;

(2)

To repatriate persons referred to in article 18 who desire to be repatriated or who may be claimed by persons exercising authority over them or whose expulsion is ordered in conformity with the law. Repatriation shall take place only after agreement is reached with the State of destination as to identity and nationality as well as to the place and date of arrival at frontiers. Each Party to the present Convention shall facilitate the passage of such persons through its territory.

Where the persons referred to in the preceding paragraph cannot themselves repay the cost of repatriation and have neither spouse, relatives nor guardian to


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pay for them, the cost of repatriation as far as the nearest frontier or port of embarkation or airport in the direction of the State of origin shall be borne by the State where they are in residence, and the cost of the remainder of the journey shall be borne by the State of origin.

Article 20 The Parties to the present Convention shall, if they have not already done so, take the necessary measures for the supervision of employment agencies in order to prevent persons seeking employment, in particular women and children, from being exposed to the danger of prostitution.

Article 21 The Parties to the present Convention shall communicate to the Secretary-General of the United Nations such laws and regulations as have already been promulgated in their States, and thereafter annually such laws and regulations as may be promulgated, relating to the subjects of the present Convention, as well as all measures taken by them concerning the application of the Convention. The information received shall be published periodically by the Secretary-General and sent to all Members of the United Nations and to non-member States to which the present Convention is officially communicated in accordance with article 23.

Article 22 If any dispute shall arise between the Parties to the present Convention relating to its interpretation or application and if such dispute cannot be settled by other means, the dispute shall, at the request of any one of the Parties to the dispute, be referred to the International Court of Justice.

Article 23 The present Convention shall be open for signature on behalf of any Member of the United Nations and also on behalf of any other State to which an invitation has been addressed by the Economic and Social Council. The present Convention shall be ratified and the instruments of ratification shall be deposited with the Secretary-General of the United Nations. The States mentioned in the first paragraph which have not signed the Convention may accede to it. Accession shall be effected by deposit of an instrument of accession with the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

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For the purposes of the present Convention the word “State” shall include all the colonies and Trust Territories of a State signatory or acceding to the Convention and all territories for which such State is intentionally responsible.

Article 24 The present Convention shall come into force on the ninetieth day following the date of deposit of the second instrument of ratification or accession. For each State ratifying or acceding to the Convention after the deposit of the second instrument of ratification or accession, the Convention shall enter into force ninety days after the deposit by such State of its instrument of ratification or accession.

Article 25 After the expiration of five years from the entry into force of the present Convention, any Party to the Convention may denounce it by a written notification addressed to the Secretary-General of the United Nations. Such denunciation shall take effect for the Party making it one year from the date upon which it is received by the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Article 26 The Secretary-General of the United Nations shall inform all Members of the United Nations and non-member States referred to in article 23: (a)

Of signatures, ratifications and accessions received in accordance with article 23;

(b)

Of the date on which the present Convention will come into force in accordance with article 24;

(c)

Of denunciations received in accordance with article 25.

Article 27 Each Party to the present Convention undertakes to adopt, in accordance with its Constitution, the legislative or other measures necessary to ensure the application of the Convention.

Article 28 The provisions of the present Convention shall supersede in the relations between the Parties thereto the provisions of the international instruments referred to in


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subparagraphs 1, 2, 3 and 4 of the second paragraph of the Preamble, each of which shall be deemed to be terminated when all the Parties thereto shall have become Parties to the present Convention.

Final Protocol Nothing in the present Convention shall be deemed to prejudice any legislation which ensures, for the enforcement of the provisions for securing the suppression of the traffic in persons and of the exploitation of others for purposes of prostitution, stricter conditions than those provided by the present Convention. The provisions of articles 23 to 26 inclusive of the Convention shall apply to the present Protocol. Source: 96 U.N.T.S. 271. Used by permission of the United Nations.

Protocol Amending the Slavery Convention Signed at Geneva on 25 September 1926, Done at the Headquarters of the United Nations, New York, on 7 December 1953

The States Parties to the present Protocol, Considering that under the Slavery Convention signed at Geneva on 25 September 1926 (hereinafter called “ the Convention “) the League of Nations was invested with certain duties and functions, and Considering that it is expedient that these duties and functions should be continued by the United Nations, Have agreed as follows:

Article I The States Parties to the present Protocol undertake that as between them selves they will, in accordance with the provisions of the Protocol, attribute full legal force and effect to and duly apply the amendments to the Convention set forth in the annex to the Protocol.

Article II 1.

The present Protocol shall be open for signature or acceptance by any of the States Parties to the Convention to which the Secretary-General has communicated for this purpose a copy of the Protocol.

2.

States may become Parties to the present Protocol by: (a) Signature without reservation as to acceptance; (b) Signature with reservation as to acceptance, followed by acceptance; (c)

3.

Acceptance.

Acceptance shall be effected by the deposit of a formal instrument with the Secretary-General of the United Nations. 742

Protocol Amending the Slavery

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Article III 1.

The present Protocol shall come into force on the date on which two States shall have become Parties thereto, and shall thereafter come into force in respect of each State upon the date on which it becomes a Party to the Protocol.

2.

The amendments set forth in the annex to the present Protocol shall come into force when twenty-three States shall have become Parties to the Protocol, and consequently any State becoming a Party to the Convention, after the amendments thereto have come into force, shall become a Party to the Convention as so amended.

Article IV In accordance with paragraph 1 of Article 102 of the Charter of the United Nations and the regulations pursuant thereto adopted by the General Assembly, the Secretary-General of the United Nations is authorized to effect registration of the present Protocol and of the amendments made in the Convention by the Protocol on the respective dates of their entry into force and to publish the Protocol and the amended text of the Convention as soon as possible after registration.

Article V The present Protocol, of which the Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish texts are equally authentic, shall be deposited in the archives of the United Nations Secretariat. The texts of the Convention to be amended in accordance with the annex being authentic in the English and French languages only, the English and French texts of the annex shall be equally authentic, and the Chinese, Russian and Spanish texts shall be translations. The Secretary-General shall prepare certified copies of the Protocol, including the annex, for communication to States Parties to the Convention, as well as to all other States Members of the United Nations. He shall likewise prepare for communication to States, including States not Members of the United Nations, upon the entry into force of the amendments as provided in article III, certified copies of the Convention as so amended. IN WITNESS WHEREOF the undersigned, being duly authorized thereto by their respective Governments, signed the present Protocol on the date appearing opposite their respective signatures. DONE at the Headquarters of the United Nations, New York, this seventh day of December one thousand nine hundred and fifty- three. ANNEX TO THE PROTOCOL AMENDING THE SLAVERY CONVENTION SIGNED AT GENEVA ON 25 SEPTEMBER 1926.

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Protocol Amending the Slavery

In article 7 “the Secretary-General of the United Nations” shall be substituted for “the Secretary-General of the League of Nations”. In article 8 “the International Court of Justice” shall be substituted for “the Permanent Court of International Justice”, and “the Statute of the International Court of Justice” shall be substituted for “the Protocol of December 16th, 1920, relating to the Permanent Court of International Justice”. In the first and second paragraphs of article 10 “the United Nations” shall be substituted for “the League of Nations”. The last three paragraphs of article 11 shall be deleted and the following substituted: “The present Convention shall be open to accession by all States, including States which are not Members of the United Nations, to which the Secretary-General of the United Nations shall have communicated a certified copy of the Convention. Accession shall be effected by the deposit of a formal instrument with the Secretary-General of the United Nations, who shall give notice thereof to all States Parties to the Convention and to all other States contemplated in the present article, informing them of the date on which each such instrument of accession was received in deposit.” In article 12 “the United Nations” shall be substituted for “the League of Nations.” Source: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/protocolslavery.htm. Used by permission of the United Nations.

Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery (September 7, 1956)

Preamble The States Parties to the present Convention Considering that freedom is the birthright of every human being; Mindful that the peoples of the United Nations reaffirmed in the Charter their faith in the dignity and worth of the human person; Considering that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, states that no one shall be held in slavery or servitude and that slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms; Recognizing that, since the conclusion of the Slavery Convention signed at Geneva on 25 September 1926, which was designed to secure the abolition of slavery and of the slave trade, further progress has been made towards this end; Having regard to the Forced Labour Convention of 1930 and to subsequent action by the International Labour Organisation in regard to forced or compulsory labour; Being aware, however, that slavery, the slave trade and institutions and practices similar to slavery have not yet been eliminated in all parts of the world; Having decided, therefore, that the Convention of 1926, which remains operative, should now be augmented by the conclusion of a supplementary convention designed to intensify national as well as international efforts towards the abolition of slavery, the slave trade and institutions and practices similar to slavery; Have agreed as follows:

Section I: Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery Article 1 Each of the States Parties to this Convention shall take all practicable and necessary legislative and other measures to bring about progressively and as soon as 745

746 |

Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery

possible the complete abolition or abandonment of the following institutions and practices, where they still exist and whether or not they are covered by the definition of slavery contained in article 1 of the Slavery Convention signed at Geneva on 25 September 1926: (a)

Debt bondage, that is to say, the status or condition arising from a pledge by a debtor of his personal services or of those of a person under his control as security for a debt, if the value of those services as reasonably assessed is not applied towards the liquidation of the debt or the length and nature of those services are not respectively limited and defined;

(b)

Serfdom, that is to say, the condition or status of a tenant who is by law, custom or agreement bound to live and labour on land belonging to another person and to render some determinate service to such other person, whether for reward or not, and is not free to change his status;

(c)

Any institution or practice whereby: (i)

A 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 (ii) The husband of a woman, his family, or his clan, has the right to transfer her to another person for value received or otherwise; or (iii) A woman on the death of her husband is liable to be inherited by another person; (d)

Any institution or practice whereby a child or young person under the age of 18 years is delivered by either or both of his natural parents or by his guardian to another person, whether for reward or not, with a view to the exploitation of the child or young person or of his labour.

Article 2 With a view to bringing to an end the institutions and practices mentioned in article 1(c) of this Convention, the States Parties undertake to prescribe, where appropriate, suitable minimum ages of marriage, to encourage the use of facilities whereby the consent of both parties to a marriage may be freely expressed in the presence of a competent civil or religious authority, and to encourage the registration of marriages.

Section II: The Slave Trade Article 3 1.

The act of conveying or attempting to convey slaves from one country to another by whatever means of transport, or of being accessory thereto,


| 747

shall be a criminal offence under the laws of the States Parties to this Convention and persons convicted thereof shall be liable to very severe penalties. 2.

(a) The States Parties shall take all effective measures to prevent ships and aircraft authorized to fly their flags from conveying slaves and to punish persons guilty of such acts or of using national flags for that purpose. (b) The States Parties shall take all effective measures to ensure that their ports, airfields and coasts are not used for the conveyance of slaves.

3.

The States Parties to this Convention shall exchange information in order to ensure the practical co-ordination of the measures taken by them in combating the slave trade and shall inform each other of every case of the slave trade, and of every attempt to commit this criminal offence, which comes to their notice.

Article 4 Any slave who takes refuge on board any vessel of a State Party to this Convention shall ipso facto be free.

Section III: Slavery and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery Article 5 In a country where the abolition or abandonment of slavery, or of the institutions or practices mentioned in article I of this Convention, is not yet complete, the act of mutilating, branding or otherwise marking a slave or a person of servile status in order to indicate his status, or as a punishment, or for any other reason, or of being accessory thereto, shall be a criminal offence under the laws of the States Parties to this Convention and persons convicted thereof shall be liable to punishment.

Article 6 1.

The act of enslaving another person or of inducing another person to give himself or a person dependent upon him into slavery, or of attempting these acts, or being accessory thereto, or being a party to a conspiracy to accomplish any such acts, shall be a criminal offence under the laws of the States Parties to this Convention and persons convicted thereof shall be liable to punishment.

2.

Subject to the provisions of the introductory paragraph of article 1 of this Convention, the provisions of paragraph 1 of the present article shall also

748 |


apply to the act of inducing another person to place himself or a person dependent upon him into the servile status resulting from any of the institutions or practices mentioned in article 1, to any attempt to perform such acts, to bring accessory thereto, and to being a party to a conspiracy to accomplish any such acts.

Section IV: Definitions Article 7 For the purposes of the present Convention: (a)

“Slavery” means, as defined in the Slavery Convention of 1926, the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised, and “ slave “ means a person in such condition or status;

(b)

“A person of servile status ” means a person in the condition or status resulting from any of the institutions or practices mentioned in article 1 of this Convention;

(c)

“Slave trade” means and includes all acts involved in the capture, acquisition or disposal of a person with intent to reduce him to slavery; all acts involved in the acquisition of a slave with a view to selling or exchanging him; all acts of disposal by sale or exchange of a person acquired with a view to being sold or exchanged; and, in general, every act of trade or transport in slaves by whatever means of conveyance.

Section V: Co-Operation Between States Parties and Communication of Information Article 8 1.

The States Parties to this Convention undertake to co-operate with each other and with the United Nations to give effect to the foregoing provisions.

2.

The Parties undertake to communicate to the Secretary-General of the United Nations copies of any laws, regulations and administrative measures enacted or put into effect to implement the provisions of this Convention.

3.

The Secretary-General shall communicate the information received under paragraph 2 of this article to the other Parties and to the Economic and Social Council as part of the documentation for any discussion which the Council might undertake with a view to making further recommendations for the abolition of slavery, the slave trade or the institutions and practices which are the subject of this Convention.


| 749

Section VI: Final Clauses Article 9 No reservations may be made to this Convention.

Article 10 Any dispute between States Parties to this Convention relating to its interpretation or application, which is not settled by negotiation, shall be referred to the International Court of Justice at the request of any one of the parties to the dispute, unless the parties concerned agree on another mode of settlement.

Article 11 1.

This Convention shall be open until 1 July 1957 for signature by any State Member of the United Nations or of a specialized agency. It shall be subject to ratification by the signatory States, and the instruments of ratification shall be deposited with the Secretary-General of the United Nations, who shall inform each signatory and acceding State.

2.

After 1 July 1957 this Convention shall be open for accession by any State Member of the United Nations or of a specialized agency, or by any other State to which an invitation to accede has been addressed by the General Assembly of the United Nations. Accession shall be effected by the deposit of a formal instrument with the Secretary-General of the United Nations, who shall inform each signatory and acceding State.

Article 12 1.

This Convention shall apply to all nonself-governing, trust, colonial and other non-metropolitan territories for the international relations of which any State Party is responsible; the Party concerned shall, subject to the provisions of paragraph 2 of this article, at the time of signature, ratification or accession declare the non-metropolitan territory or territories to which the Convention shall apply ipso facto as a result of such signature, ratification or accession.

2.

In any case in which the previous consent of a non-metropolitan territory is required by the constitutional laws or practices of the Party or of the nonmetropolitan territory, the Party concerned shall endeavour to secure the needed consent of the non-metropolitan territory within the period of twelve months from the date of signature of the Convention by the metropolitan State, and when such consent has been obtained the Party shall notify the

750 |


Secretary-General. This Convention shall apply to the territory or territories named in such notification from the date of its receipt by the Secretary-General. 3.

After the expiry of the twelve month period mentioned in the preceding paragraph, the States Parties concerned shall inform the Secretary-General of the results of the consultations with those non-metropolitan territories for whose international relations they are responsible and whose consent to the application of this Convention may have been withheld.

Article 13 1.

This Convention shall enter into force on the date on which two States have become Parties thereto.

2.

It shall thereafter enter into force with respect to each State and territory on the date of deposit of the instrument of ratification or accession of that State or notification of application to that territory.

Article 14 1.

The application of this Convention shall be divided into successive periods of three years, of which the first shall begin on the date of entry into force of the Convention in accordance with paragraph 1 of article 13.

2.

Any State Party may denounce this Convention by a notice addressed by that State to the Secretary-General not less than six months before the expiration of the current three-year period. The Secretary-General shall notify all other Parties of each such notice and the date of the receipt thereof.

3.

Denunciations shall take effect at the expiration of the current three- year period.

4.

In cases where, in accordance with the provisions of article 12, this Convention has become applicable to a non-metropolitan territory of a Party, that Party may at any time thereafter, with the consent of the territory concerned, give notice to the Secretary-General of the United Nations denouncing this Convention separately in respect of that territory. The denunciation shall take effect one year after the date of the receipt of such notice by the Secretary-General, who shall notify all other Parties of such notice and the date of the receipt thereof.

Article 15 This Convention, of which the Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish texts are equally authentic, shall be deposited in the archives of the United Nations Secretariat. The Secretary-General shall prepare a certified copy thereof for commu-


| 751

nication to States Parties to this Convention, as well as to all other States Members of the United Nations and of the specialized agencies. IN WITNESS WHEREOF the undersigned, being duly authorized thereto by their respective Governments, have signed this Convention on the date appearing opposite their respective signatures. DONE at the European Office of the United Nations at Geneva, this seventh day of September one thousand nine hundred and fifty-six. Source: 226 U.N.T.S. 3, entered into force April 30, 1957. Used by permission of the United Nations.

United Nations International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966)

Preamble The States Parties to the present Covenant Considering that, in accordance with the principles proclaimed in the Charter of the United Nations, recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all the members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in world, Recognizing that these rights derive from the inherent dignity of the human person, Recognizing that, in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the ideal of free human beings enjoying freedom from fear and want can only be achieved if conditions are created whereby everyone may enjoy his economic, social and cultural rights, as well as his civil and political rights and freedom, Realizing that the individual, having duties to other individuals and to the community to which he belongs, is under a responsibility to strive for the promotion and observance of the rights recognized in the present Covenant, Agree upon the following articles:

Part I Article 1 1.

All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.

2.

All peoples may, for their own ends, freely dispose of their natural wealth and resources without prejudice to any obligations arising out of international economic co-operation, based upon the principle of mutual benefit, and international law. In no case may a people be deprived of its own means of subsistence.

752

United Nations International Covenant

3.

| 753

The States Parties to the present Covenant, including those having responsibility for the administration of Non-Self-Governing and Trust Territories, shall promote the realization of the right of self-determination, and shall respect that right, in conformity with the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations.

Part II Article 2 1.

Each State Party to the present Covenant undertakes to take steps, individually and through international assistance and co-operation, especially economic and technical, to the maximum of its available resources, with a view to achieving progressively the full realization of the rights recognized in the present Covenant by all appropriate means, including particularly the adoption of legislative measures.

2.

The States Parties to present Covenant undertake to guarantee that the rights enunciated in the present Covenant will be exercised without discrimination of any kind as to race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

3.

Developing countries, with due regard to human rights and their national economy, may determine to what extent they would guarantee the economic rights recognized in the present Covenant to non-nationals.

Article 3 The States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to ensure the equal right of men and women to the enjoyment of all economic, social and cultural rights set forth in the present Covenant.

Article 4 The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize that, in the enjoyment of those rights provided by the State in conformity with the present Covenant, the State may subject such rights only to such limitations as are determined by law only in so far as this may be compatible with the nature of these rights and solely for the purpose of promoting the general welfare in a democratic society.

Article 5 1.

Nothing in the present Covenant may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights or freedoms recognized

754 |


herein, or at their limitation to greater extent than is provided for in the present Covenant. 2.

No restriction upon or derogation from any of the fundamental human rights recognized or existing in any country in virtue of law, conventions, regulations or custom shall be admitted on the pretext that the present Covenant does not recognize such rights or that it recognizes them to a lesser extent.

Part III Article 6 1.

The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right to work, which includes the right of everyone to the opportunity to gain his living by work which he freely chooses or accepts, and will take appropriate steps to safeguard this right.

2.

The steps to be taken by a State Party to the present Covenant to achieve the full realization of this right shall include technical and vocational guidance and training programmes, policies and techniques to achieve steady economic, social and cultural development and full and productive employment under conditions safeguarding fundamental political and economic freedoms to the individual.

Article 7 The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to the enjoyment of just and favourable conditions of work which ensure, in particular: 1.

Remuneration which provides all workers, as a minimum, with: a.

Fair wages and equal remuneration for work of equal value without distinction of any kind, in particular women being guaranteed conditions of work not inferior to those enjoyed by men, with equal pay for equal work;

b.

A decent living for themselves and their families in accordance with the provisions of the present Covenant;

2.

Safe and healthy working conditions;

3.

Equal opportunity for everyone to be promoted in his employment to an appropriate higher level, subject to no considerations other than those of seniority and competence;

4.

Rest, leisure and reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay, as well as remuneration for public holidays.


| 755

Article 8 1.

The States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to ensure: a.

b.

c.

d.

The right of everyone to form trade unions and join the trade union of his choice, subject only to the rules of the organization concerned, for the promotion and protection of his economic and social interests. No restrictions may be placed on the exercise of this right other than those prescribed by law and which are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security or public order or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others; The right of trade unions to establish national federations of confederations and the right of the latter to form or join international trade-union organizations; The right of trade unions to function freely subject to no limitations other than those prescribed by law and which are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security or public order or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others; The right to strike, provided that it is exercised in conformity with the laws of the particular country.

2.

This article shall not prevent the imposition of lawful restrictions on the exercise of these rights by members of the armed forces or of the police or of the administration of the State.

3.

Nothing in this article shall authorize States Parties to the International Labour Organization Convention of 1948 concerning Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organize to take legislative measures which would prejudice, or apply the law in such a manner as would prejudice, the guarantees provided for in the Convention.

Article 9 The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to social security, including social insurance.

Article 10 The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize that: 1.

The widest possible protection and assistance should be accorded to the family, which is the natural and fundamental group unit of society, particularly for its establishment and while it is responsible for the care and education of

756 |


dependent children. Marriage must be entered into with the free consent of the intending spouses. 2.

Special protection should be accorded to mothers during a reasonable period before and after childbirth. During such period working mothers should be accorded paid leave or leave with adequate social security benefits.

3.

Special measures of protection and assistance should be taken on behalf of all children and young persons without any discrimination for reasons of parentage or other conditions. Children and young persons should be protected from economic and social exploitation. Their employment in work harmful to their morals or health or dangerous to life or likely to hamper their normal development should be punishable by law. States should also set age limits below which the paid employment of child labour should be prohibited and punishable by law.

Article 11 1.

The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate food, clothing and housing, and to the continuous improvement of living conditions. The States Parties will take appropriate steps to ensure the international co-operation based on free consent.

2.

The States Parties to the present Covenant, recognizing the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger, shall take, individually and through international co-operation, the measures, including specific programmes, which are needed: a.

To improve methods of production, conservation and distribution of food by making full use of technical and scientific knowledge, by disseminating knowledge of the principles of nutrition and by developing or reforming agrarian systems in such a way as to achieve the most efficient development and utilization of natural resources;

b.

Taking into account the problems of both food-importing and foodexporting countries, to ensure an equitable distribution of world food supplies in relation to need.

Article 12 1.

The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.

2.

The steps to be taken by the States Parties to the present Covenant to achieve the full realization of this right shall include those necessary for:


a. b. c. d.

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The provision for the reduction of the stillbirth-rate and of infant mortality and for the healthy development of the child; The improvement of all aspects of environmental and industrial hygiene; The prevention, treatment and control of epidemic, endemic, occupational and other diseases; The creation of conditions which would assure to all medical service and medical attention in the event of sickness.

Article 13 1.

The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to education. They agree that education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and the sense of its dignity, and shall strengthen the respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. They further agree that education shall enable all persons to participate effectively in a free society, promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations and all racial, ethnic or religious groups, and further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.

2.

The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize that, with a view to achieving the full realization of this right: a. b.

c.

d.

e.

3.

Primary education shall be compulsory and available free to all; Secondary education in its different forms, including technical and vocational secondary education, shall be made generally available and accessible to all by ever appropriate means, and in particular by the progressive introduction of free education; Higher education shall be made equally accessible to all, on the basis of capacity, by every appropriate means, and in particular by the progressive introduction of free education; Fundamental education shall be encouraged or intensified as far as possible for those persons who have not received or completed the whole period of their primary education; The development of a system of schools at all levels shall be actively pursued, an adequate fellowship system shall be established, and the material conditions of teaching staff shall be continuously improved.

The States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to have respect for the liberty of parents and, when applicable, legal guardians to choose for their children schools, other than those established by the public authorities, which conform to such minimum educational standards as may be laid down or

758 |


approved by the State and to ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions. 4.

No part of this article shall be construed so as to interfere with the liberty of individuals and bodies to establish and direct educational institutions, subject always to the observance of the principles set forth in paragraph 1 of this article and to the requirement that the education given in such institutions shall conform to such minimum standards as may be laid down by the State.

Article 14 Each State Party to the present Covenant which, at the time of becoming a Party, has not been able to secure in its metropolitan territory of other territories under its jurisdiction compulsory primary education, free of charge, undertakes, within two years, to work out and adopt a detailed plan of action for the progressive implementation, within a reasonable number of years, to be fixed in the plan, of the principle of compulsory education free of charge for all.

Article 15 1.

The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone: a. b.

To take part in cultural life; To enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications;

c.

To benefit from the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

2.

The steps to be taken by the States Parties to the present Covenant to achieve the full realization of this right shall include those necessary for the conservation, the development and the diffusion of science and culture.

3.

The States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to respect the freedom indispensable for scientific research and creative activity.

4.

The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the benefits to be derived from the encouragement and development of international contacts and cooperation in the scientific and cultural fields.

Part IV Article 16 1.

The States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to submit in conformity with this part of the Covenant reports on the measures which they have


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adopted and the progress made in achieving the observance of the rights recognized herein. 2.

All reports shall be submitted to Secretary-General of the United Nations, who shall transmit copies to the Economic and Social Council for consideration in accordance with the provisions of the present Covenant;

3.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations shall also transmit to the specialized agencies copies of the reports, or any relevant parts therefrom, from States Parties to the present Covenant which are also members of these specialized agencies in so far as these reports, or parts therefrom, relate to any matters which fall within the responsibilities of the said agencies in accordance with their constitutional instruments.

Article 17 1.

The States Parties to the present Covenant shall furnish their reports in stages, in accordance with a programme to be established by the Economic and Social Council within one year of the entry into force of the present Covenant after consultation with the States Parties and the specialized agencies concerned.

2.

Reports may indicate factors and difficulties affecting the degree of fulfillment of obligations under the present Covenant.

3.

Where relevant information has previously been furnished to the United Nations or to any specialized agency by any State Party to the present Covenant, it will not be necessary to reproduce that information, but a precise reference to the information so furnished will suffice.

Article 18 Pursuant to its responsibilities under the Charter of the United Nations in the field of human rights and fundamental freedoms, the Economic and Social Council may make arrangements with the specialized agencies in respect of their reporting to it on the progress made in achieving the observance of the provisions of the present Covenant falling within the scope of their activities. These reports may include particulars of decisions and recommendations on such implementation adopted by their competent organs.

Article 19 The Economic and Social Council may transmit to the Commission on Human Rights for study and general recommendation or, as appropriate, for information the reports concerning human rights submitted by States in accordance with articles

760 |


16 and 17, and those concerning human rights submitted by the specialized agencies in accordance with article 18.

Article 20 The States Parties to the present Covenant and the specialized agencies concerned may submit comments to the Economic and Social Council on any general recommendation under article 19 or reference to such general recommendation in any report of the Commission on Human Rights or any documentation referred to therein.

Article 21 The Economic and Social Council may submit from time to time to the General Assembly reports with recommendations of a general nature and a summary of the information received from the States Parties to the present Covenant and the specialized agencies on the measures taken and the progress made in achieving general observance of the rights recognized in the present Covenant.

Article 22 The Economic and Social Council may bring to the attention of other organs of the United Nations, their subsidiary organs and specialized agencies concerned with furnishing technical assistance any matters arising out of the reports referred to in this part of the present Covenant which may assist such bodies in deciding, each within its field of competence, on the advisability of international measures likely to contribute to the effective progressive implementation of the present Covenant.

Article 23 The States Parties to the present Covenant agree that international action for the achievement of the rights recognized in the present Covenant includes such methods as the conclusion of conventions, the adoption of recommendations, the furnishing of technical assistance and the holding of regional meetings and technical meetings for the purpose of consultation and study organized in conjunction with the Governments concerned.

Article 24 Nothing in the present Covenant shall be interpreted as impairing the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations and of the constitutions of the specialized agencies which define the respective responsibilities of the various organs of the United


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Nations and of the specialized agencies in regard to the matters dealt with in the present Covenant.

Article 25 Nothing in the present Covenant shall be interpreted as impairing the inherent right of all peoples to enjoy and utilize fully and freely their natural wealth and resources.

Part V Article 26 1.

The present Covenant is open for signature by any State Member of the United Nations or member of any of its specialized agencies, by any State Party to the Statute of the International Court of Justice, and by any other State which has been invited by the General Assembly of the United Nations to become a party to the present Covenant.

2.

The present Covenant is subject to ratification. Instruments of ratification shall be deposited with the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

3.

The present Covenant shall be open to accession by any State referred to in paragraph 1 of this article.

4.

Accession shall be effected by the deposit of an instrument of accession with the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

5.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations shall inform all States which have signed the present Covenant or acceded to it of the deposit of each instrument of ratification or accession.

Article 27 1.

The present Covenant shall enter into force three months after the date of the deposit with the Secretary-General of the United Nations of the thirty-fifth instrument of ratification or instrument of accession.

2.

For each State ratifying the present Covenant or acceding to it after the deposit of the thirty-fifth instrument of ratification or instrument of accession, the present Covenant shall enter into force three months after the date of the deposit of its own instrument of ratification or instrument of accession.

Article 28 The provisions of the present Covenant shall extend to all parts of federal States without any limitations or exceptions.

762 |


Article 29 1.

Any State Party to the present Covenant may propose an amendment and file it with the Secretary-General of the United Nations. The Secretary-General shall thereupon communicate any proposed amendments to the States Parties to the present Covenant with a request that they notify him whether they favour a conference of States Parties for the purpose of considering and voting upon the proposals. In the event that at least one third of the States Parties favours such a conference, the Secretary-General shall convene the conference under the auspices of the United Nations. Any amendment adopted by a majority of the States Parties present and voting at the conference shall be submitted to the General Assembly of the United Nations for approval.

2.

Amendments shall come into force when they have been approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations and accepted by a two-thirds majority of the States Parties to the present Covenant in accordance with their respective constitutional processes.

3.

When amendments come into force they shall be binding on those States Parties which have accepted them, other States Parties still being bound by the provisions of the present Covenant and any earlier amendment which they have accepted.

Article 30 Irrespective of the notifications made under article 26, paragraph 5, the SecretaryGeneral of the United nations shall inform all States referred to in paragraph 1 of the same article of the following particulars: 1.

Signatures, ratifications and accessions under article 26;

2.

The date of the entry into force of the present Covenant under article 27 and the date of the entry into force of any amendments under article 29.

Article 31 1.

The present Covenant, of which the Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish texts are equally authentic, shall be deposited in the archives of the United Nations.

2.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations shall transmit certified copies of the present Covenant to all States referred to in article 26.

Source: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/cescr.htm. Used by permission of the United Nations.

International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1969)

Article 1 1.

In this Convention, the term “racial discrimination” shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.

Article 2 1.

States Parties condemn racial discrimination and undertake to pursue by all appropriate means and without delay a policy of eliminating racial discrimination in all its forms and promoting understanding among all races, and, to this end: (a)

(b) (c)

(d)

(e)

Each State Party undertakes to engage in no act or practice of racial discrimination against persons, groups of persons or institutions and to ensure that all public authorities and public institutions, national and local, shall act in conformity with this obligation; Each State Party undertakes not to sponsor, defend or support racial discrimination by any persons or organizations; Each State Party shall take effective measures to review governmental, national and local policies, and to amend, rescind or nullify any laws and regulations which have the effect of creating or perpetuating racial discrimination wherever it exists; Each State Party shall prohibit and bring to an end, by all appropriate means, including legislation as required by circumstances, racial discrimination by any persons, group or organization; Each State Party undertakes to encourage, where appropriate, integrationist multiracial organizations and movements and other means of

763

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International Convention on the Elimination

eliminating barriers between races, and to discourage anything which tends to strengthen racial division. 2.

States Parties shall, when the circumstances so warrant, take, in the social, economic, cultural and other fields, special and concrete measures to ensure the adequate development and protection of certain racial groups or individuals belonging to them, for the purpose of guaranteeing them the full and equal enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms. These measures shall in no case entail as a consequence the maintenance of unequal or separate rights for different racial groups after the objectives for which they were taken have been achieved.

Article 5 In compliance with the fundamental obligations laid down in article 2 of this Convention, States Parties undertake to prohibit and to eliminate racial discrimination in all its forms and to guarantee the right of everyone, without distinction as to race, colour, or national or ethnic origin, to equality before the law, notably in the enjoyment of the following rights: (a)

The right to equal treatment before the tribunals and all other organs administering justice;

(b)

The right to security of person and protection by the State against violence or bodily harm, whether inflicted by government officials or by any individual group or institution;

(c)

Political rights, in particular the right to participate in elections—to vote and to stand for election—on the basis of universal and equal suffrage, to take part in the Government as well as in the conduct of public affairs at any level and to have equal access to public service;

(d)

Other civil rights, in particular: (i)

The right to freedom of movement and residence within the border of the State; (ii) The right to leave any country, including one’s own, and to return to one’s country; (iii) The right to nationality; (iv) The right to marriage and choice of spouse; (v) The right to own property alone as well as in association with others; (vi) The right to inherit; (vii) The right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; (viii) The right to freedom of opinion and expression; (ix) The right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association;

International Convention on the Elimination

(e)

Economic, social and cultural rights, in particular: (i)

(ii) (iii) (iv) (v) (vi) (f)

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The rights to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work, to protection against unemployment, to equal pay for equal work, to just and favourable remuneration; The right to form and join trade unions; The right to housing; The right to public health, medical care, social security and social services; The right to education and training; The right to equal participation in cultural activities;

The right of access to any place or service intended for use by the general public, such as transport hotels, restaurants, cafes, theatres and parks.

Source: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/cerd.htm. Used by permission of the United Nations.

Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979)

Article I For the purposes of the present Convention, the term “discrimination” shall mean any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by women, irrespective of their marital status, on a basis of equality of men and women, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field.

Article 2 States Parties condemn discrimination against women in all its forms, agree to pursue by all appropriate means and without delay a policy of eliminating discrimination against women and, to this end, undertake: (a)

To embody the principle of the equality of men and women in their national constitutions or other appropriate legislation if not yet incorporated therein and to ensure, through law and other appropriate means, the practical realization of this principle;

(b)

To adopt appropriate legislative and other measures, including sanctions where appropriate, prohibiting all discrimination against women;

(c)

To establish legal protection of the rights of women on an equal basis with men and to ensure through competent national tribunals and other public institutions the effective protection of women against any act of discrimination;

(d)

To refrain from engaging in any act or practice of discrimination against women and to ensure that public authorities and institutions shall act in conformity with this obligation;

(e)

To take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women by any person, organization or enterprise; 766

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(f)

To take all appropriate measures, including legislation, to modify or abolish existing laws, regulations, customs and practices which constitute discrimination against women;

(g)

To repeal all national penal provisions which constitute discrimination against women.

Article 3 States Parties shall take in all fields, in particular in the political, social, economic and cultural fields, all appropriate measures, including legislation, to ensure the full development and advancement of women, for the purpose of guaranteeing them the exercise and enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms on a basis of equality with men. Source: http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/text/econvention.htm. Used by permission of the United Nations.

Convention on the Rights of a Child (1989)

…

Article 34 States Parties undertake to protect the child from all forms of sexual exploitation and sexual abuse. For these purposes, States Parties shall in particular take all appropriate national, bilateral and multilateral measures to prevent: (a)

The inducement or coercion of a child to engage in any unlawful sexual activity;

(b)

The exploitative use of children in prostitution or other unlawful sexual practices;

(c)

The exploitative use of children in pornographic performances and materials.

Article 35 States Parties shall take all appropriate national, bilateral and multilateral measures to prevent the abduction of, the sale of or traffic in children for any purpose or in any form.

Article 37 States Parties shall ensure that: (a)

No child shall be subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Neither capital punishment nor life imprisonment without possibility of release shall be imposed for offences committed by persons below eighteen years of age;

(b)

No child shall be deprived of his or her liberty unlawfully or arbitrarily. The arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child shall be in conformity with the law and shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time; 768

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(c)

Every child deprived of liberty shall be treated with humanity and respect for the inherent dignity of the human person, and in a manner which takes into account the needs of persons of his or her age. In particular, every child deprived of liberty shall be separated from adults unless it is considered in the child’s best interest not to do so and shall have the right to maintain contact with his or her family through correspondence and visits, save in exceptional circumstances;

(d)

Every child deprived of his or her liberty shall have the right to prompt access to legal and other appropriate assistance, as well as the right to challenge the legality of the deprivation of his or her liberty before a court or other competent, independent and impartial authority, and to a prompt decision on any such action.

… Source: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/crc.htm. Used by permission of the United Nations.

Brazilian Government Recognizes Slave Labor (1995)

The Brazilian Government will set up, in June, an executive group to fight slave labor in Brazil. The decision, announced late in May by the minister of Labor, Paulo Paiva, at a public audience promoted by the Commissions of Minorities, Labor, Agriculture, and Human Rights of the Chamber of Deputies, shows that the government has finally surrendered to the evidence of the existence of this kind of labor in Brazil. A report issued by the Land Pastoral Commission (CPT) called Conflicts in Rural Areas—Brazil 1994 points out the growth of slave labor in Brazil, including the exploitation of Indian labor. This kind of crime, which was being constantly denounced by social movements and leftist parties, used to be officially regarded as an exaggeration of the actual situation. It was the society, however, that once again took concrete steps against such practice: through the National Forum Against Violence, it is launching the National Campaign against slave labor. For over three years, CIMI has been denouncing the use of Indian slave labor. According to the entity, the sugarcane industry in Mato Grosso at one point relied on the slave and semislave labor of 7 thousand Indians belonging to the Guarani Kaoiwa, Terena, and Guarani Nhandeva peoples. Among them there were children who earned salaries corresponding to 50–60% of those received by the adults. In 1993, repeated denunciations from CPT and CIMI led that state to set up a Permanent Commission for Investigating and Inspecting Labor Conditions in Charcoal Kilns and Distilleries in the State of Mato Grosso do Sul, which is made up of 11 state secretariats and agencies, 16 nongovernment organizations and also CPT, CIMI and the State Commission for the Defense of Human Rights. The inspection carried out in plants and charcoal kilns has become more intense and, as a result, two police investigations have been opened. In spite of all this effort, labor relations remain below human standards. The Indians are fighting for labor rights, earn terribly low salaries in relation to the rest of the country and, in most cases, work under unsafe conditions. Because they are paid according to their production, they work over 12 hours a day without any break for lunch. Social

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movements expect the executive group to do more than simply recognize that the crime actually exists. Brasilia, June 8th, 1995 Indianist Missionary Council—CIMI Source: Indianist Missionary Council, “Brazilian Government Recognizes Slave Labor,” Newsletter, no. 162, June 8, 1995.

Model Business Principles (1995)

Recognizing the positive role of U.S. business in upholding and promoting adherence to universal standards of human rights, the Administration encourages all businesses to adopt and implement voluntary codes of conduct for doing business around the world that cover at least the following areas: 1.

Provision of a safe and healthy workplace;

2.

Fair employment practices, including avoidance of child and forced labor and avoidance of discrimination based on race, gender, national origin, or religious beliefs; and respect for the right of association and the right to organize and bargain collectively;

3.

Responsible environmental protection and environmental practices;

4.

Compliance with U.S. and local laws promoting good business practices, including laws prohibiting illicit payments and ensuring fair competition;

5.

Maintenance, through leadership of all levels, of a corporate culture that respects free expression consistent with legitimate business concerns, and does not condone political coercion in the workplace; that encourages good corporate citizenship and makes a positive contribution to the communities in which the company operates; and where ethical conduct is recognized, valued, and exemplified by all employees.

In adopting voluntary codes of conduct that reflect these principles, U.S. companies should serve as models and encourage similar behavior by their partners, suppliers, and subcontractors. Adoption of codes of conduct reflecting these principles is voluntary. Companies are encouraged to develop their own codes of conduct appropriate to their particular circumstances. Many companies already apply statements or codes that incorporate these principles. Companies should find appropriate means to inform their shareholders and the public of actions undertaken in connection with these principles. Nothing in the principles is intended to require a company to act in violation of host country or U.S. law. This statement of principles is not intended for legislation. Source: United States Department of Commerce. As seen at http://actrav.itcilo.org/ actrav-english/telearn/global/ilo/guide/usmodel.htm and http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs /40xx/doc4017/1997doc07-Entire.pdf (page 30). 772

The Sanders Amendment (1997)

105th CONGRESS 1st Session H.R. 2195 AN ACT To provide for certain measures to increase monitoring of products that are made with forced labor. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

Section 1. Findings The Congress makes the following findings: (1)

The United States Customs Service has identified goods, wares, articles, and merchandise mined, produced, or manufactured under conditions of convict labor, forced labor, and indentured labor in several countries.

(2)

The United States Customs Service has actively pursued attempts to import products made with forced labor, resulting in seizures, detention orders, fines, and criminal prosecutions.

(3)

The United States Customs Service has taken 21 formal administrative actions in the form of detention orders against different products destined for the United States market, found to have been made with forced labor, including products from the People’s Republic of China.

(4)

The United States Customs Service does not currently have the tools to obtain the timely and in-depth verification necessary to identify and interdict products made with forced labor that are destined for the United States market.

Sec. 2. Authorization for Additional Customs Personnel to Monitor the Importation of Products Made with Forced Labor There are authorized to be appropriated for monitoring by the United States Customs Service of the importation into the United States of products made with forced 773

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labor, the importation of which violates section 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930 or section 1761 of title 18, United States Code, $2,000,000 for fiscal year 1999.

Sec. 3. Reporting Requirement on Forced Labor Products Destined for the United States Market (a)

REPORT TO CONGRESS: Not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Commissioner of Customs shall prepare and transmit to the Congress a report on products made with forced labor that are destined for the United States market.

(b)

CONTENTS OF REPORT: The report under subsection (a) shall include information concerning the following: (1) The extent of the use of forced labor in manufacturing products destined for the United States market. (2) The volume of products made with forced labor, destined for the United States market, that is in violation of section 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930 or section 1761 of the title 18, United States Code, and is seized by the United States Customs Service. (3) The progress of the United States Customs Service in identifying and interdicting products made with forced labor that are destined for the United States market.

Sec. 4. Renegotiating Memoranda of Understanding on Forced Labor It is the sense of the Congress that the President should determine whether any country with which the United States has a memorandum of understanding with respect to reciprocal trade which involves goods made with forced labor is frustrating implementation of the memorandum. Should an affirmative determination be made, the President should immediately commence negotiations to replace the current memorandum of understanding with one providing for effective procedures for the monitoring of forced labor, including improved procedures to request investigations of suspected prison labor facilities by international monitors.

Sec. 5. Definition of Forced Labor As used in this Act, the term “forced labor” means convict labor, forced labor, or indentured labor, as such terms are used in section 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930.


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Passed the House of Representatives November 5, 1997. Attest: Clerk. Source: H.R. 2195 [105th]: Laogai Slave Labor Products Act of 1997. Available at http:// www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-105hr2195eh/pdf/BILLS-105hr2195eh.pdf.

Mission to the Russian Federation of the Special Rapporteur on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography (2000)

Introduction 1.

At the invitation of the Government of the Russian Federation, the Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography carried out a fact-finding mission to the country (Moscow and St. Petersburg) from 2 to 11 October 2000, in the context of her mandate. During the visit she met with representatives of governmental and non-governmental organizations, as well as of various United Nations organizations. The Special Rapporteur thanks all those involved in the preparation of her mission, including the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the International Labour Office (ILO) for substantive input, and would like to take this opportunity to express her particular appreciation to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for the very competent and thorough logistical assistance provided to her throughout her mission.

2.

During her visit, the Special Rapporteur met with officials of the Ministries of: Labour and Social Development; Foreign Affairs; Justice; Education; the Press and Mass Media; the Interior; and Health. She met with the General Prosecutor’s Office, the Committee on Women, Family and Youth Affairs of the State Duma, the Ombudsman of the Russian Federation, and in St. Petersburg, with the Committee on Family Childhood and Youth Issues, the Children’s Rights Ombudsman and the Federation of Trade Unions.

3.

Her mission also involved visits to State institutions, including orphanages and medical centres, meetings with United Nations agencies and other international organizations, with academics and with NGOs. The Special Rapporteur also carried out on-site evening visits to observe the situation of children living on the streets.

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Mission to the Russian Federation

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I. General Concerns A. Sale of children 4.

During her meeting with the Deputy Minister of Labour and Social Development, the Special Rapporteur was advised that the problem of the sale and trafficking of women is more acute than that involving children. The growing media attention and public awareness surrounding this issue was particularly welcomed by the Head of Division on Social Development Issues of the Human Rights Department.

5.

International adoption was not considered to be a common motive for the trafficking of children. It was reported that long-established bureaucratic procedures are still in place and that Russia is still very much a closed State with respect to travel abroad, making it very difficult to take children out of the country. However, certain problems were reported. These include huge bribes being offered to judges and orphanages to speed up the adoption process, while the police have reportedly been very reluctant to take any responsibility to curtail such abuses. The General Prosecutor’s Office reported that there had been a great demand for Russian babies since the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1999, the Office had carried out a survey on inter-country adoption and was alarmed to discover that although priority was supposed to be given to Russian parents wishing to adopt, many children were being sent abroad.

6.

The Ministry of Education runs a State database on children available for adoption and is responsible for applying decrees of adoption, mainly to Russian parents. However, the Ministry agreed that international adoption was a serious issue and could potentially be very problematic if the number of foreigners wishing to adopt Russian babies continued to increase and the number of Russians wanting to adopt continued to decrease. This decrease was attributed by the Ministry to the current socio-economic conditions in the country. However, the Chairperson of the Committee on Women, Family and Youth Affairs of the State Duma reported that only 20 per cent of Russian parents asking to adopt could actually do so, as so many children were being adopted abroad.

7.

In St. Petersburg, representatives of the Committee on Family, Childhood and Youth Issues advised the Special Rapporteur that in 1999, 700 children from the city were adopted, 200 of them by Russians and 500 by foreigners. Many of these children had serious illnesses and handicaps, and had been living in orphanages. The Committee reported that neither Russian families, the city nor the State had the resources to treat such children and so they were adopted abroad in order to have the best chance of survival. However, the city authorities continued to monitor every child adopted abroad from St. Petersburg and had not come across any case in which a child had been abused after being adopted.

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Mission to the Russian Federation

8. The Russian Federation has not yet signed the Hague Convention on International Cooperation and Protection of Children in respect of Inter-country Adoption, but the Ministry of Education reported that the Convention was about to be adopted. The Ministry considered that no measures would fully guarantee children’s safety and their inviolability against abuses, but explained that in each country to which Russian children were adopted, there is an accredited organization with which the Russian authorities work. These organizations have to have been working for five years in their home countries before the Russian authorities will provide the necessary accreditation and begin processing international adoptions through them. The General Prosecutor’s Office agreed that the procedure for inter-country adoption was quite strict and indicated that each year amendments were made to adoption legislation to stop children being taken out illegally. On 29 March 2000 Decree 275 stipulating the rules for transfer of children for inter-country adoption was adopted. Criminal liability for the trafficking of children is provided for under the Criminal Code and sentences can be between 5 and 15 years, depending on the severity of the offence. 9. Staff of the General Prosecutor’s Office attributed the growing number of children being adopted outside of the country, despite these measures, to the increasing involvement of middlemen, who were finding various ways to circumvent the legal provisions. Although they were not able to explain all the details to the Special Rapporteur, they alleged that many of these middlemen are former orphanage directors who select children and give information about them to adoption agencies that are operating illegally, which are somehow then able to gain access to the children. 10. Staff of the General Prosecutor’s Office also reported cases in which Russian women are paid to travel abroad and give birth there, thus facilitating legal adoption. There was also the possibility that illegal international adoptions could take place if children left Russia with the man that their unmarried mother had falsely named as their father on their birth certificate. Source: Report of the Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution, and child pornography, Ms. Ofelia Calcetas-Santos, Addendum: Mission to the Russian Federation. E/CN.4/2001/78/Add.2. Available at http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/ UNDOC/GEN/G01/108/72/PDF/G0110872.pdf?OpenElement. Used by permission of the United Nations.

Child Prostitution Investigated by the U.S. Senate (2000)

Senator [Paul] Wellstone: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me also thank all of the witnesses today. I agree with the chairman, we are going to have some powerful testimony, and having just listened to you, Senator [Sam] Brownback, I think this is something that the two of us can work together on, and I believe we can make a difference, and I think other colleagues will join us. This is an important hearing, as it seeks to investigate I think one of today’s most serious and pressing violations of human rights, and I put it in a human rights context, the trafficking of persons, particularly women and children, for purposes of sexual exploitation and forced labor. Despite increasing U.S. Government and international interest, trafficking in women and children has grown over the past decade, becoming more insidious and more widespread. I believe, Mr. Chairman, that it is one of the darkest aspects of globalization of the world economy. Every year, the trafficking of human beings affects millions of women and children throughout the world, women and children whose lives have been disrupted by economic collapse, civil wars, or fundamental changes in political geography such as the war in Kosovo and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. They have fallen prey to traffickers. According to the State Department, between 50,000 women, or somewhere around 50,000 women are trafficked each year into the United States alone, 50,000 into our country. They come from the Philippines, Thailand, Russia, the Ukraine, and other countries in Asia and the former Soviet Union. Since I began, Mr. Chairman, working on this issue several years ago, I have met, along with my wife, Sheila, trafficking victims and advocates from around the world. They have told me again and again that trafficking is induced by poverty, lack of economic opportunities for women, the horrible low status of women in many cultures, and the rapid growth, I am sorry to say, of sophisticated and ruthless international crime operations. Upon arrival in countries far from their homes, victims are often stripped of their passports, held against their will in slave-like conditions, and sexually abused. Rape, intimidation, and violence are commonly employed by traffickers to control their victims and to prevent them from seeking help. That is the common practice. 779

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Through physical isolation and psychological trauma, traffickers and brothel owners imprison women in a world of economic and sexual exploitation that imposes constant fear of arrest and deportation as well as violent reprisals by the traffickers themselves, to whom the women must pay off ever-growing debts. As many of you know, these events are occurring not just in far-off lands, but here at home in the United States as well. Last year, in the Kudhina case, six men admitted in a Florida court to forcing 17 women and girls, some of them as young as age 14, into a prostitution slavery ring. The victims were smuggled into the United States from Mexico with the promise of steady work but instead were forced into prostitution. The ring was discovered when two 15-year-old girls escaped and went to the Mexican Consulate in Miami. Even closer to home, a forced prostitution ring was busted a couple of years ago which imprisoned Russian women in a massage parlor in Bethesda, Maryland. Trafficking in persons is a human rights problem that requires a human rights response, and yet more often than not our Government and other governments have hounded the victims and let the traffickers go free. The women are treated as criminals and not as the victims of gross human rights abuses, and that is exactly what has happened to them. In order to reverse this ineffective and often cruel approach toward trafficking victims and go after the root causes of trafficking, like economic distress and the low status of women, I introduced the first bill in the Congress to comprehensively address the problem and was joined, and we will be joined by other Senators, notably Senators [Barbara] Boxer, [Diane] Feinstein, [Olympia] Snowe, and others. Moreover, the committee is going to be taking up S. 1842, the Comprehensive Antitrafficking in Persons Act at our next committee business session. I think there is some work we could do together on this before committee. I would very much like to do this in a bipartisan way with you, Mr. Chairman. The legislation focuses on prevention of abuse, protection and assistance for victims, and the prosecution of traffickers. I think those are the three key ingredients. The bill should ensure the State Department and our law enforcement agencies will be fully engaged on the issue, and I know Secretary Koh has made his absolute commitment that our immigration laws do not encourage rapid deportation of victims—that is one of the things that people have to worry about—and that the traffickers are severely punished, and that trafficking victims receive the needed services and the safe shelter. Further, this legislation provides, and we have to do this, the needed resources to programs which will assist the victims both here in our country and abroad. In conclusion, or in closing, I want to thank all the advocates who are here today who have worked so hard on this issue, and I urge the administration to support legislative efforts in the Senate so that we can move quickly to end this brutal practice once and for all.


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I just want to say to you, Mr. Chairman, that I agree with you about the importance of this hearing, and I think that both of us can make a commitment to everybody here that this is not symbolic. It is not a hearing and goodbye, you put it away. We are committed to trying to do something about this, and I think we will. Thank you. Source: 106th Congress Senate Hearings. Senate Hearing 106–705. International Trafficking in Women and Children. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2000.

The Harkin-Engel Protocol (2001)

Protocol for the Growing and Processing of Cocoa Beans and their Derivative Products in a Manner that Complies with ILO Convention 182 Concerning the Prohibition and Immediate Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labor. Guiding Principles: OBJECTIVE Cocoa beans and their derivative products should be grown and processed in a manner that complies with International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention 182 Concerning the Prohibition and Immediate Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labor. ILO Convention 182 is attached hereto and incorporated herein by reference. RESPONSIBILITY Achieving this objective is possible only through partnership among the major stakeholders: governments, global industry (comprised of major manufacturers of cocoa and chocolate products as well as other, major cocoa users), cocoa producers, organized labor, non-governmental organizations, and consumers. Each partner has important responsibilities. This protocol evidences industry’s commitment to carry out its responsibilities through continuation and expansion of on-going programs in cocoa-producing countries and through the other steps described in this document. CREDIBLE, EFFECTIVE PROBLEM SOLVING In fashioning a long-term solution, the problem-solving process should involve the major stakeholders in order to maximize both the credibility and effectiveness of the problem-solving action plan that is mutually-agreed upon. SUSTAINABILITY A multi-sectoral infrastructure, including but independent of the industry, should be created to develop the action plan expeditiously. ILO EXPERTISE Consistent with its support for ILO Convention 182, industry recognizes the ILO’s unique expertise and welcomes its involvement in addressing this serious problem. The ILO must have a “seat at the table” and an active role in assessing, monitoring, reporting on, and remedying the worst forms of child labor in the growing and processing of cocoa beans and their derivative products. Key Action Plan and Steps to Eliminate the Worst Forms of Child Labor: 1.

Public Statement of Need for and Terms of an Action Plan Industry has publicly acknowledged the problem of forced child labor in West Africa and will 782


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continue to commit significant resources to address it. West African nations also have acknowledged the problem and have taken steps under their own laws to stop the practice. More is needed because, while the scope of the problem is uncertain, the occurrence of the worst forms of child labor in the growing and processing of cocoa beans and their derivative products is simply unacceptable. Industry will reiterate its acknowledgment of the problem and in a highly-public way will commit itself to this protocol. 2.

Formation of Multi-Sectoral Advisory Groups By October 1, 2001, an advisory group will be constituted with particular responsibility for the on-going investigation of labor practices in West Africa. By December 1, 2001, industry will constitute a broad consultative group with representatives of major stakeholders to advise in the formulation of appropriate remedies for the elimination of the worst forms of child labor in the growing and processing of cocoa beans and their derivative products.

3.

Signed Joint Statement on Child Labor to Be Witnessed at the ILO By December 1, 2001, a joint statement made by the major stakeholders would recognize, as a matter of urgency, the need to end the worst forms of child labor in connection with the growing and processing of West African cocoa beans and their derivative products and the need to identify positive developmental alternatives for the children removed from the worst forms of child labor in the growing and processing of cocoa beans and their derivative products.

4.

Memorandum of Cooperation By May 1, 2002, there will be a binding memorandum of cooperation among the major stakeholders that establishes a joint action program of research, information exchange, and action to enforce the internationally-recognized and mutually-agreed upon standards to eliminate the worst forms of child labor in the growing and processing of cocoa beans and their derivative products and to establish independent means of monitoring and public reporting on compliance with those standards.

5.

Establishment of Joint Foundation By July 1, 2002, industry will establish a joint international foundation to oversee and sustain efforts to eliminate the worst forms of child labor in the growing and processing of cocoa beans and their derivative products. This private, not-for-profit foundation will be governed by a Board comprised of industry and other, non-governmental stakeholders. Industry will provide initial and on-going, primary financial support for the foundation. The foundation’s purposes will include field projects and a clearinghouse on best practices to eliminate the worst forms of child labor.

6.

Building Toward Credible Standards In conjunction with governmental agencies and other parties, industry is currently conducting baseline, investigative surveys of child labor practices in West Africa to be completed by December 31, 2001. Taking into account these surveys and in accordance

784 |


with the other deadlines prescribed in this action plan and by July 1, 2005, the industry in partnership with other major stakeholders will develop and implement credible, mutually-acceptable, voluntary, industry-wide standards of public certification, consistent with applicable federal law, that cocoa beans and their derivative products have been grown and/or processed without any of the worst forms of child labor. We, the undersigned, as of September 13, 2001 and henceforth, commit the Chocolate Manufacturers Association, the World Cocoa Foundation, and all of our members wholeheartedly to work with the other major stakeholders, to fulfill the letter and spirit of this Protocol, and to do so in accordance with the deadlines prescribed herein. SIGNED: Mr. Larry Graham President Chocolate Manufacturers Association Mr. William Guyton President World Cocoa Foundation Source: Congressional Record 148 (2002): S225. Available at http://frwebgate.access.gpo. gov/cgi-bin/getpage.cgi?position=all&page=S225&dbname=2002_record.

United States Congress Concurrent Resolution on Sudan (2001)

Regarding the human rights situation in the Republic of the Sudan, including the practice of chattel slavery and all other forms of booty and related practices. (Introduced in House) H. CON. RES 82 IH 107th CONGRESS 1st Session Regarding the human rights situation in the Republic of the Sudan, including the practice of chattel slavery and all other forms of booty and related practices.

In The House of Representatives March 22, 2001 Mr. PAYNE (for himself and Mr. TANCREDO) submitted the following concurrent resolution; which was referred to the Committee on International Relations

Concurrent Resolution Regarding the human rights situation in the Republic of the Sudan, including the practice of chattel slavery and all other forms of booty and related practices. Whereas the Government of the Republic of the Sudan has perpetrated a prolonged campaign of human rights abuses and discrimination, including the facilitation of slavery in Sudan; Whereas slavery is defined in international law as a crime against humanity; Whereas the 2000 Department of State Country Reports on Human Rights has documented numerous instances of the facilitation of slavery by the Government of Sudan; Whereas since Sudan’s independence in 1956, the Government of Sudan, which has been dominated by northern Arabs, has been fighting against the Christian and animist South; Whereas the Government of Sudan is not able to pay their militias and has encouraged the militias to take slaves as compensation; Whereas Christian Solidarity International (CSI) estimates that tens of thousands of black slaves are owned by Arabs in northern Sudan; 785

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Whereas on November 30, 1997, the Government of Sudan’s Popular Defense Force (PDF) enslaved 18 women and children during a slave raid on four villages— Tiomthet, Mabior Nyang, and Ajok and Achorou—in northeastern Bahr El Ghazal; Whereas Aluel Mangong Deng and numerous other freed slaves have recounted to rescuers from Christian Solidarity International and other rescuers that they were systematically gang raped by members of Sudan’s Popular Defense Force following their enslavement; Whereas in a January 2001 report of Christian Solidarity International, later confirmed by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), states that more than 175 black African women and children were abducted in slave raids by militia forces of the Government of Sudan in Southern Sudan during a two week period; Whereas the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights and successive United Nations special rapporteurs have identified slavery as a grave human rights problem in Sudan; Whereas the NAACP’s Executive Board passed an anti-slavery resolution in 1995; Whereas a slave raid undertaken as part of the ruling National Islam Front (NIF) regime’s self-declared jihad (holy war) against the predominantly Christian and animist South in Sudan is the most recent of a long series of such raids; and Whereas Sudan is a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, the Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, however, despite being a party to these agreements, slavery still exists in Sudan: Now, therefore, be it Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That the Congress— (1)

calls upon the Government of the Republic of the Sudan to honor its obligations under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Abolition of Slavery to prosecute slave owners to the fullest extent under the anti-slavery laws of Sudan and to educate individuals being held as slaves concerning their legal rights;

(2)

calls upon the Government of Sudan to surrender and release all slaves and return them to their homes;

(3)

urges in the strongest terms that the Government of Sudan investigate abuses relating to slavery;

(4)

urges the United Nations Security Council to condemn these acts of slavery;

(5)

deplores the fighting of the National Islam Front (NIF), which has caused untold suffering for the people of Sudan;

(6)

advocates the strengthening of the border between northern and southern Sudan;


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(7) encourages human rights organizations to facilitate a safe passage for slavery victims to and from conflict zones in Sudan; (8) encourages the President to expand the comprehensive sanctions applied to Sudan since 1997 to include sanctions with respect to the practice of slavery; (9) urges cooperation among the Western powers to address slavery and other human rights abuses in Sudan; (10) urges cooperation among the Western powers in support of the proposal of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights for international action to facilitate the decommissioning of weapons used by Sudanese militias that take slaves; and (11) calls upon the United Nations Commission for Human Rights, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the European Union (EU) to end the use of euphemisms, such as the term “abduction”, as a substitute for the term “slavery” with respect to the practice of slavery in Sudan. Source: H. CON. RES. 82 [107th Congress]. Available at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ query/z?c107:H.CON.RES.82.

The Palermo Protocol (2003)

Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, Supplementing the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, entered into force Sept. 9, 2003. Preamble The States Parties to this Protocol, Declaring that effective action to prevent and combat trafficking in persons, especially women and children, requires a comprehensive international approach in the countries of origin, transit and destination that includes measures to prevent such trafficking, to punish the traffickers and to protect the victims of such trafficking, including by protecting their internationally recognized human rights, Taking into account the fact that, despite the existence of a variety of international instruments containing rules and practical measures to combat the exploitation of persons, especially women and children, there is no universal instrument that addresses all aspects of trafficking in persons, Concerned that, in the absence of such an instrument, persons who are vulnerable to trafficking will not be sufficiently protected, Recalling General Assembly resolution 53/111 of 9 December 1998, in which the Assembly decided to establish an open-ended intergovernmental ad hoc committee for the purpose of elaborating a comprehensive international convention against transnational organized crime and of discussing the elaboration of, inter alia, an international instrument addressing trafficking in women and children, Convinced that supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime with an international instrument for the prevention, suppression and punishment of trafficking in persons, especially women and children, will be useful in preventing and combating that crime, Have agreed as follows:

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I. General Provisions Article 1 Relation with the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime 1.

This Protocol supplements the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. It shall be interpreted together with the Convention.

2.

The provisions of the Convention shall apply, mutatis mutandis, to this Protocol unless otherwise provided herein.

3.

The offences established in accordance with article 5 of this Protocol shall be regarded as offences established in accordance with the Convention.

Article 2 Statement of purpose The purposes of this Protocol are: (a)

To prevent and combat trafficking in persons, paying particular attention to women and children;

(b)

To protect and assist the victims of such trafficking, with full respect for their human rights; and

(c)

To promote cooperation among States Parties in order to meet those objectives.

Article 3 Use of terms For the purposes of this Protocol: (a)

“Trafficking in persons” shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs;

(b)

The consent of a victim of trafficking in persons to the intended exploitation set forth in subparagraph (a) of this article shall be irrelevant where any of the means set forth in subparagraph (a) have been used;

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(c)

The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of a child for the purpose of exploitation shall be considered “trafficking in persons” even if this does not involve any of the means set forth in subparagraph (a) of this article;

(d)

“Child” shall mean any person under eighteen years of age.

Article 4 Scope of application This Protocol shall apply, except as otherwise stated herein, to the prevention, investigation and prosecution of the offences established in accordance with article 5 of this Protocol, where those offences are transnational in nature and involve an organized criminal group, as well as to the protection of victims of such offences.

Article 5 Criminalization 1.

Each State Party shall adopt such legislative and other measures as may be necessary to establish as criminal offences the conduct set forth in article 3 of this Protocol, when committed intentionally.

2.

Each State Party shall also adopt such legislative and other measures as may be necessary to establish as criminal offences: (a) Subject to the basic concepts of its legal system, attempting to commit an offence established in accordance with paragraph 1 of this article; (b) Participating as an accomplice in an offence established in accordance with paragraph 1 of this article; and (c)

Organizing or directing other persons to commit an offence established in accordance with paragraph 1 of this article.

II. Protection of Victims of Trafficking in Persons Article 6 Assistance to and protection of victims of trafficking in persons 1.

In appropriate cases and to the extent possible under its domestic law, each State Party shall protect the privacy and identity of victims of trafficking in persons, including, inter alia, by making legal proceedings relating to such trafficking confidential.


2.

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Each State Party shall ensure that its domestic legal or administrative system contains measures that provide to victims of trafficking in persons, in appropriate cases: (a)

Information on relevant court and administrative proceedings;

(b) Assistance to enable their views and concerns to be presented and considered at appropriate stages of criminal proceedings against offenders, in a manner not prejudicial to the rights of the defence. 3.

Each State Party shall consider implementing measures to provide for the physical, psychological and social recovery of victims of trafficking in persons, including, in appropriate cases, in cooperation with non-governmental organizations, other relevant organizations and other elements of civil society, and, in particular, the provision of: (a) Appropriate housing; (b) Counselling and information, in particular as regards their legal rights, in a language that the victims of trafficking in persons can understand; (c) Medical, psychological and material assistance; and (d) Employment, educational and training opportunities.

4.

Each State Party shall take into account, in applying the provisions of this article, the age, gender and special needs of victims of trafficking in persons, in particular the special needs of children, including appropriate housing, education and care.

5.

Each State Party shall endeavour to provide for the physical safety of victims of trafficking in persons while they are within its territory.

6.

Each State Party shall ensure that its domestic legal system contains measures that offer victims of trafficking in persons the possibility of obtaining compensation for damage suffered.

Article 7 Status of victims of trafficking in persons in receiving States 1.

In addition to taking measures pursuant to article 6 of this Protocol, each State Party shall consider adopting legislative or other appropriate measures that permit victims of trafficking in persons to remain in its territory, temporarily or permanently, in appropriate cases.

2.

In implementing the provision contained in paragraph 1 of this article, each State Party shall give appropriate consideration to humanitarian and compassionate factors.

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Article 8 Repatriation of victims of trafficking in persons 1.

The State Party of which a victim of trafficking in persons is a national or in which the person had the right of permanent residence at the time of entry into the territory of the receiving State Party shall facilitate and accept, with due regard for the safety of that person, the return of that person without undue or unreasonable delay.

2.

When a State Party returns a victim of trafficking in persons to a State Party of which that person is a national or in which he or she had, at the time of entry into the territory of the receiving State Party, the right of permanent residence, such return shall be with due regard for the safety of that person and for the status of any legal proceedings related to the fact that the person is a victim of trafficking and shall preferably be voluntary.

3.

At the request of a receiving State Party, a requested State Party shall, without undue or unreasonable delay, verify whether a person who is a victim of trafficking in persons is its national or had the right of permanent residence in its territory at the time of entry into the territory of the receiving State Party.

4.

In order to facilitate the return of a victim of trafficking in persons who is without proper documentation, the State Party of which that person is a national or in which he or she had the right of permanent residence at the time of entry into the territory of the receiving State Party shall agree to issue, at the request of the receiving State Party, such travel documents or other authorization as may be necessary to enable the person to travel to and re-enter its territory.

5.

This article shall be without prejudice to any right afforded to victims of trafficking in persons by any domestic law of the receiving State Party.

6.

This article shall be without prejudice to any applicable bilateral or multilateral agreement or arrangement that governs, in whole or in part, the return of victims of trafficking in persons.

III. Prevention, Cooperation and Other Measures Article 9 Prevention of trafficking in persons 1.

States Parties shall establish comprehensive policies, programmes and other measures: (a)

To prevent and combat trafficking in persons; and

(b) To protect victims of trafficking in persons, especially women and children, from revictimization.


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2.

States Parties shall endeavour to undertake measures such as research, information and mass media campaigns and social and economic initiatives to prevent and combat trafficking in persons.

3.

Policies, programmes and other measures established in accordance with this article shall, as appropriate, include cooperation with non-governmental organizations, other relevant organizations and other elements of civil society.

4.

States Parties shall take or strengthen measures, including through bilateral or multilateral cooperation, to alleviate the factors that make persons, especially women and children, vulnerable to trafficking, such as poverty, underdevelopment and lack of equal opportunity.

5.

States Parties shall adopt or strengthen legislative or other measures, such as educational, social or cultural measures, including through bilateral and multilateral cooperation, to discourage the demand that fosters all forms of exploitation of persons, especially women and children, that leads to trafficking.

Article 10 Information exchange and training 1.

Law enforcement, immigration or other relevant authorities of States Parties shall, as appropriate, cooperate with one another by exchanging information, in accordance with their domestic law, to enable them to determine: (a)

Whether individuals crossing or attempting to cross an international border with travel documents belonging to other persons or without travel documents are perpetrators or victims of trafficking in persons; (b) The types of travel document that individuals have used or attempted to use to cross an international border for the purpose of trafficking in persons; and

(c)

2.

The means and methods used by organized criminal groups for the purpose of trafficking in persons, including the recruitment and transportation of victims, routes and links between and among individuals and groups engaged in such trafficking, and possible measures for detecting them.

States Parties shall provide or strengthen training for law enforcement, immigration and other relevant officials in the prevention of trafficking in persons. The training should focus on methods used in preventing such trafficking, prosecuting the traffickers and protecting the rights of the victims, including protecting the victims from the traffickers. The training should also take into account the need to consider human rights and child- and gender-sensitive issues and it should encourage cooperation with non-governmental organizations, other relevant organizations and other elements of civil society.

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3.

A State Party that receives information shall comply with any request by the State Party that transmitted the information that places restrictions on its use.

Article 11 Border measures 1.

Without prejudice to international commitments in relation to the free movement of people, States Parties shall strengthen, to the extent possible, such border controls as may be necessary to prevent and detect trafficking in persons.

2.

Each State Party shall adopt legislative or other appropriate measures to prevent, to the extent possible, means of transport operated by commercial carriers from being used in the commission of offences established in accordance with article 5 of this Protocol.

3.

Where appropriate, and without prejudice to applicable international conventions, such measures shall include establishing the obligation of commercial carriers, including any transportation company or the owner or operator of any means of transport, to ascertain that all passengers are in possession of the travel documents required for entry into the receiving State.

4.

Each State Party shall take the necessary measures, in accordance with its domestic law, to provide for sanctions in cases of violation of the obligation set forth in paragraph 3 of this article.

5.

Each State Party shall consider taking measures that permit, in accordance with its domestic law, the denial of entry or revocation of visas of persons implicated in the commission of offences established in accordance with this Protocol.

6.

Without prejudice to article 27 of the Convention, States Parties shall consider strengthening cooperation among border control agencies by, inter alia, establishing and maintaining direct channels of communication.

Article 12 Security and control of documents Each State Party shall take such measures as may be necessary, within available means: (a)

To ensure that travel or identity documents issued by it are of such quality that they cannot easily be misused and cannot readily be falsified or unlawfully altered, replicated or issued; and


(b)

| 795

To ensure the integrity and security of travel or identity documents issued by or on behalf of the State Party and to prevent their unlawful creation, issuance and use.

Article 13 Legitimacy and validity of documents At the request of another State Party, a State Party shall, in accordance with its domestic law, verify within a reasonable time the legitimacy and validity of travel or identity documents issued or purported to have been issued in its name and suspected of being used for trafficking in persons.

IV. Final Provisions Article 14 Saving clause 1.

Nothing in this Protocol shall affect the rights, obligations and responsibilities of States and individuals under international law, including international humanitarian law and international human rights law and, in particular, where applicable, the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees and the principle of non-refoulement as contained therein.

2.

The measures set forth in this Protocol shall be interpreted and applied in a way that is not discriminatory to persons on the ground that they are victims of trafficking in persons. The interpretation and application of those measures shall be consistent with internationally recognized principles of non-discrimination.

Article 15 Settlement of disputes l.

States Parties shall endeavour to settle disputes concerning the interpretation or application of this Protocol through negotiation.

2.

Any dispute between two or more States Parties concerning the interpretation or application of this Protocol that cannot be settled through negotiation within a reasonable time shall, at the request of one of those States Parties, be submitted to arbitration. If, six months after the date of the request for arbitration, those States Parties are unable to agree on the organization of the arbitration, any one of those States Parties may refer the dispute to the International Court of Justice by request in accordance with the Statute of the Court.

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3.

Each State Party may, at the time of signature, ratification, acceptance or approval of or accession to this Protocol, declare that it does not consider itself bound by paragraph 2 of this article. The other States Parties shall not be bound by paragraph 2 of this article with respect to any State Party that has made such a reservation.

4.

Any State Party that has made a reservation in accordance with paragraph 3 of this article may at any time withdraw that reservation by notification to the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Article 16 Signature, ratification, acceptance, approval and accession 1.

This Protocol shall be open to all States for signature from 12 to 15 December 2000 in Palermo, Italy, and thereafter at United Nations Headquarters in New York until 12 December 2002.

2.

This Protocol shall also be open for signature by regional economic integration organizations provided that at least one member State of such organization has signed this Protocol in accordance with paragraph 1 of this article.

3.

This Protocol is subject to ratification, acceptance or approval. Instruments of ratification, acceptance or approval shall be deposited with the Secretary-General of the United Nations. A regional economic integration organization may deposit its instrument of ratification, acceptance or approval if at least one of its member States has done likewise. In that instrument of ratification, acceptance or approval, such organization shall declare the extent of its competence with respect to the matters governed by this Protocol. Such organization shall also inform the depositary of any relevant modification in the extent of its competence.

4.

This Protocol is open for accession by any State or any regional economic integration organization of which at least one member State is a Party to this Protocol. Instruments of accession shall be deposited with the Secretary-General of the United Nations. At the time of its accession, a regional economic integration organization shall declare the extent of its competence with respect to matters governed by this Protocol. Such organization shall also inform the depositary of any relevant modification in the extent of its competence.

Article 17 Entry into force 1.

This Protocol shall enter into force on the ninetieth day after the date of deposit of the fortieth instrument of ratification, acceptance, approval or accession, except that it shall not enter into force before the entry into force of the


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Convention. For the purpose of this paragraph, any instrument deposited by a regional economic integration organization shall not be counted as additional to those deposited by member States of such organization. 2.

For each State or regional economic integration organization ratifying, accepting, approving or acceding to this Protocol after the deposit of the fortieth instrument of such action, this Protocol shall enter into force on the thirtieth day after the date of deposit by such State or organization of the relevant instrument or on the date this Protocol enters into force pursuant to paragraph 1 of this article, whichever is the later.

Article 18 Amendment 1.

After the expiry of five years from the entry into force of this Protocol, a State Party to the Protocol may propose an amendment and file it with the Secretary-General of the United Nations, who shall thereupon communicate the proposed amendment to the States Parties and to the Conference of the Parties to the Convention for the purpose of considering and deciding on the proposal. The States Parties to this Protocol meeting at the Conference of the Parties shall make every effort to achieve consensus on each amendment. If all efforts at consensus have been exhausted and no agreement has been reached, the amendment shall, as a last resort, require for its adoption a twothirds majority vote of the States Parties to this Protocol present and voting at the meeting of the Conference of the Parties.

2.

Regional economic integration organizations, in matters within their competence, shall exercise their right to vote under this article with a number of votes equal to the number of their member States that are Parties to this Protocol. Such organizations shall not exercise their right to vote if their member States exercise theirs and vice versa.

3.

An amendment adopted in accordance with paragraph 1 of this article is subject to ratification, acceptance or approval by States Parties.

4.

An amendment adopted in accordance with paragraph 1 of this article shall enter into force in respect of a State Party ninety days after the date of the deposit with the Secretary-General of the United Nations of an instrument of ratification, acceptance or approval of such amendment.

5.

When an amendment enters into force, it shall be binding on those States Parties which have expressed their consent to be bound by it. Other States Parties shall still be bound by the provisions of this Protocol and any earlier amendments that they have ratified, accepted or approved.

798 |


Article 19 Denunciation 1.

A State Party may denounce this Protocol by written notification to the Secretary-General of the United Nations. Such denunciation shall become effective one year after the date of receipt of the notification by the Secretary-General.

2.

A regional economic integration organization shall cease to be a Party to this Protocol when all of its member States have denounced it.

Article 20 Depositary and languages 1.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations is designated depositary of this Protocol.

2.

The original of this Protocol, of which the Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish texts are equally authentic, shall be deposited with the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, the undersigned plenipotentiaries, being duly authorized thereto by their respective Governments, have signed this Protocol. Source: General Assembly resolution 55/25 of 15 November 2000, annex II. Available at http://www.unodc.org/pdf/crime/a_res_55/res5525e.pdf. Used by permission of the United Nations.

Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to End the Exploitation of Children Today Act of 2003 or “Protect” Act (2003)

Title I: Sanctions and Offenses (Sec. 101) Amends the Federal criminal code to: (1) make the authorized term of supervised release after imprisonment any term of years or life for kidnapping involving a minor and for other specified felony offenses (aggravated sexual abuse, sexual abuse, abusive sexual contact, sexual exploitation of children, selling or buying of children, certain activities relating to material involving the sexual exploitation of minors and material constituting or containing child pornography, production of sexually explicit depictions of a minor for importation into the United States, transportation for illegal sexual activity, coercion and enticement to engage in criminal sexual activity, transportation of minors with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity or in a sexual act with a juvenile, or use of interstate facilities to transmit information about a minor with intent to solicit any person to engage in criminal sexual activity) (listed offenses); (2) include aggravated child abuse and child torture murders within the scope of the definition of first degree murder; and (3) increase penalties for sexual exploitation and other abuse of children, for transportation for illegal sexual activity and related crimes, and for kidnapping children. (Sec. 105) Expands the prohibitions on, and increases penalties for, traveling in or into the United States or in foreign commerce to engage in illicit sexual conduct. (Sec. 106) Provides for mandatory life imprisonment of a person convicted of a Federal sex offense against a minor if the person has a prior sex conviction in which a minor was the victim, unless a death sentence is imposed. Provides an exception if: (1) the sexual act or activity was consensual and not for commercial or pecuniary gain; (2) the act or activity would not be punishable by more than one year imprisonment under the law of that State; or (3) no sexual act or activity occurred.

799

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Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools

(Sec.107) Establishes criminal liability for attempting to remove a child from the United States with intent to obstruct the lawful exercise of parental rights. (Sec. 108) Directs the Attorney General to establish a pilot program for volunteer organizations to obtain national and State criminal history background checks on their volunteers through a 10-fingerprint check utilizing State criminal records and the Integrated Automated Finger Print Identification System of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Requires the Attorney General to designate three States as participants in an 18-month State pilot program. Outlines program procedures. Directs the Attorney General to establish an 18-month Child Safety Pilot Program for processing 100,000 10-fingerprint check requests from eligible organizations. Outlines Program procedures, requiring the volunteer organizations to eventually determine whether a child care provider or child services volunteer has a criminal history record that renders the person unfit to provide such care or services. Allows each volunteer submitting to a fingerprint check to: (1) obtain a copy of their criminal history record report; and (2) challenge its accuracy and completeness. Authorizes appropriations to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children for FY 2004 and 2005. Requires the Attorney General to: (1) conduct a feasibility study for a system of background checks on volunteers, employees, and other individuals; and (2) provide Congress an interim and final report, the latter of which may include a proposal for grants to develop or improve programs to collect fingerprints and perform background checks on individuals that seek to volunteer with organizations that work with children, the elderly, or the disabled.

Title II: Investigations and Prosecutions (Sec. 201) Authorizes the interception of wire, oral, or electronic communications in the investigation of kidnapping, sex trafficking, specified sex offenses against children, or transportation for illegal sexual activity. (Sec. 202) Eliminates statutes of limitations for child abduction or the sexual or physical abuse of a child. (Sec. 203) Bars pretrial release of persons charged with specified offenses against or involving children. (Sec. 204) Requires Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies to report each case of a missing child under age 21 (currently, 18) reported to them to the National Crime Information Center. Source: S.151 [108th Congress]. Available at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108: S.151:@@@L&summ2=m&.

Sexual Offences Bill (UK, 2003)

61. Trafficking into the UK for Sexual Exploitation (1)

A person (A) commits an offence if, for or in the expectation of gain for himself or another, he intentionally arranges or facilitates the arrival in the United Kingdom of another person (B) and either— (a)

(2)

he intends to do anything to or in respect of B, after B’s arrival but in any part of the world, which if done will involve the commission of a relevant offence, or

(b) he intends to facilitate the doing of anything to or in respect of B, after B’s arrival but in any part of the world, which if done as he intends it to be done or believes that it will be done will involve the commission of a relevant offence. A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable— (a)

on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 6 months or a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum or both;

(b) on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 14 years.

62. Trafficking within the UK for Sexual Exploitation (1)

A person (A) commits an offence if, for or in the expectation of gain for himself or another, he intentionally arranges or facilitates travel within the United Kingdom by another person (B) and either— (a)

he intends to do anything to or in respect of B, during or after the journey and in any part of the world, which if done will involve the commission of a relevant offence, or

(b) he intends to facilitate the doing of anything to or in respect of B, during or after the journey and in any part of the world, which if done as he intends it to be done or believes that it will be done will involve the commission of a relevant offence.

801

802 |

Sexual Offences Bill (UK, 2003)

(2)

A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable— (a)


(b) on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 14 years.

63. Trafficking out of the UK for Sexual Exploitation (1)

A person (A) commits an offence if, for or in the expectation of gain for himself or another, he intentionally arranges or facilitates the departure from the United Kingdom of another person (B) and either— (a)

he intends to do anything to or in respect of B, after B’s departure but in any part of the world, which if done will involve the commission of a relevant offence, or

(b) he intends to facilitate the doing of anything to or in respect of B, during or after the journey and in any part of the world, which if done as he intends it to be done or believes that it will be done will involve the commission of a relevant offence. (2)

A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable— (a)


(b) on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 14 years. Source: Sexual Offences Bill [HL], Session 2002–03. Available at http://www.publications. parliament.uk/pa/ld200203/ldbills/026/03026.24-30.html#j423. Parliamentary material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO on behalf of Parliament.

United States Congress Resolution on Sudan (2003)

H. Res. 194 In the House of Representatives, U.S., July 16, 2003. Whereas the efforts of the government of Khartoum to subjugate the peoples of the southern Sudan have led to the death of more than 2,000,000 persons and the displacement of another 4,000,000 persons; Whereas the Department of State’s “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2001” estimates that between 5,000 and 15,000 Dinka women and children have been abducted during the past 15 years, and that between 10,000 and 12,000 persons remain in captivity; Whereas credible observers report that some of the abductees were sold into slavery and others were used as forced labor or drafted into the military, including children; Whereas the Department of State’s “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2002” notes that persons held in government controlled “Peace” camps for internally displaced persons were reportedly subjected to forced labor; Whereas the Special Rapporteur for Sudan to the General Assembly of the United Nations concluded, on November 4, 2002, that the dire human rights situation in Sudan had not significantly changed; Whereas the United States Civilian Protection Monitoring Team (CPMT) reported in February 2003 that militia allied with the Government of Sudan and supported directly by Government of Sudan troops continued to abduct civilians in the western Upper Nile region of Sudan; Whereas subsequent to the February 2003 report of the Civilian Protection Monitoring Team, the Government of Sudan restricted the movements of the CPMT and prevented it from carrying out its mandate; Whereas the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights declares “[n]o one shall be held in slavery or servitude: slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms”; Whereas numerous human rights organizations, including Christian Solidarity International, the Center for Religious Freedom of Freedom House, and the American Anti-Slavery Group have demanded an end to slavery in all its forms and, in particular, to the abuses practiced by the Government of Sudan; 803

804 |


Whereas the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People adopted, in May 1995, a Resolution to Combat Modern Day Slavery stating that slavery in Sudan was an “irrefutable fact, corroborated by numerous sources,” and pledging that “we will not rest until these slaves are freed”; Whereas the House of Representatives has repeatedly decried human rights abuses in Sudan and called for the abolition of the slave trade and of chattel slavery in Sudan; Whereas the House of Representatives committed itself to practical measures to suppress the slave trade and chattel slavery in the Sudan by the passage, by a vote of 359–8, in the 107th Congress of H.R. 5531, the “Sudan Peace Act,” and the Senate passed a similar measure, S. 180, unanimously; Whereas the United Nations Commission on Human Rights conducted its 59th session in Geneva from March 17 through April 25, 2003; Whereas the head of the United States delegation to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, declared in her opening address that “[t]he Commission has the solemn duty to speak for those who are denied the right to speak for themselves”; Whereas Human Rights Watch and many other concerned persons and organizations have called upon the United Nations Commission on Human Rights to renew the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on human rights for Sudan, and to condemn gross abuses of human rights and violations of international humanitarian law by the Sudanese Government and rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) forces; and Whereas the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, by a vote of 26 to 24 with 3 abstentions, refused to classify Sudan as an “Item 9” country, one in which grave human rights problems justify the appointment of a Special Rapporteur to investigate abuses and to report on them: Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that— (1)

slavery, under any circumstances, is an unconscionable practice;

(2)

the subjection inherent in slavery inevitably leads to other abuses, including torture and rape;

(3)

human rights abuses and slavery in Sudan remain a matter of the most profound concern;

(4)

the United States must condemn attempts to ignore or condone these outrages;

(5)

the United States must make clear to all members of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights that the refusal to condemn slavery in Sudan undermines any moral authority that the Commission might seek to exert in other areas;

(6)

the United States must work to re-classify Sudan as an “Item 9” country, requiring a Special Rapporteur at the next session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights; and


(7)

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the United States should encourage the United Nations to consider reinstating sanctions against Sudan and should urge the European Union, the African Union, and all others who express concern for human freedom and dignity to be engaged in activities that will convince Sudan to abolish slavery and respect human rights.

Attest: Clerk. Source: H. Res. 194 [108th Congress]. Available at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/ z?d108:H.Res194.

Presidential Decree on Enactment of the Law on Trafficking in Persons (2005)

5 August 2005 In order to provide enactment of the adopted Law on Trafficking in Persons I decide hereby: 1.

To assign the Cabinet of Ministers within the next two months to 1.1 Prepare and submit president proposals on the alignment of national legislation to this law; 1.2 Align internal acts and orders of the Cabinet of Ministers and other relevant government agencies to this law and to report to president on related issue; 1.3 Develop rules on establishment, funding, operation as well as monitoring special entities as specified in the paragraph 12.3 of this law and to report to president on related issue; 1.4 Develop rules on social rehabilitation of the VoTs (VoTs) as specified in the paragraph 15.5 of this law and to report to president on related issue; 1.5 Determine amount of the compensatory fee paid to the VoTs during their reintegration as specified in paragraph 17.2 of this law and to report to president on related issue; 1.6 Design legal basis for operation of Aid Fund for VoTs as specified in paragraph 22.3 of this law and to report to president on related issue; 1.7 Draft act on types of charges for violation of this law and to submit to president; 1.8 Settle within its mandate all issues related to the application of this law.

2.

To determine that: 2.1 President shall be “the relevant implementing agency” indicated in paragraphs 6.1 and 7.5 of this law; 2.2 The Cabinet of Ministers shall be “the relevant implementing agency” indicated in paragraphs 9.5 (2nd part of clause), 10.3, 12.3, 15.5, 17.2 and 22.3 of this law;

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Presidential Decree on Enactment

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2.3 The Ministry of Internal Affairs shall be “the relevant implementing agency” indicated in paragraphs 7.1, 9.1 and 19.2 of this law; 2.4 The Ministry of Foreign Affairs shall be “the relevant implementing agency” indicated in paragraph 9.2 of this law; 2.5 The Ministry of National Security shall be “the relevant implementing agency” indicated in paragraph 9.3 of this law; 2.6 The State Border Service and State Customs Committee within its mandates shall be “the relevant implementing agency” indicated in paragraph 9.4 of this law; 2.7 The Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of the Population shall be “the relevant implementing agency” indicated in paragraph 9.5 of this law; 2.8 The Ministry of Health shall be “the relevant implementing agency” indicated in paragraph 9.6 of this law; 2.9 The Ministry of Education shall be “the relevant implementing agency” indicated in paragraph 9.7 of this law. Ilham Aliyev President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Baku, 2005 Source: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/pdfid/4417f1214.pdf.

Indentured Servitude Abolition Act of 2005

(Introduced in House) HR 2298 IH 109th CONGRESS 1st Session To provide for labor recruiter accountability, and for other purposes. IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES May 11, 2005 Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California (for himself, Mr. OWENS, Ms. WOOLSEY, Mr. WAXMAN, Mr. HOLT, Mr. LYNCH, Mr. GRIJALVA, Mr. MICHAUD, Mr. VAN HOLLEN, Mr. KILDEE, Ms. DELAURO, Mr. MCGOVERN, Mr. DAVIS of Illinois, Mr. EVANS, Ms. MCCOLLUM of Minnesota, Mr. KUCINICH, Mr. BROWN of Ohio, Mr. PAYNE, Ms. WATSON, Mr. WEINER, Mr. BERMAN, Mr. ABERCROMBIE, Mr. MCDERMOTT, Mr. STARK, and Mr. TIERNEY) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Education and the Workforce A BILL To provide for labor recruiter accountability, and for other purposes. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

Section 1. Short Title This Act may be cited as the “Indentured Servitude Abolition Act of 2005.”

Sec. 2. Protections for Workers Recruited Abroad (a)

Basic Requirements.— (1) Each employer and foreign labor contractor who engages in foreign labor contracting activity shall ascertain and disclose to each such worker who is recruited for employment the following information at the time of the worker’s recruitment: (A) The place of employment. (B) The compensation for the employment. (C) A description of employment activities.

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(D) (E) (F) (G)

(H)

(I)

(J) (2)

(3)

(4) (5)

(6)

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The period of employment. The transportation, housing, and any other employee benefit to be provided and any costs to be charged for each benefit. The existence of any labor organizing effort, strike, lockout, or other labor dispute at the place of employment. The existence of any arrangements with any owner or agent of any establishment in the area of employment under which the contractor or employer is to receive a commission or any other benefit resulting from any sales (including the provision of services) by such establishment to the workers. Whether and the extent to which workers will be compensated through workers’ compensation, private insurance, or otherwise for injuries or death, including work related injuries and death, during the period of employment and, if so, the name of the State workers’ compensation insurance carrier or the name of the policyholder of the private insurance, the name and the telephone number of each person who must be notified of an injury or death, and the time period within which such notice must be given. Any education or training to be provided or made available, including the nature and cost of such training, who will pay such costs, and whether the training is a condition of employment, continued employment, or future employment.

A statement, approved by the Secretary of Labor, describing the protections of this Act for workers recruited abroad. No foreign labor contractor or employer shall knowingly provide false or misleading information to any worker concerning any matter required to be disclosed in paragraph (1). The information required to be disclosed by paragraph (1) to workers shall be provided in written form. Such information shall be provided in English or, as necessary and reasonable, in the language of the worker being recruited. The Department of Labor shall make forms available in English, Spanish, and other languages, as necessary, which may be used in providing workers with information required under this section. No fees may be charged to a worker for recruitment. No employer or foreign labor contractor shall, without justification, violate the terms of any working arrangement made by that contractor or employer. The employer shall pay the transportation costs, including subsistence costs during the period of travel, for the worker from the place of recruitment to the place of employment and from the place of employment to such worker’s place of permanent residence.

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(7) (A) It shall be unlawful for an employer or a foreign labor contractor to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise discriminate against an individual with respect to compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment because of such individual’s race, color, creed, sex, national origin, religion, age, or disability. (B) For the purposes of determining the existence of unlawful discrimination under subclause (A)— (i) in the case of a claim of discrimination based on race, color, creed, sex, national origin, or religion, the same legal standards shall apply as are applicable under title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (42 U.S.C. 2000e et seq.); (ii) in the case of a claim of discrimination based on unlawful discrimination based on age, the same legal standards shall apply as are applicable under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (29 U.S.C. 621 et seq.); and (iii) in the case of a claim of discrimination based on disability, the same legal standards shall apply as are applicable under title I of the Americans With Disabilities Act (42 U.S.C. 12101 et seq.). (b)

Other Worker Protections.— (1) Each employer shall notify the Secretary of the identity of any foreign labor contractor involved in any foreign labor contractor activity for or on behalf of the employer. The employer shall be subject to the civil remedies of this Act for violations committed by such foreign labor contractor to the same extent as if the employer had committed the violation. The employer shall notify the Secretary of the identity of such a foreign labor contractor whose activities do not comply with this Act. (2) The Secretary shall maintain a list of all foreign labor contractors whom the Secretary knows or believes have been involved in violations of this Act, and make that list publicly available. The Secretary shall provide a procedure by which an employer, a foreign labor contractor, or someone acting on behalf of such contractor may seek to have a foreign labor contractor’s name removed from such list by demonstrating to the Secretary’s satisfaction that the foreign labor contractor has not violated this Act in the previous five years. (3) No foreign labor contractor shall violate, without justification, the terms of any written agreements made with an employer pertaining to any contracting activity or worker protection under this Act.


(c)

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Discrimination Prohibited Against Workers Seeking Relief Under This Act.— No person shall intimidate, threaten, restrain, coerce, blacklist, discharge, or in any manner discriminate against any worker because such worker has, with just cause, filed any complaint or instituted, or caused to be instituted, any proceeding under or related to this Act, or has testified or is about to testify in any such proceedings, or because of the exercise, with just cause, by such worker on behalf of himself or others of any right or protection afforded by this Act.

Sec. 3. Enforcement Provisions (a)

Criminal Sanctions.—Whoever knowingly violates this Act shall be fined under title 18, United States Code, or imprisoned not more than one year, or both. Upon conviction, after a first conviction under this section, for a second or subsequent violation of this Act, the defendant shall be fined under title 18, United States Code, or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

(b)

Administrative Sanctions.— (1) (A) Subject to subparagraph (B), the Secretary may assess a civil money penalty of not more than $5,000 on any person who violates this Act. (B) In determining the amount of any penalty to be assessed under subparagraph (A), the Secretary shall take into account (i) the previous record of the person in terms of compliance with this Act and with comparable requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, and with regulations promulgated under such Acts, and (ii) the gravity of the violation. (2)

Any employer who uses the services of a foreign labor contractor who is on the list maintained by the Secretary pursuant to section 2(b)(2), shall, if the actions of such foreign labor contractor have contributed to a violation of this Act by the employer, be fined $10,000 per violation in addition to any other fines or penalties for which the employer may be liable for the violation.

(c)

Actions by Secretary.—The Secretary may take such actions, including seeking appropriate injunctive relief and specific performance of contractual obligations, as may be necessary to assure employer compliance with terms and conditions of employment under this Act and with this Act.

(d)

Waiver of Rights.—Agreements by employees purporting to waive or to modify their rights under this Act shall be void as contrary to public policy.

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(e)

Representation in Court.—Except as provided in section 518(a) of title 28, United States Code, relating to litigation before the Supreme Court, the Solicitor of Labor may appear for and represent the Secretary in any civil litigation brought under this Act, but all such litigation shall be subject to the direction and control of the Attorney General.

Sec. 4. Procedures in Addition to Other Rights of Employees The rights and remedies provided to workers by this Act are in addition to, and not in lieu of, any other contractual or statutory rights and remedies of the workers, and are not intended to alter or affect such rights and remedies.

Sec. 5. Authority to Prescribe Regulations The Secretary of Labor shall prescribe such regulations as may be necessary to carry out this Act.

Sec. 6. Definitions (a)

In General.—Except as otherwise provided by this Act, for purposes of this Act the terms used in this Act shall have the same meanings, respectively, as are given those terms in section 3 of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.

(b)

Other Definitions.—As used in this Act: (1) The term “United States” means any within any State. (2) The term “State” means any State of the United States and includes the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and the Virgin Islands of the United States. (3) The term “foreign labor contractor” means any person who for any money or other valuable consideration paid or promised to be paid, performs any foreign labor contracting activity. (4) The term “foreign labor contracting activity” means recruiting, soliciting, hiring, employing, or furnishing, an individual who resides outside of the United States to be employed in the United States. (5) The term “Secretary” means the Secretary of Labor. (6) The term “worker” means an individual who is the subject of foreign labor contracting activity.

Source: H. R. 2298 [109th Congress]. Available at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/ z?c109:H.R.2298.

Anti-Sweatshop Legislation (2006)

109th CONGRESS 2d Session H.R. 5635 To amend the Tariff Act of 1930 to prohibit the import, export, and sale of goods made with sweatshop labor, and for other purposes.

In the House of Representatives June 16, 2006 Mr. Brown of Ohio (for himself, Mr. Ryan of Ohio, Mr. Strickland, Ms. Kaptur, and Mrs. Jones of Ohio) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Ways and Means, and in addition to the Committees on Armed Services, Government Reform, Rules, Energy and Commerce, and International Relations, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned.

A Bill To amend the Tariff Act of 1930 to prohibit the import, export, and sale of goods made with sweatshop labor, and for other purposes. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

Section 1. Short Title This Act may be cited as the “Decent Working Conditions and Fair Competition Act.”

Sec. 2. Findings and Purposes (a)

Findings.—Congress makes the following findings: (1) The violation of core labor standards, as defined under the laws of the United States and the International Labor Organization, is widespread in factories that produce goods for sale in the United States. 813

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(2) Factories that violate core labor standards are commonly referred to as sweatshops. (3) Subjecting factory workers to sweatshop conditions that violate core labor standards is morally offensive to the American people both in their roles as consumers and as investors, and is degrading to workers forced to labor under these conditions. (4) Workers have a right to be free of sweatshop working conditions. (5) Consumers have a right to know that the goods they purchase are not produced in sweatshops. (6) Businesses have a right to be free from competition with companies that use sweatshop labor. (7) Shareholders have a right to know that their investments are not supporting sweatshop labor. (8) It is a deceptive trade practice and a form of unfair competition for a business to sell sweatshop goods. (9) Prohibiting the sale, manufacture, offer for sale, transportation, and distribution of sweatshop goods, regardless of the source of the goods, is consistent with the international obligations of the United States because the prohibition applies equally to domestic and foreign products and avoids any discrimination among foreign sources of competing products. (b)

Purposes.—The purposes of this Act are to— (1) prohibit the import, export, or sale of goods made in factories or workshops that violate core labor standards; and (2) prohibit the procurement of sweatshop goods by the United States Government.

Sec. 3. Definition of Core Labor Standards (a)

In general.—In this Act, the term “core labor standards” means— (1) (2) (3) (4)

the right of association; the right to organize and bargain collectively; a prohibition on the use of any form of forced or compulsory labor; a minimum age for the employment of children; and

(5) acceptable conditions of work with respect to minimum wages, hours of work, and occupational safety and health. (b)

Acceptable conditions.—For purposes of subsection (a)(5), acceptable conditions of work shall be determined by the laws, regulations, or competent authority of the country where the labor is performed.


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TITLE I—TARIFF ACT OF 1930 SEC. 101. IMPORTATION AND SALE OF SWEATSHOP GOODS PROHIBITED Section 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930 (19 U.S.C. 1307) is amended to read as follows: “SEC. 307. PROHIBITION OF IMPORT AND SALE OF CONVICT-MADE GOODS AND SWEATSHOP GOODS “(a) Definitions.—In this section: “(1) Convict-made good.—The term ‘convict-made good’ means any good, ware, article, or merchandise mined, produced, or manufactured wholly or in part in any foreign country by convict labor. “(2) Sweatshop good.—The term ‘sweatshop good’ means any good, ware, article, or merchandise mined, produced, or manufactured wholly or in part in violation of core labor standards as defined in section 3 of the Decent Working Conditions and Fair Competition Act. “(b) Prohibitions.—It is unlawful for any person to— “(1) import into the United States any convict-made good; “(2) import into, or export from, the United States any sweatshop good; “(3) introduce into commerce, sell, trade, or advertise in commerce, offer to sell, or transport or distribute in commerce in the United States, any sweatshop good.”

Sec. 102. Waiver Authority (a)

In general.—The President, for reasons of national interest, may recommend that the application of section 201 of this Act or section 307(b) (2) and (3) of the Tariff Act of 1930 be waived in connection with the goods of any country with respect to one or more of the principles and rights defined as a core labor standard in section 3 of this Act. Any such recommendation shall— (1) be transmitted to the House of Representatives and the Senate setting forth the President’s reasons for the waiver; (2) include, for each waiver recommendation, a determination that the waiver is necessary to protect the national interest of the United States; and (3) include, for each principle or right for which a waiver is recommended, an explanation of why the President recommends waiving application of that principle or right.

(b)

Period of waiver.—A waiver under this section shall be effective for a 12-month period unless Congress enacts a joint resolution described in subsection (c).

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(c)

Joint resolution requirements and procedures.— (1) Resolution described.—For purposes of this subsection, the term “resolution” means only a joint resolution of the two Houses of Congress, the matter after the resolving clause of which is as follows: “That the Congress does not approve the waiver of section 201 of the Decent Working Conditions and Fair Competition Act or section 307(b) (2) and (3) of the Tariff Act of 1930 (19 U.S.C. 1307) recommended by the President to the Congress on _______ with respect to the application of _______ to the goods of _______,” with the first blank space being filled with the appropriate date, the second blank space being filled with the principle or right to be waived, and the third blank space being filled with the name of the country, if any, with respect to which the waiver of authority is disapproved. (2) Application of procedural provisions.—The provisions of section 152 (b) through (f) of the Trade Act of 1974 (19 U.S.C. 2192 (b) through (f)) shall apply to resolutions described in paragraph (1). (3) Approval by Congress.—If Congress approves a joint resolution, Congress shall send the resolution to the President before the end of the 90-day period beginning on the date that Congress receives the waiver described in subsection (a). (4) Effect of veto.—If the President vetoes the joint resolution, the resolution is enacted into law if each House of Congress votes to override the veto on or before the later of the last day of the 90-day period referred to in paragraph (3) or the last day of the 15-day period, excluding any day described in section 154(b) of the Trade Act of 1974 (19 U.S.C. 2194(b)), beginning on the date the Congress receives the veto message from the President. (5) Introduction.—A joint resolution to which this subsection applies may be introduced at any time on or after the date the President transmits to Congress the waiver described in subsection (a).

(d)

Termination or extension of waiver.—A waiver with respect to the goods of any country terminates on the day after the waiver authority granted by this subsection ceases to be effective with respect to such country, unless an extension of the waiver authority is granted. The President may recommend an extension of the waiver authority in the same manner as the original recommendation, except that the President may not recommend an extension later than the date that is 30 days before the waiver authority expires. The President may, at any time, terminate by Executive order any waiver under this section.


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Title II—Federal Trade Commission Sec. 201. Violation of Federal Trade Commission Act (a)

In general.—It is unlawful for any person to introduce into commerce, sell, trade, or advertise in commerce, offer to sell or transport or distribute in commerce any sweatshop good.

(b)

Sweatshop good.—For purposes of this title, the term “sweatshop good” means any good, ware, article, or merchandise mined, produced, or manufactured wholly or in part in violation of core labor standards, listed in section 3 of this Act.

(c)

Enforcement.— (1) In general.—The Federal Trade Commission shall enforce the provisions of this section with respect to the prohibitions under subsection (a) as if the violation were an unfair or deceptive act or practice proscribed under section 18(a)(1)(B) of the Federal Trade Commission Act (15 U.S.C. 57a(a)(1)(B)). (2) Actions by the Commission.—The Commission shall prevent any person from violating this Act in the same manner, by the same means, and with the same jurisdiction, powers, and duties as though all applicable terms and provisions of the Federal Trade Commission Act (15 U.S.C. 41 et seq.) were incorporated into and made a part of this title. Any person that violates the provisions of this title shall be subject to the penalties and entitled to the privileges and immunities provided in said Federal Trade Commission Act in the same manner, by the same means, and with the same jurisdiction, power, and duties as though all applicable terms and provisions of the Federal Trade Commission Act were incorporated into and made a part of this title. (3) Investigations.—Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Federal Trade Commission shall investigate any complaint received from a worker alleging a violation of this title with respect to a good, ware, article, or merchandise produced by that worker. (4) Regulations.—Not later than 6 months after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Federal Trade Commission shall publish rules to carry out the provisions of this title.

Sec. 202. Private Right of Action (a)

Private suits.—A person with standing to sue under subsection (c) may bring a civil action against any seller of goods, wares, articles, or merchandise on grounds of violation of section 201.

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(b)

Jurisdiction.—The United States district courts shall have jurisdiction, without regard to the amount in controversy or the citizenship of the parties, to enforce this section.

(c)

Standing to sue.—The followings persons have standing to sue under this section: (1) Competitors of the retailer of any good, ware, article, or merchandise sold in violation of section 201. (2) Investors of the retailer of any good, ware, article, or merchandise sold in violation of section 201.

(d)

Damages; injunctive relief; attorney costs and fees.— (1) When a violation of section 201 is established in any civil action arising under this section, the plaintiff shall be entitled to recover $10,000 per violation or the fair market value of the goods, whichever is greater. The court may increase the award of damages if the court finds that the defendant willfully or knowingly violated section 201. (2) The plaintiff may sue for injunctive relief against threatened loss or damage due to a violation of section 201. (3) The court shall award the cost of the suit, including a reasonable attorney’s fee, to a prevailing plaintiff.

(e)

Interagency cooperation.—All Federal departments and agencies shall cooperate with the Commissioner of Customs and the Federal Trade Commission, to the extent practicable in the enforcement of this title.

(f)

List of violators; disclosure and publication by Federal Trade Commission.— On January 1 and July 1 of each year, the Federal Trade Commission shall publish in the Federal Register and post on an Internet website the following information: (1) An alphabetical list of the name, address, and chief executive officer of each person that has, during the 2 years prior to publication, violated the provisions of this title, along with a summary description of each violation and the cumulative number of violations by each person on the list. (2) A detailed description of each violation that includes the following information: (A) The name, address, and chief executive officer of each violator. (B) The circumstances under which core labor standards, as defined in section 3 of this Act were violated in the course of the mining, production, or manufacturing of the goods in question.


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Title III—Government Procurement Sec. 301. Government Procurement of Sweatshop Goods Prohibited (a)

Amendment to federal property and administrative services act of 1949.— Title III of the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949 (41 U.S.C. 251 et seq.) is amended by adding at the end the following new section:

“Sec. 318. Prohibition on Procurement of Sweatshop Goods “(a) Certification requirement.—The head of an executive agency shall ensure that each covered contract entered into by such official for the procurement of property includes a clause that requires the contractor— “(1) to certify to the contracting officer that the contractor has made a good faith effort to determine whether any product furnished under the contract is a sweatshop good, and that, on the basis of those efforts, the contractor is unaware that any such product is a sweatshop good; and “(2) to cooperate fully in providing reasonable access to the contractor’s records, persons, or premises if requested by the contracting agency, the Directorate of Border and Transportation Security of the Department of Homeland Security, or the Department of Justice for the purpose of determining whether any product furnished under the contract is a sweatshop good. “(b) Investigations.—Whenever a contracting officer of an executive agency has reason to believe that a product furnished under a covered contract is a sweatshop good, the head of the executive agency shall refer the matter for investigation to the Inspector General of the executive agency and, as the head of the executive agency or the Inspector General determines appropriate, to the Attorney General and the Under Secretary for Border and Transportation Security. “(c) Remedies.— “(1) In general.—The head of an executive agency may impose remedies as provided in this subsection if the head of the executive agency finds that the contractor— “(A) has furnished under a covered contract a product that is a sweatshop good; “(B) has submitted a false certification under subsection (a)(1); or “(C) has failed to cooperate with an investigation under this section.

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“(2) Termination of contract.—The head of an executive agency may terminate a covered contract on the basis of a finding of a violation that occurs under paragraph (1) after the date the requirements of this section are implemented through the amendment of the Federal Acquisition Regulation under sections 6 and 25 of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy Act (41 U.S.C. 405 and 421). “(3) Debarment and suspension.—The head of an executive agency may debar or suspend a contractor from eligibility for Federal contracts on the basis of a finding that the contractor has committed a violation described in paragraph (1). The debarment period may not exceed 3 years. “(4) Inclusion on list of parties excluded from federal procurement and nonprocurement programs.—The Administrator of General Services shall include on the List of Parties Excluded from Federal Procurement and Nonprocurement Programs maintained by the Administrator under part 9 of the Federal Acquisition Regulation each contractor that is debarred, suspended, proposed for debarment or suspension, or declared ineligible by the head of an executive agency on the basis that the contractor has committed a violation under paragraph (1). “(5) Remedies not exclusive.—This section shall not be construed to limit the use of other remedies available to the head of an executive agency or any other official of the Federal Government on the basis of a finding under paragraph (1). “(d) Definitions.—In this section: “(1) Covered contract.—The term ‘covered contract’ means a contract for a total amount in excess of the micro-purchase threshold, as that term is defined in section 32(f) of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy Act (41 U.S.C. 428(f)). “(2) Sweatshop good.—The term ‘sweatshop good’ means all goods, wares, articles, and merchandise mined, produced, or manufactured wholly or in part in violation of core labor standards, as defined in section 3 of the Decent Working Conditions and Fair Competition Act.” (b)

Amendment to title 10, United States Code.— (1) In general.—Chapter 137 of title 10, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following new section: “§ 2333. Prohibition on procurement of sweatshop goods

“(a) Certification requirement.—The head of an agency shall ensure that each covered contract entered into by such official for the procurement of property includes a clause that requires the contractor—


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“(1) to certify to the contracting officer that the contractor has made a good faith effort to determine whether any product furnished under the contract is a sweatshop good, and that, on the basis of those efforts, the contractor is unaware that any such product is a sweatshop good; and “(2) to cooperate fully in providing reasonable access to the contractor’s records, persons, or premises if requested by the contracting agency, the Directorate of Border and Transportation Security of the Department of Homeland Security, or the Department of Justice for the purpose of determining whether any product furnished under the contract is a sweatshop good. “(b) Investigations.—Whenever a contracting officer of an agency has reason to believe that a product furnished under a covered contract is a sweatshop good, the head of the agency shall refer the matter for investigation to the Inspector General of the agency and, as the head of the agency or the Inspector General determines appropriate, to the Attorney General and the Under Secretary for Border and Transportation Security. “(c) Remedies.—(1) The head of an agency may impose remedies as provided in this subsection if the head of the agency finds that the contractor— “(A) has furnished under a covered contract a product that is a sweatshop good; “(B) has submitted a false certification under subsection (a)(1); or “(C) has failed to cooperate with an investigation under subsection (b). “(2) The head of an agency may terminate a covered contract on the basis of a finding of a violation that occurs under paragraph (1) after the date the requirements of this section are implemented through the amendment of the Federal Acquisition Regulation under sections 6 and 25 of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy Act (41 U.S.C. 405 and 421). “(3) The head of an agency may debar or suspend a contractor from eligibility for Federal contracts on the basis of a finding that the contractor has committed a violation described in paragraph (1). The debarment period may not exceed 3 years. “(4) The Administrator of General Services shall include on the List of Parties Excluded from Federal Procurement and Nonprocurement Programs maintained by the Administrator under part 9 of the Federal Acquisition Regulation each contractor that is debarred, suspended, proposed for debarment or suspension, or declared ineligible by the head of an agency on the basis that the contractor has committed a violation under paragraph (1).

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“(5) This section shall not be construed to limit the use of other remedies available to the head of an agency or any other official of the Federal Government on the basis of a finding under paragraph (1). “(d) Definitions.—In this section: “(1) The term ‘covered contract’ means a contract for a total amount in excess of the micro-purchase threshold, as that term is defined in section 32(f) of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy Act (41 U.S.C. 428(f)). “(2) The term ‘sweatshop good’ means all goods, wares, articles, and merchandise mined, produced, or manufactured wholly or in part in violation of core labor standards, as defined in section 3 of the Decent Working Conditions and Fair Competition Act.” (2) Clerical amendment.—The table of contents at the beginning of such chapter is amended by adding at the end the following new item: “2333. Prohibition on procurement of sweatshop goods.” (c)

Implementation through the federal acquisition regulation.—Not later than 120 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council shall amend the Federal Acquisition Regulation issued under sections 6 and 25 of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy Act (41 U.S.C. 405 and 421) to provide for the implementation of the requirements of section 318 of the Federal Property of Administrative Services Act of 1949 and section 2333 of title 10, United States Code, as added by subsections (a) and (b), respectively.

(d)

Report.—Not later than 2 years after the requirements of this section and of section 318 of the Federal Property of Administrative Services Act of 1949 and section 2333 of title 10, United States Code, as added by subsections (a) and (b), respectively, are implemented through the amendment of the Federal Acquisition Regulation pursuant to subsection (c), the Administrator of General Services, with the assistance of other executive agencies, shall submit to the Office of Management and Budget a report on the actions taken under such sections.

Source: H. R. 5635 [109th Congress]. Available at http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS110s367is/html/BILLS-110s367is.htm.

Legislation Outlawing Sexual Tourism (2006)

Section 2423. Transportation of Minors (a)

Transportation With Intent To Engage in Criminal Sexual Activity.—A person who knowingly transports an individual who has not attained the age of 18 years in interstate or foreign commerce, or in any commonwealth, territory or possession of the United States, with intent that the individual engage in prostitution, or in any sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense, shall be fined under this title and imprisoned not less than 5 years and not more than 30 years.

(b)

Travel With Intent To Engage in Illicit Sexual Conduct.—A person who travels in interstate commerce or travels into the United States, or a United States citizen or an alien admitted for permanent residence in the United States who travels in foreign commerce, for the purpose of engaging in any illicit sexual conduct with another person shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 30 years, or both.

(c)

Engaging in Illicit Sexual Conduct in Foreign Places.—Any United States citizen or alien admitted for permanent residence who travels in foreign commerce, and engages in any illicit sexual conduct with another person shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 30 years, or both.

(d)

Ancillary Offenses.—Whoever, for the purpose of commercial advantage or private financial gain, arranges, induces, procures, or facilitates the travel of a person knowing that such a person is traveling in interstate commerce or foreign commerce for the purpose of engaging in illicit sexual conduct shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 30 years, or both.

(e)

Attempt and Conspiracy.—Whoever attempts or conspires to violate subsection (a), (b), (c), or (d) shall be punishable in the same manner as a completed violation of that subsection.

(f)

Definition.—As used in this section, the term “illicit sexual conduct” means (1) a sexual act (as defined in section 2246) with a person under 18 years of age that would be in violation of chapter 109A if the sexual act occurred in the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States; or (2) any

823

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Legislation Outlawing Sexual Tourism (2006)

commercial sex act (as defined in section 1591) with a person under 18 years of age. (g)

Defense.—In a prosecution under this section based on illicit sexual conduct as defined in subsection (f)(2), it is a defense, which the defendant must establish by a preponderance of the evidence, that the defendant reasonably believed that the person with whom the defendant engaged in the commercial sex act had attained the age of 18 years.

Source: 18 U.S.C. § 2423. Available at http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/usc_sec_ 18_00002423----000-.html.

Pope Benedict XVI Condemns Human Trafficking (2006)

Dear Brothers and Sisters! On the occasion of the coming World Day of Migrants and Refugees, and looking at the Holy Family of Nazareth, icon of all families, I would like to invite you to reflect on the condition of the migrant family. The evangelist Matthew narrates that shortly after the birth of Jesus, Joseph was forced to leave for Egypt by night, taking the child and his mother with him, in order to flee the persecution of king Herod (cf. Mt 2:13–15). Making a comment on this page of the Gospel, my venerable Predecessor, the Servant of God Pope Pius XII, wrote in 1952: “The family of Nazareth in exile, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, emigrants and taking refuge in Egypt to escape the fury of an evil king, are the model, the example and the support of all emigrants and pilgrims of every age and every country, of all refugees of any condition who, compelled by persecution and need, are forced to abandon their homeland, their beloved relatives, their neighbors, their dear friends, and move to a foreign land” (“Exsul familia,” AAS 44, 1952, 649). In this misfortune experienced by the Family of Nazareth, obliged to take refuge in Egypt, we can catch a glimpse of the painful condition in which all migrants live, especially, refugees, exiles, evacuees, internally displaced persons, those who are persecuted. We can take a quick look at the difficulties that every migrant family lives through, the hardships and humiliations, the deprivation and fragility of millions and millions of migrants, refugees and internally displaced people. The Family of Nazareth reflects the image of God safeguarded in the heart of every human family, even if disfigured and weakened by emigration. The theme of the next World Day of Migrants and Refugees—“The migrant family”—is in continuity with those of 1980, 1986 and 1993. It intends to underline further the commitment of the Church not only in favor of the individual migrant, but also of his family, which is a place and resource of the culture of life and a factor for the integration of values. The migrant’s family meets many difficulties. The distance of its members from one another and unsuccessful reunification often result in breaking the original ties. New relationships are formed and new affections arise. Some migrants forget the past and their duties, as they are subjected to the hard trial of distance and solitude. If the immigrant family is not ensured of a real possibility of inclusion and participation, it is difficult to expect its harmonious

825

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development. The International Convention for the protection of the rights of all migrant workers and members of their families, which was enforced on July 1st, 2003, intends to defend men and women migrant workers and the members of their respective families. This means that the value of the family is recognized, also in the sphere of emigration, which is now a structural phenomenon of our societies. The Church encourages the ratification of the international legal instruments that aim to defend the rights of migrants, refugees and their families and, through its various Institutions and Associations, offers its advocacy that is becoming more and more necessary. To this end, it has opened Centers where migrants are listened to, Houses where they are welcomed, Offices for services offered to persons and families, with other initiatives set up to respond to the growing needs in this field. Much is already being done for the integration of the families of immigrants, although much still remains to be done. There are real difficulties connected with some “defense mechanisms” on the part of the first generation immigrants, which run the risk of becoming an obstacle to the greater maturity of the young people of the second generation. This is why it is necessary to provide for legislative, juridical and social intervention to facilitate such an integration. In recent times, there is an increase in the number of women who leave their countries of origin in search of better conditions of life, in view of more promising professional prospects. However, women who end up as victims of trafficking of human beings and of prostitution are not few in number. In family reunification, social workers, especially religious women, can render an appreciated service of mediation that merits our gratitude more and more. Regarding the integration of the families of immigrants, I feel it my duty to call your attention to the families of refugees, whose conditions seem to have gone worse in comparison with the past, also specifically regarding the reunification of family nuclei. In the camps assigned to them, in addition to logistic difficulties, and those of a personal character linked to the trauma and emotional stress caused by the tragic experiences they went through, sometimes there is also the risk of women and children being involved in sexual exploitation, as a survival mechanism. In these cases an attentive pastoral presence is necessary. Aside from giving assistance capable of healing the wounds of the heart, pastoral care should also offer the support of the Christian community, able to restore the culture of respect and have the true value of love found again. It is necessary to encourage those who are interiorly-wrecked to recover trust in themselves. Everything must also be done to guarantee the rights and dignity of the families and to assure them housing facilities according to their needs. Refugees are asked to cultivate an open and positive attitude towards their receiving society and maintain an active willingness to accept offers to participate in building together an integrated community that would be a “common household” for all. Among migrants, there is a category that needs to be considered in a special way: the students from other countries, who are far from home, without an adequate


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knowledge of the language, at times without friends and often with a scholarship that is insufficient for their needs. Their condition is even worse if they are married. Through its Institutions, the Church exerts every effort to render the absence of family support for these young students less painful. It helps them integrate in the cities that receive them, by putting them in contact with families that are willing to offer them hospitality and facilitate knowing one another. As I had the opportunity to say on another occasion, helping foreign students is “an important field of pastoral action. . . . Indeed, young people who leave their own country in order to study encounter many problems and especially the risk of an identity crisis” (L’Osservatore Romano, 15 December 2005). Dear Brothers and Sisters, may the World Day of Migrants and Refugees become a useful occasion to build awareness, in the ecclesial community and public opinion, regarding the needs and problems, as well as the positive potentialities of migrant families. My thoughts go in a special way to those who are directly involved in the vast phenomenon of migration, and to those who expend their pastoral energy in the service of human mobility. The words of the apostle Paul, “caritas Christi urget nos” (2 Cor 5:14), urge us to give ourselves preferentially to our brothers and sisters who are most in need. With these sentiments, I invoke divine assistance on each one and I affectionately impart to all a special Apostolic Blessing. From the Vatican, 18 October 2006 BENEDICTUS PP. XVI [Translation of Italian original issued by the Holy See © Copyright 2006 Libreria Editrice Vaticana] Source: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/migration/documents/hf_ ben-xvi_mes_20061018_world-migrants-day_en.html. Used by permission of the Libreria Editrice Vaticana.

Index

Action pour le Changement (Action for Change), 86 – 87 Addams, Jane, 87 – 89 Aden Protectorate and slavery, 3, 11 Adidas overseas workers, 66 adoption for exploitation, 7, 11 false, 88 – 90, 255 – 256 Adoption of Children Ordinance Law (1941), 88 – 90 Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery, 8–9 Afghanistan, 90 – 92 al-Qaeda, 54 drug trafficking, 54 slave trade and slavery memorial, 630 – 631 Africa, 3 antisweatshop movement in, 66 Berlin Conference, 133 – 134 female genital mutilation, 259 – 260 forced labor in, 5 – 6 illegal export of slaves from, 4, 5 missionaries and missions, 381 – 383 refugees in, 22 slave trade, 4, 80, 81, 382 – 383 and transnational organized crime, 53 see also East Africa; North Africa; West Africa African Americans and convict leasing, 212 – 213 slave reparations, 476

“A School for Iqbal” campaign, 71 – 72, 148 ‘abd, 73, 306, 361 Abolition of Forced Labor Convention (1957), 11 abolition International Day for the Abolition of Slavery (Dec. 2), 342– 343 International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and Its Abolition (Aug. 23), 343– 344 of slavery in 20th century, 3 – 16 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery (1956), 745 – 751 Abolition of Slavery Act (1833), 74 – 76, 156 abolitionism, 3, 6, 76 – 78 in Latin America, 370 – 381 in Muscat and Oman, 409 – 410 in North Africa, 425– 432 Pastoral Land Commission, 447 – 448 prostitution and, 81 – 85 and William Lloyd Garrison, 282 – 285 abolitionism, British, 78 – 81, 127 – 130, 156, 633 – 637 Abolition of Slavery Act (1833), 74 – 76 Anti-Slavery International, 111 – 113 Anti-Slavery Society, 113 – 114 Aborigines’ Protection Society, 6, 85 – 86, 113 Abu Dhabi rehabilitation center, 473 Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade (1807), 79

829

830 |

Index

African Civilization Society, 156 African Institution, 112 African Network for the Prevention and Protection against Child Abuse and Neglect (ANPPCAN), 92 – 93 African Squadrons, 93 – 94 Agee, Philip, 122 Agnivesh, Swami, 94– 96, 111, 499 Agricultural Labor Relations Act, 308 agricultural workers, 3, 45 Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), 307, 308 agriculture cash crops, 172 – 174 and forced labor, 24 Green Revolution, 288 – 290 Aguer, James, 109 Aguilar-Hernandez, Jaime, 23 Ahmad, Muhammad, 96 – 97 AIDS. See HIV/AIDS Ajayi, J. F. A., 367 Akitoye, King, 366, 367 Akofa, Henriette, 272 al-Diein Massacre (1987), 99 – 101 prisoners of war, 464 Alexander II, 101 – 103, 605 – 610 Algeria abolition of slave trade, 429 Alien Tort Claims Act (1789), 103 – 104, 234 – 235, 597 aliens, undocumented, 542 – 554 Aliyev, Ilham, 806– 807 All India Brick Kiln Workers, 95 All Pakistan Brick Kiln Owners Association, 104 – 105, 136 al-Qaeda. 54, 92 American African Squadron, 94 American Anti-Slavery Group (AASG), 105 – 107 American Anti-Slavery Society, 76, 77, 282, 283 American Center for International Labor Solidarity, 122 American Civil Liberties Union, 88 American Colonization Society, 565 Amistad case, 586 Angkor Wat, 159 – 160 Angola forced labor, 422

Anthony, Susan B., 486 Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society (ASAPS), 6, 7, 8, 10, 86, 107 – 109, 113 Anti-Slavery Award, 109 – 111 Anti-Slavery International, 6, 14, 109, 111 – 113, 114, 167 Anti-Slavery Reporter and Aborigines Friend, 107 Anti-Slavery Society, 10, 12, 112, 113 – 114 Anti-Slavery Society, British, 6, 79 antipeonage laws, 23 antislavery British abolitionism, 78 – 81 Enlightenment, 253 – 254 and the Koran, 359 – 364 and labor movements, 114 – 116 in Latin America, 370 – 381 World Anti-Slavery Convention (1840), 584– 586 antisweatshop legislation (2006), 813 – 822 antisweatshop movement, 64, 65 – 66, 188, 514 – 515 antitrafficking enforcement, 28 – 29 apartheid, 12 apparel manufacturing, 60, 61, 62 negative publicity, 63 – 64 apprenticeship system, 75, 80, 156 Arab-Berber integration, 305 – 306 Arabia, 3 antislavery struggle in, 11 enslavement of Muslim pilgrims in, 4 slave trafficking in, 5, 7 Arabian Peninsula chattel slavery in, 3, 5 Arana, Julio César, 116 – 118, 304, 450– 451 Arbour, Louise, 311 Argentina slave emancipation in, 379 Aristide, Jean-Bertrand, 167 Arizona, 19, 20 Armenia organized crime, 52 arms trafficking, 13, 36 Arya Sabha, 95 Ashurst-Sumners Act (1935), 460 Asia Monitor Resource Center (AMRC), 118 – 119

Index Asia and child prostitution, 188 drug trafficking, 54 human smuggling through Canada, 21 refugees in, 22 transnational organized crime, 57 see also ECPAT Asian concubines, 203 Asian emigration, 20 Asian labor markets, 118 – 119 Asian Migrant Center (AMC), 119 – 121 Asian prostitutes, 265 – 266, 269, 270 Asian-American Free Labor Institute (AAFLI), 121 – 122 Asians, undocumented, 20 Asociacion de Trabajadora Autónomas “22 de Junio” de El ORO, 122 – 123 assembly work, 61, 62 Association for Community Development, 110 Association for the Defense of the Rights of Domestic Workers, 162 Association for the Reform and Codification of the Law of Nations resolutions (1883), 632 asylum seekers, 21, 135, 544 Athie, Mohamed, 217 Auschwitz complex, 470 Australia, 123 – 125 asylum seekers, 135 and human smuggling, 20 and human trafficking legislation, 37 – 38 sexual offenses with children, 192 Azerbaijan Law on Trafficking in Persons (2005), 806– 807 Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA), 499, 500 Backward Society Education, 110 Baker, Florence Szasz, 127, 128 – 129 Baker, Samuel White, 127 – 130 Baldo, Suleyman Ali, 99 Bales, Kevin, 497 Baluchistan slave trafficking in, 4, 5 Bangkok sweatshops in, 13 Bangladesh child labor, 492 Barbie dolls, 65

| 831

Barya, 130 – 131 bateyes (worker housing), 238 Beecher, Henry Ward, 76 Belarus, 41 Belgium and slavery, 4, 10 see also Leopold II Benedict XVI, Pope human trafficking condemnation (2006), 825 – 827 Berbers, 305 – 306 Beria, Lavrenty Pavlovich, 131 – 132 Berlin Conference (1884 – 1885), 132 – 134, 150 Berlin Wall, 289 Beydanes, 73, 217, 301 – 302, 397 Bhagwati, P. N., 134 – 135 Bhatta Mazdoor Mohaz (Brick Kiln Worker’s Front), 105, 135 – 137, 140 Bilateral Safety Corridor Coalition (BSCC), 28, 29 Bill for the Total Abolition of Colonial Slavery (1833), 112 Birney, James G., 76 Bismarck, Otto von, 133 Black Moors. See Haratines Black Power movement, 258, 354 Black Star Line, 287 blackbirding, 125 Blakely, G. Robert, 51 Bok, Francis Piol Bol, 137 – 138 Bolívar, Simón, 374 – 375 Bonanno, Joseph, 51 bonded labor, 138 – 139, 357 “A School for Iqbal” campaign, 71 – 72 Ceylon, 89 – 90 children, 194, 195 India, 445 – 447, 493 – 494, 571 – 572 Pakistan, 97, 98, 104 – 105, 135 – 137, 309 peshgi, 452 – 453 Bonded Labour Liberation Front (BLLF), 95, 98, 358 Bonded Labour Liberation Front (BLLF) Global, 358 Bonded Labour Liberation Front (BLLF) India, 499, 500 Bonded Labour Liberation Front (BLLF) Pakistan, 139 – 142

832 |

Index

Bonded Labour System Abolition Act (1992), 105, 141 bootlegging gangs, 50 border crossings, 315 border-crossing identification cards, 18 Borlaug, Norman, 291 Boulkheir, Messaoud Ould, 302, 303 boys and child prostitution, 189 child soldiers, 14 false adoption of, 255 – 256 Bracero Program, 18 brand names and child labor, 186 company codes of conduct, 201 and sweatshops, 62 Brazil and abolitionism, 81, 165 – 167 charcoal production, 180 – 181 In Plurimis (1888) encyclical on slavery abolition, 659 – 670 Pastoral Land Commission, 478 – 479 slave labor, 447 – 448 slave labor recognition (1995), 770 – 771 slave trade, 372 slavery, 3, 142 – 146, 371 Brazilian Slavery, Law Abolishing (1888), 640 Break the Chain Campaign, 161 brick making child labor, 184 and debt bondage, 13, 357 bride-price, 146 – 148 and female genital mutilation, 261 – 262 and servile marriage, 486 – 487 British Abolition Act (1833), 598 – 600 British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 112, 113 British Anti-Slavery Society, 6, 79 British dependencies aboriginal inhabitants, 155 British East African Carrier Corps, 5 British South Africa Company, 134 British West African Squadron, 80, 94 British West Indies apprenticeship system, 156 former slaves, 155 Broad Meadows Middle School, 71 – 72, 148 – 149

brothels, 29, 209 in Nazi Germany, 417 Brown, Henry Billings, 456 – 457 Brown, John, 532 – 533 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954), 354 Brussels Act (1890), 6, 149 – 150, 208 Brussels Conference (1890) Declaration of the General Act, 671 – 672 Buchanan, James, 242, 243 Bulow, Count Bernhard von, 230 Bunyoro, 129, 130 Burma, 4, 8, 151 – 153 human rights abuses, 234 – 235 State Law and Order Committee, 501 – 503 Burma Peace Foundation, 153 – 154 Burma Project/Southeast Asia Initiative, 153 – 154 Burmese workers in Thailand, 518 Butler, Josephine, 82, 412, 580 Buxton, Sir Thomas Fowell, 74 – 75, 85, 107, 154 – 156 Cadet, Jean-Robert, 157 – 158 California and border patrol, 19 and human trafficking legislation, 30 and human trafficking social services, 29 labor law enforcement, 65 and Mexican girl prostitution, 28 sweatshops, 63, 188, 249 – 251, 514 – 516 California Alliance to Combat Trafficking and Slavery Task Force, 30 California Sweatshop Reform Bill, 65 Cambodia, 158 – 160 and child prostitution, 188 sex workers in, 487 – 488 Cambodian Prostitutes Union, 487 – 488 Cambodian Women’s Development Association, 487 – 488 camel drivers, 5 camel jockeys, 36, 141, 473 Cameroon servile marriage, 487 Campaign for Migrant Domestic Workers’ Rights, 160 – 163 Canada and human smuggling, 20, 21

Index internment of Japanese, 471 canal building in Central Asia, 178 by Gulag prisoners, 292 cane harvesters, 163– 165, 173, 174 Dominican Republic, 238 – 239 capitalism and economic globalization, 245 – 248 Capone, Alphonse, 50 Cardoso, Fernando Henrique, 165 – 167 Caribbean refugees in, 22 and transnational organized crime, 53 cariye (female slaves), 167 – 168 Carlyle, Thomas, 331 – 332 carpet factories and debt bondage in India, 13 Casement, Sir Roger, 168– 172, 304, 390, 405, 451 cash crops, 172 – 174 Green Revolution, 290 caste, 174 – 178 devadasi, 232 – 233 India, 323 Central Africa Gabon, 279 – 282 Central African Republic refugee outflow, 22 Central America, 18 and coyotes, 20 refugees from, 22 slavery, 373 Central Asia forced labor in, 178 – 179 certification process (for trafficking victims), 40 Ceylon Adoption of Children Ordinance Law (1941), 88 – 90 chain gangs, 212 Chand, David, 106 charcoal making, 180 – 181, 448 chattel, 181 – 182 chattel slavery, 3, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, 181 – 183, 548, 551 Chavez, Cesar, 308 chewa, 130 – 131 Chicago organized crime, 49, 50 – 51 and Prohibition, 50 – 51

| 833

child adoption. See mui tsai child labor, 13 – 14, 88, 183 – 185 Bangladesh, 492 fishing platforms, 264 – 265 in India and debt bondage, 13 International Program on the Elimination of Child Labour, 349 – 350 National Child Labor Committee, 412 – 413 Pakistan, 98 Pledging of Labour of Children Act (1933), 723 – 724 South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude (SACCS), 499 – 500 sweatshops, 61 versus child slavery, 194 see also Convention against the Worst Forms of Child Labor Child Labor Coalition, 185 – 187 child marriage, 7 child pornography, 14, 55, 205, 458 – 460 Russian Federation, 774 – 778 child prostitution, 187– 191, 205 religiously sanctioned, 188 Russian Federation, 776– 778 South Asia, 511 – 512 Wellstone report, 779 – 781 Child Rights Information Network, 191 – 192 child sex tourism, 14, 36, 38 Mexico-U.S. border, 27 – 28 child sexual abuse preferential and situational abusers, 190 child slaves and slavery, 194 India, 323 Ivory Coast, 215 – 217 mui tsai, 407 – 409 restaveks, 159, 297 – 298, 476 – 478 child soldiers, 14, 192 – 194, 195 Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), 214 – 216 Lord’s Resistance Army, 449 – 450 child trafficking, 191 – 192 Child Wise, 38 children abuse and neglect of, 577 – 578 Adoption of Children Ordinance Law (1941), 88 – 90 in Australia detention centers, 135 in bonded labor, 139, 140 – 142

834 |

Index

Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), 210 – 212, 768 – 769 Declaration on the Rights of the Child (1959), 229 – 230 domestic enslavement of, 297 – 298 enslavement of, 17, 36 false adoption, 255 – 256 Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child (1924), 713 incest and, 321, 322 International Convention for Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children, 337 – 338 and marriage, 14 Mexico trafficking, 27 – 28 PROTECT Act, 799 – 800 restaveks, 476 – 478 sex slaves, 14 sex trafficking, 36 sexual abuse of, 488 – 489 sexual exploitation of, 197, 248 – 249, 324, 588 – 590 slave trade of in Africa, 4 as slaves in Mauritania, 8 transfer and adoption of, 7 UNICEF, 556 – 558 victims of modern slavery, 194 – 196 West Africa trafficking in, 42 Chile on peonage, 10 slavery, 373 China, 41 and child kidnapping and adoption, 8, 14 child labor, 184 and child sexual slavery, 14 and forced labor, 14 female bondage, 338 gulags in, 11, 14 illegal export of slaves by, 5 international law enforcement cooperation, 57 land reform, 370 mui tsai, 8 – 9, 407 – 409 pirated goods, 55 slave trafficking in, 4 State Regulations on the Reform through Labor, 503 – 504 U.S.-based companies in, 66

Chinese, smuggling of, 20, 21 Chinese prostitutes, 335 Chinese triads and illegal aliens, 13 chocolate slavery debate, 214 – 215 Chông-ok, Yun, 364 Chou Ta-kuan, 161 Christian slavery, 426 – 427 Christian Solidarity International (CSI), 221 Christian Solidarity Worldwide, 219 Christians, evangelical and abolitionist movement, 3 Chulalongkorn (Rama V), King, 196, 197 – 198, 518 Civil Rights Cases (1883), 353 Civil War Amendments (1865, 1868, 1870), 620 – 621 Clarkson, Thomas, 94 Clay, Cassius M., 76 Clinton, President Bill, 206 clitoridectomy. See female genital mutilation closed slave systems, 332, 333 Coalition against Child Labour in Pakistan, 140 Coalition against Slavery in Mauritania and Sudan, 215 Coalition against the Trafficking in Women (CATW), 26, 83, 198 – 200 Coalition of Immokalee Workers, 109, 110, 202 Coalition to Eliminate Sweatshop Conditions, 514 cocaine trade, 54, 438 cocoa production, 172, 174 Fernando Pó, São Tomé, and Príncipe, 262 – 263 and forced labor, 14 Harkin-Engel Protocol (2001), 782 – 784 Ivory Coast, 215, 216 coerced labor, 312 coerced migration, 18, 22 coercion and enslavement, 35 and human smuggling, 20 Palermo Protocol, 34, 37 Cold War and UN committees, 12 college logo clothing, 64, 65, 66

Index Colombia drug trafficking, 54 on peonage, 10 slave emancipation in, 375 – 376 colonialism and labor trafficking, 310 – 311 Columbo crime family, 51 combat child soldiers in, 14 comfort women, 299 – 300, 342, 362 – 363, 455, 471, 472 Commission for the Eradication of Abduction of Women and Children (CEAWC), 497 Commission on the Status of Women, 205 Committee of Experts on Slavery, 383 communist world and concepts of freedom, 10 company codes of conduct, 200 – 203 Model Business Principles (1995), 403 – 404 compradors. See subcontractors concentration camps, 9, 288, 469 and brothels, 418 and Nazi slavery, 421 concubines, 5, 203 – 205 cariye, 167 Confederate States of America, 252 Confederation of Trade Unions of Turkey (TURK-IS), 122 Congo, Democratic Republic of refugee outflow, 22 Congo Free State, 133, 134, 404 – 405, 526 forced labor in, 5 Roger Casement, 169 – 170, 171 see also Leopold II Congo Reform Association, 6 consent and child prostitution, 187 of trafficked victims, 43, 44 – 45 consumers and negative publicity, 63 – 64 Contagious Diseases Acts, 81 – 82 contract labor, 5, 6 charcoal production, 180 Dominican Republic, 238 Convention against the Worst Forms of Child Labor (1999), 205 – 206

| 835

Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Women and Children (1949), 206 – 208, 342, 406 – 407, 581 Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others (1951), 733 – 741 Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children (1921), 580 Convention of Saint Germain-en-Laye (1919), 6, 210, 704 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) (1979), 208 – 210, 547, 766 – 767 Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), 196, 197, 210 – 212, 768 – 769 convict leasing, 212 – 214, 460 convicts in Australia, 124 Coolidge, Calvin, 287 corporate ethics Model Business Principles (1995), 403 – 404 corporate oversight of subcontracting. See transparency corvée labor Cambodia, 159 and cash crops, 172 Haiti, 288 – 299 Thailand, 197, 517 Côte d’Ivoire, 214 – 217 Cotton, Samuel Leslie, 106, 217 – 219 cotton growing, 173 and contract workers, 6 and Industrial Revolution, 331 counterfeiting pirated goods, 55 “county marriage,” 204 cousins (former slaves), 8 Cox, Caroline, 219 – 221 COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics), 221 – 222 coyotes, 20, 23, 29, 398 crime human smuggling, 20

836 |

Index

human trafficking for sexual exploitation, 314 – 316 illegal migration, 17, 319 – 320 intellectual property, 55 trafficking, 526 violence against sex workers, 572 – 576 crime, organized definitions and descriptions of, 47 – 49 early immigrants and, 49 – 51 enslavement and, 47 – 58 Eurasian, 52, 55 – 56 Russian, 52 transnational, 47, 48, 51, 52 – 53, 57 – 58 crime, transnational human trafficking, 34 – 36, 38 – 40, 41 – 42 law enforcement cooperation, 56 – 58 sex abuse, 489 Crimean Tatars, 132 criminal networks and slavery, 15 culture and human trafficking, 42 Czech Republic, 41, 222 – 223 dams and forced labor construction, 9 Davis, Gov. Gray, 65 death squads Central America, 22 debt bondage, 7, 9, 11, 13, 24, 36, 139 and labor trafficking, 312 in Indian subcontinent, 6, 10, 13 peonage, 23, 449 – 450 peshgi system, 104, 105, 136, 140, 309, 452 – 453 trokosi, 529 – 530 see also debt slavery debt forgiveness and economic aid, 271 debt slavery, 221 – 223 Decent Working Conditions and Fair Competition Act, 66 – 67 Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World (1920), 705 – 711 Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (1967), 227 – 229

Declaration on the Rights of the Child (1959), 229 – 230 Decree Respecting Domestic Slavery in German East Africa (1901), 230 – 231 Democratic Party, 115 Department of Health and Human Services, 23, 30 certification process, 40 Department of Homeland Security FTC Customs and Border Protection, 67 Department of Labor labor law enforcement, 64 Designated Suppliers Program, 66 devadasi, 231 – 234 dharma, 175 – 176 Dinka people, 99 – 100, 137, 497 discrimination against women, 227 – 229 Jim Crow laws, 353 – 354 displaced persons, 21 Doe v. Unocal (1997), 103, 234 – 235 domestic enslavement of Haitian children, 297 – 298 domestic labor, 3, 139 in Arabia, 5 Muscat and Oman, 409 and U.S. sex trafficking, 24 domestic slavery in France, 272 – 273, 274 in German East Africa, 230 – 231 domestic violence movement, 23 – 24, 28 domestic workers, 235 – 237 Bangladesh, 492 Campaign for Migrant Domestic Workers’ Rights, 160 – 163 false adoption, 255 – 256 mui tsai, 407 – 409 Dominican Republic, 237 – 239 cane harvesters, 163 – 165 Douaty, Alfonse, 215 Douglass, Frederick, 77 – 78, 239 – 242, 540 dowry. See bride-price Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), 242 – 244 Drug Enforcement Administration China and drug trafficking, 57 narco-terrorism and, 54

Index drug trafficking, 13, 20, 36, 53, 54 – 55 Dutch East India Company, 329 Duvalier, Francois and Jean-Claude, 164, 165 East Africa child soldiers, 192 domestic slavery in, 230 – 231 slave trafficking in, 4 Eastern Europe fall of communism in, 53 human smuggling through Canada, 21 slave traffic in, 10, 13 economic globalization, 245 – 248 child pornography, 458 – 459 illegal migration, 320 labor trafficking, 312 nongovernmental organizations, 424 prostitution, 466 sexual abuse, 489 economic marginalization and human trafficking, 41 – 42, 46 economic migrants from Central America, 22 ECPAT (End Child Prostitution in Asia Tourism; End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography, and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes), 111, 113, 190, 248 – 249, 512 ECPAT International, 248, 249 Ecuador association of sex workers, 122 – 124 Egypt abolition of slave trade, 431 – 432 and Yemen, 11 Eibner, John, 137, 220 Eighteenth Amendment, 50 El Hor movement, 302 – 303, 398, 496 El Monte, California, sweatshop case, 63, 186, 249 – 251, 514 El Salvador and child labor, 13 – 14 and coyotes, 20 Emancipation of the Serfs Manifesto (1861), 605 – 610 Emancipation Proclamation (1863) 251 – 253, 392, 394, 520, 618 – 619 Empress Fashions, 63

| 837

End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography, and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes. See ECPAT End Child Prostitution in Asia Tourism. See ECPAT endeude (indebtedness), 117, 308, 457 Enlightenment, 253 – 254 enslaved labor and organized crime, 18 enslavement, 23, 24, 34 – 46 of women and children, 17 see also human trafficking Equatorial Guinea, 395 Ethiopia Barya and Shanqilla, 130 bride-price, 147 Haile Selassie I, 295 – 297 illegal export of slaves by, 5 Italian conquest of, 9 rehabilitation programs, 473 servile marriage, 487 slavery and slave raiding and trading, 3 – 9, 295 – 297 ethnic cleansing and forced migration, 21 ethnic persecution and refugees, 22 eunuchs, 3, 5 Eurasian organized crime, 52, 55 – 56 Europe drug trafficking, 54 refugees in, 22 evangelical Christians, 3 exploitation Palermo Protocol, 35, 37 see also human trafficking for sexual exploitation factories, unionized, 62, 63 Factory Act (1833), 601 Fair Labor Association, 64 Faisal, Prince, 319, 483 Falco, Marcelle Legrand, 408, 580 false adoption, 255 – 256 Adoption of Children Ordinance Law (1941), 88 – 90 famine and forced migration, 21

838 |

Index

Fanon, Frantz, 256 – 258 farm workers, 311 – 312 Faulkner, Thomas J., 263 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) human trafficking, 38, 55 Legal Attaché Program, 56 organized crime definition, 48 Federal Trade Commission labor law enforcement overseas, 67 Female Domestic Service Ordinance (1923), 113 female genital mutilation, 259 – 261 female slaves, 203 cariye, 167 – 169 devadasi, 231 – 234 feminists Coalition against Trafficking in Women (CATW), 198 – 200 on prostitution, 83, 266, 267, 465 and sex workers organization, 123 feminization of poverty, 42 Fernando Pó, São Tomé, and Príncipe, 5, 259 – 262, 422 Fifteenth Amendment (1870), 78, 621 Fight against Child Exploitation (FACE), 512 Fiji, 125 “Final Solution of the Jewish Question,” 288 financial fraud, 55 Finet, Paul, 336 First World. See global North fishing platforms, 264 – 265, 473 Flores-Oebanda, Cecilia, 110 Fonda, Jane, 221 forced crop growing, 6 forced labor, 7, 10, 14 – 15 in Africa, 5 – 6, 8, 9 – 10 Central Asia, 178 charcoal making, 180 company codes of conduct, 202 Ethiopia, 299 and gulags, 9, 295 India, 325 Mali children, 215 Nazi Germany, 419 – 421 and organized crime, 55

peonage, 449 – 450 Sanders Amendment (1997), 773 – 775 Soviet Union, 470 – 471, 538 – 539 Ukraine, 537 – 539 in the United States, 24 Forced Labour Convention of 1930, 8, 108 forced marriage, 7, 11 Australia, 126 forced migration, 21 – 22 forced prostitution, 12, 13, 17, 24, 53, 265 – 269 Nazi Germany, 286, 415 – 418 and organized crime, 18 foreign aid, 269 – 271 foreign nationals in United States and illegality of, 31 Fourteenth Amendment (1868), 456, 457, 521, 620 – 621 France and forced labor, 9 and Gabon, 279 – 280 and slavery, 4, 8, 9, 271 – 275 Franklin, Benjamin, 254 Free the Slaves, 272–273 free wage labor, 138 freedom, concepts of, 10 Freedom Network (USA) to Empower Enslaved and Trafficked Persons, 161, 273 – 275 free-trade agreements and human trafficking, 42 Freyre, Gilberto, 144, 145 Fuess, Harald, 148 Fugitive Slave Act (1850), 78, 541 Gabon slavery and slave trade, 279 – 282 Gambino crime family, 51 Gangs of New York, The (film), 49 Gap, The, 65, 201 Garang de Mabior, John, 509, 510 – 511 garment industry, 15 sweatshop labor, 60, 62 – 63 Garnet, Henry Highland, 77 Garrison, William Lloyd, 76, 240, 241, 280– 283, 585 Garvey, Marcus, 283 – 285

Index gender and human trafficking, 24 – 25, 31 and migration, 18 gendered coercion and human trafficking, 22 gendered crimes, 25 gendered violence, 25 Geneva Conventions, 463, 464 Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child (1924), 713 Genovese crime family, 51 Georgia organized crime, 52 German Democratic Republic (East Germany), 289 German East Africa domestic slavery in, 230 – 231 Germany, 287 –290 and human smuggling, 20 slave reparations, 475 see also Nazi Germany Gettysburg Address, 394 Ghana International Needs (IN), 346 – 347 peonage, 449 – 450 rehabilitation programs, 473 servile marriage, 487 and slavery, 10 trokosi, 529 – 530 Gifford, Kathie Lee, 63, 201 girls exploitation of, 25 false adoption, 255 – 256 mui tsai, 407 – 409 servile marriage, 486 – 487 and sex trafficking, 14, 24 – 25 trafficking from Mexico, 29 trokosi, 529 – 530 warfare and enslavement of, 193 and white slave traffic, 335 – 336, 578 – 579 Giuliani, Rudolph, 51 global migration, 17, 18 global North (First World, industrialized nations), 18, 20, 26, 31 global smuggling networks, 21 global South (developing nations), 18, 31 global systems theory, 246

globalization human trafficking, 41 – 43, 46, 315 – 316 and labor, 12 – 13 of labor competition, 61 and transnational organized crime, 51, 52 – 53, 58 see also economic globalization God Arabic names for, 73 Golden Crescent, 54 Golden Triangle, 54 Gompers, Samuel, 344 Goodell, William, 116 grape boycott, 308 Great Britain abolition of slave trade, 582 – 583 African Squadrons, 93 – 95 and Burma, 151, 152 domestic workers in, 236 economic aid and antislavery efforts, 270 illegal aliens smuggled into, 13 Industrial Revolution, 331 – 332 and Lagos, 366 – 368 and manumission in Saudi Arabia, 482 – 483 and maritime slave trade, 11 slave reparations, 475 and slavery, 3, 8, 11 and UN slavery issue, 11 see also entries under British; United Kingdom Green Revolution, 286 – 287 Greenidge, Charles, 10, 11 Grimké, Sarah and Angelina, 77, 284 Guangdong, China labor, 66 Guatemala and coyotes, 20 Gubins, John Russell, 450 guest workers in Germany, 289 Guinea, Republic of serfdom, 485 Gulag (Main Administration of Camps), 131, 132, 288 – 290, 470 gulag camps Ukrainians in, 538

| 839

840 |

Index

gulags, 9, 11, 178 in China, 11, 14 Gulu Support the Children Organization (GUSCO), 437 – 438 Gypsies, 9 Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, 462 – 463 Haile Selassie I, 293 – 297 Haiti, 397 – 299 cane harvesters, 163 – 165 child slaves, 157 restaveks, 476 – 478 Haitian workers in Dominican Republic, 237 – 239 Hak Sun, Kim, 299 – 301, 365 Hantrakul, Sukanya, 267 Hapsburgs serfdom, 484, 485 Haratines (Black Moors), 73, 301 – 303, 306, 397, 398 Hardenburg, Walter E., 118, 303 – 305, 451 harems, 335 eunuchs in, 3 Harkin-Engel Protocol (2001), 215, 788 – 790 Harlan, John Marshall, 457 – 458 Harris, Craig, 218 Harris, John, 7, 107, 108, 109, 304, 387, 434 Hassaniya-Berbers, 303 – 305 health care schemes, fraudulent, 55 heat exposure, 20 Hebrew marriage, 144 Hejaz slave traffic in, 7 Hennessy, David C., 50 heroin transnational organized crime and, 54 Himmler, Heinrich, 417 Hindu caste system, 175 – 177 Hitler, Adolph, 415, 416 HIV/AIDS, 13, 14 and child prostitutes, 190 Hoile, David, 219 Holocaust, 278 Honduras coyotes and, 20

Hong Kong mui tsai in, 8, 408, 409 hotel work and forced labor, 24 Huerta, Dolores, 307 – 308 Hull House, 88 human minesweepers, 193 human rights, 310 – 311 Alien Tort Claims Act, 103 – 104, 234 – 235 and Burma Peace Foundation, 151 and Chinese triads, 13 company codes of conduct, 200 – 203 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, 208 – 210 Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), 210 – 212 and indigenous peoples, 6 Palermo Protocol, 444 records of nations and foreign aid, 270 and slavery, 3 Transnational Institute, 528 – 529 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), 565 – 568 human rights abuse Dominican Republic, 238 human rights advocates and human smuggling, 22 Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), 308 – 310 Human Rights Day (Dec. 10), 314, 315 human rights violations false adoption, 255 – 256 human sacrifice in Burma, 152 human smuggling, 19 – 20, 25, 55 and fatalities, 21 and human trafficking, 19, 43 and medical problems, 20 U.S.-Mexico border, 18 – 19 of women, 22 human trafficking, 25 Cambodia, 159 and children, 195, 205 defined, 24, 34 – 35, 314, 443 efforts to end, 36 – 40

Index factors giving rise to, 41 – 43 and Freedom Network (USA), 275 – 277 Gabon, 281 and gender, 24 – 25 history of, 40 – 41 and human smuggling, 19, 43 and international crime threats, 53 methods used, 43 – 44 Mexico hotels, 28 organized crime and, 55, 439 and Palermo Protocol, 443 – 445 Pope Benedict XVI condemnation of (2006), 825 – 827 profits from, 36 survivors of, 30 and U.S. Border Patrol, 19 and victim consent, 44 – 45 of women, 22 human trafficking for labor purposes, 35, 42, 311 – 314, 523 – 525, 528 Asian workforce, 120 – 121 Azerbaijan law (2005), 800 – 801 India, 324, 325 International Organization for Migration, 348 Protection Project, 466 – 467 Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (VTVPA) of 2000, 563, 564 – 565, 569 – 571 human trafficking for sexual exploitation, 25 – 26, 125 – 126, 314 – 316, 523 – 524, 525 Cambodia, 488 Coalition against Trafficking in Women, 198 – 200 Czech Republic, 222 – 223 false adoption, 255 – 256 Germany, 290 India, 324 – 325 Mexico, 400 Movement to Abolish Prostitution and Pornography (MAPP), 405 – 408 Palmero Protocol (2003): text, 788 – 798 Philippines, 455 Protection Project, 466 – 467 Sexual Offences Bill (2003), 801 – 802 South Asia, 511 – 512

| 841

Spain, 501 Thailand, 518 trokosi, 529 – 530 Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (VTVPA) of 2000, 563, 564 – 565, 569 – 571 white slave traffic, 334 – 336 women for prostitution, 206 World Congress against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children, 588 – 590 see also sex trafficking Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust (HART), 220 Hume, David, 254 Hungary organized crime, 52 Hyo-chae, Lee, 365 Ibn Saud, King Abdul Aziz, 317 – 319, 483 illegal migrants as accomplices, 45 illegal migration, 319 – 320, 524 undocumented aliens, 542 – 544 immigrants and organized crime, 47, 49 – 51 and political machines, 49 – 50 and sweatshop labor, 60, 61, 62 immigration, illegal, 17 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) human trafficking rings, 38 labor law enforcement, 64 immigration detention Australia, 135 Immigration Reform and Control Act (1986), 64 immigration schemes, fraudulent, 55 Immokalee Workers, Coalition of, 109, 110, 202 In Plurimis (1888) encyclical, 659 – 670 incest, 321 – 322 indentured labor systems, 125, 312 Indentured Servitude Abolition Act of 2005, 808 – 812 India, 322 – 326 bonded labor, 445 – 447, 493 – 494, 571 – 572

842 |

Index

caste, 177 child labor, 499 child prostitution, 188 child sexual slavery in, 14 debt bondage and children in, 13 devadasi, 231 – 234 exclusion from slavery conventions, 8 illegal export of slaves by, 5 servile marriage, 487 slave trafficking in, 4 slavery, 4, 10, 323 – 325 Indian subcontinent debt bondage in, 6, 10, 13 Indian-Mestizo captives, 326 – 328 indigenous people Aborigines’ Protection Society, 85 – 86 Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society, 107 Australia, 124 Brazilian Indians as slaves, 142 – 143 enslavement of in Putumayo, 6 and human rights, 6 International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, 350 – 354 Survival International, 513 UN groups and, 12 Indonesia Burma Project/Southeast Asia Initiative, 154 – 155 child labor and fishing platforms, 264 – 265 slavery, 10, 328 – 331 industrial homework, 61 Industrial Revolution, 331 – 332 industrialization and domestic work, 236 inheritability of slavery, 332 – 334 intellectual property and World Trade Organization, 592 intellectual property crimes, 53, 55 INTERCEDE (International Coalition to End Domestic’s Exploitation), 161 Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration (ICEM), 347 International Agreement for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic (1904), 338 – 340, 576, 580

International Center for Wheat and Maize Improvement (CIMMYT), 290 International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), 336 – 337 International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children (1921), 337 – 338, 712 International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women of Full Age (1933), 338 – 339, 580, 719 – 722 International Convention for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic (1910), 580 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1969), 763 – 765 International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Their Families (1990), 161 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966), 161, 339 – 340 International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (1966), 339, 340 – 342 International Crime Threat Assessment, 53 International Day for the Abolition of Slavery (Dec. 2), 207, 342 – 343 International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and Its Abolition (Aug. 23), 343 – 344 International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, 291 International Labour Conferences, 348, 349 International Labour Organization (ILO), 12, 344 – 346 and child labor, 15, 185 Convention against the Worst Forms of Child Labour (1999), 205 – 206 and forced labor, 8, 10, 11, 14 International Program on the Elimination of Child Labour, 349 – 350 Temporary Slave Commission, 7 trafficking estimates, 24 International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU), 63 international law to suppress human trafficking, 37 – 38

Index International Monetary Fund, 586, 587 International Needs (IN), 346 – 347, 473 international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), 12 International Organization for Migration, 347 – 349 International Program on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC), 349 – 350 International Rice Research Institute, 290 international trade and sweatshop labor, 60 international treaties and human trafficking, 41 International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA), 350 – 352 Internet child pornography, 458 – 459 human trafficking for sexual exploitation, 313 – 314 and prostitution, 466 and sexual abuse, 489 – 490 transnational organized crime, 53 internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, 471 Interpol (International Police Organization), 12, 56, 57 and child pornography, 14 involuntary servitude, 24, 26 Iran and maritime slave trade, 11 Iran-Iraq war child soldiers in, 190 Iraq refugee outflow, 22 Irish immigrants and political machine, 49 Isabel, Princess, of Portugal, 144 Islamic culture bride-price, 146 concubines, 203 and enslavement of Muslims, 5 Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, 54 Ismailia, 128, 129 Italian Americans and organized crime, 50 – 51 Italy and Ethiopia, 9, 295 – 296

Jacka, Keith, 220 Jacobs, Charles, 106, 137, 217 Jagiellonian Trust, 220 Jahangir, Asma, 308, 309 – 310 jamadari system, 140 James, Jennifer, 221 Japan bride-price, 147 – 148 comfort women, 338, 364 – 365 prisoners of war, 463 – 464 slave labor, 471 Japanese Americans reparations, 475 Japanese Imperial Army comfort women, 299 – 304 Java cultivation system, 329, 330 fishing platforms, 262 – 263 Jefferson, Thomas, 254 Jews and forced migration, 21 Holocaust, 288 Nazi Germany, 9, 416, 418, 419, 420, 469 – 470 Jilani, Hina, 312, 309 – 310 Jim Crow laws, 353 – 354 Jolin, A., 266 Jordan sweatshop labor, 65 Jottrand, Émile, 198 Judiciary Act of 1789, 103, 597 jus cogens violations Alien Tort Claims Act, 234 – 235 just war theory and slavery, 356 – 357 Kabarega, 129 kalavants, 233 Kalmyks, 132 Kamara, Cheikh Saad Bouh, 111 Kansas-Nebraska Act, 78 Karadzic, Radnvan, 234 Karlag camp system, 178 karma, 176 Karnataka Devadasi Prohibition Act (1982), 233 Kazakhstan organized crime, 52

| 843

844 |

Index

Khaldun, Ibn, 305 – 306 Khan, A. Q., 54 Khan, Ehsan Ullah, 135, 136, 140, 353 – 355 Khmer Rouge, 161 Khoi-San people, 155 kidnapping of South Pacific islanders, 125 kin-based servitude, 322 – 324 King, C. B. D., 263 Kirkpatrick, Robert J., 198 Kluge, Patricia, 72 Kony, Joseph, 443 Koran and antislavery, 359 – 364 Korea and chattel slavery, 4 comfort women, 364 – 365 Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, 300, 364 – 366 Korean War prisoners, 464 Kosoko, Oba, 364 – 368 L. L. Bean, 64 labor. See child labor; forced labor labor, unfree, 139 Dominican Republic, 237 sweatshops, 60 – 67 labor camps China, 504 Gulag, 294 – 297, 470 Nazi Germany, 420 – 421, 469 labor immigration, 319 – 320 labor law violations, 63 – 64 labor movements, 115 labor trafficking. See human trafficking for labor purposes labor-intensive industries, 61 – 62 Lagos slave trade, 366 – 368 Lahore Fort, 358 land reform, 116, 369 – 370 International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, 351 laogai system, 503 Laos drug trafficking, 54

Latin America abolition of slave trade, 370 – 381 child sexual slavery, 14 child-sex tourism, 36 and coyotes, 20 debt bondage in, 13 drug trafficking, 54 forced migration from, 22 and human trafficking, 24, 29 immigrants to United States, 19 refugees in, 22 and sex trafficking, 26 sharecroppers and peons in, 6 slave populations, 371 – 372 and stereotypes, 18 and transnational organized crime, 53 and U.S. West Coast, 18 Latin American emigration, 20 Latin American workers, 18 Latinas/Latinos trafficking of, 29 Lavigerie, Charles-Marial-Allemand, 381 – 383, 638 – 639 law enforcement global statistics, 27 international cooperation, 30 and transnational organized crime, 47 law of nations, 236, 638 Law of the Free Womb (Birth) (1871), 144, 625 – 629 League of Nations enforcement powers of, 7 – 8 Germany and, 9 and human trafficking, 41 and ILO, 344 – 346 and North Africa slave trade, 428 slave trade and slavery, 383 – 386, 546 Slavery Convention of 1926, 494 – 496, 714 – 718 and white slavery, 580 see also Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery League of Nations Covenant, 386 – 388 League of Nations Temporary Slavery Commission, 7, 11, 384 – 385, 494 and Burma, 152 on false adoption, 253 – 254

Index Lederer, Laura, 198, 486 Legal Attaché Program (FBI), 56 Leo XIII, Pope and African clerics, 638 – 639 In Plurimis encyclical, 659 – 670 Libertas encyclical, 641 – 658 Rerum novarum encyclical, 673 – 697 Leopold II, King, 5, 134, 169, 170, 388 – 390, 404, 405 Lesko, Vera, 110 Lesseps, Ferdinand de, 133 Levi Strauss company codes of conduct, 201 levirate, 487 Liberator, 283, 285 Liberia, 94, 286 laborers recruitment, 262 – 263 and League of Nations covenant, 387 Libertas: On the Nature of Human Liberty, 641 – 658 Libreville, Gabon, 280 Libya abolition of slave trade, 430 – 431 nuclear technology, 54 Lieber, Francis, 462 Lim, Janet, 390 – 391 Lincoln, Abraham, 78, 387 – 390, 519 – 520 Emancipation Proclamation (1863) 251 – 253, 618 – 619 inaugural address (1861), 611 – 617 Live-in Care Giver Program (Canada), 161 Livingstone, David, 133 Loiola, Pureza Lopes, 111 Lord’s Resistance Army (Sudan), 14, 193, 437 – 438 Los Angeles and international economy, 61 sweatshops, 62 Los Leones, 28 Lovejoy, Elijah, 76 Lucchese crime family, 51 Luciano, Lucky, 51 Lugard, Sir Frederick, 7, 385 ma malakat aymanukum, 361 Macaulay, Zachary, 79

Macías Nguema, Francisco, 263 – 264, 395 – 397 MacKinnon, Catharine, 266 Mafia, 50, 51 Mafiya, 52 Mahmud, Ushri Ahmed, 99 Malaya mui tsai, 408, 409 Malaysia child kidnapping and adoption, 4 male prostitution, 83 Malvinas labor law evasion in, 63 – 64 Manasurangkun, Suni, 249 – 250 Mann, James R., 578 Mann Act (1910). See White Slave Traffic Act Mao Zedong, 503 Maranzano, Salvatore, 51 Marcovich, Claire Malka, 405, 407 marital rape, 25 maritime slave trade, 7 – 8 and British abolitionism, 80 – 81 as piracy, 10 maritime smuggling, 20 Marks, John, 220 marriage bride-price, 146 – 148 and female genital mutilation, 259 – 260 to gods, 231 – 233 see also child marriage; forced marriage; servile marriage Martin, Ricky, 35 Masih, Iqbal, 71 – 72, 98, 148 – 149, 195 Masseria, Joseph, 51 Mattel company code of conduct, 202 Maures, 306 Mauritania, 397 – 400 Action for Change, 86 – 87 American Anti-Slavery Group, 105 – 107 Berbers, 305 Haratine, 301 – 305 and slavery, 4, 8, 9, 12, 15, 183, 302, 411 – 412 slaves in, 217 – 218 SOS Esclaves, 498 – 499

| 845

846 |

Index

Maxwell, Lucien B., 327 Maxwell, Sir George, 385 McDonald, Michael Cassius, 49 McNamara, Robert, 586 Mecca antislavery and the Koran, 358, 359 enslavement of pilgrims to/from, 4, 6 Mediterranean-Christian slave trade, 426 – 427 Messaoud, Boubacar Ould, 87, 300, 498 Mexican workers, 18 Mexico, 41 abolition of slavery in, 380 antitrafficking legislation, 27 child-sex tourism, 36 and coyotes, 20 and human trafficking, 38, 398 – 400 International Center for Wheat and Maize Improvement, 290 migration from, 398 – 399 and rape, 25 and stereotypes, 18 slavery, 373 Tier 2 Watch List, 27 U.S. cooperation with and human trafficking, 27 victim protection in, 27 – 28 women and girls trafficking, 29 Mexico-California trafficking, 29 migrant children Ivory Coast, 213 migrant domestic workers, 234, 235 migrant domestic workers’ rights, 160 – 163 Migrant Forum in Asia, 162 migrant women and prostitution, 23 migrant workers, 400 – 403 Asian workforce, 120 – 121 illegal migration, 319 – 320 International Organization for Migration, 348 undocumented, 18, 542 – 546 migrants and criminal activities and enslavement, 17 and labor trafficking, 312, 313 – 314 smuggled, 542

migration coerced, 18, 22 feminization of, 18 forced, 21 – 22 illegal, 17, 319 – 320 International Organization for Migration, 347 – 349 minors in sex industry, 24 Mission to the Russian Federation of the Special Rapporteur on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography (2000), 776 – 778 Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Africa (White Sisters), 381 missionary societies and abolitionist movement, 3, 6 Model Business Principles (1995), 403 – 404, 778 Moldova, 41 money laundering, 13, 53, 55 Monroe, James, 94 Moors, 306 Morel, Edmund Dene, 6, 390, 404 – 405 Morocco abolition of slave trade, 429 exclusion of from slavery conventions, 8 Haratines, 301 mosques eunuch tenders of, 3 Mott, Lucretia, 585, 586 Movement to Abolish Prostitution and Pornography (MAPP), 405 – 407 Mozambique child soldiers in, 14 mui tsai, 8 – 9, 10, 113, 390 – 391, 407 – 409 multinational corporations sweatshop labor in, 60 Muscat and Oman abolition of slavery in, 409 – 410 and slavery, 9, 11, 12 Muslim pilgrims enslavement of en route to/from Mecca, 4, 5 Muslims enslavement of, 5 Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty System, 57

Index Myanmar, 151 drug trafficking, 54 and forced labor, 14 Nagorno Karabakh, 220 Nankar, Keshav, 504 narco-terrorism, 54 Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 11 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 411 – 412 National Child Labor Committee (NCLC), 88, 412 – 413 National Farm Workers’ Association, 307 – 308 National Islamic Front (NIF), 413 – 415, 534 – 535 National Mobilization against Sweatshops, 65 National Organization for Women, 24 National Security Council (NSC) and international crime threats, 53 Nazer, Mende, 137 Nazi Germany, 298 and concentration camps, 9 prostitution and, 415 – 419 Nazi slavery, 419 – 421, 469 – 472, 481 – 482 and prostitution, 415 – 418 social reintegration, 497 Soviet prisoners of war, 463 Negro Factories Corporation, 289 Negro World, 288 Nepal and chattel slavery, 4 servile marriage, 487 and sexual slavery, 14 Netherlands Indonesia slavery, 329 – 330 Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP), 84 Nevinson, Henry Woodd, 421 – 423 New Africa policy, 156 New Mexico and border patrol, 19 Indian-Mestizo servitude, 326 – 328 New Orleans and organized crime, 50 “new slavery,” 12

| 847

New York City Chinatown labor, 64 Chinese immigrants and garment industry, 63, 64 Coalition against Trafficking in Women, 200 – 202 and international economy, 61 and organized crime, 50 – 51 political machine, 49, 50 sweatshops, 62 New York State Apparel Industry Task Force, 64 Nicaragua and refugees from, 22 Nicholas I, 101 Niger, 4, 8, 9, 12, 15 Nigeria concubines, 204 contract workers, 263 and human trafficking, 42 Nike, 64, 66 NKVD (Peoples Commissariat of Internal Affairs), 131, 132 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), 12, 15 and antislavery, 423 – 425 North Africa abolition in, 409 – 410, 425 – 432 Arab expansion into, 305 North America refugees in, 22 North American Free Trade Agreement (1994), 26, 42, 63 North Korea nuclear technology, 54 nuclear materials and technology smuggling of, 53 NUPI (Norwegian Institute of International Affairs), 432 – 433 Nuremberg Tribunal (1950) slave labor and war crimes principles of law, 731 – 732 Oastler, Richard, 115, 602 – 604 Obiang Nguema M’ba N’Zogo, Teodoro, 264 Oceania refugees in, 22

848 |

Index

Office of Refugee Resettlement, 30 Office to Control and Monitor Trafficking in Persons, 26 Ohr, Bruce, 52 oil industry and slaves, 11 Oman. See Muscat and Oman Omona, George, 110, 437 – 438 open slave systems, 330 – 331 Open Society Institute, 152 Operation Day’s Work, 148, 149 Operation Enduring Freedom, 92 Operation Gatekeeper (1994), 19 Operation Hold-the-Line (1993), 19 Operation Safeguard (1995), 19 Operation Stonegarden, 18 – 19 opium production and trafficking, 54 Orang Rimba, 226, 333 – 334 organized crime, 13, 30 enslavement, 47 – 58 human smuggling and trafficking, 18 Mexico-U.S. prostitution trafficking, 27 – 28 sexual exploitation, 335 and slavery, 438 – 440 Osama bin Laden, 54, 92 Ottoman Empire, 3, 5, 7 cariye, 167 – 168 overseas workers, 65 Oxfam International, 440 – 441 Pacific Island Labourers Act (1901), 125 Pacific islanders Australia workforce, 124 – 125 Pacific Islanders Protection Acts (1872, 1875), 125 Pakistan, 149 bonded labor, 71 – 72, 97 – 98, 140 – 142 Brick Kiln Worker’s Front, 135 – 137 brick-kiln industries, 140 debt bondage, 13 drug trafficking, 54 Human Rights Commission, 308 – 310 maritime slave trade, 11 peshgi, 453 post – World War II slavery, 10 Paladino, Morris, 122

Palermo Protocol (2003), 34 – 35, 37, 38, 443 – 445, 560 – 563 text of, 788 – 796 Palestinians exodus of, 21 Pandit, Vidyullata, 111, 445 – 446, 493, 494 Pandit, Vivek, 111, 446 – 447, 493, 494 Paraguay slave emancipation, 377 – 378 Paraison, Father Edwin, 111 Parker, John P., 541 Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), 183, 447 – 449, 478 – 479 patriarchal societies and gender trafficking, 25 patron-client relationships. See debt bondage pawning, 7, 9 pearl divers, 5, 124 Pearson, Malcolm, 220 peasant exploitation Ethiopia, 301 peonage, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 24, 26, 449 – 450 Peonage Abolition Act (1867), 39 Perkins, W. B., 303 – 304 Persian Gulf and slavery, 3, 9, 10 Peru peonage, 10 serfdom, 485 slave emancipation in, 376 – 379 slavery, 373 Peruvian Amazon Company (PAC), 117 – 118, 172, 173, 303 – 304, 456 – 458 peshgi (debt bondage), 104, 105, 136, 140, 309, 452 – 453 Philippine Women Centre, 164 Philippines, 453 – 456 Asian-American Free Labor Institute, 122 and chattel slavery, 4 and child prostitution, 191, 192 and sex trafficking, 26 Phillips, Wendell, 76, 285 pimping legality of in Mexico, 27 piracy slave trade as, 11

Index plantations, 174 – 175, 176 sharecropping, 490 Playfair2008.org, 65 Pledging of Labour of Children Act (1933), 729 – 730 Plessy, Homer, 456 Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), 353, 456 – 458 Pol Pot, 161 Poland organized crime, 52 serfdom, 484 political coercion and forced migration, 21 political instability and human trafficking, 42, 43, 46 political machines and organized crime, 49 political prisoners in Gulag camps, 293 pollero. See coyotes Polynesian Labourers Act (1868), 125 pornography and children, 464 – 466 Coalition against Trafficking in Women, 198 – 200 Movement to Abolish Prostitution and Pornography (MAPP), 405 – 407 see also child pornography Portugal African contract workers of, 5 African possessions and slavery, 9 Brazilian Indian slaves, 142 – 143 Fernando Pó, São Tomé, and Príncipe, 263 – 266 slave trade and slavery, 4, 40 Portuguese Africa forced labor in, 5 poverty feminization of, 42 and human trafficking, 528 and land, 367 – 368 Preventive Police Force (PDF), Mexico, 27 Príncipe. See Fernando Pó, São Tomé, and Príncipe Principles on the Domestic Application of International Human Rights Norms, 134

| 849

prison farms, 214 Prison Industries Enhancement Act (1979), 461 prison labor, 466 – 468 Gulag camps, 292 – 295 prison reform, 155 prisoners of war (POWs), 462 – 464 prisons in American South, 213 Prohibition, 50 – 51 Prohibition Enforcement Act (Volstead Act), 50 Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to End the Exploitation of Children Today Act (2003). See PROTECT Act prostitution, 464 – 466 and abolitionism, 81 – 85 and children, 187 – 191 Coalition against Trafficking in Women, 198 – 200 coerced, 25 Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Women and Children, 206 – 208 Czech Republic, 223 decriminalization of, 221 – 222 Germany, 297 Mexico, 27 migrant women, 23 Movement to Abolish Prostitution and Pornography (MAPP), 405 – 407 Nazi Germany, 290, 415 – 419 religiously sanctioned, in India, 324 sacred, 231 – 234 trafficking, 24, 45, 315, 335 U.S.-Mexico trafficking, 27 – 28 as white slavery, 579 – 580 see also child prostitution; forced prostitution PROTECT Act (2003), 565, 799 – 800 Protection Project, 466 – 467 Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons (2003). See Palermo Protocol Purbrick, Becky, 193 Putumayo Commission, 173

850 |

Index

Putumayo district indigenous peoples enslavement in, 6, 304 Peruvian Amazon Company, 451 rubber output, 117, 118 Qatar and slavery, 11 quilombos (maroon or runaway settlements), 144 racial discrimination International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1969), 763 – 765 racial segregation, 456 – 458 Jim Crow laws, 351 – 352 Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organization (RICO) Act, 51 railway building by Gulag prisoners, 293 Rankin, John, 76, 540 – 541 rape, 25 raqabah, 361, 362 Read, Herbert M., 450 – 451 recruitment and human trafficking, 35, 44 Red Mafia, 52 Red Sea slave traffic across, 4, 6 – 7 Reebok, 64 Refugee Cash Assistance, 28 refugees defined, 21 – 22 as displaced persons, 21 Regional Indigenous Organisation of Atalaya, 111 regulationism (prostitution), 82 rehabilitation programs (for former slaves), 472 – 474 social reintegration, 494 – 498 Religions for Social Justice, 96 religious bondage trokosi, 529 – 530 Remond, Charles Lenox, 77, 585 Renamo and child soldiers, 14 reparations (slave redress), 474 – 476

repatriation sex trafficking victims, 26 Republican Party, 78 and slavery, 242, 239 – 240, 252 Rerum novarum: On Capital and Labor (1891), 673 – 697 Rescue and Restore Victims of Human Trafficking Coalition, 23 RESPECT (Rights, Equality, Solidarity, Power, Europe, Cooperation Today), 164 restaurant work and forced labor, 24 restaveks (child slaves), 159, 297 – 298, 476 – 478 Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), 54 Rezende Figueira, Rev. Ricardo de, 111, 447 – 448, 478 – 480 Rhodes, Cecil John, 134 rice milling, 292 Rizeigats, 99 – 100 roads and forced labor, 9 Robinson, Mary, 134 Rockefeller Foundation Green Revolution, 290 Romania and child kidnapping and adoption, 14 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 566 Royal Navy African Squadrons, 94 and British abolitionism, 80, 81 Royal Niger Company, 134 rubber production in Congo, 171, 173, 389 forced labor, 5, 6 Peru, 308 Peruvian Amazon Company, 117 – 118, 170, 171, 303 – 304, 450 – 452 Ruggles, David, 240, 540 Russell, Diana E. H., 321 Russia, 41 Alexander II, 101 – 103 child sexual slavery, 14 financial fraud and money laundering schemes, 55 – 56

Index forced labor in gulags, 9 serfdom, 484, 485 UN slavery issue and, 10 Russian Federation, 41 Mission of the Special Rapporteur on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography (2000), 776 – 778 Russian Germans, 132 Russian Mob, 52 prostitution, 335 Russian organized crime, 52 Sahara fringe slave raids and trading in, 4, 9 Sainte Croix, Avril de, 580 Saipan and forced labor, 15 Sakdina (dignity marks), 196 – 197, 198 Samoa, 125 San Diego, California human smuggling rings, 19 sex trafficking in, 29 San Francisco La Casa De Las Madres, 29 Sanders Amendment (1997), 773 – 775 Sangha Act (1902), 199 São Tomé. See Fernando Pó, São Tomé, and Príncipe Sauckel, Fritz, 481 – 482 Saudi Arabia abolition of slavery in, 11, 482 – 484 enslavement of pilgrims to, 11 Ibn Saud, 317 – 319 Slave Convention of 1926, 8 slavery in, 9, 317 Save the Children, 473 Sazlag plantation system, 180 Schiller Institute, 219 Scott, Dred, 242 – 243 Sears, 65 Sebastio, King, of Portugal, 143 segregation Jim Crow laws, 357 – 358 self-smuggling, 20 separate but equal doctrine, 351, 352, 456 seraglios. See harems serfdom, 7, 10, 484 – 485, 605 – 610

Ethiopia, 296 in Russia, 101 – 102 Serrano, David, 304 servile labor force Australia, 124 servile marriage, 14, 486 – 487 sex industry, 24, 25 – 26, 486 and human trafficking, 24, 25 – 26 and organized crime, 439 Palermo Protocol, 444 sex services as forced labor in United States, 24 sex slave children, 14 sex tourism, 36, 39 and children, 14, 187, 190 India, 325 Mexico-U.S. border, 27 – 28 U.S. legislation outlawing (2006), 829 – 830 sex trade and children, 195 false adoption, 255 – 256 sex trafficking, 24, 25 – 26, 35, 36, 40, 41 and enforcement, 28 – 29 women and girls. 24 – 25 sex workers child prostitution, 186 – 191 in Latin America, 122 – 124 violence against, 572 – 576 sex workers’ rights movement, 83 – 84 sexual abuse, 488 – 490 incest, 321 – 322 sexual exploitation of children, 210 – 212 human trafficking for, 314 – 316 and organized crime, 55 Sexual Offences Bill (2003), 801 – 807 sexual slavery, 14 comfort women, 364 – 365 Shafi, Mian Muhammad, 104 Shanqilla, 130 sharecropping, 5, 6, 490 – 491 Ethiopia, 297 Green Revolution, 293, 294 Haratine, 301 and peonage, 449 – 450

| 851

852 |

Index

Sharpe, Granville, 79 Shinhoster, Earl, 411 shoe manufacturing, 60, 61 Shoishab, 492 – 493 Shramajeevi Sanghatana, 493 – 494 Siam. See Thailand Siberia labor camp, 294 Sierra Leone and child soldiers, 14, 193 former slaves in, 8 Silva, Luiz Inacio “Lula” da, 145 Sindhi bonded labor system, 309 slave labor ancient Greece, 40 Brazil, 448 Brazilian recognition of, 770 – 771 and cash crops, 172 – 173 charcoal production, 181 El Monte, California, sweatshop case, 249 – 251 Nazi Germany, 288 Nuremberg Tribunal principles, 731 – 732 slave raiding, 4 slave reintegration, 496 – 498 slave reparations, 474 – 476 Slave Reparations Bill (1867), 622 – 624 Slave Route Project, 343 Slave Trade Act (1819), 94 slave trade and trading, 12 abolition of, 588 – 589 abolition in Latin America, 370 – 372 British abolitionism, 78 – 81 Brussels Act, 149 – 151 elimination of in Africa, 4 in Ethiopia, 4, 5 Tippu Tip, 521 – 523 slave trafficking, 5 false adoption, 251 – 252 and forced prostitution, 13 slavery, 5, 24, 26, 215 abolitionism, 3 – 16, 76 – 78 British abolitionism, 78 – 81 Burma, 152 – 153 definitions of, 7 and domestic work, 232 – 237 and economic globalization, 247 – 248 Enlightenment, 253 – 254 Fernando Pó, São Tomé, and Príncipe, 262 – 264

and forced migration, 21 Free the Slaves, 275 India, 323 – 325 inheritability of, 332 – 334 and just war theory, 354 – 355 Mauritania, 397 – 398 NAACP resolution to combat, 411 – 415 Nazi Germany, 419 – 420 and organized crime, 438 – 440 and peonage, 449 – 450 and prison labor, 460 reemergence during World War II era, 469 – 472 Thailand, 197, 517 – 518 and Thirteenth Amendment, 520 – 521 and VTVPA, 24 see also chattel slavery; state slavery Slavery Abolition Act (1833), 79, 124 Slavery Convention of 1926, 7 – 8, 11, 108, 113 – 114, 434, 494 – 496, 714 – 718 protocol amending (1953), 558, 742 – 744 “slavery-like practices,” 12 slaves and slavery ‘abd, 73 in Brazil, 371 as expense, 5 illegal migrants, 320 and the Koran, 359, 360, 361, 365 social reintegration of former, 494 – 498 see also chattel slavery Smith, Adam, 254, 489 Smith, William Sidney, 427 smuggling China fees, 20 illegal immigrants, 17 of migrants, 524 Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Air, and Sea Protocol, 21 snakeheads, 20 social discrimination of freed slaves, 5 social reintegration of former slaves, 494 – 498 social stratification caste, 176 – 180 Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery throughout the British Dominions, 156

Index Society of Missionaries of Africa (White Fathers), 381 Sojourner Truth, 77 Sokoto Caliphate serfdom, 485 soldiers chattel slaves as, 3 see also child soldiers Somalia refugee outflow, 22 Sorvino, Mira, 35 SOS Esclaves (Mauritania), 109, 302 – 303, 498 – 499 Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain (2004), 104, 234 South African apartheid, 12 South America and child kidnapping and adoption, 14 see also Latin America South Arabian protectorate chattel slavery in, 10 South Asia child prostitution, 511 – 512 debt bondage in, 13 South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude (SACCS), 136, 140, 472 – 473, 497, 498 – 500 Southeast Asia Burma Project/Southeast Asia Initiative, 154 – 155 Cambodia, 158 – 160 debt bondage, 227 illegal export of slaves by, 5 Indonesian slavery, 332 – 335 mui tsai, 9 slave trafficking in, 4, 55 Soviet labor army, 132 Soviet Union and Afghanistan, 91 – 92 collapse of and human trafficking, 42 disintegration of, 15 dissolution of and organized crime, 52, 53 forced labor camps, 131 – 132 and German prisoners of war, 463 Gulag, 9, 11, 292 – 295 on human rights, 10 and human trafficking, 55 land reform, 370 and nuclear material, 53 slave traffic in, 13

| 853

Spain Fernando Pó, São Tomé, and Príncipe, 262 – 264 and Philippines, 453 – 454 and slavery, 500 – 501 Speedo, 65 Spencer, Herbert, 85, 86 Sri Lanka and child prostitution, 188, 189, 190 St. James, Margo, 221 Stalin, Joseph, 179, 470 Stanley, Edward George Geoffrey Smith, 75 Stanley, Henry Morton, 522 State Law and Order Committee (SLORC), 501 – 503 State Regulations on the Reform through Labor, 503 – 504 state slavery China, 503 – 504 Equatorial Guinea, 396 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 78, 116 Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs), 270 – 271 Sturge, Joseph, 584 Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and the Protection of Minorities, 12 subcontracting corporate evasion, 63 – 64, 65 of labor, 61 Sudan and South Sudan, 504 – 507 ‘abeed, 73 al-Diein massacre, 99 – 101 American Anti-Slavery Group, 105 – 107 chattel slavery in, 8, 183 child soldiers, 14 Commission for the Eradication of Abduction of Women and Children, 497 human rights abuses, 309 National Islamic Front, 413 – 415, 534 – 535 refugee outflow, 22 rehabilitation programs, 473 slave trade, 127 – 128, 130 slavery, 137 – 138, 217, 218, 219, 411 – 412 U.S. concurrent resolution on (2001), 785 – 787 U.S. resolution on (2003), 803 – 805

854 |

Index

Sudan Peace Act (2002), 507 – 509, 511 Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M), 414 – 415, 508 – 511 Sudhar, 72, 149 Sudrat Srisang, 512 Suez Canal, 11, 133 sugar production, 173 Brazil, 143 cane harvesters, 165 – 167 Dominican Republic, 237 – 238 Sumatra closed slave system, 333 coerced labor, 329 debt bondage, 226 fishing platforms, 264 – 265 Sunbelt garment industry, 62 Sundiata, Sekou, 218 Supplemental Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery (1956), 11, 745 – 751 “Surinam marriage,” 204 Survival International, 513 – 514 survival sex, 188, 189 survivors, trafficked, 26, 29, 30 U.S. benefits, 28 Swami Agnivesh, 95 – 96, 111, 499 Sweatfree Communities, 65 sweatshop factories and forced labor, 24 sweatshop labor, 60 – 67 Sweatshop Watch, 514 – 516 sweatshops, 514 – 516 Bangkok, 13 children in, 186 El Monte, California, case, 249 – 251 Europe, 15 Sweden human trafficking prosecution, 37, 38 sexual services in, 84 swidden cultivation, 180 Syria bride-price, 147 T visas, 29 Taco Bell company codes of conduct, 202

Taha, Ali Othman Mohammad, 413–415 Tai Shan people, 151 Taiwan and child prostitution, 190 international law enforcement cooperation, 57 Taliban regime, 54 Taliban prisoners of war, 464 Tammany Hall, 49 Tanah Garo, 333 Taney, Roger Brooke, 242 Tappan, Arthur, 283 Tariff Act of 1930, 66 Taya, Maaouya Ould Sid’Ahmed, 87 temperance movement, 50 and domestic violence movement, 23 – 24 temple prostitutes devadasi, 231 – 232 Temporary Slavery Commission. See League of Nations Temporary Slavery Commission tenant farmers Green Revolution, 291 – 292 terrorism and drug trade, 54 – 55, 57 human smuggling, 55 and nuclear material, 53 – 54 and organized crime, 54 – 55, 58 Texas border patrol, 19 slavery, 585 Thailand (Siam), 41, 196 – 198, 517 – 519 and chattel slavery, 4 child labor, 13 and child prostitution, 188, 189, 190 drug trafficking, 54 ECPAT, 248 forced prostitution, 267 thekedari system, 140 Thirteenth Amendment (1865), 78, 519 – 521, 620 Thomas, Albert, 344 Tibet serfdom, 485 tied labor. See bonded labor Tier 2 Watch List India, 325 Mexico, 27

Index Tifa Foundation, 154 timber gulag production of, 9 Timidria, 110 Tippu Tip, 521 – 523 Togo and human trafficking, 42 refugee outflow, 22 trokosi, 523 – 524 toy manufacturing, 61 Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP), 122 Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property. See TRIPS traffickers and criminality, 17 trafficking, 523 – 528 Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (VTVPA) of 2000, 563, 564 – 565, 569 – 571 white slavery, 580 of women and Mexico, 28 see also human trafficking Trafficking in Persons Report, 39 Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA), 563, 565, 569 Trafficking Victims Reauthorization Act (TVRA) (2003), 27 transatlantic slave trade, 21, 347 transnational corporations company codes of conduct, 201 – 203 economic globalization, 245 – 248 transnational crime, 47, 48, 51, 52 – 53, 57 – 58 human trafficking, 34 – 36, 38 – 40, 41 – 42 law enforcement cooperation, 56 – 58 sex abuse, 489 Transnational Institute (TNI), 528 – 529 transnational organized crime, 439 transnational sex trafficking networks, 26 transparency in business conduct, 64 – 65 company codes of conduct, 202 transportation industry and segregation, 353 Trattner, Walter, 414 Treaty of Versailles ILO, 345

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire (1911), 61 TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property), 592 trokosi, 367, 473, 529 – 530 Trucial States and slavery, 11 Trujillo, Gen. Rafael, 238 Tubman, Harriet, 77, 531 – 534, 540 Tunisia, 8 abolition of slave trade, 429 – 430 Turabi, Hassan Abdullah al-, 417, 534 – 535 Turner, Nat, 77, 116 Udu (play), 218 Uganda child soldiers, 193 slavery, 437 – 438 Ugarte, Marisa, 28 Ukraine, 41 forced labor, 537 – 539 Great Famine, 470 organized crime, 52 Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 78, 541 Underground Railroad, 78, 532, 539 – 541 undocumented aliens, 542 – 544 undocumented immigrants, 17 – 18, 19 undocumented migrant workers, 18, 543 – 544 UNESCO International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and Its Abolition (Aug. 23), 347 – 348 UNIFEM (United Nations Development Fund for Women), 544 – 546 Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE), 63, 64 United Farm Workers of America, 307 United Kingdom, 9 ECPAT UK, 248 human trafficking prevention, 37, 38 United Nations and antislavery, 547 – 555 child labor, 554 child pornography, 459 and human rights, 10 human trafficking treaty, 37 ILO, 344 – 346 and nongovernmental organizations, 423

| 855

856 |

Index

prisoners of war, 464 on prostitution, 465 on servile marriage, 486 and slavery, 10 – 11, 548 – 551 UNIFEM, 544 – 546 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), 565 – 567, 725 – 730 weakness of, 16 white slave traffic, 581 see also Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery United Nations Ad Hoc Committee on Slavery, 114, 546 – 547, 558 United Nations Charter (1945), 10 United Nations Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Status of Refugees and Stateless Persons, 22 United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, 48 – 49, 438, 443 and Palmero Protocol (2003), 788 – 804 United Nations Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Women and Children (1949), 206 – 208 United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), 208 – 210 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), 183, 187, 189, 191, 192, 211 – 212, 256 United Nations Decade for Women, 209 United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (1967), 227 – 229 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child (1959), 193, 195, 229 – 230 United Nations Draft Code of Conduct on Transnational Corporations, 201 United Nations Economic and Social Council, 12, 198 – 199 United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR), 22 United Nations Human Rights Committee, 134 – 135 United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), 12, 556 – 558

United Nations International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966), 752 – 762 United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, 439 United Nations Optional Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children. See Palermo Protocol United Nations Protocol Amending the Slavery Convention (1953), 547, 558 United Nations Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery (1956), 559 – 560 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), 103 United States border protection and national security, 18 – 19 border-crossing identification cards, 18 Bracero Program, 18 debt peonage in, 23 drug trafficking, 54 enslavement of women and children in, 17 forced labor in, 15 and foreign nationals, 31 Freedom Network (USA), 275 – 277 on human rights, 10 human trafficking, 43 human trafficking legislation, 29 – 30 human trafficking suppression, 34, 35, 38 – 40 and illegal migrants, 18 Industrial Revolution, 331 – 332 international law enforcement cooperation, 56 – 57 internment of Japanese Americans, 471 land reform, 368 law enforcement, 19 Mexico border and human smuggling, 18 – 19 and modern slavery, 563 – 565 organized and transnational crime, 47, 49 – 51 and Philippines, 454 – 455 rape in, 25

Index sharecroppers and peons in, 6 slave reparations, 475 slave traffic in, 13 and slavery, 23 southern penal systems and convict labor, 214 and Sudan, 507, 508 – 509 sweatshop goods and labor, 60, 67 trafficking laws, 34, 35, 37, 38 – 40 unauthorized people, 20 undocumented workers, number of, 18, 19 victim assistance in, 28 victims of trafficking, 35 – 36, 39 – 40 West Coast and Latin America, 18 see also entries under U.S. United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), 64, 65, 66 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), 310, 339, 548, 565 – 567, 731 – 736 Universal Negro Improvement Association, 285, 286 – 287 untouchables, 177, 178, 179 U.S. armed forces and sweatshop goods, 67 U.S. Border Patrol, 19, 20 U.S. Civil War, 254, 393 – 394 U.S. Constitution Civil War Amendments, 620 – 621 Dred Scott v. Sandford, 242 – 244 and slavery, 77, 286 see also numbered amendments U.S. Department of Commerce Model Business Principles (1995), 403 – 407 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 23, 30, 40 U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 56, 67 U.S. Department of Justice, 56 and human trafficking, 24 U.S. Department of State and foreign government and TVRA, 27 and human trafficking, 24, 39 Office to Control and Monitor Trafficking in Persons, 26 U.S. Immigration and Nationalization Act, 20

U.S. Leadership against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act (2003), 84 U.S. territories and labor law evasion, 63 – 64 U.S.-Mexico border and coyotes, 20 and law enforcement, 29 Venezuela slave emancipation in, 378 – 379 slave trade, 377 victimization of trafficked persons, 45 Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (VTVPA) of 2000, 23, 24, 26, 29, 30, 34, 35, 38 – 40, 253, 563, 564 – 565, 569 – 571 Victoria’s Secret outsourcing, 65 Vidhayak Sansad, 571 – 578 Vietnam War prisoners, 470 Vietnamese refugees, 21 Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) (1994), 24 virgins and child prostitution, 192 and sexual slavery, 14 visas for migrant domestic workers, 163 Volstead Act. See Prohibition Enforcement Act Voluntary Fund for the Decade for Women (VFDW), 550 voluntary migration, 18 vulnerability and human trafficking, 44 wage labor of African contract workers, 5 versus slavery, 3 Wahhabi reformers, 321 Walker, David, 77 Wal-Mart, 63 – 64 Wao-Afrique, 583 – 584 war crimes, 236 principles of in charter of Nuremberg Tribunal, 737 – 738

| 857

858 |

Index

warfare and child soldiers, 193 Washington, Booker T., 286 Watson, James, 332 weapons of mass destruction (WMD), 53 – 54 Wells, Col. Clark H., 299 Wellstone, Paul, 785 – 788 West Africa and debt bondage, 14 and human trafficking, 42 forced labor in, 14 French outlawing of slavery in, 4 modern-day slavery, 216, 217 trokosi, 535 – 536 Western Europe and human smuggling, 20 WHISPER (Women Hurt in Systems of Prostitution Engaged in Revolt), 83 White House Apparel Industry Partnership, 64, 515 White Moors. See Beydanes white slave trade, 37, 41, 524 Australia, 125 White Slave Trade, International Covenant for the Suppression of the (1910), 703 white slave traffic, 335 White Slave Traffic, International Agreement for the Suppression of the (1904), 698 White Slave Traffic Act (Mann Act) of 1910, 23, 336, 526, 578 – 579, 699 – 703 white slavery, 579 – 581 and abolitionism, 82 Whittier, John Greenleaf, 78 widows and marriage, 14 Wilberforce, William, 79, 94, 112, 581 – 584 Williams, George Washington, 390 Williams, Phil, 438 Win, Ne, 502 women apparel work industry, 62 – 63 bonded labor, 140 – 141 Coalition against Trafficking in Women, 26, 83, 198 – 201

concubines, 3, 203 – 205 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979), 208 – 210, 766 – 769 Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (1967), 227 – 229 domestic work, 235, 236 enslavement of, 17 exploitation of, 25 female genital mutilation, 259 – 261 and feminization of migration of, 18 and feminization of poverty, 42 global migration of, 18 human smuggling and trafficking of, 22 – 23, 41 human trafficking for sexual exploitation, 314 – 316 International Convention for Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children (1921), 337 – 338 International Convention for Suppression of the Traffic in Women of Full Age (1933), 338 – 339 Korean comfort women, 299 – 300 and Mexico trafficking, 27 – 28, 29 migrants and prostitution, 23 servile marriage, 486 – 487 and sex trafficking, 24 – 25 trafficking in forced prostitution, 17 UNIFEM, 544 – 548 white slave trade, 37, 41, 335 – 336 White Slave Traffic Act (1910), 578 – 579 white slavery and abolitionism, 82 World Anti-Slavery Convention (1840), 584 – 586 women’s rights Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, 308 – 310 worker rights company codes of conduct, 201 – 202 Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), 64 working conditions sweatshops, 60 – 61 Working Group of the Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and the Protection of Minorities, 114

Index Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery, 12, 14, 15, 553 – 555 Working Group on the Protection of Indigenous Populations, 554 – 555 World Anti-Slavery Convention (1840), 584 – 586 World Association of Orphans, 577 World Bank, 586 – 588 World Conference of the International Women’s Year, 211 World Congress against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (1996), 588 – 590 World Muslim Congress, 590 World Muslim Congress, Sixth (1964), 590 – 591 World Plan of Action for the Implementation of the Objectives of the International Women’s Year, 211

| 859

World Trade Organization (WTO), 591 – 593 World War I African conscripts in, 5 postwar mandates, 6 World War II slavery reemergence, 469 – 472 world-systems theory of economic globalization, 245, 246 Wu, Harry, 111 Xin Yie Plastics factory, 65 Yemen and Egypt, 11 and slavery, 11 Yum! Brands company codes of conduct, 202 Zulu bride-price, 147

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