The Delhi 14 | Gordon Brown

Just 72 hours ago in the Indian capital of Delhi 14 children were freed from slave labor. They were being held in dark, insanitary conditions and forced to work for up to 15 hours a day making Christmas decorations. Two were just eight years old.

The suffering of these young children, cruelly trafficked into slave labor, is the real Christmas story of 2012. Their plight must become a wake-up call for all concerned about the treatment of vulnerable children around the world. It demands we move immediately to ban all child labor.

The children rescued in Delhi had been beaten and intimidated. Imprisoned in dingy, locked rooms where they were forced to make Christmas goods with no access to light or fresh air. Malnourished and underfed, many had injuries as a result of using glass to make trinkets and because of violent assaults by their gangmasters. All had been sold into slavery and trafficked by middlemen.

The Christmas decorations and seasonal gifts they were making were for export from India to the West. There are near identical items on sale in shops in America and Europe right now.

The courageous morning break-in that freed the children from this slave labor was organized and carried out by Kailash Satyarthi and his co-leaders of Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA) and Global March Against Child Labour (GMACL). They faced violent resistance by the gangmasters and thugs.

Because the gangmasters had received a tip off that a raid would take place, most of the children had been whisked away from the workshop and 12 were incarcerated in a pitch-black cell no bigger than 6ft by 6ft.

Only with police help were the locks to the cell broken and all children rescued. They are now receiving rehabilitative care and arrangements are being made for them to go to school.

The ‘Delhi 14′ are just a few of the thousands of children forcibly conscripted into a multi-billion Christmas sweatshop trade in hundreds of hidden factories and workplaces. The child laborers are just a tiny proportion of the 15 million children under the age of 12 who do not go to school because they are forced to work.

Christmas is supposed to be a festive celebration but for the ‘Delhi 14′ it had become a nightmare of exploitation, cruelty, neglect and violence. Their suffering is amongst the most tragic Christmas tales of our times.

The cry for help of a child should be an international language we all are able to understand and respond to immediately.

We must now demand that before the Indian Parliament finishes its session on December the 20th legislation is passed banning all child labor for under fourteens and outlawing hazardous work for under eighteens.

Our petition on EducationEnvoy.org asks concerned citizens around the world to support our call to end child labor.

The figures of child exploitation makes appalling Christmas reading: of the 61 million children who do not go to primary school one in four work full-time. In Africa child labor is rising.

My report on child labor — published with the help of the Brookings Institution‘s Kevin Watkins and a number of organizations including the excellent Understanding Child Work project demonstrates — many children who go to school part-time also work part-time. In total, 215 million children are in some kind of employment.

More alarming is the number of children aged less than 12 who are involved in hazardous forms of labor, 90 million in total. These children are to be found risking their young lives down narrow tunnels mining for gold in Tanzania. They are working on cocoa farms in Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire or in garment factories in South Asia. More than half of these vulnerable children are trafficked, forced into prostitution or armed conflict. The anti-slavery organization Walk Free reports that in some parts of the world children as young as five and six are sold as slaves.

People assume all too readily that child labor will simply die out of its own accord. So we fail to press companies and consumers hard enough to demand the policing and enforcement of anti-child labor laws. For too long governments around the world have stood by and not taken sufficient action to eradicate child labor. That’s why I am now calling on governments, donors and UN agencies to come together and put in place the policies needed to get children out of exploitative employment and into education. Just as universal education was the catalyst a century ago for consigning child labor to the history books of the rich world, so it can free a generation of children today.

The new exposé of the children denied schooling because of child labor comes just six weeks after the Taliban’s shooting of Malala Yousafzai simply because she wanted to go to school. The world is discovering that in 2012 millions of children are forcibly prevented from attending lessons because of child labor, child marriage, child militias, child trafficking and the brutal discrimination against girls. In total 32 million girls and 29 million boys are denied their right to education.

We now know from these appalling new revelations the sheer scale, severity and depth of inhumane treatment visited upon young children, it is time for the U.N. to draw up a plan to end child slavery.

The education of all children cannot of course start to happen until we end the exploitation of children. 2012 must be the year when the casual complacency about the plight of 61 million out of school children ends, 2013 must be the breakthrough year that ushers in urgent and practical action. Let this year’s grim Christmas tale lead to a New Year resolution the world will honor – the end of child slavery once and for all.

Reprint: The Delhi 14 -By Gordon Brown | HuffPost

 

Ethnic Killings Continue in Cote d’Ivoire Despite Regime Change | Amnesty International (Video)

Côte d’Ivoire security forces and a state-backed militia are creating a climate of fear that is preventing hundreds of thousands of people displaced by post-election violence from returning to their homes.

A new Amnesty International report We Want to go Home, but We Can’t: Côte d’Ivoire’s Continuing Crisis of Displacement and Insecurity describes how ethnically targeted killings and attacks by the government security forces (FCRI) and a militia composed of Dozos (traditional hunters) have left the population unable to leave the relative safety of temporary camps.

 

UNHCR: 80% of World Refugees in Developing Countries

Pakistanian refugees: Pakistan, Iran and Syria have the largest refugee populations at 1.9 million, 1.1 million and 1 million respectively (Photo: AP).

A UNHCR report released on World Refugee Day (June 20th) reveals deep imbalance in international support for the world’s forcibly displaced, with a full four-fifths of the world’s refugees being hosted by developing countries – and at a time of rising anti-refugee sentiment in many industrialized ones.

UNHCR’s 2010 Global Trends report shows that many of the world’s poorest countries are hosting huge refugee populations, both in absolute terms and in relation to the size of their economies. Pakistan, Iran and Syria have the largest refugee populations at 1.9 million, 1.1 million and 1 million respectively.

Pakistan also has the biggest economic impact with 710 refugees for each US dollar of its per capita GDP (Gross Domestic Product), followed by Democratic Republic of the Congo and Kenya with 475 and 247 refugees respectively. By comparison, Germany, the industrialized country with the largest refugee population (594,000 people), has 17 refugees for each dollar of per capita GDP.

Overall, the picture presented by the 2010 report is of a drastically changed protection environment to that of 60 years ago when the UN refugee agency was founded. At that time UNHCR’s caseload was 2.1 million Europeans, uprooted by World War Two. Today, UNHCR’s work extends to more than 120 countries and encompasses people forced to flee across borders as well as those in flight within their own countries.

The 2010 Global Trends report shows that 43.7 million people are now displaced worldwide – roughly equalling the entire populations of Colombia or South Korea, or of Scandinavia and Sri Lanka combined. Within this total are 15.4 million refugees (10.55 million under UNHCR’s care and 4.82 million registered with the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees), 27.5 million people displaced within their own country by conflict, and nearly 850,000 asylum-seekers, nearly one fifth of them in South Africa alone.

Particularly distressing are the 15,500 asylum applications by unaccompanied or separated children, most of them Somali or Afghan. The report does not cover displacement seen during 2011, including from Libya, Côte d’Ivoire and Syria.

“In today’s world there are worrying misperceptions about refugee movements and the international protection paradigm,” said António Guterres, UN High Commissioner for Refugees. “Fears about supposed floods of refugees in industrialized countries are being vastly overblown or mistakenly conflated with issues of migration. Meanwhile, it’s poorer countries that are left having to pick up the burden.”

Reflecting the prolonged nature of several of today’s major international conflicts, the report finds that the refugee experience is becoming increasingly drawn-out for millions of people worldwide. UNHCR defines a protracted refugee situation as one in which a large number of people are stuck in exile for five years or longer.

In 2010, and of the refugees under UNHCR’s mandate, 7.2 million people were in such a situation – more than at any time since 2001. Meanwhile only 197,600 people were able to return home, the lowest number since 1990.

Some refugees have been in exile for more than 30 years. Afghans, who first fled the Soviet invasion in 1979, accounted for a third of the world’s refugees in both 2001 and in 2010. Iraqis, Somalis, Congolese (Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Sudanese were also among the top 10 nationalities of refugees at both the start and end of the decade.

“One refugee without hope is too many,” said High Commissioner Guterres. “The world is failing these people, leaving them to wait out the instability back home and put their lives on hold indefinitely. Developing countries cannot continue to bear this burden alone and the industrialized world must address this imbalance. We need to see increased resettlement quotas. We need accelerated peace initiatives in long-standing conflicts so that refugees can go home.”

Despite the low level of refugee returns last year, the situation for people displaced within their own countries – so-called internally displaced people, or IDPs – showed some movement. In 2010, more than 2.9 million IDPs returned home in countries including Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda and Kyrgyzstan. Nonetheless even with these return levels, at 27.5 million people the global number of internally displaced was the highest in a decade.

A further but harder-to-quantify group that UNHCR cares for is stateless people, or people lacking the basic safety net of a nationality. The number of countries reporting stateless populations has increased steadily since 2004, but differences in definitions and methodologies still prevent reliable measurement of the problem.

In 2010, the reported number of stateless people (3.5 million) was nearly half of that in 2009, but mainly due to methodological changes in some countries that supply data. Unofficial estimates put the global number closer to 12 million. UNHCR will be launching a worldwide campaign in August this year to bring better attention to the plight of the world’s stateless and to accelerate action to help them.

Reprint: UNHCR Finds 80 Percent of World Refugees in Developing Countries

 

Civilians Murdered, Women Raped in Cote d’Ivoire |HRW

Fighters loyal to the internationally recognized winner of the November 2010 Ivory Coast presidential election Alassane Ouattara prepare for the "final assault" in front of the Golf Hote (AFP/ Getty Images/TIME)

(ZWEDRU) – Forces loyal to President-elect Alassane Ouattara killed hundreds of civilians, raped more than 20 alleged supporters of his rival, Laurent Gbagbo, and burned at least 10 villages in Côte d’Ivoire’s far western region, Human Rights Watch said today. Forces loyal to Gbagbo killed more than 100 presumed Ouattara supporters as Ouattara’s forces advanced in their March campaign. Upon taking power, Ouattara should urgently open a credible and impartial investigation into serious abuses by both sides and ensure that those responsible at all levels are brought to justice, Human Rights Watch said.

People interviewed by Human Rights Watch described how, in village after village, pro-Ouattara forces, now called the Republican Forces of Côte d’Ivoire (Forces Républicaines de Côte d’Ivoire, FRCI), summarily executed and raped perceived Gbagbo supporters in their homes, as they worked in the fields, as they fled, or as they tried to hide in the bush. The fighters often targeted people by ethnicity, and the attacks disproportionally affected those too old or feeble to flee.

“Killing and raping civilians is no way for Ouattara’s forces to end this conflict,” said Daniel Bekele, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Ouattara should fulfill his public pledge to investigate and prosecute abuses by both sides if Côte d’Ivoire is to emerge from this horrific period.”

In one particularly horrific incident, hundreds of ethnic Guéré civilians perceived as supporting Gbagbo were massacred in the western town of Duékoué by a mixture of pro-Ouattara groups, including Republican Forces under the overall command of Ouattara’s prime minister, Guillaume Soro.

Three Human Rights Watch researchers conducted investigations in the Grand Gedeh region of Liberia between March 26 and April 7, interviewing over 120 victims of and witnesses to human rights abuses committed by both sides’ forces in the far western region of Côte d’Ivoire. More than 40,000 Ivorians have fled to Grand Gedeh as a result of the fighting. Human Rights Watch also interviewed some 20 victims and witnesses still in the far west towns of Guiglo, Duékoué, and Bloléquin by telephone.

The abuses documented by Human Rights Watch occurred from March 6 to 30, 2011, as the western towns of Toulepleu, Doké, Bloléquin, Duékoué, and Guiglo, all formerly controlled by pro-Gbagbo forces, fell to the pro-Ouattara forces seeking to force Gbagbo from the presidency. He has rejected calls to step down after an election Ouattara is internationally recognized to have won.

Ouattara’s Republican Forces of Côte d’Ivoire comprise a loose coalition of combatants who previously fought for the Forces Nouvelles (“New Forces”) rebellion, the long-time rebel army led by Soro that has controlled the northern half of the country since late 2002. The Republican Forces also include former Ivorian army soldiers, policemen, and gendarmes who have recently defected from Gbagbo’s side.

In village after village investigated by Human Rights Watch, Republican Forces combatants killed, raped, and pillaged the predominantly Guéré population. The Guéré are originally from western Côte d’Ivoire and largely supported Gbagbo in last year’s election. A 47-year-old woman told Human Rights Watch that she looked on as two fighters killed her father, husband, and 10-year-old son around the family’s cocoa farm near Doké. A 32-year-old man described pro-Ouattara forces entering Diboké and opening fire on civilians as they ran out to see which side’s forces had entered, killing at least three people right in front of him. In at least 10 villages around Toulepleu and Bloléquin, villagers said they hid in the bush and watched as the Republican Forces set fire to houses and buildings used to store crops and seeds, slaughtered animals, and stole everything of value.

Many residents fled in anticipation of or immediately upon the arrival of pro-Ouattara forces. Others, particularly some elderly residents who were unable to undertake the 40 or more kilometer walk to neighboring Liberia, were caught by the Republican Forces and held captive in their villages. Human Rights Watch documented the execution of more than 30 of these detained civilians. One 67-year-old woman described pro-Ouattara fighters taking several captives out each day – often men and women between 60 and 80 years old – and executing them at point-blank range.

Dozens of women were also detained for a day or longer and repeatedly raped. One woman from Bakoubli, near Toulepleu, said the forces raped her in front of her children, then killed her husband who tried to intervene.

Read full report: Cote d’ Ivoire: Ouattatra Forces Kill, Rape Civilians During Offensive | Human Rights Watch

 

Trafficking in Persons Report 2009: Victims’ Stories

The victims’ testimonies included in this report are meant to be representative only and do not include all forms of trafficking that occur. These stories could take place anywhere in the world and illustrate the many forms of trafficking and the wide variety of places in which they occur. No country is immune. Many of the victims’ names have been changed in this report. Most uncaptioned photographs are not images of confirmed trafficking victims, but they show the myriad forms of exploitation that define trafficking and the variety of cultures in which trafficking victims are found.

Azerbaijan

Azade, 22, left rural Azerbaijan to work at a massage parlor in Baku. But the massage parlor was a cover for a brothel. Soon after she arrived, a client who worked for the brothel owner forced himself on Azade and threatened to show a videotape of the assault to her father unless she engaged in prostitution at the brothel. Fearing the social stigma attached to rape and the consequences of bringing shame to her family, Azade submitted to several months of forced prostitution before she escaped with the help of an anti-trafficking NGO.

Mali – Cote d’Ivoire

Ibrahim, 11, dreamed of buying a bicycle. When a man he had known for some time told him that he could work on a cocoa farm and make enough money for a bicycle, radio, clothes and more, Ibrahim didn’t suspect the man to be a trafficker. The man took Ibrahim to Cote d’Ivoire and sold him to a cocoa farmer. Ibrahim and other trafficked boys worked long hours doing back-breaking and dangerous work farming cocoa and bananas. The farmer gave them little to eat, beat them severely, and forbade them from leaving the farm. Ibrahim suffered in forced labor for two years before he escaped and returned to Mali. He now works in a market garden but still doesn’t earn enough to buy a bicycle.

India

Jayati and her husband were bonded laborers at a rice mill in India for more than 30 years. From 2 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day, they separated and boiled rice, often suffering burns, injuries and illnesses. The owner of the mill threatened to hurt them if they tried to leave. Their children were forced to quit school and work alongside them in the mill. Their grandchildren were born into bonded servitude. In 2005, Jayati and her family were finally freed with the help of NGOs and local authorities. “I never dreamt of a day like this in my life,” she said after being freed.

Pakistan

Waleed, 45, was a bonded brick kiln worker until he was freed in 1997 by a historic Supreme Court decision that deemed bonded labor illegal. But he found it difficult to adjust to a life of freedom, not knowing how to support his family of six. Work at the kiln was the only life his family knew. So they went back. Ten years later, Waleed is once again in bondage, having accumulated more than $700 in debt. He, his wife, two young daughters, son, and daughter-in-law all work as brick makers. Together they make 2,000 bricks a day, for which they are paid $3. To cover their daily expenses—including food, electricity for a single 60-watt light bulb, and medical care for frequent mosquito-borne illnesses—the family takes more loans from the kiln owners and continues working to repay their debts.

Azerbaijan

Dilara’s sister had been tricked into an unregistered marriage to a trafficker who later abandoned her when she got pregnant. When Dilara confronted her sister’s traffickers, she herself became a victim. She ended up in Turkey, where she and other abducted girls were tortured and forced to engage in prostitution. Dilara escaped with the help of Turkish police, who promptly arrested the nine men who trafficked Dilara and her sister. She then approached a local NGO for legal aid and counseling. The NGO also helped Dilara learn computer programming and find employment with a company in Baku.

The Balkans

When Julia was 8, a man took her and her sisters to a neighboring country and forced them to beg on the streets until their early teens, when he sold them into prostitution. Julia’s traffickers expected her to bring in a certain amount of money each day or face beatings. At 14, Julia ran away, eventually coming under the supervision of local authorities. They placed her in an orphanage where she was not allowed to go to school due to her undocumented status. After a few months, Julia ran away from the orphanage and became involved with a pimp who prostituted her to local men and tourists. Recently, Julia was arrested on narcotics charges. She will likely spend the next two years in a juvenile prison, where she will finally learn to read and write.

Brazil

Matheus was born and raised in one of the poorest backlands of Brazil. For the 39-year-old farmhand, the opportunity to work at a charcoal production site in the Amazon region was too good to miss. But the reality he faced at the work site was far from the opportunity he expected. The workers drank from the same river used by cattle. Smoke from the charcoal furnace stung their eyes all day and made it difficult to sleep at night. They knew the owners had weapons, and they feared the consequences of trying to escape. When anti-slavery activists arrived at the site, they found Matheus and 10 other workers disheveled, wearing torn trousers, filthy T-shirts, and rubber flip-flops.

Democratic Republic of The Congo

Lucien was studying at school when members of a militia group abducted him and 11 other boys from his secondary school. The soldiers drove them to a training camp and put them in a pit in the ground. Those who resisted were beaten. Lucien was stabbed in the stomach and tied up until he submitted to the training. Lucien endured difficult training with some 60 other children, including a number of girls. They were fed one plate of maize meal a day to share among 12 people. Lucien watched people die from starvation and illness. When the soldiers killed those who tried to escape, they forced Lucien and other children to bury the bodies. Lucien later managed to escape and now lives with a host family.

Morocco-Cyprus

Rania signed a contract she couldn’t read and set off to earn money as a cleaner in Cyprus. But when she arrived, an agent told her she was going to work in a cabaret, have drinks with customers, and have sex with them if they wanted. She resisted and asked to be sent home but was told she had to repay her travel expenses first. Rania was raped. It was her first sexual experience. She knew if she returned to Morocco, her brother, a strict Muslim, would kill her for having sex before marriage and for damaging the family’s reputation. When she finally ran away, social workers took Rania to a government shelter for victims of sexual exploitation. While police investigated the case, Rania stayed in Cyprus and worked as a cleaner.

China

Xiao Ping, 20, had spent most of her life in her small village in Sichuan Province. She was thrilled when her new boyfriend offered to take her on a weekend trip to his hometown. But her boyfriend and his friends took her instead to a desert village in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and sold her to a farmer to be his wife. The farmer imprisoned Xiao Ping, beat her, and raped her for 32 months. In that time Xiao Ping grew depressed and homesick, and she became pregnant and had a son. Xiao Ping’s family borrowed a substantial sum to pay for her rescue, but the farmer’s family forced her to leave behind her 6-month-old baby. To cancel the debts, Xiao Ping married the man who provided the loan. But her husband regarded her as “stained goods,” and the marriage did not last.

Southeast Europe

A man trafficked for labor exploitation explains: “I once fainted and the owner took me to the hospital. There the doctor asked me why I didn’t have any registration. I told him that my owner didn’t let me leave the territory I worked. He seemed to have understood the situation I got into… I felt safe at that moment. I thought I would stay there for a long time and I would be able to go home… I was there for three days. On the third day the doctor told me that the treatment was over and the costs were covered by a charity organization. When I went out of the hospital, I saw my owner waiting for me.”

Burma-Malaysia

When Mya, 59, and her husband feared for their lives in Burma, they fled and took refuge in Malaysia. One night, when her husband was at work, Malaysian officials raided Mya’s home and took her to a local police station. For five days, groups of Chinese and Malay officers beat her violently, deprived her of food, and demanded to know where her husband was. A judge sentenced Mya to five months in prison for entering Malaysia illegally. Mya endured abusive conditions in both prison and immigration detention camps before she and other refugees were deported and sold to a Burmese man along the way. Those who could not repay the trafficker were sold to fish trawlers, into prostitution, or to be maids.

Uzbekistan-India

Nila and Miram, ages 20 and 22, traveled from rural Uzbekistan to India to work for a fashion design company after hearing a friend’s stories of lavish parties and unending wealth. But once they arrived, their passports were taken and they were told they would not be designing clothing but instead servicing clients at various luxury hotels. Indian authorities eventually discovered the sex trafficking ring. The women returned to Uzbekistan and received necessary victim care and rehabilitative assistance from a shelter.

Cambodia-Thailand

In Cambodia, Phirun worked in the fields growing rice and vegetables. Promised higher wages for factory work in Thailand, Phirun and other men paid a recruiter to smuggle them across the border. But once in Thailand, the recruiter took their passports and locked them in a room. He then sold them to the owner of a fishing boat, on which the men worked all day and night slicing and gutting fish and repairing torn nets. They were given little food or fresh water, and they rarely saw land. Phirun was beaten nearly unconscious and watched the crew beat and shoot other workers and throw their bodies into the sea. Phirun endured this life at sea for two years before he persuaded his traffickers to release him.

Guinea

After her mother and brother died, Jeannette’s father gave her away at age 8 to work as a domestic servant. Jeannette did housework for 18 hours a day, but she was never paid. She slept on the verandah and ate leftovers. Sometimes, she was denied food altogether. Jeannette was beaten frequently, particularly when she tried to rest. When his wife left the house, the male guardian raped Jeannette. She was not allowed to leave, but even if she was, she wouldn’t know where to go. She didn’t know if her father was still alive. Jeannette later received assistance from a local NGO.

Indonesia-Gulf

Keni binti Carda, 28, left Indonesia to work as a domestic worker in a Gulf state. The woman who employed Keni allegedly burned her repeatedly with an iron, forced her to ingest feces, abused her psychologically, and applied household cleaners to Keni’s open wounds. She poked Keni’s tongue with a knife, pried her teeth loose and forced them down her throat, beat her own children when they tried to protest, and threatened to kill Keni if she tried to escape. Keni’s employer made her work extremely long hours every day, locked her inside the house, and sent Keni back to Indonesia before she could seek help from the authorities. She has impaired vision in one eye, and her flesh is fused together in some places where her employer allegedly burned her.

Southeast Europe

Many victims don’t know where to go for help when they escape from their traffickers or after they return home. A male victim of forced labor explains: “I knew nothing about the assistance available for trafficking victims. I didn’t know who to address in the destination country in case I needed help. I thought I could go only to the police. There I didn’t have enough courage to go to the police because the [traffickers] used to say that they bought the police. They threatened me with death in case I went to the police. I was afraid.”

Nigeria-Ghana-Italy

Anita was trafficked from Nigeria through Ghana to Italy, where she was forced to have sex with more than 25 men a day. If she resisted, her “madam” would beat her with a belt, starve her, and threaten to deport her. Anita would rotate through Turin, Rome, and Milan, enduring mental torture and physical abuse at each base. Anita’s traffickers raped her several times, and she underwent several crude abortions. Anita survived, but some of her friends died in the ordeal.

Source: U.S. Department of State