“In 2008, Barack Obama, who is the Democratic pro-labor candidate for the U.S. presidential race, is the last hope of laborers”, reported a U.K daily newspaper Independent. Last December, Independent reported a story about three Mexican immigrants, who escaped exploitation at an American tomato farm. For one year, they earned only 45 cents per 14 kilograms of tomatoes. Moreover, the three Mexican immigrants were injured by their farm owner and treated less than human.
According to research by The International Labour Organization (ILO) in 2005 laborers, who are not under labor laws accounted for 9,490,000 people in the Asia Pacific region, 990,000 in Africa and the Middle East, and even 260,000 in developed countries. “Although, there are a number of international agreements and laws for anti-slavery after 1817, we are in the era most people work as slave.” said Skinner, author of a ‘Heinous Crime- A Modern Slave’. That is to say, the emancipation of slaves is not accomplished yet.
# Revived British Slave Trade
The British slave trade abolished in 1833, set the precedent of anti-slavery laws by as much as 30 years earlier than those in the United States. But still, hundreds of children are moved from poor countries to Britain as slaves every year. Three to five-year-old boys are traded only at 5,000 pounds, and a ten-month-old child is sold at 2,000 pounds. They are forced to work 18 hour of heavy labor everyday, even becoming the scapegoats in ‘ghost driving ceremony.’ A British broadsheet newspaper The Sunday Telegraph expressed this, ‘New British slave.’
# Left Housemaids in U.S
As Victims of the Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) has established in US, oppressing housemaid has being prosecuted. A Saudi Arabian queen was convicted for the abuse of her two housemaids for three years while she was living in Boston, and two doctors were condemned for using his maid like a slave for 20 years in Wisconsin. The housemaids claimed that they were enforced to work day and night, were placed under the beating and slept in a wall closet. About 20,000 people have came to America through people smuggling every year, one-third of them are housemaids. Mostly they are from seriously affected countries.
# Sport slavery
Many English Premier League soccer club scouts are extending their hand towards the African continent. They purchase promising young players and even make a whole life contract. African children devote all their might to soccer, a symbol of the rich in Africa, because they can feed their family members by becoming sports stars in Europe. Scouts are busy making them into soccer players, however, if young players fail in Europe, the scouts do not give them a return passport to go back to Africa. So, young players become illegal sojourners in a foreign country.
# North Korean escapes N.K
Recently, the human rights of North Korean defectors have become a delicate subject of international labor. Because of the flood in 2006, many North Korean laborers were sent to other countries. In there, they were locked up or executed. In addition, North Korean women were smuggled to earn money as sex slaves. “Their human rights are considered as political and ideological problem, preparing nothing ways to alter”, said Hakmin J. Kim, Senior Programs Officer in Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights. “The Korean government needs to treat this problem from a universal view point, not a standpoint of relationship between South & North Korea”, he added.
# Interview with Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR)
CAH: Why does the international slave trade still exists?
NKHR: As globalization-developed traffic, communication and interchanges among countries have increased in speed, some problems have occurred before it was possible to prevent the defects.
CAH: Compared with domestic human rights, what seriousness does international slave trade have?
NKHR: A government can either protect human rights or violate them. However, internationally the problem of people smuggling is in a blind spot because there is no jurisdiction. There is no established punishment or remedy for foreigners.
CAH: What effort is required to cut the slave trade?
NKHR: First, international cooperation to recognize this common problem is important. Secondly, an international agreement for stamping out people smuggling and a systemic solution on domestic dimensions are needed. In addition, we have to solve this problem economically and socially as victims is a socially vulnerable class.
People call the 21st century the most advanced era. However, we still live in a world of slavery, where people are traded due to poverty and wrong governance structures. One of the ways to rescue them is some private organization gives money to slavery intermediary, but it can worsen the situation. If we pay a little attention to them, this problem can be solved than we may think. The 21st century has to be a human-oriented era, not a technology or economic era.