" Is not this what I require of you…to snap every yoke and set free those who have been crushed?"
Isaiah, 58 v 6

There are many ways that we are held in chains, through our own desires and actions and by the structures of society.  Our task is to help snap those bonds of slavery, both our own  through our efforts at self-realization and those of others who are often in situations where the power of individual will is not strong enough.  Social forces are strong, and violence is often used to keep the chains in place.

The United Nations has created a "Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery" as part of the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights in which I participate as a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) representative.  The Working Group is a continuation of anti-slavery efforts begun by the League of Nations.  The League of Nations on 25 September 1926 facilitated a Convention on Slavery which was a high-water mark in the world-wide consensus on the need to abolish slavery.  However, as with many League of Nations Conventions, there were no mechanisms written into the convention for monitoring, investigation, and enforcement.  Although the Slavery Convention outlawed slavery and associated practices, it not only failed to establish procedures for reviewing the incidences of slavery in States parties, but also neglected to create an international body which could evaluate and pursue allegations of violations.

Therefore, today, there are contemporary forms of slavery, some of which are growing.  Slavery today, as in the past, can have one or more of the following characteristics.  A slave is forced to work through mental or physical threat.  The person is owned or controlled by an "employer," usually through mental or physical abuse and threats.  The person is dehumanized by being treated as a commodity and bought and sold as if "property."  There are also restrictions placed on a person's freedom of movement and kept isolated from those who might help to break the chains.

Snapping the yoke of contemporary forms of slavery provides a framework for NGO peace and social action.  There is a close link between work for peace and work for human dignity.  To give one example, is a UN report on "Trafficking of Children and Prostitution in India" the authors write "Nepal appears to be the most significant, identifiable source of child prostitution for Indian brothels.  Thousands of Nepalese females under the age of 20 have been identified in India by various studies.  The average age of the Nepalese girl entering an Indian brothel is said to be 10-14 years, some 5,000-7,000 of them being trafficked between Nepal and India annually."  This report dates from 1996 before the armed insurgency in Nepal took on the proportions that it has today with a large flow of refugees going to India - refugees which add to the pool of Nepalese people potentially trafficked into prostitution.

NGOs play an important role in bringing to the attention of the Working Group the local realities and sufferings.  Given the low priority for many governments of the fight against contemporary slavery, it is especially NGOs who are on the 'frontlines' of the positive efforts.

We can usefully divide contemporary slavery into five categories, though there are often links between them.

The first is debt bondage, especially practiced in South Asia.  It is estimated that there are some 20 million people held in debt bondage throughout the world, despite the fact that  debt bondage is specifically  forbidden by the "Supplementary Convention of 1956 on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery."  Debt bondage is largely a rural practice, and local government officials and police often overlook its consequences.  The debt is usually contracted in an emergency such as sickness or to cover expenses between harvests.  However, the person making the debt from money lenders or richer farmers cannot read, and therefore has no idea of what "rates of interest" mean nor do they know when they have worked off the debt.  It is often a child or younger member of the family who is "given" to work to pay off the debt.  The debt is often never considered to have been paid and will go on from one generation to the next.  NGOs such as the South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude have taken the lead in efforts against bonded labor.

Child labor is the second category of contemporary slavery.  The UN's International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that there are some 180 million children aged between five and 17 who are in the worst forms of child labor - work that is hazardous to their mental and physical health.  There is currently an important effort of the ILO to deal with child labor.  There is an ILO convention of 1999 (N° 182) on the "Worst Forms of Child Labor".  Translating these efforts to the local workplace is a large job and needs to be done with care as some families depend heavily on income from children's work.

Early and forced marriages is the third category of contemporary slavery.  This form is often overlooked or excused as 'custom,' for it is usually carried out by the families themselves.  In many societies, marriage is an alliance between families with elements of social control over wealth, power, and the sexuality of women as the motive.  Women and girls are married without choice and often forced into lives of servitude.  As Professor Vitit Muntarbhorn, the former UN Special Reporter on the Sale of Children said to the Working Group in 1994, "Gender discrimination victimizes the girl child.  Precisely because the girl child is seen in some communities as having lower priority, she is often denied access to such basic necessities as education which could ultimately protect her from exploitation.  Another disquieting form of discrimination is based upon race and social origin, interwoven with issues of class and caste.  It has become increasingly obvious that many children used in labor and sexual exploitation are lured from particular racial or social groups such as hill tribes, rather than the well-endowed groups in power."

Child soldiers, both boys and girls, is the fourth form of contemporary slavery.  There
are world wide some 300,000 child soldiers, some as young as 10, in some 30 areas of conflict.  Child soldiers can fight on the front lines where they are often given drugs to overcome their reluctance to kill.  Girls are often obliged to be "soldiers' wives" and end up in prostitution when the conflicts end.  Armed conflicts cause large-scale displacement of children.  Many are born and raised in refugee camps, where they are especially exposed to the trauma of exile, separation from their families, and exploitation, including child prostitution.  Children involved in armed conflicts are often intentionally brutalized to a point where they lose all respect for human life and dignity.  They are subjected to and often forced to participate in beatings, torture, murder and various forms of sexual abuse, including rape, and reach a point of no return where they start committing the same atrocities themselves.  These children, victims of adult exploitation, become killers themselves and create more victims. The process of dehumanization of children will have to be reversed.  This is a long-term and time-consuming effort, but a necessary undertaking that post-conflict societies will have to assume.  Thus, family-based and community-based rehabilitation are urgent necessities for children in these armed conflicts.

It is the fifth category, human trafficking, often linked to prostitution which is the fastest-growing means by which people are enslaved today.  Women, children, and men are coerced and deceived by traffickers who promise work and good pay in areas far from their family and community.  The reality is usually a harsh contrast.  People are forced through the threat and use of violence to work against their will.  There are UN estimates of some 700,000 persons trafficked each year.  There is an increasing trans-frontier sale of children and child.

Trafficking in persons is often carried out by groups which also traffic guns, drugs, and pornography.  These groups are willing to kill in order to keep their trade growing and often corrupt local officials and the police.  Thus, in combating the forms of slavery, one must not underestimate the strength of these groups who benefit from prostitution, drugs and run running.  As Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times  wrote recently "Sex trafficking at its worst is the slavery of the 21st century, yet it has become one of the world's growth industries…In the 19th century, the civilized world recognized that slavery was a moral blot on humanity and rose up against it.  So why should we acquiesce in the 21st century slavery, when 15-year-old girls are imprisoned in brothels and sentenced to death by AIDS?"  Trafficking and sexual exploitation are symptoms of a social problem, namely the vulnerability in which too many people are trapped, lacking the material and educational tools to live in dignity.  Children are the ones who suffer the most and have less means of  protecting themselves.  Vulnerability is a silent social disease.  Many societies live with it and do not take firm and continuing actions to face it until the consequences erupt in violent and dramatic forms.  Prevention means acting before this happens.  It means preventing the social fabric from tearing apart, especially in those areas of a country with little economic and social opportunity.

No part of the world is free from these forms of contemporary slavery.  Prevention, protection of the vulnerable, and recovery are the three levels of necessary action.  There is a need for a sound knowledge of the area and social groups exposed to higher risks of servitude.  There is a need to develop awareness and political will so that police and social welfare officials carry on systematic protection.  There is a need to develop capacity for recovery through the creation of shelters, workshops for psychological care, education, and training.  The spiritual aspects of healing for those who have been trafficked into prostitution is underdeveloped and where research and special efforts are needed.