The Issue
Today, slavery is rife throughout the world - in fact as you read this
two children per minute are being
sold. Modern slavery (as it is termed) takes many different forms: bonded slavery, forced labour,
forced marriage, domestic slavery and human trafficking for the means of sexual exploitation. Slavery means that a person is
abducted, sold or kept against their will; their freedom and human rights are denied them; usually cruelty and
violence is employed to beat them into submission, along with threatenings and intimidation.
Victims of sexual
exploitation are trafficked from country to country, their passports taken away from them. Or, indeed, they may be trafficked
domestically. They may be kept in saunas and
brothels, or hidden away in private houses and apartments. Child slaves can be found working on
cocoa plantations or infactories, working back-breaking hours in
appalling conditions with little or no payment. They may be found working as domestic slaves, or they may be
abducted into rebel armies where they are not only
brutalized but also forced to become brutal.
Other types of slavery
today may include camel jockeying, deep sea slavery etc. Poverty is a prime factor in slavery, along with cultures where it is acceptable for families to sell their children, or allows low-caste systems to flourish, such as the
Dalits in India. However slavery, abduction and trafficking are not confined only to the
poor, but people of greater means can be lured or
groomed by various kinds of enticement. For every
victim of slavery there is violation of their most
basic human rights.
"What we are required to do now is STAND erect and look the world in the face and do our duty without fear or favour"
WINSTON CHURCHILL
FACTS:
- 27 Million people in slavery (United nations, Amnesty International)
- 1.2 million children trafficked each year (UNICEF UK)
- 126 million children work in the worst forms of child labor (UNICEF)
- $9.5 billion a year is made from the slave trade (US department of State)
- 250 million dalits in India, also known as untouchables (Dalit Freedom network)
FACT:
- Jesus Loves and Died for everyone of these people..
"For he will deliver the needy who cry out,
the afflicted who have no one to help
He will take pity on the weak and the needy
and save the needy from death.
He will rescue them from oppression and violence,
for precious is their blood in his sight."
Ps 72: 12-14
Let's be part of his solution
Trafficking, a definition:
"Trafficking in human beings" 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."
Article 3 of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, Supplementing the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organised Crime (Palmero Protocol).
Dalits -
All over the world today various forms of slavery, bonded and child labour, human trafficking for the sex trade take place. The difference in India is both the scale and the 3000 years of hopelessness that caste discrimination has produced.
These people, numbering some 250,000,000, were previously known as 'Untouchables' but now more often referred to as 'Dalits', a title taken for themselves meaning broken or crushed. They are regularly treated as less than human and can never escape their life of slavery and degradation. They are told from birth that they are worthless and can contaminate anyone from a higher caste by their presence alone.
Almost exclusively all the women trafficked into the sex trade or ritual temple prostitution, all the victims of bonded and child labour, all of those living in abject poverty, all come from the Dalits and lower castes. It has been estimated that there is more hidden slavery in India today than in any place, at any time in history. Certainly this is the longest standing issue of slavery in human history!
These people are crying out to the church for help in their fight for emancipation. Help for their women as they suffer abuse and gender exploitation. Freedom for their children as they grow up knowing no hope or escape from an inhuman system of modern slavery and apartheid.
It's time to take a Stand on their behalf! It's time that they know the dignity of being created in the image of God. It's time to free the Dalit child through access to quality education that can give them a hope and choice for the future.
Let's take a Stand to free the Dalit child!
Visit
www.daliteducation.org
