Forgiveness is key

Imagine, being taken from your home. Sold and thrown into a country where you don’t know anyone, you don’t know the

language, and you’re forced to work; without pay, under threat of violence, with no means to escape. After you’re freed, if you’re that lucky, can you find the will to forgive what’s been done to you? For many people, that would probably be a hard question to answer, because we could only imagine how difficult it would be to forgive anyone who put us through so much pain and for reason that we rarely ever understand. It may be hard for those who have experienced the trauma to ever adapt to the idea of forgiving those who have essentially taken their life away from them. Although it seems like it’s nearly impossible, forgiveness is an important step in the healing and rehabilitation of former slaves back into society. Therapy is an important part of healing, but one can never fully heal and move on, until they can forgive those whom have done them wrong. “Without forgiveness, there's no future”-Desmond Tutu. Desmond is a South African activist whom fully advocates for forgiveness. In the book, The Impossible Will Take a Little while, Desmond talks about Rwanda, and how the people were able to move on, and forgive those whom had massacred so many of them. Instead of seeking revenge “there was this remarkable Truth and Reconciliation Commission to which people told their heart-rending stories, victims expressing their willingness to forgive and perpetrators telling their stories of sordid atrocities while also asking for forgiveness they had wronged so grievously.” The fact that people are willing to forgive, and that others are even willing to admit their faults, allows everyone to move on in the process of healing. Although the topic is different, the answer is still the same. In order for slavery to end today, we need to help those who have been hurt forgive those who have hurt them. Forgiving does not only help one mentally but physically as well. Being able to forgive, allows one to let go of the not only the pain and suffering, but also the fear they had for so many years. Kevin Bales, author of Ending Slavery, also believes that forgiveness is an important step in ending the vicious cycle of slavery. “Forgiveness will be hard—for many it may be impossible—but is there full freedom without forgiveness? If the slaves of today carry their pain and recrimination into liberation, bitterness will flow down through the generations. We will have to let freed slaves lead us; let them say how they can best ease their anger and pain. The children of slaves and the children of slaveholders will have to find a way to share the world without anger. Even as we seek to destroy the evil of slavery forever, we must help build the reconciliation that silences slavery’s echo of hatred.” The hatred that lives in those who have been enslaved moves on through generations and even the mindset of slave holders moves on to their children. In order for slavery for fully end, we must help show slaves that the best revenge is forgiveness, because when one forgive, then can they move on to be successful.

Maquiladoras

Working in depressing conditions, making far less than minimum wage, and having your labor rights denied is slavery. In Mexico sweatshops which are called Maquiladoras, mostly employ women from poverty stricken communities that are between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. These Maquiladoras manufacture goods for the United States, Japan, Europe, China, and North Korea. The women who are employed by the maquiladoras are paid around fifty cents to three dollars an hour, and work about forty eight hours or more a week. Women are considered to be preferred to men because women will typically work for cheaper wages."Some maquiladora operators have admitted a preference for women, because women often display a greater level of patience and higher dexterity than men in performing the standardized and repetitive work of an assembly plant"(The Maquiladora Reader: Cross-Border).The employees of the maquiladoras work under very horrible conditions. "Industrial accidents and toxic exposures are common in the plants." Often workers are not given adequate training or provided with safety equipment." "Physical risks such as noise, heat, vibrations, poor ventilation, and awkward posture have a high occurrence in maquiladoras." There are also many forms of discrimination against the women. Women must have mandatory pregnancy tests, and if they are found to be pregnant they are most times forced to resign.

They do not provide nor have any interest in the healthcare, education, or housing of their employees or their families. The employees of maquiladoras usually live in “do it yourself projects.” The shacks are usually made with wood pallets that are bought from their employers for a dollar each. “They drag wood pallets to a squatter village and recycled material is collected; a shack is nailed, tied, and somehow erected to withstand the almost unbreakable daytime heat and nighttime cold, sandstorms, occasional rain, and vermin to raise their family." These problems are the worst in Tijuana and Juarez, Mexico.”

In 1994 the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was adopted by Mexico. NAFTA stepped in to try and stimulate trade, exports, jobs, and increase the economic growth in Mexico. This plan did increase jobs but as jobs increased wages decreased. "The profits that are generated from the maquiladoras are typically sent back to the United States, or other investor based countries, and therefore, maquiladoras do not promote direct economic development within Mexico"(The Maquiladora Reader: Cross-Border). Jose Guerro, wrote a poem about his mother who was a maquiladora worker, “I remember waking up and her already being gone, She would catch the ruta before the sun and arrive home after dawn, Being awake that early in Juarez can be dangerous for a woman, She always lied and said she was a fashion designer but in reality she spent long hours sewing holes into designer jeans that her children would never wear, The Maquiladora swallowed her and she just became part of the machine...” This is slavery; if the maquiladoras were on the California side of the border, they would be making at least eight dollars an hour, receive healthcare, and their labor rights would be enforced. Instead these companies bring their businesses across the boarder to Mexico and abuse these workers by denying their rights and paying them next to nothing wages.

There are some organizations that help to improve the problems in the Maquiladoras. One of these organizations is the Maquiladora Health & Safety Support Network. This is a group of trained professionals that donate their time and expertise to create safer and healthier working conditions for the one million maquiladora workers employed by primarily U.S.-owned transnational corporations along Mexico's northern border from Matamoros to Tijuana. Hopefully one day this problem will be resolved and these maquiladora workers will finally get paid what they deserve.

Should Prostitution Be Legal?

When one hears the word prostitution there are often many negative connotations associated with it. There are child prostitutes, STDs, and just a general image of crime and immorality. If prostitution were legalized many of these negative aspects could be eliminated or reduced. There are many pros and cons to prostitution but the benefits outweigh the potential negative aspects. With the legalization and regulation of prostitution sex workers could be tested regularly for STDs which would do a great deal to combat the spread of these diseases. If there was some type of licensing for prostitutes it would be easy to identify sex workers who are not free of STDs or those who are not of age. This would reduce the amount of underage children being trafficked across borders and forced into prostitution. It would also help combat the spread of STDs because sex workers who are not clean can have there license taken away. There are many dangers associated with prostitution but these dangers can be eliminated or greatly reduced through regulation. Prostitution would have to take place in a brothel or some other type of establishment and there will probably need to be some security present. This would help eliminate the violence that prostitutes are often the victims of. Use of condoms would have to be a requirement if prostitution were legalized and would have to be strictly enforced possibly by undercover police posing as "johns". Also instead of victims being illegally trafficked into other countries and taken advantage of they can legally migrate and reap the benefits of their own labor. This would do a great deal to end human trafficking since many victims of human trafficking are trafficked for the purpose of forced prostitution. Prostitution is not going to end so it should at least be regulated to reduce the dangers associated with it and help combat human trafficking.

Companies Envolved with Child Labor.

Nike has been accused several times of using slave child labor in other countries. Their biggest case is the one of making shoes in Indonesia. It is said that they higher kids under the age of 16 in a regular bases paying them only the minimum wage or nothing. These children are forcefully put to work by family members and at times even sold to companies. So does Nike support slave child labor? The legal age to work in Indonesia is any child 14 years or older, and Indonesia has over 2.4 million children working in rural areas and a quarter million working in urban areas between the ages 10 and 14. There are many more children under the age of ten working in Indonesia. These children sometimes have nowhere to go and they finish living in the same factories they work in all day. Indonesian culture has ignored all the laws against child labor for many years. Recently, the minimum wage was raised so they could in some way help all the children forcefully working under the legal age and this too has been ignored by many employers. When a country takes no major actions against child slave labor is it still wrong for companies to come in, hire, and use children’s labor?

Child Sex Tourism

With more than two million children reported being linked to prostitution in countries across the world and the total number of acts of child molestation being much larger (albeit more vague, with estimates ranging from five to twenty-five percent of all Americans falling victim), it is no wonder that the child sex industry is among those most harshly prosecuted trades in almost all nations. Countries such as India, Brazil, or Cambodia, all popular tourism locations, combat child sex tourism even more aggressively than many other humanitarian crises perhaps deserving equal attention. But despite these legislative efforts, tourism continues to expand at a rate faster than nearly all other criminal activities. Despite employing numerous task forces to preemptively track down sexual offenders and allowing for extraterritorial legal action, the various governments and NGOs that work against the industry are skirting around a more centralized method of dealing with these offenders. The child sex trade itself and the notions of pedophilia that accompany it are seen almost unanimously as taboo issues that most governments are reluctant to raise awareness against for the sake of social stability, issues that have to be overcome if child prostitution is to be stamped out. If the UN and other international councils do not aggressively advocate against sexual abuse and threaten those who would partake in it with more severe sentences, the notion that one can simply vacation to a country whose laws are seen as being more lax will continue as a standard. In addition, due to an alarmingly large number of children entering the sex trade of their own accord, more federal education for children under the age of 12 regarding the dangers of sex and the illegality of intercourse with adults should be present, most realistic through the inclusion of sexual education in elementary curricula for those countries with the highest rate of child abuse. Though raising awareness at such young ages and for the general population as a whole is an unpleasant prospect, it is ultimately the last effective option in restricting the child sex trade.

Worldwide Child Soldiers

"Over the past ten to fifteen years", the topics child slavery and child soldiers have caught the attention of the outside world. Child soldiers have come about by abductions. In the event of abductions, once they are taken captive, they become child soldiers because the leaders convince the children, coerce them into being a killer, promise them "glory and excitement". Another reason is that these children have been exposed to poverty stricken areas and unsafe conditions at home. Child abductions and forceful tactics of entering children into the war time situations happen most in Africa. Over half of child soldiers are in Africa. Children as young as eight and ten, once abducted are forced to become child soldiers.
Pictures of kids holding guns and killing others are sprawled all over the television for billions to see. But what isn't usually portrayed that should be are the young girls that are also abducted and forced to enter into the armies. These girls are then force to service the men in the army and even become their wives. They are also physically and sexually abused. These facts show that not only boys are exposed to the cruelty.
A couple of countries that have struck me are Mozambique and Angola. The leaders in these countries pray on young children and not adults because they know that children are vulnerable. They know that adults would never abide to their rules. Children can't fight back, physically or mentally. These leaders will use threats of violence, drugs, coercion, and any other tactics they need to use in order to get these children to do what they want.
There are provisions that have been taken to try to stop these types of things from happening. Once of the efforts happened in 1990 when the United Kingdom passed the "Convention on the Rights of the Child". This was created to help the children that were abducted and forced into the world of being a child soldier.
How will these children be able to cope once they escape from these armies or are rescued? Who do they turn to? How will they be able to settle back into regular civilization? Should these children once out of the armies go to better places other than where they originated from or should they go to places that will have better situations for them? There should be more programs out there trying to help these children cope and be ready for the REAL world . There could also be camps set up for these victims, something like more rehabilitation centers. There should be places set aside only for these children. The horrible things they have experienced, only they could understand from each other. Outsiders will only judge them. There could also be older escapees who have grown and forgiven and learned that they were not monsters and help these children to regain a purpose in life and they can feel like they amount to something.

Fair Trade Festival

Come out and support fair trade vendors along with free music and food this Friday (November 12th) on the Peace Quad here at Loyola.

Child Abduction

The enslavement of an adult is an unjust and immoral practice, but most slaves are children. The reason for such a statistic is because children are more easily manipulated, are more easily exploited commercially (prostitution, begging, or trafficking), and are much harder to trace than adults. Children can be exploited in such ways as forced labor, organ removal, servitude, recruitment as child soldier, cults, or athletes. Since the beginning of slavery, child enslavement has been a prevalent and common practice that dates back to child slavery in ancient Greece.

Many factors can attribute to the abduction of children. Most abducted children are from third world/under developed countries that lack many of the basic laws that would otherwise protect children from predators. In some cases, nations that lack infrastructure and development fall victims to natural disasters that not only cause great damage to these nations but give way to the displacement and homelessness of many children. The most famous of such events include the 2004 earthquake near the Western coast of Sumatra that took the lives of 230,000 people and displaced 1.69 million, and the 2010 Earthquake in Haiti that also took the lives of an estimated 230,000 and left 1 million people homeless.

Child slavery is such a prevalent practice due to its profitability. Such statistics prove how lucrative the child sex trade is, "Investigators and researchers estimate the average predator in the U.S. can make more than $200,000 a year off one young girl. – NBC Report by Teri Williams". UNICEF values the global market of child trafficking at over $12 billion a year with over 2.5 million child victims.

However, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Such organization such as the SCT and Humantrafficking.org , whose missions are to target buyers/predators for conviction in hopes of decreasing the demand part of the problem, as well as to provide resources for empowerment, rehabilitation, and self-improvement.

Slavery results from economic disparities

The trafficker, the slave owning entrepreneur, and the unfortunate bonded individual all have one thing in common, and that is the need for economic success. Exploiting individuals to achieve the minimum cost of labor satisfies the demand for maximized profits. As long as there are individuals who are willing to exploit humans in efforts of attaining the maximum profit, slavery is said to continue. 

Those who fall into slavery often come from vulnerable situations. Extreme poverty contributes significantly to global slave trade. Desperate families will sell their children with the allusion that the child will experience a better life, or simply the family cannot afford another mouth to feed. Traffickers prey on desperate situations including natural disasters. After the devastating earthquake in Haiti last January, despite promises from Haitian leaders to protect orphaned children, the number of smuggled individuals (especially children) skyrocketed. This same behavior was witnessed in south Asia after the tsunami in 2003. After both disasters children were devalued to the point that smugglers offered to trade children for sex, cooking, and laundry. 

Traffickers have very little to nothing invested in their slaves, resulting in up to 500% profit. This economic venture proves too tempting to those whom have traded their morals for potential economic growth. A simple way to combat this issue and to minimize the exploiters' profits is, as a consumer to demand fair traded items. The combination of excessive materialism and the desire to spend the least amount of currency possible fuels the human trafficking industry. When we as consumers decide to elevate the fad of buying fair trade and organic items into a movement and demand true fairly traded items, the profits reaped by slave owners will diminish significantly.

 

Raising awareness along with passing and enforcing legislation can also minimize the number of those who reside in bondage. Organizations such as the Polaris Project and Free the Slaves are successful in both raising awareness and inspiring legislation. While slavery is illegal in every country, indifferent public officials seldom seek to assist those who are enslaved. We as responsible citizens of society have the moral obligation to demand people of power to take actions against exploiters and assist those who have been taken advantage of.

Magic Carpet

Here is a common scenario: Your friend invites you over her new apartment. You arrive, leave your shoes at the door, walk in, and embrace the soft fresh carpet between your toes.

"Why is this rug so impeccably wonderful?" You ask.

"It's handmade, imported directly from South Asia." She replies enthusiastically.

Like most people, the idea of how and by whom a certain product is made does not even past the mind, and thus is left undiscovered. It turns out that the handmade carpet industry located in South Asia exploits nearly 300,000 children, as calculated by The South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude. This means that evidence of the atrocities of slavery and child labor is literally right beneath your nose, in fact-your standing on it. Children around the ages of 4 to 15 years are by many means captured and trafficked into working for these handmade carpet companies. They receive extremely low pay, if any at all. If the child laborers are forced to live in the loom, they are then required to pay for food and shelter, thus resulting in a form of debt bondage. Other child slaves are traded in by their own parents for money, while others are simply kidnapped from their families.

Carpet makers adore the advantages to having children workers, any which include a child's typically better eyesight perfect for making elaborate designs in bad lighting and the simple fact that children do not know their rights making them accepting of the horrible treatment and deadly working environment. Children working as carpet makers are forced to handle harmful tools without any proper training and are exposed to many types of health problems. They are malnourished, their bodies deformed from sitting in cramped loom sheds, and even bare respiratory problems due to inhaling dust and wool fibers.

What's most upsetting about this is that once the child is trafficked into the carpet industry, the chances of he or she getting sold to another type of slavery becomes very high, especially for girls who make up about a quarter of the child laborers. These young girls, who are probably already getting sexually abused by other workers, can easily end up being trafficked into the sex trade. Another dire effect of child labor is its negative effect on the economy and household. Since employers choose to employ children, opportunities for adults diminish, and children are unable to attend school and get educated, causing poverty to be passed down. It seems impossible to break this cycle, but as always there is hope. Organizations such as Goodweave have already helped by building awareness about child labor in the carpet industry and inventing a certification system to ensure rugs have not been made by the hands of child slaves.

Works cited:

http://www.anti-slaverysociety.addr.com/carpets.htm

http://goodweave.org/index.php?cid=29