Brides for Sale

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In many places all over the world marriage is viewed as a financial transaction. Women are treated as property, and bartered for like livestock, even being used to settle debts. Often times these women are underage and have no choice in their marriages. Women are assigned value based on their age, beauty, education, virginity, among many other things. Poverty is often a driving factor in these financial marriages. According to the New York Times About 1 in 7 girls in the developing world (excluding China) gets married before her 15th birthday” Sometimes girls are married off very young and sent to live with their in-laws and act as a servant, until they reach puberty, when they will consummate the marriage. Girls who find themselves in these marriages often face abuse at the hands of their husbands and in-laws. Often these young girls’ bare children before their bodies are ready, often ending in fatalities. The World Population Foundation says “Pregnancy, and its complications is a leading cause of death for young women aged 15 to 19.”

A few years ago there was a court case about a Triqui Indian man in Greenfield, California, who allegedly sold his 14 year old daughters hand in marriage to her 18 year old suitor for $16,000 and over 100 cases of beer and meat. The Father, Marcelino de Jesus Martinez was charged with human trafficking. The high profile case was significant because it could set a precedent for future cases dealing with bride selling. Paying a bride price is custom in indigenous Mexican communities. Bride selling is said to reduce break ups, due to the added value of the wife “"It is so the man gives value to his wife and so he won't easily leave her for another woman."”

                Even though bride selling is a traditional native custom, it is still a form of human trafficking. Not all traditions are good traditions.  These women are treated as property and are unable to leave their situations. Selling another person is a clear violation of human rights.

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?

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.

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.

Is Tradition an Excuse to Have Child Slaves?

Every day Haitian children are sent away in hopes of a better life. This has become a Haitian tradition. When Haitians don’t have enough money to support their children they sent them to live with another family or many times complete strangers. These foster parents are supposed to take care of these children as if they were their own. They’re supposed to send them to school, buy them clothe, and guide the to a better future. However, this hardly ever happens. These children are taken in as servants, forced to work without pay, secluded from other children in the household and not often sent to school. Before the earthquake out of Haiti’s eight million people 300,000 children were restaveks. After the earthquake one million Haitians were left homeless so the number of restaveks also raised a lot. The big question with all this is. Is this Haitian tradition or child slavery? If the parents give away the children willingly is it still slavery? Jean-Robert Cadet, a former restavek, now runs an organization against restaveks. Cadet tells us that the only reason why restaveks are still around today is because it is socially accepted as tradition. Cadet says only a small percent of restaveks are treated well and sent to school, this makes Haitian parents prefer sending of their kids and hoping they end up with a good family than watching them die while living with them. So is this so called “ tradition” slavery?

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