Cruelty at work

Trafficking and child labour

There are no slaves in the 21st century, right? Wrong.

An estimated 27 million people worldwide are in forced labour, bonded labour, forced child labour, and sexual servitudeⁱ. Too many of these are innocent children.

Children as young as four years old are forced to work as domestic servants, street beggars, agricultural labourers or miners. Even worse, they are involved in prostitution, armed conflict or bonded labour.

A small boys sews silver beads onto a red piece of cloth stretched over a wooden frame.

The trafficking of children meets the growing global demand for cheap, submissive labour.

Bonded labour, or debt bondage, is the least known and most widely used method of enslaving people worldwide. Many of the world's bonded labourers are children, working as virtual slaves to pay off small debts owed by a guardian or parent. Sweating in the heat of stone quarries, working in the fields 16 hours a day, picking rags in city streets, or hidden away as domestic servants, they lead miserable, hopeless lives. They may spend many years working unsuccessfully to pay a debt which is eventually passed on to their own children.

It's a tragic situation, and growing. But there are ways we can help to stop the trade of innocent lives.

ⁱ Source: "Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy" by Kevin Bales (University of California Press, 2000).