Writing: modern slavery

Slavery has been abolished for a long time. Yet it still exists today in the 21st century all over the world. Every day, tens of millions of people live in despair and bondage. These modern slaves constitute a workforce that is speechless, defenseless and corvorable at will. The misery and the hope of a better life push these men, women and children into the hands of the ruthless exploiters who infect them, mistreat them, terrorize them. Brutalized, restrained by force and coercion, they are left to their fate.

Slaves from their earliest ages, or fallen into bondage one day, children, women, and men exhaust themselves in fields, factories, mines, plantations, houses, workshops, or brothels. Slaves for debts, victims of modern or illegal slave traders trapped in the tragedy of human beings, they undergo the worst treatments, reduced to the status of objects. Unlike the time of the transatlantic trafficking, the determining criterion is not the color of the skin nor the ethnic origin but the vulnerability that allows total control over a person.

The main contemporary forms of slavery are debt slavery, forced labor, sexual slavery, forced marriage, traditional slavery, and the exorbitant labor of children ... If they are encountered most often in Asia and Africa, Europe and America are also concerned. There are slaves in the vast plantations of Brazil, women are victims of trafficking and sexual slavery in Europe, young children are enslaved as domestic servants in Western countries. This scourge spares no country. In France, this new servitude is found particularly in domestic slavery, clandestine workshops, forced begging, and enforced prostitution ..

Slavery for debt It affects millions of people in the world. When the misery is too great, a father or mother, a teenager or an old man can contact a debt that their "lender" asks them to repay by working for him. They sometimes need some money to buy food, medicines, or seeds ... The whole family or a part of them - children, young women, or fathers - ends up being alienated, Repayment of this loan. The slaves work seven days a week, throughout the year, against a little food and shelter to sleep. Most often their work never arrives at the end of the debt that can even be passed on to their children. This system has existed for a long time in some Asian countries, such as India because of the caste system.

Forced labor It concerns people who are forced to work under difficult conditions under sometimes dangerous conditions. Their retribution is non-existent and they are often locked up, deprived of identity, subjected to physical and psychological violence. They work at the limit of their strength. Children are the main victims, but adults, both men and women, are also affected. It is practiced in mines, workshops, fields, factories. These slaves constitute a docile workforce, without recourse. They are hundreds of thousands, from brickyards in India to the Cocoa fields of Benin, through forced begging or pickpocketing in European capitals, camel races in the Gulf countries and domestic servitude in the whole world.

Sexual slavery Sexual exploitation of women and children, particularly vulnerable persons, is one of the most common forms of forced labor. Often trapped by traffickers, young women are subjected to extreme violence. Much has been said about these criminal practices concerning children in some countries in South East Asia and for girls in Eastern Europe. These are usually criminal networks that engage in trafficking in human beings. 

Forced marriage It may mean for the girl or girl a life of domestic servitude, slave labor in the fields or forced prostitution.

Traditional slavery In a few countries there remains slavery per ancestry, which means that a group of people or individuals are regarded as enslaved by birth. Although officially abolished slavery, countries such as Mauritania, Niger, Sudan, or some Persian Gulf countries continue to tolerate this practice from another age.

In addition, the International Labor Organization, the UN agency responsible for developing international labor standards, estimates that 215 million children between the ages of 5 and 17 are working. Of these, 53 million young people under the age of 15 are doing particularly dangerous work. According to the ILO, more than 8 million are slaves either in bonded labor, forced into forced labor, recruited into armed conflicts or prostitutes