Labor and exploitation of children

Carlos Mora Vanegas

It is known that the fight against child slavery is governed by two documents of the UN system. C182 The Convention "on the worst forms of child labor?, Adopted by the ILO in 1999, states:" The term the worst forms of child labor (...) covers all forms of slavery or practices similar to slavery, as the sale and trafficking of children, debt bondage and serfdom and forced or compulsory labor, including forced or compulsory recruitment of children for use in armed conflict. ?

The "Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, supplementing the UN Convention Against Transnational Organised Crime Units crime? states: "Trafficking in persons shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, fraud, deceit, abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for purposes of exploitation. Exploitation shall include (...) the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs for (...) child means a person under 18 years?. It adds that about 3,500 less than the "triple border" suffer sexual exploitation in hotels and streets. Others work on plantations or in domestic service, but always at risk of being subjected to terrible abuse. In other areas of the world children are even recruited to join the armies fighting in armed conflicts.

In 1997, U.S. police discovered a group of 55 children mute buttons selling for a dollar in trains and subways of New York. The mute of Jackson Heights, as he called the press, had been brought from Mexico by a band that is dedicated to enslave defenseless children. Small received corporal punishment and were not paid any salary.

That episode, occurred in the heart of Western civilization possible to note the magnitude with child slavery. Each year, between 700,000 and 1 million children and women victims of trafficking are illegal under estimated the U.S. government in 2000.

When children arrive in a foreign country, are at the mercy of their employers, to isolate them to make them work in plantations, factories or domestic service, forced to become beggars or allocate to child prostitution. For their working conditions remain virtually detained, are at high risk and are treated like slaves.

unesco. org. In the center of Bamenda (Cameroon), there are billboards with job offers for children, who need the required age and the proposed salary. These agencies recruit clandestine children aged 6 to 14 years that, once placed in cocoa or cotton, are $ 14 per month.

In Abidjan (Côte d'Ivoire), employment agencies hiring minors to work in the mines for 10 dollars a month and girls are trafficked to Europe or the United States to be employed in domestic work for $ 25 a month. Many of them end up nurturing child prostitution networks.

Paid poverty wages, these children represent a workforce of almost free.

The same situation prevails more or less in almost all countries? West and Central Africa. In this region, in recent years intensified the trafficking of children for use as cheap labor in conditions of slavery as a fact-finding mission found the ILO which toured nine countries in the area.

In most cases, children are sold by their parents for amounts ranging between 14 and 40 dollars. Some brokers admitted that place up to 150 children per year.

A Nigerian network received 10,000 to $ 12,000 to bring children smuggled to New York, according to the Immigration Service.

The system is identical in Asia or Latin America, two regions denounced by human rights organizations as "bulk supplier" of child slaves.

For obvious reasons, it is difficult to estimate the economic value that represents that child trafficking. But experts estimate that, after drug trafficking, illegal gambling and prostitution-child slavery is one of the most lucrative forms of organized transnational crime.

Intolerable working conditions faced by children who are victims of trafficking, contact with hazardous substances and tools and violent punishments are not only break your health. Also exposed to deep psychological trauma.

The separation from his family, the stress factors associated with trafficking, aggravated by sexual abuse exerted on children working as domestic servants, street or are forced into prostitution, predispose to depressive symptoms. For many, those extra torment eventually open the way of crime or submerged in the depths of the drug.

Consider that the Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations and ratified by more than 20 states on 20 November 1989.La Convention follows the pattern of international treaty both in its internal structure as in the remaining 6 countries contenido.Sólo for universal ratification, these are the USA, Switzerland, Somalia, Oman, UAE? Arab States and the Cook Islands. This makes the Convention on the Rights of the Child Human rights treaty ratified by more States Parties.

De1959 November 20, the General Assembly of the United Nations unanimously adopted the Declaration on 10 points Rights of the Child:

1 .- Rights to equality regardless of race, creed or nationality.

2 .- The right to special protection for their physical, mental and social development.

3 .- The right to a name and a nationality.

4 .- The right to food, shelter and medical care for the child and mother.

5 .- The right to education and care for the child physically or mentally handicapped.

6 .- Right to understanding and love from parents and society.

7 .- Right to free education and to enjoy the games.

8 .- The right to be the first to receive disaster assistance.

9 .- The right to be protected from neglect and exploitation in the workplace.

10 .- Right to form in a spirit of solidarity, understanding, friendship and justice among all peoples

Keep in mind as we remember them always assumes elrincondelvago.com operating conditions and has the following features:

• full-time job

• very long working hours

• work and life on the streets in bad conditions

• low pay

• work that hampers access to education

• work to undermine the dignity and self-esteem of children, such as slavery or bonded labor and sexual exploitation

• work to undermine the full social and psychological development

Aspects of child development can be adversely affected by the work are:

• Physical development, which covers health in general.

• Cognitive development, covering literacy, numeracy and the acquisition of skills necessary for life.

• Emotional development, which includes self-esteem, affection, etc..

• Social and moral, which includes the sense of group identity and the ability to distinguish right from wrong