Employmentweb_low

employment relations and health inequalities: a conceptual and empirical overvieW
has encouraged a demand for cheap labour, and where there is
virtually no state presence to provide protection against forced labour.
at the same time, land and tenancy reforms, together with the
extension of labour law provisions to rural areas, have not prevented
the emergence of new patterns or manifestations of forced labour.
aggravating the powerful reinforcing effect of the tradition of
slavery is political unrest. This is a particularly salient issue in africa,
where contemporary forced labour and slavery-like practices are more
apparent in countries with a recent history of slavery and with reports
of continuing patterns of discrimination against persons of slave
descent. In addition, there are regions throughout the whole continent
that are disturbed by ongoing civil war, displacing thousands of people
and compelling them to live as refugees. With no alternative, they often
turn to forced labour to supply much needed income (Martens,
Pieczkowski, & Vuuren-Smyth, 2003; Fitzgibbon, 2003).
yet another type of slavery is bonded labour. Bonded labour is a type
of debt bondage, mainly found in South asia, that is defined in broad
terms as a system under which a debtor enters into an agreement with
the creditor to provide his own work, or that of somebody else, for a
specified or unspecified period of time, either without wages or for less
than the minimum wage. Bonded labourers give up the freedom of
changing employment, the right to move freely from place to place and
the right to sell their property or the product of their labour at market
value (Srivastava, 2005; IlO, 2001).
Unfortunately, bonded labour ensnares those who are least able
to work their way out of it, namely women, children and migrants.
With some 5.7 million children in forced or bonded labour, 1.2
million as victims of trafficking, 300,000 children involved in fighting
forces, 1.8 million in prostitution and pornography, and 600,000 in
illicit activities such as drug trafficking, today's statistics are
staggering (see Case study 27). On average, women and girls
constitute 56 per cent of victims of forced economic exploitation.
regarding forced commercial sexual exploitation, they are an
overwhelming majority (98%) (IlO, 2005; 2006) (see Case study 28).
Migrants also have little to no recourse against such labour. Poor
women are triply disadvantaged by their gender, membership in low
castes or other low-status groups, and by virtue of being in bonded
or otherwise exploitative labour arrangements. This forced labour
most directly affects those people working at the margins of the
formal economy, with irregular employment or migration status.
The precarious legal status of millions of undocumented migrant
women and men makes them even more vulnerable to coercion in
industrialised countries (IlO, 2005; WHO, 2005).
"no, we have never tasted chocolate." millions
of people in Britain eat chocolate every day,
what would you say to them' "if i had to say
something to them, it would not be nice words.
They buy something that i suffer to make.
They are eating my flesh.”
source: lawrence, l. (2001, april 22). We
bought boy slaves’ freedom for pounds 20
each; Filmmakers expose brutal child slave
trade on cocoa plantations. SundayMirror.
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