NAIROBI (dpa) – The Universal Declaration of Human Rights as proclaimed by the United Nations in December 1948 leaves no room for doubt: “No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.”
That may be fine on paper but according to the human rights organization “Anti Slavery”, around 27 million people around the world are effectively “bonded” to others. The topic is set to be hotly debated at the U.N. racism conference which begins in Durban this Friday August 31.Victims of slavery are forced to work on plantations, in factories, households and as prostitutes. The irony is that along the West African coast, home to most of the original slaves in the 17th Century, modern day slave trading is flourishing.“I swear to pay my aunt 40,000 dollars and not to tell the police anything about it. If I fail to comply my aunt has the right to kill me and my family in Nigeria.” Police in Spain came across this grim employment contract which was handed to a young Nigerian.The 20-year-old girl had been lured to Europe with the promise of a job as a waitress. She signed on the dotted line and found herself working as a call girl – like many before her.In the 17th Century, as many as 10,000 slaves a year were shipped to America from points along the West African coast from where the Volta river enters the Atlantic to the Niger delta. These days thousands of young women from Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Cameroon and the Ivory Coast are sold to European “masters”. Most end up in prostitution.From Nigeria alone around 1,130 girls from Nigeria are believed to have been smuggled from Cameroon to France in the past two years, according to the WOTCLEF foundation against trade in women and child labour in the capital Abuja.The slave traders of yore were Europeans, Arabs and Brazilians but nowadays they hail from Africa too. Local dealers round up the girls, some as young as 12 years old, before taking them on an odyssey on foot lasting months on end or else cramming them into primitive buses to be smuggled out through Morocco to southern Europe.“On average 69 girls a month are shipped out this way,” said Titi Abubakar, wife of the Nigerian deputy president: “If the victims protest their abductors have been known to threaten them with severe beatings or even murder.”This fate is shared by the many thousands of slaves, who according to human rights pressure groups, are sold from the poor African states to their wealthier counterparts. Most of these people are put to work on the cocoa and coffee plantations.The U.N. children’s welfare organization UNICEF is concerned at the growing number of children being traded in these regions. In countries like Benin, Mali and Togo parents will sell their offspring to dealers for around 15 U.S. dollars a head.Fathers and mothers are often led to believe the children will find a job as a plantation worker, enabling a son or daughter to earn enough for an education and return home one day.The bulk of this human freight finds its way to the cocoa and coffee plantations of the Ivory Coast, say the aid organizations. According to a UNICEF report, 15,000 children were sold there two years ago and were made to carry out backbreaking work tilling fields.“The children are kept on the farms as prisoners. They are beaten and frequently sexually abused,” said the director of “Save the Children” in Mali, Salia Kante. “People who drink cocoa or coffee are drinking the blood of child slaves.”The misery of child slavery was recently highlighted by the suspected slave vessel “Etireno” in Benin. The ship was stopped by authorities in April in Cotonou on suspicion of involvement in slave trading.The crew was accused of holding on board around 200 minors as slaves. By the time the vessel arrived in Cotonou after two weeks of zig-zagging across the Atlantic, only 40 children were left. A probe into what happened is still in progress.
