Child slavery

Forced, unpaid labor of children (minors)

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Part of a series on

Forced labour and slavery

Contemporary

* Child labour
* Child soldiers
* Conscription
* CSEC
* Debt bondage
* India
* Forced marriage
* Bride buying
* Child marriage
* Wife selling
* Forced prostitution
* Human trafficking
* Child
* China
* Cybersex
* Europe
* Fraud factory
* India
* United States
* Involuntary servitude
* ... in 21st-century jihadism
* ... in Africa
* Peonage
* Penal labour
* Sex trafficking
* China
* Europe
* United States
* Sexual slavery
* Wage slavery

Historical

Antiquity

* Babylonia
* Egypt
* Greece
* Rome

Medieval Europe

* Ancillae
* Black Sea slave trade
* Byzantine Empire
* Genoese slave trade
* Kholop
* Prague slave trade
* Serfs
* History
* In Russia
* Emancipation
* Thrall
* Venetian slave trade
* Balkan slave trade

Muslim world

* Baqt
* Barbary Coast
* slave trade
* pirates
* Sack of Baltimore
* Slave raid of Suðuroy
* Turkish Abductions
* Bukhara slave trade
* Concubinage
* history
* Ma malakat aymanukum
* Avret Pazarları
* Harem
* Abbasid harem
* Ottoman Imperial Harem
* Safavid imperial harem
* Qajar harem
* Jarya/Cariye
* Odalisque
* Qiyan
* Umm al-walad
* Circassian slave trade
* Contract of manumission
* Crimean slave trade
* Kafala system
* Khazar slave trade
* Khivan slave trade
* Ottoman Empire
* Avret Pazarları
* Saqaliba
* Slavery in the Abbasid Caliphate
* Slavery in al-Andalus
* Slavery in the Rashidun Caliphate
* Slavery in the Umayyad Caliphate
* Slavery in the Abbasid Caliphate
* Volga Bulgarian slave trade
* 21st century

Atlantic slave trade

* Brazil
* Bristol
* Database
* Dutch
* Middle Passage
* Nantes
* New France
* Panyarring
* Spanish Empire
* Slave Coast
* Thirteen colonies

Topics and practice

* Blackbirding
* Child soldiers
* Conscription
* Devshirme
* Ghilman
* Mamluk
* Coolie
* Corvée labour
* Drapetomania
* Dysaesthesia aethiopica
* Field slaves in the United States
* Treatment
* Gladiator
* Gladiatrix
* House slaves
* Planter class
* Proslavery thought
* Saqaliba
* Seasoning
* Slave market
* Slave Power
* Slave raiding
* Slavocracy
* Voluntary slavery
* White slavery

Naval

* Galley slave
* Impressment
* Pirates
* Shanghaiing
* Slave ship

By country or region

Sub-Saharan Africa

* Contemporary Africa
* Trans-Saharan slave trade
* Red Sea slave trade
* Indian Ocean slave trade
* Zanzibar slave trade
* Angola
* Chad
* Comoros
* Ethiopia
* Mali
* Mauritania
* Niger
* Nigeria
* Seychelles
* Somalia
* Somali slave trade
* South Africa
* Sudan
* Zanzibar

North and South America

* Pre-Columbian America
* Aztec
* Americas indigenous
* U.S. Natives
* United States
* field slaves
* female
* contemporary
* maps
* partus
* prison labour
* slave codes
* treatment
* interregional
* proslavery
* sexual slavery
* The Bahamas
* Canada
* Caribbean
* Barbados
* British Virgin Islands
* Trinidad
* Code Noir
* Latin America
* Brazil
* Lei Áurea
* Colombia
* Cuba
* Haiti
* revolt
* Restavek
* (Encomienda)
* Puerto Rico

East, Southeast, and South Asia

* Haruwa-charuwa
* Human trafficking in Southeast Asia
* Bhutan
* Brunei
* China
* Booi Aha
* Eunuchs
* Laogai
* penal system
* India
* Debt bondage
* Chukri System
* Bawi system
* Indonesia
* Japan
* comfort women
* Karayuki-san
* Korea
* Kwalliso
* Nobi
* Malaysia
* Maldives
* Slavery in the Mongol Empire
* Thailand
* Yankee princess
* Vietnam

Australia and Oceania

* Australia
* Human trafficking
* Blackbirding
* Slave raiding in Easter Island
* Human trafficking in Papua New Guinea
* Blackbirding in Polynesia

Europe and North Asia

* Sex trafficking in Europe
* United Kingdom
* Penal Labour
* Slavery
* Denmark
* Dutch Republic
* Finland
* France
* Germany in World War II
* Hungary
* Malta
* Norway
* Poland
* Portugal
* Romania
* Russia
* Spain
* Sweden
* Switzerland

North Africa and West Asia

* Afghanistan
* Bacha bazi
* Algeria
* Bahrain
* Egypt
* Human trafficking in the Middle East
* Iran
* Iraq
* Jordan
* Kuwait
* Lebanon
* Libya
* Morocco
* Oman
* Palestine
* Saudi Arabia
* Syria
* Tunisia
* Qatar
* Yemen
* United Arab Emirates

Religion

* Bible
* Christianity
* Catholicism
* Mormonism
* Islam
* Judaism
* Baháʼí Faith

Opposition and resistance

* Abolitionism
* U.K.
* U.S.
* Brussels Anti-Slavery Conference 1889–90
* Temporary Slavery Commission
* 1926 Slavery Convention
* Committee of Experts on Slavery
* Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery
* Ad Hoc Committee on Slavery
* Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery
* Abolitionists
* Anglo-Egyptian Slave Trade Convention
* Anti-Slavery International
* Blockade of Africa
* U.K.
* U.S.
* Colonization
* Liberia
* Sierra Leone
* Compensated emancipation
* Freedman
* Manumission
* Freedom suit
* Slave Power
* Underground Railroad
* songs
* Slave rebellion
* Slave Trade Acts
* International law
* Third Servile War
* 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution
* Timeline of abolition of slavery and serfdom
* Abolition of slave trade in Persian gulf [fa]

Related

* Common law
* Forced labour
* Fugitive slaves
* laws
* convention
* Great Dismal Swamp maroons
* Indentured servitude
* List of slaves
* owners
* last survivors of American slavery
* List of slavery-related memorials and museums
* Slave catcher
* Slave marriages in the United States
* Slave narrative
* films
* songs
* Slave name
* Slave patrol
* Slave Route Project
* breeding
* court cases
* Washington
* Jefferson
* J.Q. Adams
* Lincoln
* Emancipation Proclamation
* 40 acres
* Freedmen's Bureau
* Iron bit
* Emancipation Day

* v
* t
* e

Child slavery means that children have to work under slave-like conditions. Even though-slavery has been abolished, there are still many children with this fate. Many of them live in developing countries. The enslavement of children can be traced back through history. Despite the fact that slavery has been abolished, children continue to be enslaved and trafficked. Particularly in developing countries, this is a problem. Like other forms of modern slavery, child slavery is also often linked to poverty: Families "sell" their children, because they are poor, and often do not see other options. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote about a man who bought a slave woman, just to bear children, which he could then sell as slaves.[1]

## History

[edit]

Photograph of a slave boy in the Sultanate of Zanzibar. 'An Arab master's punishment for a slight offence.' c. 1890.

Child slavery refers of the slavery of children below the age of majority. Many children have been sold into slavery in the past for their family to repay debts or crimes or earn some money if the family were short of cash. In the Roman Empire, the children of a slave woman normally became the property of her owner.[2] This was also the case in Korea around 1000 AD.[3] Since slavery among the Maya and indigenous people of North America could be inherited, the children of the Indians could be born slaves.[4][5]

### In the United States

[edit]

Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote about a woman a slave owner bought to breed children to sell.[1] The expectations of children who were either bought or born into slavery varied. Scholars noted, "age and physical capacity, as well as the degree of dependence, set the terms of children's integration into households".[6]

The duties that child slaves were responsible for performing are disputed among scholars. A few representations of the lives that slave children led portrayed them as, "virtually divorced from the plantation economy until they were old enough to be employed as field hands, thereby emphasizing the carefree nature of childhood for a part of the slave population that was temporarily spared forced labor".[7] This view also stated that if children were asked to perform any duties at all, it was to perform light household chores, such as being "organized into 'trash gangs' and made to collect refuse about the estate".[7] Opposing scholars argued that slave children had their youth stolen from them, and were forced to start performing adult duties at a very young age.[7] Some say that children were forced to perform field labor duties as young as the age of six.[7] It is argued that in some areas children were put to "regular work in the antebellum South" and it "was a time when slaves began to learn work routines, but also work discipline and related punishment".[8]

A degree of self-possession was present in some degree to adults, but "children retained the legal incapacities of dependence even after they had become productive members of households".[6] It was reported by scholars that, "this distinctive status shaped children's standing within familial households and left them subject to forced apprenticeship, even after emancipation".[6] There were slave owners who did not want child slaves or women who were pregnant for fear that the child would have "took up too much of her time".[1]

The conditions of slavery for pregnant women varied regionally. In most cases, women worked in the fields up until childbirth performing small tasks. "four weeks appears to have been the average confinement period, or 'lying-in period', for antebellum slave women following delivery in the South as a whole".[8] Slaveholders in northern Virginia, however, usually only permitted an average lying-in period of about "two weeks before ordering new mothers back to work".[7] The responsibility of raising and tending to the children then became the task of other children and older elderly slaves. In most institutions of slavery throughout the world, the children of slaves became the property of the owner. This created a constant supply of people to perform labor. This was the case with, for example, thralls and American slaves. In other cases, children were enslaved as if they were adults. Usually, the mother's status determined if the child was a slave, but some local laws varied the decision to the father. In many cultures, slaves could earn their freedom through hard work and buying their own freedom.[citation needed]

## Modern day

[edit]

Although the abolition of slavery in much of the world has greatly reduced child slavery, the problem lives on, especially in developing countries. According to the Anti-Slavery Society, "Although there is no longer any state which legally recognizes, or which will enforce, a claim by a person to a right of property over another, the abolition of slavery does not mean that it ceased to exist. There are millions of people throughout the world—mainly children—in conditions of virtual to slavery."[9] It further notes that slavery, particularly child slavery, was on the rise in 2003. It points out that there are countless others in other forms of servitude (such as peonage, bonded labor, and servile concubinage) that are not slavery in the narrow legal sense. Critics claim they are stretching the definition and practice of slavery beyond its original meaning and are actually referring to forms of unfree labor other than slavery.[10][11] In 1990, reports of slavery came out of Bahr al Ghazal, a Dinka region in southern Sudan. In 1995, Dinka mothers spoke about their abducted children. Roughly 20,000 slaves were reported in Sudan in 1999.[12] "The handmade woolen carpet industry is extremely labor-intensive and one of the largest export earners for India, Pakistan, Nepal and Morocco." During the past 20 years,[timeframe?] about 200,000 and 300,000 children have been involved, most of them in the carpet belt of Uttar Pradesh in central India.[13] Many children in Asia are kidnapped or trapped in servitude, where they work in factories and workshops for no pay and receive constant beatings.[9] Slaves have reappeared following the old slave trade routes in West Africa. "The children are kidnapped or purchased for $20–$70 each in poorer states, such as Benin and Togo, and sold into slavery in sex dens or as unpaid domestic servants for $350.00 each in wealthier oil-rich states, such as Nigeria and Gabon."[9]

### Trafficking

[edit]

Main article: Trafficking of children

Trafficking of children includes recruiting, harboring, obtaining, and transporting children by use of force or fraud for the purpose of subjecting them to involuntary acts, such as commercial sexual exploitation (including prostitution) or involuntary labor, i.e., enslavement. Some see human trafficking as the modern form of slavery. Human trafficking is the trade of human beings and their use by criminals to make money. The majority of trafficking victims are adults, predominantly made up of women forced into prostitution, but children make up many victims forced into prostitution. [clarification needed]

In Ukraine, a survey conducted by the non-governmental organization (NGO) La Strada-Ukraine[14] in 2001–2003, based on a sample of 106 women being trafficked out of Ukraine found that 3% were under 18, and the US State Department reported in 2004 that incidents of minors being trafficked was increasing. In Thailand, NGOs have estimated that up to a third of prostitutes are children under 18, many trafficked from outside Thailand.[15]

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography estimates that about one million children in Asia alone are victims of the sex trade.[16]

Following the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Save the Children, World Vision and the British Red Cross have called for an immediate halt to adoptions of Haitian children not approved before the earthquake, warning that child traffickers could exploit the lack of regulation. An Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights spokesman said that child enslavement and trafficking was "an existing problem and could easily emerge as a serious issue over the coming weeks and months".[17]

### Child soldiers

[edit]

Main article: Military use of children

The United Nations defines child soldier as "A child associated with an armed force or armed group refers to any person below 18 years of age who is, or who has been, recruited or used by an armed force or armed group in any capacity, including but not limited to children, boys, and girls, used as fighters, cooks, porters, spies or for sexual purposes."[18] In 2007, Human Rights Watch estimated that 200,000 to 300,000 children served as soldiers in current conflicts.[19][20] In 2012, this estimation rose to be around 300,000 in only twenty countries.[21] Around 40% of child soldiers are believed to be girls, that have been taken and used as sex slaves and 'wives'.[22]

### Forced labor

[edit]

More girls under 16 work as domestic workers than any other category of child labor, often sent to cities by parents living in rural poverty[23] such as in restaveks in Haiti.

## See also

[edit]

* Children in the military – Conscription of children in warfare
* Children's Care International
* Andrew Forrest – Australian mining businessman (born 1961)
* Slavery in the 21st century
* Walk Free – International human rights organisation based in Australia

## Notes

[edit]

1. ^ a b c Stephenson, Mimosa (November 2011). "Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin: An Argument for Protection of the Family". Journal of the American Studies Association of Texas: 40.
2. ^ Keith Bradley (7 March 2016). "slavery, Roman". Oxford Classical Dictionary. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.013.7311. ISBN 978-0-19-938113-5. Archived from the original on 10 May 2024. Retrieved 27 June 2023. "Children born to a slave mother (vernae) were typically themselves slaves"
3. ^ Seung B. Kye (2021). "12. Slavery in Medieval Korea". In Craig Perry; David Eltis; Stanley L. Engerman; David Richardson (eds.). The Cambridge World History of Slavery, Vol. II: AD 500–AD 1420. Cambridge University Press. p. 297\. doi:10.1017/9781139024723. ISBN 9781139024723. "the heritability of slave status was enacted as evidenced by the Matrilineal Succession Law (chongmopŏp) of 1036, which stated that the offspring of nobi shall inherit the status of the mother"
4. ^ Burkholder, Mark A.; Johnson, Lyman L. (2019). "1. America, Iberia, and Africa Before the Conquest". Colonial Latin America (10th ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 10\. "the Maya […] once enslaved, the status could become hereditary unless the slave were ransomed"
5. ^ (Ames 2001, p. 3)"the children of slaves in many areas were also slaves”
6. ^ a b c Jones, Catherine (February 2010). "Ties That Bind, Bonds That Break: Children in the Reorganization of Households in Postemancipation Virginia". Journal of Southern History: 74.
7. ^ a b c d e Pargas, Damian (December 2011). "From the Cradle to the Fields: Slave Childcare and Childhood in the Antebellum South". Slavery & Abolition. 32 (4): 477–493\. doi:10.1080/0144039X.2011.601618. S2CID 143877395.
8. ^ a b Pargas, Damian Alan (December 2011). "From the Cradle to the Fields: Slave Childcare and Childhood in the Antebellum Plantation South". Slavery & Abolition. doi:10.1080/0144039X.2011.601618. S2CID 143877395.
9. ^ a b c "Does Slavery Still Exist?". Anti-Slavery Society. Archived from the original on 2018-08-08. Retrieved 2008-01-04.
10. ^ Pat Dolan, Nick Frost (2017). The Routledge Handbook of Global Child Welfare. Taylor & Francis. p. 170\. ISBN 9781317374749.
11. ^ Beyond Voluntarism: Human Rights and the Developing International Legal Obligations of Companies. ICHRP. 2002. p. 32\. ISBN 9782940259199.
12. ^ Miniter, Richard (July 1999). "The False Promise of Slave Redemption". The Atlantic.
13. ^ "Child Labor in the Carpet Industry". Anti-Slavery Society. 3 April 2007. Archived from the original on 5 October 2018. Retrieved 21 November 2011.
14. ^ "La Strada Ukraine". www.brama.com. Archived from the original on 2010-09-04. Retrieved 2010-05-25.
15. ^ "United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute". Archived from the original on 2005-10-24.
16. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2007-11-13. Retrieved 2010-05-25.`{{cite web}}`: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
17. ^ Call for halt to Haiti adoptions over traffickers, The Times, January 23, 2010.
18. ^ Tremblay, Stephanie. "Child Recruitment and Use". United Nations Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict | To promote and protect the rights of all children affected by armed conflict. Archived from the original on 2023-09-13. Retrieved 2020-04-02.
19. ^ Staff. Campaign Page: Child Soldiers, Human Rights Watch.
20. ^ Dabbagh, Maureen (8 December 2011). Parental Kidnapping in America: An Historical and Cultural Analysis. McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-8905-3.
21. ^ "Ten facts about child soldiers that everyone should know". The Independent. 2012-12-23. Archived from the original on 2018-11-28. Retrieved 2020-04-02.
22. ^ Theirworld (2020-04-03). "Child soldiers". Theirworld. Archived from the original on 2019-12-07. Retrieved 2020-04-02.
23. ^ "In Togo, a 10-Year-Old's Muted Cry: 'I Couldn't Take Any More'". Washington Post. Archived from the original on 12 June 2018. Retrieved 27 May 2018.

## Bibliography

[edit]

* Ames, Kenneth M. (2001). "Slaves, chiefs and labour on the northern Northwest Coast". World Archaeology. The Archeology of Slavery. 33 (1). Taylor & Francis: 1–17\. doi:10.1080/00438240120047591. ISSN 0043-8243. JSTOR 827885.

## External links

[edit]

* Anti-Slavery Society
* BBC – Help for Gulf child camel jockeys
* NY Times – Robot Jockeys
* BBC – Child camel jockeys find hope
* Ansar Burney Trust – brought world attention to the plight of child camel jockeys and rescued hundreds of children from camel farms; operates shelter homes for trafficked victims; persuaded governments of Qatar and UAE to ban the use of children as camel jockeys in 2005.
* Sport of Sheikhs – Emmy and duPont award-winning documentary on camel jockeys in the Middle East
* Every Child Ministries Archived 2007-02-21 at the Wayback Machine—child slaves
* Trafficking in Minors – United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute
* ECPAT international
* 'Tracking Africa's child trafficking – BBC
* 'Child traffic victims 'failed'- BBC
* Fears of rising child sex trade – The Guardian

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