Glossary Words commonly used in reference to slavery:
Organized effort by consumers to stop purchasing targeted products and/or to stop supporting targeted companies, with the intent to pressure the company to alter some business practice.
One person assumes complete legal ownership over another. Chattel slavery is the only type where the slave is considered the legal property of the slaveholder, and it exists today primarily in Mauritania and other parts of Northern Africa. (Slavery is technically illegal in these countries, but law enforcement there often returns escaped slaves to their slave holders based on the asserted ownership just as if the practice was legal.) This is the type of slavery that existed in the antebellum American South.
Formally known as the Harkin-Engel Protocol, it is an agreement to eliminate slavery and the worst forms of child labor from cocoa production, with particular emphasis on West Africa. The Protocol marked the first time in the 250-year history of the anti-slavery movement that a global industry took responsibility for the slavery in its supply chain. Brokered by Free the Slaves, the Protocol brought together actors all along the product supply chain to work together: chocolate companies, several non-governmental organizations, organized labor, the International Labor Organization, Senator Harkin and Representative Engel, and the governments of Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana.
Relatively modern form of slavery, where a worker is deceived into slavery through the use of a false employment contract. Slave holders create contracts to lure individuals with promises of employment, yet once they arrive at the workplace they are forced to work for no pay and cannot escape. The false contracts are used to avoid criminal charges or to prove that a “debt” is owed to the slaveholder.
Legally binding agreement between states sponsored by an international organization.
Term used to describe people who do not belong to one of the four major Hindu castes in South Asian societies, primarily in India. Also known as “untouchables,” Scheduled Castes and Harijans, the Dalits are the poorest people on the subcontinent and heavily discriminated against, making them exceptionally vulnerable to slavery.
The most common method of enslavement in the world today, accounting for nearly 20 million of the world’s slaves. It begins when a person accepts a loan from a moneylender, often in order to purchase basic necessities such as food or medicine. The person (and often his or her family as well) are held as collateral against the loan. Because they are collateral, their work does not repay the debt but ‘belongs’ to the moneylender. Unable to earn money independently, the family is unable to repay the illegal debt and it is passed down from generation to generation, creating hereditary enslavement. This system is well-entrenched in South Asia, and can trap entire families in slavery for illegal debts as small as $40.
The modern-day slave trade--the process of enslaving a person. It happens when someone is tricked or kidnapped or coerced, and then taken into slavery. If moving a person from one place to another does not result in slavery, then it is not human trafficking. The term ‘human trafficking’ often has a specific legal definition based on the laws of countries or states or the conventions of international organizations, and those official definitions differ slightly from place to place. For example, under US law, anyone under 18 who is in prostitution is considered a trafficking victim. Condition of compulsory service or labor performed by one person, against his or her will, for the benefit of another person due to force, threats, intimidation or other similar means of coercion and compulsion directed against him or her.
Work done by people who travel from place to place for employment. Migrant laborers today are commonly immigrants, sometimes illegal, and often exploited by their employer. Most migrant labor is in agriculture, and the workers move around the country to harvest crops during different growing seasons. They are usually paid little for work, sometimes crossing the line into slavery when they are paid nothing and unable to leave.
Non-profit organization which is not part of any state or interstate agency.
Children in Haiti are given or sold by their parents into domestic work for another family. The children are promised to education, training and care, but many become slaves for the family, where they are abused and forced to work.
A marriage where the woman has been forced or coerced into marriage against her will. The woman is forced to work, and frequently physically and sexually abused. In some cases the woman has been sold into the marriage.
Sector of the economy in which sexual acts, performances or images are exchanged for money.
A person held against his or her will and controlled physically or psychologically by violence or its threat for the purpose of appropriating their labor.
(see Human Trafficking)
Legally binding agreement between two or more states.
(see Dalit)
Term used in the International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention 182; refers to child labor involving slavery, trafficking, forced labor, child soldiering, commercial sexual exploitation of children, children used for illegal activities, or other work that harms children’s health and morals.
|