tagged w/ Children's Rights
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CNN...
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THE CNN FREEDOM PROJECT ENDING MODERN-DAY SLAVERY
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January 19th, 2012
12:03 PM ET
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Child slavery and chocolate: All too easy to find
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In "Chocolate's Child Slaves," CNN's David McKenzie travels into the heart of the Ivory Coast to investigate children working in the cocoa fields.
(More information and air times on CNN International.)
By David McKenzie and Brent Swails, CNN
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CLICK ON CNN LINK (at top) TO VIEW THREE VIDEOS
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Daloa, Ivory Coast (CNN) - Chocolate’s billion-dollar industry starts with workers like Abdul. He squats with a gang of a dozen harvesters on an Ivory Coast farm.
Abdul holds the yellow cocoa pod lengthwise and gives it two quick cracks, snapping it open to reveal milky white cocoa beans. He dumps the beans on a growing pile.
Abdul is 10 years old, a three-year veteran of the job.
He has never tasted chocolate.
During the course of an investigation for CNN’s Freedom Project initiative - an investigation that went deep into the cocoa fields of Ivory Coast - a team of CNN journalists found that child labor, trafficking and slavery are rife in an industry that produces some of the world’s best-known brands.
It was not supposed to be this way.
After a series of news reports surfaced in 2001 about gross violations in the cocoa industry, lawmakers in the United States put immense pressure on the industry to change.
“We felt like the public ought to know about it, and we ought to take some action to try to stop it,” said Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, who, together with Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, spearheaded the response. “How many people in America know that all this chocolate they are eating - candies and all of those wonderful chocolates - is being produced by terrible child labor?”
But after intense lobbying by the cocoa industry, lawmakers weren’t able to push through a law. What they got was a voluntary protocol, signed by the heads of the chocolate industry, to stop the worst forms of child labor “as a matter of urgency.” One of the key goals was to certify the cocoa trade as child-labor free.
“It was meant to achieve the end of child slave labor in cocoa fields,” Engel said.
It didn’t.
UNICEF estimates that nearly a half-million children work on farms across Ivory Coast, which produces nearly 40% of the world’s supply of cocoa. The agency says hundreds of thousands of children, many of them trafficked across borders, are engaged in the worst forms of child labor.
A recent study by Tulane University says the industry’s efforts to stop child labor are “uneven” and “incomplete” and that 97% of Ivory Coast’s farmers had not been reached. But the industry’s main representative in the country disagrees with the assessment.
“I think the situation has improved exponentially,” said Rabola Kagohi, country director for the International Cocoa Initiative, the chocolate industry’s answer to fighting child labor and trafficking. “Today, the message is physically getting through.”
Kagohi works out of a basement office with one other permanent employee.
“There are some results,” he said. “I wish that you had spoken to some planters.”
None of the farmers CNN spoke to in the heart of the cocoa production region said they had ever been reached by the International Cocoa Initiative, the government or chocolate companies about child trafficking.
Children such as Abdul don’t know anything about protocols or certification. All they know is work.
When Abdul’s mother died, a stranger brought him across the border to the farm. Abdul says all he’s given is a little food, the torn clothes on his back, and an occasional tip from the farmer. Abdul is a modern child slave.
And he is not the only youngster working in his group.
Yacou insisted he is 16, but his face looks far younger.
“My mother brought me from Burkina Faso when my father died,” he said.
Scars crisscross Yacou’s legs from a machete. He can’t clear grass in the cocoa fields without cutting himself. During harvest season, he works day after day hacking the cocoa pods.
The emotional scars run much deeper.
“I wish I could go to school. I want to read and write,” he said. But Yacou hasn’t spent a single day in school, and he has no idea how to leave the farm.
“It makes me angry,” Engel said. As far as he’s concerned, the chocolate companies haven't done enough.
“They are working with us, and we are glad that they are working with us. But they could do better.”
One of the major players in the Ivory Coast cocoa trade is, not surprisingly, the Ivorian government. Although the country has cornered a vast chunk of a lucrative market, it is considered one of the world’s poorest by any measure.
But the government leadership blames politics and war for the problems in the cocoa industry.
“Thirty years of political instability caused a lot of damage to our economy generally, and to the agricultural sector particularly, and more specifically to the cocoa industry,” said Ivory Coast’s minister of agriculture, Sangafowa Coulibaly. “Unfortunately, these years have been lost.”
After an attempted coup in 2002, the country was split in half and kept from all-out civil war by the United Nations. There was protracted violence after the last disputed presidential elections, when then-President Laurent Gbagbo refused to concede.
With the new government of Alassane Ouattara in charge, the government says it can now put much-needed reforms in place.
“Things can only get better,” Coulibaly said. “The main reason is that today, the political crisis is behind us, the armed conflict is behind us.”
But many observers believe that a new government won’t make it a priority to stop slavery in the cocoa fields.
And with peace, traffickers are free to do their work again. U.N. officials told CNN that the Ivory Coast conflict actually helped slow down trafficking because people were too afraid to move across borders.
Contrary to the promises of action, CNN’s investigation could only find promises. And those promises are empty to children like Abdul and Yacou.
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Post by: CNN's Brent Swails, CNN's David McKenzie
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THE CNN FREEDOM PROJECT ENDING MODERN-DAY SLAVERY
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January 19th,... more
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The Guardian UK...
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Father who set up anti-gay-bullying campaign after son's suicide found dead
Roger Crouch's 15-year-old son Dominic leapt off a roof amid rumours he was gay after apparently kissing a boy for a dare
Steven Morris
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 1 December 2011 15.43 EST
PHOTO: Roger Crouch with his son Dominic, taken from the Facebook anti-bullying website.
Photograph: SWNS.com
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A father who campaigned against homophobic bullying after his son killed himself amid rumours that he was gay has been found dead.
Earlier this month Roger Crouch, 55, who launched a Facebook campaign after 15-year-old Dominic leapt off a roof after apparently kissing a boy for a dare, was named "hero of the year" by the lesbian, gay and bisexual charity Stonewall, beating the likes of Lady Gaga and Joan Armatrading.
He was pronounced dead after Gloucestershire police went to his home in Gretton, near Cheltenham, on Monday following "concerns for the welfare of a man at the address".
A police spokesperson said on Thursday that they were not treating his death as suspicious and that the coroner had been informed.
Crouch, who was clerk of Stow-on-the-Wold town council in the Cotswolds, was also a patron for Diversity Role Models, a charity campaigning against homophobic bullying. He lobbied schools to ensure anti-bullying policies are used and argued young people should be taught coping strategies, and visited the House of Commons to tell MPs what they could do about bullying.
Crouch's wife, Paola, wrote of her and daughter Giulia's heartbreak on the Facebook group she and Crouch created. She posted: "The changes you have started for young people everywhere, the work you have done against bullying, will remain as a towering monument to you."
Dominic leapt from the roof of a six-storey building near his private school, St Edwards in Cheltenham, in May last year. The inquest into his death heard that there had been rumours he might be gay after he was said to have kissed a boy during a spin-the-bottle game.
The inquest recorded a verdict of suicide, and his son's death prompted Crouch to begin his campaign against bullying.
Crouch said at the time: "It is clear that the banter and rumours were based on Dom's alleged sexuality. Some maintain that mystery still surrounds Dominic's death. There's no real mystery around why Dom was driven to take his own life.
"He was desperate that his happiness after the residential trip was punctured by rumours and being the butt of jokes. Over a single morning he felt he went from hero to zero. The real tragedy is not just that he died. It's that his death was preventable."
After receiving the Stonewall award last month, Crouch said: "I see this as an award for Dom. By choosing us for this award you've also chosen to take a stand alongside all the young people whose lives have been ended by bullying.
"We are parents who loved our son. We stood by him in life and we stand by him in death."
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A spokesman for Stonewall said: "His tireless campaigning against bullying following the death of his son was an inspiration."
Joanne Dunning, of the Lesbian and Gay Foundation, said: "It seemed like he was only just getting the recognition he deserved for his anti-bullying work."
.The Guardian UK...
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Father who set up anti-gay-bullying campaign after... more
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CNN...
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The Blood and Sweat Behind Labor Day
By Kenneth Davis, Special to CNN
updated 10:56 AM EST, Fri September 2, 2011
PHOTO:
Scores of boys worked at the Breaker Pennsylvania Co. coal mine before child labor was finally outlawed in 1938.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Ken Davis: Today, labor under fire. But war for workers' rights was long, deadly struggle
There was child labor, 12-hour days, 6-day weeks, low wages, no sick days, holidays
Soldiers, militias, private armies used deadly force to break 19th-century strikes
Labor Day born in 1894, he says, but reform didn't come till FDR's fair labor laws
Editor's note: Kenneth C. Davis is the author of "Don't Know Much About History: Anniversary Edition" and "A Nation Rising." His website is www.dontknowmuch.com.
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(CNN) -- A small boy, perched on an open catwalk in a candy factory, falls to his death. No, it is not a macabre moment out of "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory." It is a true story told by social reformer Jane Addams, who founded Chicago's Hull House in 1889.
Addams also described little girls who refused sweets as Christmas gifts that year. "They could not bear the sight of it," Addams wrote. "We discovered that that they had worked from 7 in the morning until 9 at night, and they were exhausted."
These Dickensian scenes lasted in America from the late 19th century until 1938, when child labor was outlawed under the Fair Labor Standards Act. They are a sobering reminder of why the nation marks Labor Day.
To most Americans, the first Monday in September means a three-day weekend and the last hurrah of summer, a final outing at the shore before school begins, a family picnic.
But Labor Day was born in a time when work was no picnic. As America was moving from farms to factories in the Industrial Age, there was a long, violent, often-deadly struggle for fundamental workers' rights, a struggle that in many ways was America's "other civil war."
It was a war fought when 12-hour days and six-day weeks were routine. Wages were low; there were no sick days, pensions or holidays. There was certainly no unemployment insurance. Any attempts at organizing were met by the combined wrath of business and government. The business of America was business.
That conflict, a period in which thousands of workers died in America's unsafe and unsanitary factories and mines, and hundreds more died in riots and pitched battles over workers' rights, is the little-noted history behind this holiday.
The first American Labor Day is dated to a parade organized by unions in New York on September 5, 1882, as a celebration of "the strength and spirit of the American worker." Their goals were simple: decent wages, an eight-hour workday and the right to organize. The September date was selected to provide a respite for workers and their families midway between July Fourth and Thanksgiving Day. By all accounts, the first Labor Day was a peaceful affair that drew tens of thousands of workers and their families to the city's Union Square Park.
But the path to a national Labor Day holiday was no walk in the park. The federal Labor Day was created 12 years later, signed into law by President Grover Cleveland during his second term in 1894. It's not that Cleveland was a great friend of labor. In fact, he had just sent out troops to break a strike.
During the economic depression known as the Panic of 1893, workers for the Pullman Car Co., one of the country's largest manufacturers, walked off their jobs when Pullman tried to cut wages, fire workers and evict them from their company-owned homes. They were joined by hundreds of thousands of workers in a nationwide walkout. Facing a strike that would shut down America's railroads, Cleveland dispatched 12,000 federal troops on the premise that the strike interfered with the U.S. Mail. In the ensuing violence, at least 13 strikers were killed.
This was not the first time troops had been used against American workers. Federal soldiers, state militias and private armies, often from the Pinkerton Detective Agency, had used deadly force to break many 19th-century strikes. Some of these strikes had become pitched battles, like the Homestead strike of 1892 in Pennsylvania. There, men on both sides armed with rifles and cannons died fighting over keeping a union at a steel mill, a union that owner Andrew Carnegie and manager Henry Frick were determined to break.
After crushing the Pullman strike, Cleveland thought that granting workers a Labor Day holiday was a sop that would appease them as he sought a third term. (It didn't work; he was denied the Democratic nomination in 1896.) Politicians and labor leaders were content to keep the holiday in September, far from the growing popularity of May Day as a commemoration of the "Martyrs of Haymarket Square," a group of union leaders executed -- unjustly, it was later proved -- after Chicago's deadly Haymarket Square Riots in May 1884.
For unions, Labor Day proved a hollow victory. Most of the reforms they sought did not come about for nearly half a century. The Depression-era fair labor laws that were passed under Franklin D. Roosevelt finally set standards like the eight-hour day and an end to child labor.
This history is worth remembering on Labor Day. But at a moment when American workers are battered by high unemployment, the Great Recession, a technology revolution in the workplace and globalization, there seems to be little to celebrate.
And these economic forces are only part of the relentless pressures faced by America's work force. There is also a renewed war over labor in this country. It is being fought in battleground states including, most notably, Wisconsin, Ohio, New Jersey and Florida, where mostly Republican governors are wrangling with public employees over pay, pensions and more fundamental issues including the right of collective bargaining.
Their sharp anti-union rhetoric has increasingly found receptive listeners who have been convinced that "spoiled" unions and public employees -- the people who fight our fires, teach our children and pick up our garbage -- are at fault for our budgetary woes and the sorry state of the economy. The fight has been vitriolic but well short of the violence of America's "other civil war."
With that in mind, it is worth recalling President Abraham Lincoln's words during the dark early days of the real Civil War. "Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed," he told Congress in December 1861. "Labor is the superior of capital and deserves much the higher consideration,"
Today, the first Republican president's words would count as heresy in the GOP. But they are a sharp reminder that working men and women built this country and fought its wars. And their labors are worth more than a Monday holiday or the mean-spirited contempt they now face. They deserve, as Lincoln said, "the higher consideration."
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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Kenneth Davis.
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The Blood and Sweat Behind Labor Day
By Kenneth Davis, Special to... more
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CNN...
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/07/27/cameroon.breast.ironing/index.html?hpt=hp_c1
Breast ironing tradition targeted in Cameroon
From Nkepile Mabuse, CNN
July 27, 2011 8:53 p.m. EDT
Click on photo to play video
Activists fight breast ironing tradition
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(CNN) --
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Every morning before school, nine-year-old Terisia Techu would undergo a painful procedure. Her mother would take a burning hot pestle straight out of a fire and use it to press her breasts.
With tears in her eyes as she recalls what it was like, Terisia tells CNN that one day the pestle was so hot, it burned her, leaving a mark. Now 18, she is still traumatized.
Her mother, Grace, denies the incident. But she proudly demonstrates the method she used on her daughter for several weeks, saying the goal was to make her less desirable to boys -- and stave off pregnancy.
A study found that one in four girls in Cameroon have been affected by the practice.
The U.S. State Department, in its 2010 human rights report on Cameroon, cited news reports and said breast ironing "victimized numerous girls in the country" and in some cases "resulted in burns, deformities, and psychological problems."
There are more than 200 ethnic groups in Cameroon with different norms and customs. Breast ironing is practiced by all of them.
Some mothers use hot stones or coconut shells to flatten their daughters' breasts.
Doctors believe improved diets have resulted in young Cameroonian girls going through puberty early. Many of them are also becoming pregnant early.
Terisia became pregnant at 15. Her child died at birth.
She told CNN that breast ironing doesn't work. She hates the practice and wishes her mother had instead talked to her about sex and preventing pregnancy.
Grace Techu argues that if it weren't for the breast ironing, Terisia would have become pregnant at an even younger age.
Techu has four daughters, and she used the procedure on the first two. The third avoided it because her breasts are growing at an acceptable rate, Techu says, and the fourth girl is still too young.
Mothers who want their children to finish school before becoming parents have resorted to this drastic measure, and many see nothing wrong with it.
In 2006, a German nongovernmental organization exposed the practice, which at the time was done mainly in secret.
Now, charities have embarked on campaigns to educate mothers in Cameroon that sex education -- not breast ironing -- is the solution to ending teenage pregnancy.
Dr Sinou Tchana, a gynecologist in Cameroon, has seen breast glands that were destroyed. She also saw one case of cancer, though she says it couldn't be established whether the ironing caused or only exacerbated the cancer.
"One mother came with secondary burns because the stone she was using to do this breast ironing burned her," Tchana says.
One of Tchana's patients is a 23-year-old whose scars are still painful 14 years after her breasts were ironed. She has joined the effort to confront mothers about the effects of their actions.
The challenge for all those trying to stop the practice is reaching parents like Techu in villages before a ritual that they say is motivated by love shatters more lives.
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CNN's Josh Levs contributed to this report.CNN...... more
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Nine children from the drug infected mountains of Sinaloa, Mexico give their opinion on peace amidst an increasingly violent environment, punctuated by the violent video games they play. Very surprising answers reveal how some young individuals can raise above their environmental influences.
Recorded in HD video. 2:30 minutes.
Directed / Produced Maria Caridad PerezNine children from the drug infected mountains of Sinaloa, Mexico give their opinion... more
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CNN.....
June 16th, 2011
03:11 PM ET
My Take: On adoption, Christians should put up or shut up
Editor's Note: Jason Locy is co-author of Veneer: Living Deeply in a Surface Society. He and his wife are adoptive parents and participants in Safe Families for Children, a voluntary alternative to foster care.
By Jason Locy, Special to CNN
When the Arkansas Supreme court struck down a voter-approved initiative that banned cohabitating straight and gay couples from adopting orphaned children, the Christian community predictably erupted.
Byron Babione of the Alliance Defense Fund, a coalition of Christian lawyers, attributed the April ruling to a “political movement afoot to undermine and destroy marriage.” Baptist Press, the publications arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, ran an article that quoted Babione as saying the ruling reflected “a campaign to place adult wants and desires over the best interests of children."
On one hand, these comments aren’t surprising. Conservative evangelicals have decried “the anti-family gay agenda” for decades. On the other, they underscore the way many Christians denounce a social problem that they have no plan for solving.
And the problem here is not ultimately gays adopting — the prevention of which, I believe, was the impetus behind the Arkansas initiative and behind adoption restrictions in various other states. The problem is a global orphan crisis involving tens of millions of children.
In the United States, there are approximately 116,000 foster children waiting to be adopted. That means a judge has either severed the rights of the original parents or the parents have voluntarily signed their children over to the government.
To put this into perspective, we might compare the number of American orphans to the purported 16 million Southern Baptists who attend more than 42,000 churches nationwide. Quick math reveals that there are roughly 138 Southern Baptists for every child in the American foster care system waiting to be adopted. To say it another way, this single denomination has an enormous opportunity to eradicate the orphan crisis in America.
If you’ve spent any time in church, you’ve probably heard a sermon on Noah or Moses or David. But how many sermons have you heard on the biblical mandate to care for orphans?
When was the last time you heard your pastor declare, “if you choose to adopt a child we will stand with you. We will provide respite care, financial help and do everything possible to meet the needs of that child?”
Southern Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Catholics — the Christian Church — can provide safe, loving, permanent homes for these kids. Our faith dictates that we fight for a better way in both words and deeds.
When Jesus asked Peter if he loved him, and Peter responded yes, Jesus didn’t tell him to picket the wolves. He told Peter to feed and tend his sheep.
Some churches and Christian groups are stepping up. Focus on the Family launched a Wait No More initiative in Colorado in 2008, forming partnerships between local churches, adoption agencies and the government in order to encourage families to adopt through the foster care system. As a result, the number of Colorado orphans waiting for a family has been cut in half.
Christianity Today ran a 2010 report headlined “Adoption is Everywhere,” illustrating the trend among churches and Christians who are giving “attention to orphans, adoption, the fatherless, and so on.”
Despite such efforts, the American orphan crisis remains. Too many churches still find it easier to stand behind a megaphone decrying the morality of laws than to stand beside a child in need.
Thousands of orphaned children in America need grandmas and grandpas, embarrassing uncles and crazy aunts. They need someone to teach them to fly a kite and throw a ball and read a book and tie their shoes. They need someone to call mom and dad.
In fairness, adopting a child is not easy and many of these children face difficult adjustments once they’re adopted. They have experienced pain, loss, hurt, confusion and misplaced trust. They have endured physical, emotional and sexual abuse — things most of us don’t even want to imagine.
In 2008, when my wife and I adopted through Bethany Christian Services, the organization educated us on the possible challenges of adopting a child. They informed us that even though our daughter was a baby when we brought her home, she would eventually ask tough questions, as would our friends and family.
But my wife and I know our faith demands action and that sometimes action takes us out of our comfort zone.
As a father of three — two biological children and an adopted child — and a host to a number of children that have needed a temporary home I can tell you these kids need less arguing over who should and should not be allowed to adopt and more families stepping up and saying, “we will adopt.”
It is time Christians decide to either step up or shut up. If a Christian group wants to wade into the discussion over who should adopt, it needs to put its money and manpower where its mouth is.
That means not only challenging families and churches to adopt from foster care (which costs virtually nothing financially) but also to adopt children resulting from unplanned pregnancies, children with special needs and children of mixed race or minority ethnicity.
If Christians’ only desire is to fight the culture wars and score political points, then they should continue to lean on empty rhetoric. But if they truly care about the family and the Bible, they’ll begin caring for children who desperately need a home.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Jason Locy.CNN.....
June 16th, 2011
03:11 PM ET
My Take: On adoption, Christians should... more
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Orphaned in quake, forgotten in Japan
The Japanese government still doesn't have an accurate count of the number of children orphaned in the March earthquake and tsunami. Adding to their woes, a group helping the children says people have stopped calling to offer
VIDEOOrphaned in quake, forgotten in Japan
The Japanese government still... more
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PART ONE...
03/25/2011
Nepal's Lost Daughters
Victims of Child Slavery Learning to Fight Back
By Dialika Krahe
Hartmut Schwarzbach/DER SPIEGEL
Like many Nepalese girls from poor families, Urmila Chaudhary was sold into bonded labor until she liberated herself. Now 20, she works with a team of former victims, traveling throughout Nepal to free other girls from the clutches of their unrepentant masters.
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The man who once bought Urmila squats on the threshold between her past and her new life, picking a piece of chewing tobacco from his teeth. He spits a black stream of saliva into a bucket next to him on the living-room floor. Urmila Chaudhary, who hasn't been his property for the last four years, kneels on the carpet at his feet and hands him a tray holding a cup of sweetened tea.
She ought to hate, curse and berate this man. But, instead, she bows to him and calls him "father."
Urmila was taken from her family and enslaved as a young child. Now 20, she has long, black hair and a gentle, melodious laugh. She wears blue smiley-face earrings and a colorful skirt with a red stripe along the hem, the traditional attire of women from Nepal's Tharu people. Her clothing says a lot about the story of Urmila and this man -- and about the thousands of other young girls who are sold every year as soon as they are big enough to look over the edge of a table and yet still young enough to grow into their new roles as servants.
Her former owner wears his black hair carefully parted, a bomber jacket and tracksuit pants. He was astonished when he saw Urmila on television and in a newspaper photo that depicted her standing next to the country's president.
"I thought you would have forgotten us," he says.
"No," Urmila replies.
Sold for 50 Euros
Urmila says she was five years old when this man, an attorney from a respected family, came to her village of Manpur, on the Rapti River, and made an offer that ended her childhood.
It was a day in January, just after the Maghi festival had begun, one of those cold days of the year when the Tharu celebrate the New Year. It's also the time of the year when they sell their daughters.
"I can still see him coming toward us," says Urmila. He was a man from the city, wearing sunglasses and a suit. "I had never seen such clothing," she says. She was sitting at the fire pit in front of the tiny mud-and-dung house where her family of 11 lived. Pumpkins grew on the straw roof, and pigs lay in shallow pits in the ground. Urmila was sitting there with her mother and brother as the man approached.
"I knew it was my turn," Urmila says. Her sisters and her sisters-in-law had all worked as kamalari, or slave girls. One sister had told her about the beatings she endured at the hands of the landowner who purchased her and the kitchen scraps she was fed. "I begged my mother not to send me away," Urmila recounts. Her mother said that she had no say in the matter.
Instead, the man spoke with her older brother because he was the one who supported the family. The man offered the brother money -- 4,000 rupees, or about €50 ($70) -- for his little sister Urmila. The family owed money to the landowner whose fields they farmed, there wasn't enough food and the children wore shoes made of bean pods tied to their feet with pieces of rope. Four thousand rupees. It was a lot of money. Urmila's brother agreed to the deal.
Millions of Child Slaves across the World
In Nepali, the word kamalari means "hardworking woman." But these aren't women being sold off and forced to work; they're children between the ages of five and 15, thin-armed girls forced to work 14-16 hours a day in the households of families, fully at the mercy of their owners and exposed to their moods and their beatings. About one in 10 of the girls is sexually abused.
Aid organizations estimate that 10,000 girls work as kamalari in Nepal. As long ago as 1956, the United Nations declared that forms of child labor and bonded labor were slavery and should therefore be outlawed. However, although human trafficking has been officially illegal in all countries for a long time, it still exists to a significant degree in about 70 countries. Indeed, roughly 27 million people across the world are victims of modern slavery -- living in debt bondage, as forced prostitutes and as bonded laborers. Between 40 percent and 50 percent of these are children, and many are in Asia.
In many poor countries, there is a tradition of using child slaves in private households. Children are practical because their personalities are flexible and their characters are as malleable as clay on the sculptor's wheel. Child slaves go by many names: the kamalari in Nepal, the restavék in Haiti and the abd in Mauritania.
The principle is almost the same everywhere. On the one side are the parents, who are unable to earn enough money to feed their children. On the other are the more affluent members of society, the landowners and businesspeople. In many cases, the people who buy children and raise them to suit their purposes are teachers, lawyers and politicians. The child slaves are rewarded with affection or extra meals, while punishments consist of being denied food, beaten and berated. In the end, they have no choice but to do their work without complaint.
Bought as a Present
Urmila was in the same position as most of the others. "Down there," she says, pointing to a door on the ground floor of the yellow townhouse, "down there in the room next to the kitchen is where I spent the first night." Her brother had taken her on the bus to Ghorahi, a noisy city in southwestern Nepal. With its cars and bicycle rickshaws, the place was completely unlike her village of Manpur. Urmila lay on a mat on the floor next to another girl the house's owner had bought. It was cold. A wedding was being held in the house. The son of the landowner had found a wife, and there were many relatives among the guests, including the owner's daughter. She lived in Katmandu, and Urmila had been bought as a present for her.
"She's so thin and small," the daughter said when she first saw Urmila. "How is she supposed to work properly?" From then on, Urmila was instructed to address the daughter as "maharani," or mistress, and her children as "prince" and "princess." A few days later, the daughter took Urmila with her to an apartment in Katmandu, where she was required to work for 12 people. It would be four years before she saw her parents again, and 11 before she was free.
CONTINUED...PART ONE...
03/25/2011
Nepal's Lost Daughters
Victims of Child Slavery... more
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March 9th, 2011
07:41 AM ET
The challenges of counting a 'hidden population'
By Manav Tanneeru, CNN
Slavery still exists. Of that there isn’t much dispute, if any. But how widespread is what many experts call modern-day slavery?
Estimates range from about 10 million to 30 million, according to policymakers, activists, journalists and scholars.
The International Labour Organization, an agency of the United Nations that focuses on, among other things, labor rights, put the number at a “minimum estimate” of 12.3 million in a 2005 report.
Kevin Bales, a sociologist who serves as a consultant to the United Nations and has authored several books about modern-day slavery, estimated the number was 27 million people in his book “Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy.” The book was published in 1999.
There is yet another estimate. Siddharth Kara, a fellow on trafficking at Harvard University and also an author, recently told CNN that his calculations put the range between 24 million and 32 million. That number was current as of the end of 2006, he said.
There are several reasons behind the variance in numbers, said Ben Skinner, who published a book about modern-day slavery – “A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-day Slavery.”
“There are two big problems with the count,” Skinner, a Senior Fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University, said during a telephone interview. “The first is that the people we are counting are, by definition, a hidden population.
“The second problem is more of a theoretical one where the definitions are not in place. We don’t have a common definition still as to what slavery is.”
‘A hidden population’
Slave labor has been a part of civilization for much of history. It was practiced openly and its legality wasn’t much of a question. During the height of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, its scale was carefully documented.
Today, slavery is illegal in every country. Yet it persists, in secret, exploiting the poor and the marginalized – which poses immense challenges for legal authorities, activists and experts working to track the problem.
Skinner recounted a conversation he had with John Miller – the former State Department ambassador at large on modern slavery from 2002 through 2006 during the George W. Bush administration – about the inherent difficulty of counting a population that is difficult to find.
“These are not people that stand in line, raise their hands and wait for the census to be taken,” Miller told Skinner.
And, even when found, they may not want to be identified, Skinner said. “They are victims of a crime and that is still oftentimes missed as a crime,” he said.
The enslaved may be involved in prostitution or might be in a country illegally as a result of trafficking – activities that could land them in trouble with the law. So, they’d rather keep quiet about their condition, Skinner said.
“They are individuals who will be seen as perpetrators of a crime against the state rather than victims of a crime against humanity,” he said. “They are aware of that so they don’t self-identify.”
It also isn’t the easiest thing for observers to get data from countries about how big of a problem slavery is within their borders.
For example, South Asian countries will acknowledge problems with sex trafficking because of a perception that it’s not just a South Asian issue, Skinner said, echoing a theory from John Miller.
However, they may not be as forthcoming about their problems with debt bondage – when someone has to pay off a loan through work and may be trapped in the situation because the amount earned is too little to pay off the amount of money borrowed.
“There’s a self-perception that debt bondage is a rather embarrassing part of the continuing underdevelopment in parts of their countries,” Skinner said.
Definitions and divisions
Before you can count something, you have to define it, and a broadly accepted definition of what modern slavery encompasses has been elusive.
In 1926, a treaty signed in Geneva under the auspices of the League of Nations, the precursor to the U.N., defined slavery as “the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised.”
The ILO, in 1930, used the terms "forced or compulsory labor" to describe “all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily.”
Roger Plant, who worked at the ILO from 2002 through 2009, said during a telephone conversation that forced labor is “when you get into work or service without the freedom of choice and you can’t get out of it without punishment or the threat of punishment."
Kevin Bales offered this description: “To me slavery means one person who is completely under the control of another person, that they use violence to maintain that control, they exploit them, make money out of them, and that the person just can’t walk away.”
There is, then, the term “human trafficking,” which is sometimes used interchangeably with the word “slavery.” According to the U.S. State Department, “human trafficking” describes “activities involved when one person obtains or holds another person in compelled service.”
The State Department says the term includes sex trafficking, forced labor and bonded labor. It also includes, among other things, the use of child soldiers and forced child labor.
The terms and their meanings seem straightforward, but the divisions come to light when legislators try to reconcile the definitions with their country’s situation.
“Within the trafficking community, there really isn’t a consensus on what slavery means,” Skinner said. “That’s harmful, that’s detrimental.”
The biggest consequence of incorrect data, not knowing the full scope of the problem or where it’s concentrated can lead to poor decisions on where to focus resources and how best to solve the problem, Skinner said.
“Slavery, on its face, is monstrous,” he said. “I think it’s important to be motivated by emotion but to, very quickly, come to the point of getting to the cold, hard business of figuring how best to free as many slaves as possible.
“Part of that is understanding how many slaves there are and understanding where they are."March 9th, 2011
07:41 AM ET
The challenges of counting a 'hidden... more
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Child scavenges for family's survival in Afghanistan
By Arwa Damon, CNN
January 4, 2011 3:09 a.m. EST
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* Marjan, 5, scavenges for trash to help keep her family warm in the winter
* Marjan's brother died from the cold and her mother worries for the other children
* UNICEF says Afghanistan is the worst place in the world to be a child
* UNICEF: One in five children in Afghanistan do not live past the age of five
Kabul (CNN) -- Five-year-old Marjan sniffles from the cold as she struggles under her load. Hoisted on her back is a bag almost as big as she is.
Instead of going to school, Marjan scavenges for hours with her 10-year-old aunt collecting trash. It is a heavy burden for such a small child but a necessary one. The trash she collects is what her family uses as fuel for cooking and, more importantly, to fend off Kabul's bitter winter.
It is a matter of life and death for someone so young. Last winter, Marjan's baby brother died from the cold.
"It was dark and cold, and the baby died," she says softly, wiping her running nose. "I saw him dead and I was very sad, and I cried."
"I don't blame myself," Marjan's mother, Zarkharida, says. "We don't have firewood. I set fire to the garbage but it went out and my baby died."
Zarkharida's husband was killed in a family feud over land. She was forced to move in with relatives, already struggling to make ends meet. She built a one-room mud hut on a small piece of land.
"I wasn't able to properly cover the roof, this is why when the cold weather came my son died," she says.
Plastic tarp covers the roof, windows and doorway. She stitched a blanket from scraps of clothes given to her as charity. It is all she has to keep her family warm.
But Zarkharida fears this winter will claim another one of her children.
"Of course I am worried about my children's health," she says. "I am afraid they will get sick."
UNICEF, the UN children's agency, says that Afghanistan is the worst place in the world to be a child. One in five children do not live past the age of five. Afghanistan is second only to Sierra Leone when it comes to child mortality. Most of those deaths are caused by curable childhood diseases and malnutrition, compounded by the security situation, which means that parents are unable to access proper health care.
"It is very hard to put a hard and fast figure to the number of children dying from hypothermia alone on Kabul's streets as there would undoubtedly be other reasons that would make them sick or vulnerable in the first place," UNICEF regional communications chief Sarah Crowe wrote in an e-mail. "Extreme poverty, having lost a parent, being trafficked or displaced, or many other reasons may have forced them on to the streets where they would be deprived of their most basic needs (decent food, health, immunization, protection) and exposed to the extreme cold of Afghan winters."
Marjan is constantly blowing warm air on her hands, which are grimy and cracked from the cold. She kicks off her plastic, torn shoes and tries to warm her feet on the trash fire blazing under the kettle. But it is never enough.
A meal is scraps of bread and weak tea.
Even though she has never set foot in a classroom, Marjan dreams of being a teacher. She also loves to play with dolls. But in one of the world's poorest countries, she is, instead, responsible for her family's survival.Child scavenges for family's survival in Afghanistan
By Arwa Damon, CNN... more
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A recent report from Enough Project ranked the top 21 electronics manufacturers, showing their progress in creating products with conflict-free minerals and the steps they've taken to ensure that. EP estimates that conflict mining is a $185 million business, which is even more shocking when you consider the World Bank says average the average miner makes only $5 a day.
====== report ===================
By Michelle Castillo, TechLand, on December 15, 2010
Many of our electronic devices are made up of minerals like tantalum, used to make the capacitors in most cell phones, and tin, which makes up the inside lining of some cell phones and is used to solder circuit boards. Unfortunately, many of these materials come from conflict-ridden areas of the Congo, where increasing profits from electronic sales help fund the inhumane treatment of people who live and work in the country. The Enough Project, an advocacy group focused on ending genocide and crimes against humanity, estimates that conflict mining is a $185 million business, which is even more shocking when you consider the World Bank says average the average miner makes only $5 a day.
According to Raise Hope for Congo, more than 5.4 million people have died from the continuous wars that ravage the country. The organization urges people to tell companies that they want conflict free products. Congo's minerals are especially attractive to electronic manufacturers because of unregulated mining practices and cheap labor. Minerals from the African nation cost half or a third as much the same materials from other countries, according to the Washington Post. Though the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Act requires manufacturers to identify and get rid of conflict minerals in their products and similar legislation will be mandated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2011, Congolese mines are often controlled by armed groups and militias. These groups smuggle the minerals out of the country to smelting companies on other continents, which means the origin of the minerals can often be masked even from the company commissioning the product. Even though Congo's president announced a ban on all artisanal mining in eastern Congo last August, the ruling has not been enforced by the country's national military and has even negatively affected the citizens who work in the mines as a main source of income.
A recent report from Enough Project ranked the top 21 electronics manufacturers, showing their progress in creating products with conflict-free minerals and the steps they've taken to ensure that. Leading the pack was HP with an over 30 percent improvement. The company has endorsed anti-conflict mineral legislation and advocates for strong US regulations for all manufacturers. Apple, who uses tantalum not only in their smartphones but in iPods as well, were given a yellow score, which means there is much room for improvement. (Though several of their top executives have spoken out against conflict mineral mining in the Congo, they did not weigh in on key US conflict mineral legislation.) Toshiba received the worst score of the bunch; they have barely made any changes at all according to the study. Enough Project knows it may be hard for the average consumer to tell whether or not they are helping fund a war over natural resources just by looking at a product. Still, the group hopes that especially this holiday season when people are out shopping for the latest gadgets that by being little more knowledgeable about which companies are taking a stand against genocide and human rights abuses, shoppers can judge for themselves whether or not to support these crimes against humanity.
##### ARTICLE HERE ##################
Is Your Mobile Device or Laptop Funding Conflict Mineral Wars?
By Michelle Castillo on December 15, 2010
http://techland.time.com/2010/12/15/is-your-mobile-device-or-laptop-funding-conflict-wars/A recent report from Enough Project ranked the top 21 electronics manufacturers,... more
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The United Nations has ordered 900 peacekeepers to a remote region of Democratic Republic of Congo, where the LRA killed more than 1,000 adults and children around Christmas in 2008 and 2009 and kidnapped hundreds more, to head off feared Christmas attacks by Lord's Resistance Army fighters.
===== report ==============
UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations has ordered 900 peacekeepers to a remote region of Democratic Republic of Congo, to head off feared Christmas attacks by Lord's Resistance Army fighters, a spokesman said Tuesday.
UN forces will go to a region where the LRA killed more than 1,000 adults and children around Christmas in 2008 and 2009 and kidnapped hundreds more.
The UN mission in DR Congo is also sending extra humanitarian supplies to the region, UN spokesman Martin Nesirky told reporters.
A special operation against the LRA has been launched in the Dungu district of Upper Uele region and would carry on until mid-January because of fears of the "holiday season" attacks, Nesirky said.
The announcement came after the UN Security Council called for greater international action against the LRA, which is led by Joseph Kony who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The LRA sprang out of a rebellion in Uganda in the 1980s but now terrorizes communities in Central African Republic, southern Sudan and DR Congo.
The Security Council welcomed an African Union move to set up a joint task force to fight the LRA and deploy joint border patrols.
"It calls for the countries of the region to enhance coordination and information sharing regarding the the threat posed by the LRA," said a Security Council statement on efforts to bring peace to Central African Republic.
Ugandan special forces currently lead the international hunt for Kony, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
In December 2008, LRA fighters killed 865 men, women and children in the northeastern DR Congo and in southern Sudan, and kidnapped hundreds of others.
A year later 300 people were murdered between December 14 and 17, also in northeast DR Congo.
The United States has promised to support a new effort to catch Kony and halt the conflict generated by the LRA, but in a report titled "Ghosts of Christmas Past," 19 aid agencies said the Security Council should do more.
The report said LRA attacks remote communities in Sudan, Central African Republic and DR Congo almost four times a week.
"These communities await Christmas with fear," added the groups, who include Oxfam, Christian Aid, Refugees International, World Vision and War Child UK, among others.
The UN refugee agency said in October that the rebels had killed 2,000 people since December 2008, kidnapped more than 2,600 and displaced more than 400,000 in DR Congo, the Central African Republic and southern Sudan.
"The acute suffering and mass population displacement the LRA has generated across international borders is undermining stability in an already fragile region, where southern Sudan is preparing to hold a landmark referendum on secession in early 2011," the report said.
The aid groups welcomed recent steps by the United States and the African Union. But it said kidnapped people had to be helped to return home and villages had to be protected.
The aid groups called on the UN Security Council to set up an expert panel as "there is a chronic lack of information about the motivation, composition and location of the LRA."
The LRA began their rebellion in northern Uganda in the late 1980s, but have not carried out an attack there since 2006.
Since south Sudanese-hosted peace talks broke down in 2008, the fighters have roamed the jungles of central Africa and been repeatedly blamed for the slaughter of defenseless civilians.
The African Union has said the LRA should be called "terrorists" rather than rebels.
############# ARTICLE LINK #############
UN peacekeepers to head off Christmas massacre
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iduTBApHLCmGUF9clnqdrlk-L8TQ?docId=CNG.a3cd72112889141b0229f761dc840322.2a1
(AFP) – Dec 13, 2010The United Nations has ordered 900 peacekeepers to a remote region of Democratic... more
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Leaders from 11 nations in the conflict-ravaged Great Lakes region of central Africa on Tuesday signed a pledge – partly drafted by a Canadian organization – to stamp out the illegal trade of conflict minerals.
Signed at a summit in the Zambian capital of Lusaka by governments including the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burundi, the pledge commits signatory states to take steps to implement a regional certification system to track such minerals as they are exported from Africa for smelting in Asia.
The summit was called to address mining practices that have helped to fuel mass rapes and massacres in the eastern provinces of Congo. The illegitimate mining of minerals such as coltan, tungsten, tin and gold, which are used in electronic devices, is widespread in the region and often finances armed groups.
Among the mechanisms to be implemented is a “bag-and-tag” system in which minerals are tagged at their point of origin. The African nations also said they would create a database to make it easier to identify and track minerals that originate in areas of conflict.
The move by the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region comes as governments in the United States, Canada and Europe consider legislation that would make roughly 6,000 manufacturers, including BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd., responsible for tracking the minerals used in their products.
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PLEASE GO AND READ THE ARTICLE !
IAIN MARLOW AND OMAR EL AKKAD
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, Dec. 15, 2010 2:02PM EST
Last updated Wednesday, Dec. 15, 2010 6:57PM EST
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/african-leaders-pledge-to-wipe-out-trade-of-conflict-minerals/article1839121/?cmpid=rss1Leaders from 11 nations in the conflict-ravaged Great Lakes region of central Africa... more
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Hundreds of women and children were raped over and over during 3 days in July, another incident reported in August... estimates indicate many thousands of women and girls are brutalized each year on a gross scale ...for the creature comforts of civilized society. Efforts to combat illicit mining of coltan and other minerals are gaining traction, as politicians in Canada and other Western governments look to establish tough penalties against the practice. When we glance at the holocaust in Congo, with about 7 million dead, the clichés of Africa reporting tumble out: this is a "tribal conflict" in "the Heart of Darkness". It isn't. The United Nations investigation found it was a ****war led by "armies of business" to seize the metals*** that make our 21st-century society zing and bling. The war in Congo is a war about you.
(Mash-Quoted from various articles included below. When you see 5.4 million quoted, that is up to 2007, estimates for up to today are at 6.5 to 7 million.)
"Dr. Mukwege [see below] believes the number of women who have been raped since the beginning of the conflict is far higher than the U.N. estimates of 200,000-300,000, saying the real figure is more like half a million."
Over 6,000 rape incidents a year (in recent years) are conservatively estimated based just on what gets reported.
And we do not see the continuing dismemberment and murders (possibly decapitations), nor much footage from the few doctors you may read about working in the tranches.
"Exploited African oil, coltan, chocolate, bauxite, gold, coffee, platinum, chromium, iron, gas, flowers, agriculture and animals are dripping in the blood of African people, making billions of dollars for Europe and America. "
"In the end, it will be consumer education and pressure that will make the difference."
Lets wake up. There's more we can be doing...
Over 10 years, and its still going strong... "The mining industry in that country relies on slave labour, violence and sexual assault. Since the popularity of smartphones has risen, warlords in the country have taken control of the mines to retrieve the precious metal, then sell it on the international market to manufacturers of the gadgets that will ultimately end up under our Christmas trees." more at this link-->
http://www.care2.com/causes/human-rights/blog/smartphones-the-new-blood-diamonds/
Consider how much of this is about our cell phones and laptops, DVD players, computers, digital cameras, video games, vehicle air bags, jewelry (gold and diamonds), chocolate, and more... all the things so many feel they cannot live without [sic].
And so what can we do? What are we doing? Are we forgetting to keep an eye on this?
The main article prompting me to post is marked as such below. I have included a lot of links to other interesting articles, almost all within the last couple months. There are a couple of key things we all can be doing...
- we need to keep an eye on manufacturers and govt actions behind the statute in the Dodd-Frank bill discussed below
- there's a really provocative video in my third post below, please check it out... the ideas expressed there seem to make very good sense for changing things that matter.
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Q&A: DR Congo conflict (first, a little down and dirty overview)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-11108589
"In November 2009, a report by UN-commissioned experts said UN involvement had done nothing to quell the violence - with rebels continuing to kill and plunder natural resources with impunity and claims the rebels are supported by an international crime network stretching through Africa to Western Europe and North America."
Timeline: Democratic Republic of Congo
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1072684.stm
Prevalence of Rape in E. Congo Described as Worst in World (sep 2007)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/08/AR2007090801194.html
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MAIN ARTICLE
IPS: Activists Slam World's "Grotesque Indifference"
http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=44965
The following are Excerpts - go read the article:
"TORONTO, Canada, Dec 3 (IPS) - International lust for the enormous mineral and resource riches of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) abetted by international indifference has turned much of country into a colossal "rape mine" where more than 300,000 women and girls have been brutalised, say activists."
""Rape is being used as a deliberate tool to control people and territory," said Eve Ensler, a celebrated U.S. playwright and founder of V-Day, a global movement in 120 countries to end violence against women and girls."
"This "blood coltan" - akin to blood diamonds -
**generates billions of dollars of sales every year for electronics manufacturers in rich countries***
and brings
****hundreds of millions of dollars to rebels and others who control the coltan-producing regions.****
Coltan is also produced in other countries, and the DRC's "blood coltan" is often transported to those countries to give it a sheen of conflict-free provenance. "
There is a lot of news brewing if you look for it. I am disconcerted to seen almost none of it on Current. So you will forgive me if I post what may seem like to much information... I don't think you can have too much of this information and awareness about this.
What is ailing them is not isolated to "them over there". WE are a strong hand in their lives, and deaths, and suffering, by what we do, and what we fail to do.
Do you think it matters to be making an effort during your news sojourns 'out there' to find and read some news in/on Africa?Hundreds of women and children were raped over and over during 3 days in July, another... more
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Driver kicks 7-year-old out of taxi
By Marina Landis, CNN
October 13, 2010 6:11 p.m. EDT
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* Police say cabbie Roy D. Sutherland, 66, left 7-year-old alone on a street corner
* The driver had asked the boy if he had money for the fare and got no answer
* Sutherland was arrested and is to be arraigned October 25
New York (CNN) -- A driver for the Valentine Cab Co. in Roosevelt, New York, was charged with endangering the welfare of a child after he kicked a young boy out of his cab Tuesday for not having any money, police said.
Nassau County Police detectives say a 7-year-old boy with special needs was put into a cab in Freeport, New York, by his grandmother and was supposed to be dropped off at his residence in the neighboring Long Island town of Roosevelt.
After picking up the child, the driver of the cab, 66-year-old Roy D. Sutherland, asked the boy if he had money for the fare. When the child was unable to provide any information, Sutherland told him to get out of the cab, police said.
Sutherland left the boy on a street corner in Freeport by himself and drove away, police said.
Sutherland was later arrested and issued an appearance ticket, police said. He's scheduled to be arraigned at the First District Court in Hempstead on October 25.
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7-year-old boy kicked out of cab - WABC/TV
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Lauren DeFranco
FREEPORT, NY (WABC) -- A cab driver is accused of dumping a 7-year-old boy onto the street because he didn't have any money.
He was making a routine trip from his Grandmother's home to his mother's house.
"I was just a little crazy at the moment, because I was like, what do you mean he didn't have fare, he's 7 years old," Joy Allen, Alex's mother said.
Joy Allen is still in a state of shock, she's so angry and upset.
Monday at around 5 p.m., a cab driver left her 7-year-old son Alex alone on a street corner in Freeport.
What's worse, is that Alex is a child with special needs and has difficulty communicating.
"He begged the cab driver not to put him out of the car, and he said that the cab driver told him, he doesn't have time for people who don't have money and to get out," Allen said.
"I said OK, and so I got out and stood by myself," Alex said.
Allen, who doesn't drive, had called the Express Valentine Taxi Company to take her son from her mother's home in Freeport to her house in Roosevelt.
When the cab driver realized the boy didn't have money, he kicked him out of the car.
"I called the cab company screaming, no forget everything, tell me where my son is before we resolve anything, where is my son, where is my son, and he couldn't get an answer out of the driver," Allen said.
Alex was alone and confused and crying for his grandmother who eventually found him.
"I was screaming for Grandma, and I keep saying, Grandma!" Alex said.
Eyewitness News went to the owner of the cab company who said it is company policy to turn away any passenger who doesn't pay the fare upfront.
Allen says a 7 year old child with a disability isn't just any passenger.
"I speak for a lot of people, I could never put a child out anywhere," Allen said.
The driver, Roy Sutherland, 66, will be arraigned on charges of endangering a child later this month.Driver kicks 7-year-old out of taxi
By Marina Landis, CNN
October 13, 2010 6:11... more
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Aid groups say lead poisoning has killed 400 children in Nigeria
By Salma Abdelaziz, CNN
October 5, 2010 9:45 p.m. EDT
Children are dying of lead poisoning in Nigeria according to the aid group Doctors Without Borders.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* Doctors Without Borders says the death toll may be even higher
* The contamination comes from villagers' attempts to extract gold from ore
* The clean-up involves removing contaminated soil and replacing it with clean soil
(CNN) -- As many as 400 children have died of lead poisoning-related illnesses in Nigeria since March, two international aid groups say, and as many as 30,000 people could be affected by lead contamination.
The deaths occurred predominantly in children under the age of 5 in the state of Zamfara, according to Lauren Cooney, the emergency manager for Medecins Sans Frontieres. The group is also known by its English name, Doctors without Borders.
Cooney told CNN Tuesday that the death toll may be even higher, but said the numbers shouldn't mask the crisis.
"Rather than focus on specific death toll numbers, because those often are very difficult to obtain, the international community should focus on the harsh reality in Nigeria: It is very clear that a serious and significant number of children have died due to lead poisoning," she said.
A study conducted by the World Health Organization and the Health Ministry of Zamfara State "identified 180 villages where children may have been poisoned by lead, which means that up to 30,000 people could be affected," said a statement Friday from the United Nations' Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The report on child deaths comes a few months after the Nigerian government announced in early June the deaths of more than 160 Nigerians, including scores of children, of lead poisoning due to illegal gold mining.
"The lead poisoning is a consequence of villagers practicing small-scale gold extraction from lead-containing ore. The processing of the ore involves crushing and drying, often inside the homes of villagers, resulting in the contamination of soil," Doctors without Borders explained in a statement.
Since June, Nigerian health officials have cooperated with the World Health Organization to clean up the affected areas. Since the process began, two out the seven villages known to be affected have been decontaminated, Cooney said.
"We already started in June treating patients. We are focusing on treatment of children under 5 but the most important thing is the remediation, or clean-up, so the exposure can stop," she added.
Remediation is a lengthy process that requires removing all the contaminated soil and replacing it with clean soil. The process was stopped in the month of August due to the beginning of the rainy season but it started up again a few weeks ago.
Efforts to clean up contaminated areas are being hampered by the reluctance of villagers to report potential lead exposure, for fear the Nigerian government will prohibit the informal gold mining, OCHA said.
Doctors without Borders says it's still treating hundreds of lead-poisoning cases in Zamfara, but the group warned that the treatment is only effective if patients do not return to contaminated sites.Aid groups say lead poisoning has killed 400 children in Nigeria
By Salma Abdelaziz,... more
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September 8th, 2010
10:00 PM ET
Gov. Schwarzenegger to sign 'Chelsea's Law' on Thursday
The parents of a California teen who was raped and murdered by a sex offender this year will join Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday as he signs into law a bill that increases penalties for certain sex offenses.
Named after 17-year-old Chelsea King, "Chelsea's Law" increases penalties for forcible sex acts against minors and mandates lifetime parole for certain sex offenders.
Schwarzenegger will be joined by the teen's parents, Brent and Kelly King, and the bill's sponsor, Assemblymember Nathan Fletcher, as he signs it into law at Balboa Park in San Diego, California at 9:45 a.m. PT. The event will be webcast live at www.gov.ca.gov.
"Chelsea's Law" has an urgency clause attached to it that means it will take effect as soon as it is signed.
Read more about "Chelsea's Law" on CNN.com
The bill creates a penalty of life without the possibility of parole for forcible sex crimes against minors that include aggravating factors, such as the victim's age or whether the victim was bound or drugged.
"Chelsea's Law" also sets criteria for assessing the risk of recidivism and, based on that risk, placing certain paroled sex offenders under greater supervision.
Registered sex offender John Gardner III has admitted to killing King and 14-year-old Amber Dubois. He was sentenced in April to three consecutive terms of life without parole for the murders and an attack on a jogger in a plea deal that spared him the death penalty.
Dubois' father is behind three assembly bills concerning law enforcement response to missing children. They are also awaiting Schwarzenegger's signature.September 8th, 2010
10:00 PM ET
Gov. Schwarzenegger to sign 'Chelsea's... more
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Assembly passes Chelsea's Law: mandatory life sentences for violent sex crimes against kids
Chelsea's Law would give molesters life terms
Monday, August 30, 2010
Chelsea King (KABC Photo)
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SACRAMENTO (KABC) -- Certain child molesters in California would be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole under a bill lawmakers have sent to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The bill passed unanimously Monday in the state Assembly.
It was named after 17-year-old Chelsea King, who was murdered in a San Diego County park this year. A convicted child molester pleaded guilty to raping and killing King and 14-year-old Amber Dubois.
Republican Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher of San Diego, the bill's author, says the legislation is an attempt to remove some evil from the streets of California.
Adult predators who kidnap, drug, bind and torture or use a weapon while committing a sex crime against a child would face life in prison without parole.Assembly passes Chelsea's Law: mandatory life sentences for violent sex crimes... more
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Salt of the Earth - Herbert Biberman (1954)
Película hecha por artistas pertenecientes a la "lista negra" del macartismo de la época. Es sobre la lucha por reivindicaciones laborales de obreros mexicanos. Movie made by people that had been blacklisted by the McCarthyism at that times. It's about the strike of mexican workers, fighting for better work conditions. Public domain film. Source: www.archive.org FILM DATA. Directed by Herbert J. Biberman. Produced by Paul Jarrico, Sonja Dahl Biberman and Adolfo Barela. Written by Michael Wilson and Michael Biberman. Starring: Rosaura Revueltas, Will Geer, David Wolfe, Mervin Williams, David Sarvis, Ernesto Velázquez, Juan Chacón, Henrietta Williams. Music by Sol Kaplan. Cinematography by Stanley Meredith and Leonard Stark. Editing by Joan Laird and Ed Spiegel. Distributed by Independent Productions. Release date(s) March 14, 1954. Country: United States Language: English/Spanish. Budget $250,000. Data from Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/Salt of the Earth - Herbert Biberman (1954)
Película hecha por artistas... more
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Armed Groups Raped More Than 150 Women
Added On August 25, 2010
Journalist Josh Kron reports from Goma, DRC, about the mass rape of women over four days in North Kiva last month.Armed Groups Raped More Than 150 Women
Added On August 25, 2010
Journalist Josh... more
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