President of UN General Assembly on Tackling Human TraffickingGeneral Assembly President, Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, has called for redoubled efforts to tackle human trafficking which the United Nations anti-crime agency says is a multi-billion dollar industry and one that enslaves some 2.4 million people at any given time, many of whom are children. Read more…
(Photo courtesy of UN News Centre)
Children Taken From School to Work in Cotton FieldsDespite efforts to conceal systematic breaches of national and international bans on child labour, the use of minors in Uzbekistan’s cotton industry continues to be well-documented.
This September, three years after the government formally outlawed child labour, saw the usual annual exodus of school children as well as university students to pick the cotton harvest.
Human rights groups say children in the seventh to ninth grades of school were sent out to the fields en masse from September 10. Read more…
(Photo taken from Institute for War and Peace Reporting website)
Anti-Human Trafficking Newsletter Vol 9 No 9.The September 2011 issue highlights campaigns that address various aspects of human trafficking and suggests ways of becoming involved in the fight against this modern day form of human slavery.
Click here to read this issue.
His Excellency Silvano M. Tomasi,Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nation sand Specialized Agencies in Geneva, made a statement on Human Trafficking at the 18th Session of the Human Rights Council.
Click here to read the statement.
ILO and Chocolate and Cocoa Industry Forge New PartnershipEight companies in the chocolate and cocoa industry – ADM, Barry Callebaut, Cargill, Ferrero, The Hershey Company, Kraft Foods, Mars Incorporated, and Nestlé – have pledged US $2 million to a new Public-Private Partnership (PPP) with the International Labour Office (ILO) to combat child labour in cocoa growing communities in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire.
For more information click here
During their recent visit to the Australian Federal Parliament ACRATH spoke to members of the House of Representatives and the Senate about the Harkin-Engel Protocol which aimed at eliminating the worst forms of child slavery in the cocoa industry. On Monday 19th September 2011, the tenth anniversary of the signing of this protocol, five Senators, representing the ALP, Coalition and Greens, presented the following motion in the Senate:
“Senator MOORE:
Senator MARSHALL:
Senator BIRMINGHAM:
Senator PARRY: and
Senator HANSON-YOUNG: To move:
That the Senate—
(a) notes the 10th anniversary of the Harkin-Engel Protocol signed in September 2001, designed to encourage voluntary standards for the certification of cocoa production that prohibits and eliminates engagement in the worst forms of child labour, as defined by the International Labour Organization Convention 182 which has been ratified by Australia; and
(b) calls on the Australian Government to:
(i) be proactive in measures to counter people trafficking or slavery,
(ii) actively engage in international fora to ensure greater priority for consideration of measures against child slavery and trafficking,
(iii) work cooperatively to improve traceability of products through the monitoring of their derivation where practical with reference to people trafficking or slavery, and
(iv) cooperate closely with organisations and entities against people trafficking.”
(Quoted from Senate Hansard of 19th September 2011)
Progress Report on Criminal Justice Responses to Trafficking in Persons in the ASEAN RegionReleased in July 2011 this report describes and examines national and regional responses to trafficking in South East Asia with specific reference to the rules and standards which ASEAN Member States themselves have developed or freely accepted.
Click here to read the report.
The Trafficking in Persons forum will examine the inconvenient truths that underpin the crime of human trafficking. The Forum will be held in Lower Hutt, New Zealand on 2-3 December 2011.
For more information click here.
10 Campaign10 Campaign and Stop the Traffik has released a media statement to mark the tenth anniversary of the signing of the Harkin-Engel Protocol. Despite this protocol Child Labour is still prevalent in the cocoa industry.
Read more about this protocol and the campaign to eliminate child labour from the cocoa industry by clicking here.
Monday 19th September 2011 marks the tenth anniversay of the signing of the Harkin-Engel Protocol. The chocolate industry signed up to a six-point road map to eliminate the worst forms of child labour in the production of cocoa in the West African countries of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana by 2005. Research conducted by Turlane University, in the US, between 2006 and 2011 found the industry had failed to fully implement any of the six promised areas of action.
The US Department of State has recently estimated that more than 109,000 children in Cote d’Ivoire’s cocoa industry work under “the worst forms of child labor”, and that some 10,000 are victims of human trafficking or enslavement.
Is the chocolate you eat child slavery free? Follow the Links below to learn more.
Trading Lives
"In a new country there will be
no slavery & hence no slaves."
Captain Arthur Phillip said this in 1787 before leaving England to become the 1st Governor of the new colony of Australia. Phillip landed at Sydney Cove in 1788 after an 8 month sea voyage.
ACRATH acknowledges and respects the Indigenous Peoples of Australia both past and present.
As caretakers of the land and custodians of the stories their culture has survived for thousands of years and is now recognised as the oldest living culture in the world.
