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End Note
Huro and Shiva were kidnapped when they were six years old and taken hundreds of miles from their village in north east India to weave carpets. They were held in a tiny dark room and forced to work 18 hours a day. They used a can for a toilet, ate the poorest rice and were paid nothing for the carpets they made which were shipped to the US and Europe. Their owner bribed the police, thereby keeping the children in pain, hunger and fear. In the heart of the world's largest democracy they were enslaved and tortured so that a few dozen carpets could be sold in the West for a few pounds less. Huro and Shiva were lucky. The South Asian Coalition Against Child Servitude (SACCS) intervened and was able to reunite the boys with their parents.
This account only became public because it had a happy ending. All around the world in developed and under-developed regions, children are used as the easiest and most malleable way to do the jobs that adults won't touch.
There are many horrific examples.
Today there are 300,000 children estimated to be involved in 30 conflicts worldwide, some as young as ten. I was recently in southern Sudan where I met for myself traumatised children, and heard first-hand accounts of the use of children in the front-line battle between the mainly Christian south and the Muslim North. Far from being used as a last resort, children were known to be particularly effective killers – willing to act without the constraint of their adult comrades. Many children lost their lives – almost all lost their childhood.
Two years ago, we started a "Back to School" project in Liberia for some of the thousands of children recovering from being embroiled in the devastating ten year civil war. The project provides trauma counselling, and reintegration assistance as well as an education. The work has demonstrated that through education, the curse of the past is not preventing the children's hopes for the future.
Another iniquitous form of work is that of child prostitution. Estimates suggest that around 1 million children become part of the world's sex trade each year. This is a scourge that is growing in parts of the world where the demand for virgins as a result of AIDS has led to the recruitment of ever-younger girls. Some children are so desperate that they choose to work as prostitutes to earn what they need to survive. Furthermore, direct links also exist between the commercial sexual exploitation of children and other forms of unacceptable child labour. Nepal's carpet factories, for example, are notorious for their use of child labourers and they also form centre points for sexual exploitation for employers.
Jubilee Action's Director became embroiled in this issue following the rescue of Asha who was about to be sold to a brothel by her father for £600. Working with others, he was able to prevent the sale and, deeply affected, he resolved to do something more permanent for the daughters of prostitutes like Asha.
Today there are two beautiful homes outside Bombay for over 70 girls, all of whom would have ended up in the sordid world of the sex industry.
It is an example of how, given resolve and determination, we can protect children from the worst forms of exploitative work.
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