Child Slavery

When I started researching slavery one thing I quickly noticed was that many of those enslaved are children. All over the world children are trapped in the most dire of circumstances, taken advantage of due to their inability to defend themselves. Hideous unspeakable crimes are committed against these defenseless little ones and the world is just beginning to wake up to the scope and depth of their pain.

 In India and Pakistan children as young as five are taken from their poor, illiterate parents and through either out right kidnapping or subterfuge they are moved hundreds of miles away to work up to 15 hours a day at rug looms weaving wool oriental carpets. Many times the children are fed once a day and sleep under their looms. As time goes on these children suffer from wool dust in their lungs, on their skin and in their eyes as well as malnutrition. They are often beaten for mistakes.  

 In India, Thailand and other Asian countries girls as young as ten are kidnapped or sold by their parents into a sex trade market that uses religious ideas along with violence and economic pressure to keep girls in the trade, . Many of these children are made to "service" multiple customers a night. When they either become HIV positive or become too old many are then literally discarded like rubbish on the streets, others become the madams and slave owners of the next generation.

Many other countries turn a blind year to child slavery in cotton production, the garment industry, mining, cocoa, farming, domestic service, fishing and even soccer ball production.

http://www.time.com/time/asia/features/slavery/cover.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/this_world/6458377.stm

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28415693/