Every day young children are awakened as soon as dawn cracks. They work long into the night, with no pay, little to no food and barely anything to drink. They are managed like cattle on a busy farm. These are child slaves.
Picture this, hundreds upon hundreds of young, terrified kids doing manual work in a large field. Their stomachs are emaciated from starvation, their faces look aghast because they have no idea what’s coming next. Most people in this society don’t even know that slavery still exists, let alone child slavery. Sometimes children are born into the system and have to work as soon as they are capable. Most of the time though, children are sold into the system so their parents can feed their other children. This is a reality for many people around the world.
There are 40.3 million slaves in the entire world, says anti-slavery.org. That’s the entire population of Canada, and even New York City combined. Over 10 million of those slaves are children. That means that 1 in 4 slaves are children. The number of children in this system is unbelievable, there are a lot more than people think.
Another concern with these children is malnourishment and long-term effects on their health. Children who don’t have proper food intake can develop many illnesses, malnourishment can even lead to death. “Nearly half of all deaths in children under 5 are attributable to undernutrition, translating into the loss of about 3 million young lives a year. Undernutrition puts children at greater risk of dying from common infections, increases the frequency and severity of such infections, and delays recovery” (Unicef). This illustrates the fact that malnutrition is a serious problem for children everywhere.
Added to the previous evidence, slave children are particularly affected by this. “Slave children were very small by modern standards. Their average height at age three was shorter than 99 percent of 20th-century American three-year-olds. At age 17, slave men were shorter than 96 percent of present-day 17-year-old men and slave women were shorter than 80 percent of contemporary women” (History). This demonstrates that slave children are not getting proper food, water or living conditions. This causes nutritional deficiencies leading to long-term effects on their health.
In the bigger picture, there are 40.3 million slaves worldwide, which is completely outrageous. There are 1.95 million slaves in the US, 3.6 million in Europe and Central Asia, 9.2 million in Africa, and lastly, 25 million slaves in Asia and the Pacific, (Washington Post). This indicates that in places with less government involvement have more slavery.
Next, another factor to the millions of slave children are the low selling prices for those children. “Some parents get an initial lump sum payment of between 10,000 and 15,000 CFA (US$20 and US$31). Others are paid in kind, receiving a calf for every year of labor – the equivalent of about US$8 a month” (IRIN). This exhibits the fact that children are so cheap to purchase for labor companies trying to make more money by paying little to no wages.
Children are suffering, we need to take action immediately. Some of the solutions we could have to this are, the government can do more and individuals must also do more. The governments have to do more by stepping in more. The government needs create laws against this, no way to get around it. They need to set up checks for big companies, especially hard labor companies such as the oil and mining industry, to ensure they are following the laws. Individuals can do more by getting the word out there. Even you can do something, tell friends, family, classmates, you can hang flyers, make a website, every little thing helps. If everyone knows about this it’s less likely to happen in the first place. We must stop the buying and selling of people, in all ways.
