forced labor

The End is Near: "Any Moment Now"

 

Reflecting on History

Soviet soldiers escorting concentration prisoners

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The Gulag Archipelago

 

 

Highest Number of Conscripted Child Soldiers: Myanmar

A 12-year-old soldier in the Karen rebel army
REUTERS/Jason Reed

Myanmar has the highest number of forcibly conscripted child soldiers in the world, rights activists say. The government is attacking ethnic Karen minority villages forcing many thousands to flee. Refugees say the military has shot children.
  • Some 70,000 children make up a fifth of Myanmar's army (Human Rights Watch).
  • Many have been forced to commit atrocities against ethnic minorities (HRW).
  • Rebel groups are also accused of recruiting child fighters.
  • Children and teenagers are used for forced labour and portering.
  • Thousands of children are living as refugees in Thailand, India and Bangladesh.
  • Many others are hiding in the jungle with no food after fleeing attacks.
"I have no idea where my parents are now."

Dang, 18, now living in a camp after escaping an army raid on his village.

Child Soldiers and Project AK-47 
Project: AK-47 is a team of people who are always ready to invade the next hopeless situation for children in armed conflict. Our staff members on the ground are nationals who are committed to rescuing and restoring the lives of children who otherwise would only know lives of violence and exploitation. We also do a fair share of raising awareness and advocacy for these children, but we don't stop there. We can't stop there. And we hope that you won't either.

The World's Ten Worst Child Danger Spots

A displaced child at Aboushouk camp in Norther Darfur
REUTHERS/Nima Elbagirt

  • Nearly 11 million children a year die before their fifth birthday, mostly from preventable causes.
  • Out of 100 children born in 2000, 30 will likely suffer malnutrition and 17 will never go to school.
  • An estimated 218 million children are used for labour, millions in virtual slavery.
  • An estimated 1.2 million children are trafficked each year for labour or sex.
  • There are over 300,000 child soldiers, some as young as eight, in more than 30 countries.
  • More than 2 million children are thought to have died in armed conflict in the past decade.
  • Up to 10,000 children are killed or maimed by landmines each year.
  • An estimated 100 million women and girls have undergone genital mutilation.
Sources: UNICEF, International Labour Organization

Economic Contribution: The Gift of Silver


Colonial Potosi

 

Nothing from our impossible past has died.

Mirna Martinez, in Zoe Anglesey, ed., Ixoc Amar*go, 249

 

The communal traditions of the Indians shaped the political structure which the Founding Fathers constructed, but Indians were not responsible for the economic system based on accumulation that the Europeans imported from the “old world.”  The Incan Indians of the Andean nations provided the forced labor that impelled a world economic transformation that shaped generations and gave rise to a capitalist world economy.

The silver mined from the Cerro Rico of Bolivia initiated a new currency, which, unlike gold, could be used by the emerging merchant class of bakers, fisherman, candle makers, and cloth weavers.  Never before had this common sector of society been major actors in the economy:

Never before in the history of the world had so much silver money been in the hands of so many people.  Kings, emperors, czars, and pharaohs had always accumulated great wealth in their jewels, their hordes of gold, and their coinage, but the total amount of gold and silver was quite limited by the scarcity of precious metals….This changed with the opening of the Americas…Precious metals from America superseded land as the basis for wealth, power, and prestige.  For the first time there was enough of some commodity other than land to provide a greater and more consistent standard by which wealth might be measured.  This easily transported and easily used means of wealth prepared the way for the new merchant and capitalist class that would soon dominate the whole world.

Even though the Indians made possible the greatest economic boom in the history of the world…they still languish in poverty….Potosi, the city which supplied the silver for the rise of capitalism, is now out of silver….The great mint of Potosi that swallowed eight million Indian miners and turned out billions of coins from the sixteenth century into the twentieth century operates now as a museum for visiting children.

 

Jack Weatherford, Indian Givers, 13, 18-19