Slavery

1. WHAT IS SLAVERY?
Slavery is any system in which principles of property law are applied to people, allowing
individuals to own, buy and sell other individuals.
It is an exploitative situation in which a person cannot refuse due to threats, violence,
deception and abuse of power.
Slavery has existed in many cultures since before written history. A person could become
a slave from the time of their birth, capture, or purchase.

2. ORIGINS OF SLAVERY AND ITS HISTORY

The history of slavery spans many cultures, nationalities, and religions from ancient
times to the present day. However, the social, economic, and legal positions of slaves have
differed vastly in different systems of slavery in different times and places. Slavery
operated in the very first civilizations such as Sumer in the Middle East, or Egypt in North
Africa.
All big civilizations that we know have into their history a part in which slaves have an
important role, for example: Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and all the kingdoms of the
ancient world, even in the Chinese and Japanese dynasties and the kingdoms of India and
the Arab world... all of them took slaves when they conquered their enemies.
The vast majority of those captured were used as slaves, without rights and with the sole
duty to serve their owners. These slaves were used for the construction of cities and
wonders without receiving a salary, because they had no right to have it. This remained in
this way for thousands of years, literally thousands of years. Nevertheless, the "slaves"
did not feel like property, many accepted the reality of their lives, but many others fought
against that reality, a clear example of this is what we know as "servile wars", these were
uprisings by slaves against the Roman Republic, as we see in the series "Spartacus". But,
as history shows, they were not successful in their search for freedom.

3. TRADE OF AFRICANS
Slavery became common long before the Roman Empire and it would continue into
the middle age. The expansion and colonization of African regions by part of European
empires resulted in the capture of a large number of slaves. The Dutch, French, Spanish,
Portuguese, British, Arabs and some West African kingdoms played a prominent role in
the Atlantic slave trade, especially after 1.600 AC. and with this, we get to the biggest
racial problem we know, it’s “the slavery of African natives and the segregation
against dark-skinned people”.
The region of sub-Saharan Africa has always had a dark history, full of wars and death,
the arrival of European kingdoms to these lands was not the exception. The African slave
trade was the largest source of income for the powerful Nations that were expanding to
Africa and what they called as "the new continent," that is, the American continent.
The history of the American people is not very different from the rest of the world; the
only difference is that their technology was not so advanced.
Slavery already existed as a method of payment for those minor villages that were
conquered by empires such as the Inca, Maya or Aztec. All of this, before the arrival of
European.
With the arrival of the Europeans, the aborigines became dead or slaves, but the new
owners of America were not very in agreement with the slavery of those people who could
be their subjects, but it is difficult to control colonies from the other side of the ocean,
besides, the rulers of the new world did not want to pay for the cheap labor that Native
and African slaves offered.

4. THE ABOLITION
Everything changes, and as history indicates, there were many slave uprisings against their
owners, in Florida, new Grenade, Brazil and the islands of the Caribbean... All this ended
up unleashing the liberation of the colonies and the formation of new independent nations.
However, slavery did not end there and problems did not end, despite constitutions that
prohibited slavery, as in Haiti (the first nation of free slaves), Venezuela in 1854, the
United States in 1855 or Brazil in 1888.

This whole process of ending slavery is known as "abolition of slavery" or simply

"abolitionism".

Even today, in the XXI century, there is still unquestionable slavery in certain areas of
countries such as Brazil. In 2003, for example, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva made
a list with the names of the owners of farms condemned for the possession of slaves. The
number of slaves released by the government in those years amounted to 10.731
approximately.

5. NEW SYSTEMS OF TRADING PEOPLE

Trade of people or human trafficking is the illegal trade of human beings for the purpose
of forced labor, sexual exploitation, organs harvesting or any modern form of slavery
against the will and wellbeing of people.
It is an international crime against humanity and it violates the human rights, it is also
called the slavery of the 21st century and it threatens the freedom and dignity of victims.
Child labor and prostitution are among the most outstanding and scandalous forms of
slavery.
 6. KIDS FORCED TO WORK
Kidnapping and trafficking of children for work that should be carried out by an adult is
not a secret for the international community. According to UNICEF, in 18 countries child
exploitation persist yet.
Asia is the continent with the largest number of children exploited; approximately 60.000
girls are trafficked to Japan and China each year, especially from the Philippines and
Thailand. This with the end to be used in textile farms or as sexual slaves.
In our continent, more than a thousand children are used annually to pass drugs from
Mexico to the United States, in Sudan and Somalia thousands more are forced to be "child
soldiers".
Actually, there are currently more than 10 million children between 6 and 15 years old
that are used for these kind of “works”.

7. WOMEN IN DOWN WORLD

Sexual slavery is a particular form of enslavement, which includes limitations on one's
autonomy, freedom of movement and power to decide matters relating to one's sexual
activity. This crime also includes forced marriages, domestic servitude or other forced
labor that ultimately involves forced sexual activity.
I will not go into this topic very deeply because of the audience, so I will only highlight
the following:
Prostitution has existed since the beginning of civilization, and also the abuse of power
over girls, boys and women, all of them forced to "work" in this medium. The main
sources of slavery are poverty and wars, it has always been like this, it continues in this
way but not for long.

8. ORGANIZATIONS AGAINST SLAVERY

With this, I mean that there are a lot of ONG (Non-Governmental Organizations)
working hard to stop this kind of auto destruction.
For example, we have the “international organization for migration” Since the 90s, IOM
and its partners have provided protection and assistance to approximately 100,000 men,
women and children, who were victims of trafficking for the purpose of labor and sexual
exploitation, slavery or similar practices, servitude or trade of organs. Some of the sectors
in which these victims suffered exploitation were agriculture, fishing and manufacturing,
domestic service and hospitality, commercial sexual exploitation, pornography, begging
and construction.
We have too: IMAGE – IMAGE – IMAGE - IMAGE
And there are many others that fight to make this planet a better place.
Well, that is all, thank you very much and God bless you all.