“If we don’t stand up for children, then we don’t stand for much.”
~Marian Wright Edelman
photo by B. Seeton
I have a friend in France, Amely-James KOH BELA, a truly remarkable African born woman who endured a brutal childhood as both a domestic slave and incest survivor. She was a slave from the age of 4—the same age as the girl in this photograph.
Amely got an education and went undercover as a private investigator for twelve years exposing the dark underworld of child sex slavery and has authored two important books on the subject. She currently goes village to village in Africa educating her people about the rights of children and is dedicated to ending child trafficking. You can read more on my website about this remarkable woman.
Take a piece of paper. Write down these numbers. Two. Seven. Comma. Zero. Zero. Zero. Comma. Zero. Zero. Zero. Now read it. That’s how many people are slaves on the planet. And children are half of all the people trafficked (bought/sold, stolen, forced, kidnapped) worldwide for sex and domestic slavery. Those are the statistics.
27,000,000 is the number of human beings who are at this very moment living lives as slaves. And I mean slave in every sense, in every horror of the definition, and every imaginable way and then some. These people (mostly women and children) have no choice about the way they live their lives. Not ‘no choice’ as in you have a crummy job you want to change and you wish your car was newer. I mean NO CHOICE and they’re brutalized in countless ways all the time. Many have no choice over their own bodies. They have no say about who touches them or how. Many are repeatedly raped day in and day out. They are often beaten, starved, and in addition to the physical abuse, most are emotionally tormented. They do not have control over where they work, how long they work, or where they live or when or what they get to eat—if they get to eat.
Then there are child soldiers …
“Gilbert did not mean to kill anyone. He did not even intend to go to war. He was 10 when a relative enlisted him in a rebel army in eastern Congo and 12 when he led a raid in which his cousin died. ‘I was ordered to kill the son of the leader in my village. I was put in charge of the group, and ordered to fire as people fled. The leader was my uncle; his boy was six years old.” A news story by Mary Ridell. Read more ...
Please get informed about child trafficking. You can begin helping by insuring the products you buy are slave free. Look for the free trade certification. Start by buying only slave free coffee, chocolate and cotton. These are small steps, but steps in the right direction. (Nestle has been one of the worst offenders of child slavery.) When consumers begin demanding ONLY slave free products, manufacturers and retail operations will begin to care.
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