Who invented modern slavery

Photo: Anti-Slavery International. Help us produce more like this Patreon is a platform that enables us to offer more to our readership. X New Internationalist is a lifeline for activists, campaigners and readers who value independent journalism.

Related Articles. The violent crackdown against Chilean protesters is reviving painful memories of dictatorship. Roxana Olivera talks to a High seas, low deeds.

Slavery, murder, abandonment. Where human rights do not reach. Paper promises: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at Why is it so easy for governments to ignore this much-feted document?

TJ Coles analyzes the British case. Human rights after Trump. Nanjala Nyabola explains why Trump presents a challenge for those who work in human rights. Is China detaining a million Uyghur Muslims? Nithin Coca reports. Our bodies, our rights. According to the UN, most surgeries on intersex babies amount to torture. Valentino Vecchietti calls for urgent change. Locked away forever. Shahidul Alam imprisoned another month. A court will hear his bail petition in September. Rumana Hashem reports.

Free Shahidul! Bangladeshi police have abducted renowned photographer Shahidul Alam. Chris Brazier explains what Alam's detention means and Prime Minister Hun Sen has dissolved newspapers and the opposition. Becky and Simon Kenton-Lake report. Defending journalism in a climate of fear. Remembering a revolution: May Iranian Women protest the veil. On 27 December , year-old Vida Movahed removed her headscarf, tied it to a stick and stood atop a telecoms box on busy Indigenous lives matter in Canada.

Thousands of Canadians — indigenous and non-indigenous — took to the streets in cities across the country after an all-white jury Emmerson Mnangagwa. The record of Zimbabwe's new President is not re-assuring for Zimbabweans interested in human rights discovers Richard Swift.

Why Spycops victims walked out from the police inquiry. We are not abandoning the inquiry. We are desperate to participate, but it must be thorough and credible, says an alliance of A decade of resistance behind Iranian bars. Theresa May rolls out the red carpet for Saudi crown prince.

Only six per cent of Britons back selling arms to Saudi Arabia. So why has Mohamed bin Salman been invited to Britain? Demanding a solution revolution. Dear MeToo backlash, we feminists have heard it all before… Kate Smurthwaite writes. Should you buy an ethical smartphone? Supply chain monitoring not consumer choices will protect rights argues Annie Pickering. Why make women suffer twice?

Their entire education about slavery was confined to America. Because, says the Times, that is the date of the arrival of the first slaves to the land that would a century-and-a-half later be called the United States.

Of course, it is important to study the history of slavery in this country. But what if America was not unique in holding slaves? Reading it should be your first step toward learning the full facts about slavery worldwide. In perusing the FreeTheSlaves website, the first fact that emerges is it was nearly 9, years ago that slavery first appeared , in Mesopotamia B. Enemies captured in war were commonly kept by the conquering country as slaves.

And in the s B. Later, the pagan Greeks participated in slavery, for ancient Sparta as well as Athens relied fully on the slave labor of captives. But Greek slavery paled in comparison to that in ancient Rome. By the 8 th century A. By the year A. As for the Atlantic slave trade, this began in A.

Eighty-two years later , Spanish explorers brought the first African slaves to settlements in what would become the United States—a fact the Times gets wrong.

But the antipathy of many Americans toward slavery became evident as early as , when Quakers in Pennsylvania set up the first abolitionist society. Betsy Ross, whose American flag was deemed politically incorrect recently by Nike, was herself both a Quaker and an abolitionist. Slavery is prohibited under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights , which states: "No one shall be held in slavery or servitude: slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

Definitions of modern-day slavery are mainly taken from the UN supplementary convention , which says: "debt bondage, serfdom, forced marriage and the delivery of a child for the exploitation of that child are all slavery-like practices and require criminalisation and abolishment". The Forced Labour Convention defines forced labour as "all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily".

As contemporary systems of slavery have evolved, new definitions, including trafficking and distinguishing child slavery from child labour, have developed. Bonded labour: people become bonded labourers after falling into debt and being forced to work for free in an attempt to repay it.

Many will never pay off their loans, and debt can be passed down through the generations. Forced labour: where people are forced to work, usually with no payment, through violence or intimidation. Many find themselves trapped, often in a foreign country with no papers, and unable to leave. Descent-based slavery: where people are born into slavery because their families belong to a class of "slaves" within a society.

The status of "slave" passes from mother to child. Trafficking: the transport or trade of people from one area to another and into conditions of slavery. Child slavery: children are in slavery as domestic workers, forced labour — in, for example, the cocoa, cotton and fisheries industries — trafficked for labour and sexual exploitation, and used as child soldiers.

Early and forced marriage: women continue to be married without consent, often while still girls, and forced into sexual and domestic servitude. Due to its illegality, data on modern-day slavery is difficult to collate. The ILO says this estimate includes trafficking and other forms of modern slavery.