What is forced labour?

What is the problem?

Forced labour is any work or services which people are forced to do against their will under the threat of some form punishment.  Almost all slavery practices, including trafficking in people and bonded labour, contain some element of forced labour.

Forced labour affects millions of men, women and children around the world and is most frequently found in labour intensive and/or under-regulated industries, such as:

• Agriculture and fishing 
• Domestic work
• Construction, mining, quarrying and brick kilns 
• Manufacturing, processing and packaging
• Prostitution and sexual exploitation
• Market trading and illegal activities

 

How big is the problem?

The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that there are at least 20.9 million people in forced labour worldwide. The figure means that, at any given point in time, around three out of every 1,000 persons worldwide are suffering in forced labour.
Some more detailed ILO's statistic:

• 18.7 million (90%) people are in forced labour in the private economy, exploited by individuals or enterprises. Out of these, 4.5 million (22%) are in forced sexual exploitation, and 14.2 million (68%) in forced labour exploitation in activities such as agriculture, construction, domestic work and manufacturing.
• Women and girls represent the greater share of forced labour victims 11.4 million (55%), as compared to 9.5 million (45%) men and boys.
• Adults are more affected than children 74% (15.4 million) of victims fall in the age group of 18 years and above, whereas children are 26% of the total (or 5.5 million child victims).
• 2.2 million (10%) work in state-imposed forms of forced labour, for example in prisons under conditions which violate ILO standards, or in work imposed by the state military or by rebel armed forces.

Why is there a problem?

In around 10 per cent of cases the State or the military is directly responsible for the use of forced labour. Notable examples where this takes place are Burma, North Korea and China.  However, in the vast majority of cases forced labour is used by private individuals who are seeking to make profits from the exploitation of other people.

Victims of forced labour are frequently from minority or marginalised groups who face institutionalised discrimination and live on the margins of society where they are vulnerable to slavery practices. Forced labour is usually obtained as a result of trapping the individual in debt bondage or by restricting their freedom of movement.  In other cases violence, threats and intimidation are used and/or there is an absence of effective State protection.

Where is the problem?

Forced labour is a global problem, although some regions have larger numbers of people affected than others.  The regional distribution of forced labour is:

• Asia and Pacific: 11.7 million (56%)
• Africa: 3.7 million (18%)
• Latin America and the Caribbean: 1.8 million (9%)
• The Developed Economies (US, Canada, Australia, European Union, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Japan): 1.5 million (7%)
• Central, Southeast and Eastern Europe (non EU) and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CSEE): 1.6 million (7%)
• Middle East: 600,000 (3%)

Laws

The ILO defines forced labour as: “all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of a penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily”. 

This definition is set out in the ILO’s Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29).  This Convention has been ratified by over 170 states and obliges governments to “suppress the use of forced or compulsory labour in all its forms within the shortest possible period”.

The United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights also prohibits the use of forced labour (Article 8) and has been ratified by more than 160 states. 

China is the only country in the world which has not ratified either of these international standards.  However, many countries have not passed specific laws defining and prohibiting forced labour with adequate punishments for those responsible.  Where these laws exist they are often not enforced properly.


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Yesterday's Labour Workfare Masssacre

Reblogged from Diary of a Benefit Scrounger

 

This morning, like the night after Agincourt, lefties like me scan the bloody, burnt out social media #workfare battlefield in the hope of finding twitching Labour corpses. There are none. Like the French 600 years before, a few generals at the top of the pile made the fateful decision to crush the weak and exhausted. Like the French, they were shown exactly why that's often not a very good idea at all. 

In the three years since Labour have been in opposition, nothing has described their fate better than the welfare debate. With minds stuck in an ideology forged around a gleaming new millennium, welfare was a comforting Blairite hawk to offset the freer doves of education, international aid and health. 

Tough on povety, tough on the causes of poverty. It suited Purnell, and Murphy and Cooper as they forged their credentials as "centrists" and who knows? Future leaders? 

So the argument goes : "It's a no brainer. The public think everyone on welfare is scrounging. (Except them) The tougher we are on welfare, the more people in the "Middle" and the "Shires" and the "City" breathe easy at night. (As long as it's not pensioners and it doesn't affect them.) Combining a little social justice elsewhere, with a good dose of judgement and steel in welfare = the chance of a majority. 75% of the public support workfare. Therefore, supporting the government on this is a chance to show we are still tough on poverty, tough on the causes of poverty. The Daily Mail fall gasping at our feet, they raise a glass in the gentleman's clubs, and no-one will listen to the screams of the anguished or weak, well, because they're anguished and weak."

Some around the shadow cabinet now look uncomfortable, shift in their seats. This is at least progress. Some mention the change in the welfare narrative lately. Opinion polls shifting, disability becoming toxic for the Tories, the increased media interest and above all, that behemoth of opinion formers - social media. But the hawks give the doves a little slap about and logic prevails. 75% of everyone or about 1% of the active, gobby probably-gave-up-on-us-anyway-leftie-activist-Face-Tweeps??? 

As has happened so often before, but had been happening less lately, the hawks won the welfare Agincourt, and they took to the commons. 

We on Twitter and Facebook steeled ourselves. Defeat had been heavily trailed on the blogs and had met with the grim opposition of the archer who knows he may be amongst small and ragged numbers, but he has all the arrows and the mighty have none. 

And so it proved. If the Daily Mail or the BBC even noticed Labour's unprincipled stand yesterday, designed to get them picked for the election team, there is little evidence today on a quick dodge of budget fever. 

But on Social Media? 

Oh Agincourt,

"Those few, those happy few those band of brothers. 

For those yesterday who shed their blood may have been a brother. 

Be he ne'er so vile, election day may have gentled his condition and Englishmen abed may have held their front doors wide as any speaks, that canvassed late, upon election day!!!"

For the return of precisely zero centre ground, floating voting, Mail readers, Labour managed to enrage and alienate 10s of 1000s of active, passionate, left of centre, engaged, knowledgeable, informed, opinion formers who are read by journalists and opposition alike - not to mention their own families and friends. 

Life has changed since 2000. Politics has changed. The economy has changed beyond all recognition. Living standards have fallen. Corruption seems to stalk everywhere now that gossamer veneer of "success" has floated away. 

But most of all, "media" has changed. Numbers of papers sold are plummeting, news figures freefall by their side. 

And every day, social media takes over. Sure, not the majority, but the vanguard. And they are the ones who care and think and devise and solve and organise. Just like any world paradigm change, it is the few who lead you to safety not the many. 

Every time Labour remembers that, they are rewarded with just a little touch of Harry in the night - Murdoch and Leveson, Gas giants and Loan sharks their names in our mouths bitterly remembered. 

We appreciate their company, there in the breach. 

But every time they take what they know is the wrong decision on principle, the response is swift and horrific. 

I won't pain myself more by sifting through the "I'll never vote Labour again" tweets or sifting through the debris of torn up membership cards and broken hearts. 

But Labour squandered so much more yesterday on a battle they could never win, and all the while they go on frittering away principles and viable voters on the wind of a cruel popularity it cannot win, our cause be not just.

 

 

Christian charities face Christian protests over use of workfare labour

Christian organisations including the Salvation Army and the YMCA are participating in “workfare” schemes, using workers who must work without pay or face losing their benefits.

Christianity Uncut is writing to the charities to urge them to withdraw from the schemes as a public witness against forced labour.

The call comes at the start of a week of action against workfare. The action has been called by the group Boycott Workfare for the week of 18-24 March. During the week, Christianity Uncut is planning to write to all Christian organisations using workfare labour.

Christianity Uncut welcome the fact that most churches and Christian organisations are not participating in workfare. We encourage them to sign the pledge promising that they will not do so in future.

Chris Wood, a spokesperson for Christianity Uncut, said:

“Workfare workers are not volunteers – their work is not voluntary but obligatory, and they should be paid a living wage. Instead they are being threatened with losing the benefits on which they live if they refuse to take part in this forced labour scheme.

“We are deeply saddened that charities such as the Salvation Army and YMCA are undermining the good work they do, and their witness to Christ, by participating in workfare schemes. Throughout the economy, workfare is increasing poverty and unemployment by reducing the jobs available for paid staff. Christians need to make a public witness against workfare and proclaim Jesus’ teaching that ‘The worker is worthy of his pay’ (Luke 10,7).”

There are numerous workfare schemes currently in operation. Each requires claimants to work without pay or face possible destitution through sanctions (benefit stoppages), which can last for up to three years. A list of schemes currently in operation can be found at http://www.boycottworkfare.org/?page_id=663.

Protests, creative actions and online pickets against workfare will take place on 18-24 March across the UK in a week of action called by the Boycott Workfare network to escalate the campaign against forced unpaid work. More information and a list of actions can be found at http://www.boycottworkfare.org/?p=1996.

Christianity Uncut

CAPITA will NOT be offering claimants Audio Recording of PIP Assessments

A FOI Request has confirmed Capita will not be offering PIP Claimants the opportunity of having their assessments audio recorded as was previously thought to be the case.

It now seems the government are determined to stop audio recording in any way they can, claimants will if they choose be able to record PIP assessments with their own equipment if they can provide a copy to the HCP at the end of their assessment, it’s the same old crap basically.

The government/DWP/Capita don’t want the truth to come out about how the assessment process is carried out, a bigger bunch of shysters I doubt we will ever come across again…

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/capita_pip_contract_audio_record#incoming-369105

Atos assessment death rate dwarfs that of soldiers in Afghanistan

The headline says it all.

Some people reading this might think it tasteless to compare the number of people who have died while going through the Atos/DWP assessment process for Employment and Support Allowance with the number of soldiers who have given their lives for their country in Afghanistan. I don’t.

Consider the outpouring of sorrow that takes place when one of our soldiers dies. They deserve that recognition; they have made the ultimate sacrifice.

Sick and disabled people who have died because our bullying government’s assessment system caused more stress than their weakened system could handle – they don’t get that kind of recognition. Perhaps it’s because it is an action of their own government that is killing them.

Perhaps you will look more kindly on the sick and disabled of this country when you read the following:

According to the BBC, by October 30 this year, the total number of British soldiers who had died in Afghanistan since military operations began there in 2002 was 437.

That’s equivalent to the number of sick or disabled people who die - while going through the Atos/DWP work capability assessment system (or as a result of going through it) - every six weeks.

Vox Political

Suicide training in Job Centres? Cancer patients scrubbing floors? Welcome to Cameron’s Brave New World

By Sonia Poulton
UPDATED: 17:19, 6 March 2012

So, the Welfare Reform Bill - the part that refers to sick and disabled people - limped bruised and bloodied over the finishing line in Parliament last week. The various acts of treachery and betrayal it contained making its final journey into law once it has been granted the Queen's royal assent.

 
It was inevitable, really, and disability campaigners who, for the past two years, have fought feverishly, and quite literally at times from their sickbeds, to oppose it, resigned themselves to the fact that nothing short of a Biblical-type miracle would reverse their fate.

 
However, it is only now that the full implications of what these reforms - or brutal acts of savagery as I prefer to call them - will actually mean to millions of seriously vulnerable people in our country. And it is an ugly realisation.

 
This is how I see it. In the life of most every politician there is one, or several, events that mark out their ‘D’Oh moment. This is not based on severity but on a feeling it should not have happened at all.

Brave New World? David and Samantha Cameron themselves claimed Disability Living Allowance for their child

For examples: Nixon - Watergate. Kennedy - Marilyn. Major - Edwina Currie. Tony Blair - Iraq. You get my point?

 
Well here’s my ‘D’oh moment prediction for David Cameron. He will be remembered as the Prime Minister - without a mandate, remember - who attacked the sick and disabled of our country with a vehemence beyond human comprehension. And when you think that he had a disabled son who tragically passed two years ago, well, then, it beggars belief even more so.
So, to bring the story up to speed.

 
Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair’s Governments set the blueprint of the welfare reforms that David Cameron has just forced through Parliament. And when I say forced I mean the type that requires extraordinary levels of subterfuge and manipulation to shoehorn into place.

 
He ignored panels and focus groups, charities and campaigners and he overturned the Lords' by invoking an archaic law of “financial privilege”, which allows the Commons the last say on money matters.

Such was his unstoppable zeal to push through reforms - contrary to all advice, personal and professional - that you had to wonder if it was a psychological issue driving him on.

Talk to any disabled or sick person right now and there is a word that crops up more than any other, a running thread central to what they are feeling. It is this: fear

Perhaps denied grief at the death of his disabled son. Bereavement affects us on an individual basis and there is no guarantee that it will manifest in logical ways.

 
So these cuts will now become law and, as a nation weeps, the details are sorrowful when applied to reality.

 
Here's an example. Any disabled or sick person who has been given more than six months to live - and is unable to financially support themselves - will be sent out to work. If they refuse, or back out of a scheme, then they will be subject to benefit sanctions.

 
This, it must be noted, is extraordinarily punishing towards disabled people when we consider how DWP boss, Chris Grayling, treats others involved in 'Workfare' type arrangements.

 
Consider, if you will, how he was forced to back-track last week following pressure from campaigners and businesses.  After a summit designed to get more businesses on board the Workfare bus, he announced that he would remove the threat of benefit sanctions for unemployed young people on job seeker allowance who drop out of the scheme.

 
Wow. In what world can young, fit people be given protection that we deny our most vulnerable? That's more suited to an Aldous Huxley script than real life.

 

Next up in the reforms will be an increase in multiple testing of patients, including those with Alzheimer's and Multiple Sclerosis, to see if they are fit for work. They will be tested repeatedly. It will cost a great deal of money to administer and it will wear already sick people to a pulp.

And as for children who dare to be born disabled, well that assistance previously available to them has been wiped out in Cameron's Armageddon on the poor. 

 
Sue Marsh, one of the co-authors of 'Responsible Reform - The Spartacus Report' - which launched a worthy counter-attack to the Coalition's WRB measures said: "We begged for £11 Million to protect profoundly disabled children into adulthood, but nuh-huh."

 
And yet we, as a nation, manage to find millions of pounds to pay Cameron's army of advisers and assessors including the allegedly fraudulent activities of back-to-work company A4E which was set up by the Coalition's 'families czar' Emma Harrison.

 
Could we consider this? If this is really a cost-cutting exercise to fill the billion pound deficit, when is the Coalition going to start from within? The DWP spend over 25 thousand pounds per month on travel, hotels and stationery - surely there is something that could be curbed there rather than taking 20% from disability which, according to their own figures, only has 0.5% of fraud.

 
I'm writing this and I'm struggling to believe it at the same time, which is quite a conflict.

 
With all this insistence of paid employment for the terminally ill (despite the fact that we have almost 3million unemployed) it is no wonder that job centres, up and down the land, have been issued with details on how to handle suicides in their establishments. Something, apparently, they are anticipating rather more of since the WRB was voted in.

 
I think the expression ‘you couldn’t make this up’ is appropriate here.

 
Perhaps the aim is to finish off the sick and disabled sooner rather than later. Well that way, at least, you get to save on the medical bills of our increasingly privatised National Health Service.

 
After all, what use are such people to our society?

There is a notion, false obviously, that disabled and sick people make no contribution and only ‘drain’ the system. What short-sightedness. Such a statement assumes that only paid work has social value.

Legacy: Will Cameron be remembered as the PM who attacked the sick and disabled of our country with a vehemence?

What about other contributions including volunteer work - from charity shops to hospitals and schools? These roles are frequently staffed by disabled people, too.

 
Ironically, a number of disabled people will now be removed from such vital community roles and placed in a Workfare scheme - free labour to private businesses - so that they may mop floors, wash dishes or clean toilets. Ain't life grand?

 
Disabled people, like the majority of people, want to work but they also have to take account of how their illness or disability will affect their working life. Unlike the able-bodied and healthy, they do not know which turn their well-being will take when they wake in the morning. Whether they will be able to physically climb out of bed much less make it to the factory floor.

 
People on disability benefit are not living it up. If only. According to the group Family Action, some families survive on less than two pounds per day. Quite a contrast when you compare it to the Peers in the Lords who receive 300 a day just to show up and then get to enjoy smoked salmon in the tax-payer subsidised cafeteria (cost to the taxpayer is a mere 1.44million a year. bargain). Oh how the other half live.

 
So where will disabled and sick have to turn to now in their greatest hour of need? Well they can forget the Social Fund because that was viciously axed in these reforms, too.

 
For millions of people, a Social Fund loan - yes it was repayable, it wasn't a gift - was the difference between sleeping on a bed or a floor. The MP's who voted to banish this have no understanding of such destitution and poverty. Not while they are able to subsidise the purchase of their country mansions with their parliamentary expenses.

 

There are those who openly mock the disabled: Ricky Gervais's 'mong' comment says more about him than anything else

People are already impoverished and it is certain to get worse. I read one online disability forum where a woman with breast cancer and liver disease didn't know where she was going to get the ten pound needed for travel to hospital for an appointment.

 
Unlike David and Samantha Cameron, who claimed Disability Living Allowance for their child - and absolutely did not need to - many disabled now must adjust to seriously reduced circumstances since Cameron attacked DLA in the reforms and will replace with the patently detrimental Personal Independence Payment (PIP).

 
The transfer from DLA to PIP will remove help from 25% of those in receipt of the benefit now, despite the fact that this is a benefit that helps some disabled people to stay in work.
And therein lies much of the problem with these reforms. They lack joined-up thinking. They don't appear to have been thought through to a satisfactory end.

 
Take for example the perception within the Coalition, the DWP and the care services that everyone has a spouse and family to fall back on but that is not the reality for many people.
As a consequence of these cuts, more disabled people will find themselves in bedsits, or hostels or on the streets. There is a significant proportion of people with mental health issues and learning difficulties who find themselves in this situation already and it is certain to increase.

 
Well then perhaps it's time to resurrect another part of our history - seeing as David Cameron is clearly following a Dickensian blueprint for our poor - the workhouse.  Yes, that testament to our proud, class-conscious society.

 
Talk to any disabled or sick person right now and there is a word that crops up more than any other, a running thread central to what they are feeling. It is this: fear.

 
Fear of losing their homes when they no longer have DLA to top up their Housing Benefit shortfall where, thanks to the previous Conservative Government, private rents are uncapped and extortionate. Fear of losing their carer because there will be no allowance for them. Fear of being bed-ridden for the lack of anyone to lend support. Fear of losing ramps and assistance to get in and out of the house. Cold fear that this feeling of being unwanted and excluded from society is how it is going to be for the rest of their days.

With all this insistence of paid employment for the terminally ill it is no wonder that job centers, up and down the land, have been issued with details on how to handle suicides in their establishments.

In internet circles, where many disabled campaigners congregate, names are bandied around of those who have committed suicide through fear of going cold and hungry and feeling that they are increasingly a burden to society.

 
At the last count there were some 103 names linked to such suicides and I have actually heard people say that they would consider suicide as a way out of this constant state of anxiety and despair.

 
What alarms me is how this dispassion towards people with disabilities appears to be spreading from the Coalition down.

 
There are commentators who openly deride disabled people (Rod Liddle's ill-informed and hate-inciting rhetoric - a type of drunk-sick on paper - in a tabloid was one, but he's not alone). There are also comedians who mock disability. Ricky Gervais' 'mong' impersonation surely says more about him than it does about anyone else (although to be fair, Ricky has since claimed this to be naivety and that he was unaware that the term was still used to describe disability).

 
There is also, according to recent figures, a 40 per cent increase in disabled attacks in the past year alone.  Hardly wonder when the general public are constantly being goaded with the idea that we are 'mugs for supporting scroungers'. Talk like that tends to breed resentment.
And then there's this. An occurrence that should serve to alarm us all.

 
The British Medical Journal published a paper from Oxford University don Francesca Minerva, a philosopher and medical ethicist, who argued that doctors should have the right to kill newborn babies including those born with disabilities because, according to Minerva, a young baby is not a real person and so killing it in the first days after birth is little different to aborting it in the womb.

But here's what gives me hope. Ever since last week's rubber stamping of the Welfare Reform Bill, disability campaigners have begun a serious fightback and are preparing, like an army, to overcome this wickedness that has been wrought on them.  Information is being compiled and exchanged, despite ill-health and disability I have never witnessed such a bank of people determined to overcome the odds piled on them.

 
Let us not forget, and despite the mainstream media's best efforts to convince us otherwise, this is not about the neighbor with the apparent bad back who plays golf at weekends (who can also be genuinely disabled but even disabilities allow for better days when activity can increase), but about some of the most horrendous acts against truly vulnerable people.

 
This may not affect you. Perhaps your parents, or yourself even, have a sufficient financial cushion not to worry about that. What an enviable position to be in.

 
But what about those less fortunate?

 
I believe - and I’ve 47 years of a colourful life to base this judgement on - that the UK is comprised of essentially decent people. Citizens who care enough to see beyond their own selfish existence.

 
The people I know don’t want to be - and neither are they - the type of people who turn their backs when the going gets tough. They actually seek a more compassionate life on earth where we are prepared to support and contribute to each others lives.

 
In is unconscionable that these disability reforms have been allowed to happen. To be fair, we all knew it was a Conservative agenda, but a Liberal one as well? Goodness how Nick Clegg can ever recover from this I do not know. My imagination is not that good.

 
So the Welfare Reform Bill, after decades in the making, has finally come to pass. Oh, how proud are we as a nation? We did it. Gave those sick and crippled unfortunates a good old kicking. Let’s give ourselves a collective pat on the back for allowing this to proceed. Makes you proud to be British, doesn't it?

More from Sonia Poulton...

•   The Paralympics celebrate the strength of disabled people – as do all the protests that accompany them 30/08/12
•   Empathise with 'outsider' Julian Assange if you want, Mr Galloway, but don’t diminish sexual assault while doing it 22/08/12
•   So much is wrong about London 2012, but I would never criticise the stars of the show 09/08/12
•   Will Ed Miliband stand up for the disabled against distressing and unreliable work capability tests? 02/08/12
•   Clare's Law is designed to protect men and women from violent exes – but it wouldn't have saved me 17/07/12
•   Yes, Prime Minister, London 2012 will generate billions in profit. But for business, not people 12/07/12
•   With supermarkets donating food to poor families and soup kitchens, has Britain returned to the 1930s? 03/07/12
•   Is the BMA misguided to vote in favour of neutral counselling for women considering abortion? 28/06/12
•   Fathers worried about their daughters' future should take more responsibility for raising them in the first place 15/06/12
•   VIEW FULL ARCHIVE

Sonia Poulton