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Two weeks ago, 18 children aged between six and 13 from the Watoto children’s project in Kampala sat in the Gallery of your Lordship’s House. The Watoto project has a village of 1,500 children—it is hoped to increase that number to 10,000 children—who are orphans of AIDS victims. When I was chatting to them outside the Chamber, I asked what they would like to be. One child said that he would like to be a pilot, another said that he would like to be an accountant. One child said that she wanted to be a nurse and, even though Watoto is a non-conformist establishment, one said that she wanted to be a nun. They all had dreams. Children are allowed to dream, look forward and hope, but there are many obstacles to their hopes and dreams: poverty, disease and slavery.
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Even though next year we can celebrate the first move to abolish slavery 200 years ago and the efforts of William Wilberforce and his fellows, we are still faced with different forms of slavery. Some of the children from Kampala had been thrown on rubbish heaps when they were babies with their hands and feet tied together, and there was no hope. Our task—and in this House, we can do it more than any other place—is to bring hope and dreams and to try to remove the nightmares that haunt so many children in the world today.
I could go on for a long time, but I am trying not to. We see bonded labour, trafficking, forced labour, children forced to work as soldiers or as domestic labourers or to take part in commercial sex work. It is estimated that there are 179 million children in the worst forms of child labour. There are girls and women in early or forced marriages who are sentenced to a life of servitude. Others are enslaved in chattel slavery.
We must act according to the global demands. Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:
“No one shall be held in slavery or servitude: slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms”.
For the United Kingdom, that must mean an active and, I hope, leading part in tackling this problem. Can the Minister say why we are still refusing to sign and ratify the Council of Europe convention against trafficking? The answer I get time and time again is that we must sort out the immigration question. We have had time to think that through, and yet we do not seem to have made any positive move to sign it. On 19 July, the Prime Minister said,
However, he still refuses to sign. We are told that the police have most commendably set up the UK Human Trafficking Centre and that Operation Pentameter resulted in the rescue of 75 trafficked victims, but it is estimated that 4,000 women are brought into the UK each year, so 75 is commendable, but a mere drop in the ocean. What are we doing to be seen to be more determined? Why does the May 2000 optional protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child about the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography remain unsigned by the United Kingdom? This reluctance is not a good advertisement for us as a country.
On 18 October, a Written Answer promised that Her Majesty’s Government,
- “intend to publish the UK Action Plan on tackling human trafficking by the end of 2006”.—[Official Report, 18/10/06; col. WA 195.]
We are now near the end of 2006. Perhaps other people have heard of the action plan. Perhaps it has been published secretly or confidentially. Can the Minister tell us what is happening to that promise? If we have not published that action plan, it shows the country in an unfavourable way.
Conventions and plans are only part of dealing with these problems. Many other local initiatives are helping. It is important that, by accepting the
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4.30 pm
The Lord Bishop of Liverpool: My Lords, I rise to support the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, and to assure her of the support of these Benches. Liverpool—whose 800th anniversary we celebrate next year in 2007, which is the same year as the bicentennial of the abolition of the slave trade—amassed much wealth through the trade in slaves and the culture of slavery. So I stand in ambivalent manner to make this speech today.
One of the ships that sailed from Liverpool with human cargo was ironically and tragically named “The Blessing”. How could a ship, which cursed the lives of so many, have borne such a name? How could decent men and women of only two centuries past have tolerated such a stain on their character? Did they not know of the abuse? Did they not possess any fellow human feeling? Did they not have the imagination to place themselves in the shoes, if they had them, of the slaves?
We look back in this generation with incredulity on this so-called civilised era, but what will they say of us in 200 years’ time? What will they ask with equal disbelief about the stands we have taken or failed to take? Will they say, “Did they not have the global media to tell them that according to the ILO 179 million people are caught up in forced labour?”. Will they say, “Did they not have the intelligence to know that 218 million children between the ages of five and 17 were engaged in some form of slave labour?”. Will they say of us, “Did they not know that 2.4 million are victims of sexual trafficking?”. These statistics should shame our conscience, stir our compassion and fire our demand for justice.
Although much of this happens in other parts of the world, victims of forced labour and sexual trafficking are also found in Europe, and even here in Britain. Furthermore, as Madeleine Bunting reported in the Guardian yesterday, there are an estimated half a million irregular migrants forced into cheap labour and servicing our own economy. The Government must know from this debate that these realities are simply unacceptable to this House and to all people of conscience.
It is to the Government’s credit that they have brought in legislation to criminalise trafficking and to sign up to the Palermo protocol of 2000 to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking. But, in calling for papers for the eradication of contemporary slavery, we on these Benches urge, with the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Llandudno, the Government to ratify the 2005 Council of Europe Convention on
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The trade in slaves was abolished in the British Empire in 1807. Slavery itself was abolished in 1833. Tragically, it continues to affect millions of people around the world today. When the Bill to abolish the slave trade came before Parliament 200 years ago, it was thwarted many times by your Lordships’ predecessors. It was argued that such liberation of the slaves would bring economic disaster and even ruin the Empire. Perhaps we in our generation might atone for the sins of our fathers and send out a clear message that slavery ruins human life, and that if it goes unchallenged and unchecked it will diminish the humanity of us all.
4.34 pm
The Earl of Sandwich: My Lords, as we have heard, nearly 200 years ago, Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce and a few other committed individuals persuaded the Government to pass a law against the appalling trans-Atlantic slave trade. If any one of us has the courage to stand beside those names today, it must be my noble friend Lady Cox. As we shall learn from an exhibition in Westminster Hall opening in May, it was a popular campaign as well—one of the first examples of parliamentary democracy in action; a noble cause popularised through petitions, posters and public speaking that was finally given parliamentary expression through a Bill.
Today, the campaign outside Parliament is spearheaded by Anti-Slavery International, of which I have been a council member for the past nine years. A few weeks ago, I had the honour of presenting the 2006 Anti-Slavery Award to James Aguer, whom my noble friend mentioned, from the Dinka Committee in Sudan, which has rescued thousands of women and children from traditional slavery. My noble friend Lord Alton will also speak about that.
But there are many less visible, equally brutal forms of contemporary slavery, as the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, mentioned. According to the ILO, at least 12.3 million individuals are forced to work against their will, of whom as many as 9 million are in the Asia/Pacific region. Debt bondage occurs when workers offer their labour in exchange for a loan but then lose all control over their conditions of work and pay. Their debt is often inflated through excessive interest and can be passed on to other family members. That cruel practice affects millions of people in the Indian subcontinent, especially among the lowest castes in India and Nepal. Dalit NGOs that I have visited in southern India tell stories of appalling oppression, of children enslaved as bonded labourers, of families forced off their land simply because of their caste and of workers made to carry out humiliating tasks just to avoid poverty.
In Latin America, workers are enslaved, receiving only basic food and shelter in return for their labour. In Brazil and Bolivia, for example, migrant workers and indigenous people are used as forced labour on the sugar cane plantations. The majority are forced
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Trafficking is another form of forced labour. The ILO estimates that about 2.5 million people have been trafficked into forced labour and draws attention to the fact that 32 per cent of those are exclusively for labour exploitation. That is a contemporary issue that directly concerns the UK today. Unpublished government research, which has been mentioned already, shows that there were an estimated 4,000 victims of trafficking for prostitution in the UK during 2003 at any one time—a huge increase from the previous estimate in 1998 of 1,420.
As we know, people are also trafficked for labour exploitation here. In September, Anti-Slavery International published research that identified 27 individual cases, mainly through debt bondage, the removal of passports or the use of intimidation and threats. Those migrants have been trafficked into industries such as agriculture, construction, food processing and packaging, nursing, hospitality and the restaurant trade. The majority had entered the country legally. In many cases, the employers kept the migrants’ documents, claiming that they had sent them to the Home Office for official purposes until workers’ visas ran out and they became much easier to exploit.
There is the story of two Vietnamese men in their twenties who were recruited in Vietnam to work in a hotel in the UK. They paid £18,000 to arrange the job, and came to the UK under the work permit scheme. On arrival, an agent met them at the airport and removed their passports. They worked in a major hotel chain for two months without any pay. All they were given was food. They attempted a strike, and their families in Vietnam then received threats. They were too frightened to approach their embassy or the police, but eventually approached a citizens advice bureau via someone whom they met on the street who happened to speak Vietnamese.
There is no information about what happens to most of these trafficked people. Surely this reflects a lack of awareness about trafficking in the relevant agencies and a lack of support services for the people affected. In 2004, the UK introduced a law that makes trafficking for all forms of labour exploitation a criminal offence. In 2006, it established the United Kingdom Human Trafficking Centre. Despite these positive initiatives, no single successful prosecution has been brought against trafficking for labour exploitation. Perhaps the Minister will put me right on that if I am wrong. Nor is any specialised assistance available to people who are trafficked for forced labour.
As the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, said, the UK has still not signed the Council of Europe convention, which would ensure that people trafficked into forced labour are at least provided with the minimum standards of protection and support. More than 30 other European countries, including France, Italy,
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Will the Government follow the JCHR’s recent recommendation and sign the Council of Europe convention, which provides the minimum standards of protection? Will the UK also provide additional funding to the ILO for its special action programme against forced labour? Will it also make a commitment to retain the 1998 rule on migrant domestic workers, which gives them one-year renewable visas and the right to change their employer? This rule has helped to protect migrant workers from being reduced to conditions of servitude, and removing that right would lead to an increase in trafficking and forced labour.
Finally, will the Government establish an independent national rapporteur on trafficking in human beings in the UK, with a similar role to that of the Dutch national rapporteur, as part of the UK’s action plan, to which we all look forward?
4.43 pm
Lord Alton of Liverpool: My Lords, my noble friend, the indomitable and indefatigable Lady Cox, has once again laid a Question of singular importance before your Lordships’ House for debate. Commemoration on 22 February 2007 of the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade is of course right, but we are also right, as preceding speakers have said, to note that contemporary forms of slavery persist on a vast scale in many parts of the world. Perhaps as many as 27 million people are enslaved today. The International Labour Organisation estimates that 8.4 million children—approximately one in 175 children in the world—are held in slavery. The cocoa industry in Africa uses children, and in India children as young as six have been kidnapped and taken hundreds of miles from their village to weave carpets.
In addition to gross exploitation, it is said that about 700,000 people are trafficked every year. Slavery and trafficking generate billions of pounds worldwide, and even in countries such as our own, the deaths of the Morecambe Bay cockle pickers illustrated the horrors of the shadowy world of exploitation and gangmasters.
Part of the hold over migrant workers like these is debt bondage, which is estimated by the United Nations to affect more than 20 million people. Modern-day forms of slavery—based on discrimination because of racial origin, forced labour, child labour, trafficking and debt bondage—all underpin the economic and trade relationships from which we and many other countries continue to benefit. Compared with 1807, slavery tiptoes in carpet slippers, but it remains a pernicious and all-too-evident contemporary reality.
In Sudan, even the Arabic word which is used to describe the African Sudanese who live in the south of the country and in Darfur means slave. Perhaps that
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The Dinka Committee of which James Aguer is chairman has documented 14,000 abductions and has suggested that a further 6,000 occurred between 1997 and 2002. He told me that in addition to this, thousands of children have been born to those who have been abducted and, therefore, have also been enslaved. Despite securing the release of more than 4,000 Dinka people, neither the Dinka Committee nor the Committee for the Eradication of the Abduction of Women and Children (CEAWC) has funds to continue the work of identifying and releasing abductees and returning them to the south. I hope that when the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, replies she will give us information about whether additional support can be provided to CEAWC and the Dinka Committee. Sudan is by no means the only African country to permit contemporary slavery.
In a debate initiated by my noble friend Lord Sandwich in 2005 I raised the situation in Niger. I had recently met members of the NGO, Timidria, whose president, Ilguilas Weila, and his colleague, Alassane Biga, had been arrested by the Government of Niger for graphically describing the widespread practice of slavery. In Niger, people are compelled to perform work for others simply because of their caste or ethnic group. Timidria found evidence that the majority of the 11,000 people whom they interviewed could identify individuals by name as their masters and were expected to work for them without pay. More than 80 per cent of respondents said that their master took key decisions in their lives, such as who they would marry and whether their children would go to school. Again, I hope that when the noble Baroness replies she will welcome last month’s decision by the Government of Niger to establish a national commission to tackle forced labour and the legacies of slavery, including discrimination. But, at a practical level, perhaps the Government could also usefully commit to discuss with our European Union colleagues how financial support could be made available to support the work of that commission in securing the release of slaves and providing alternative livelihoods.
It is significant that those who are subjected to forced labour are frequently from minority or marginalised groups. For example, slavery in Sudan affects different ethnic or religious groups. Bonded labour in India, Nepal and Pakistan disproportionately affects dalits and those who are considered to be of “low” caste, adivasis, indigenous people, or other minority groups, including religious minorities. Clearly, many governments will have limited resources for eradication programmes, but development projects could be focused on geographic areas where slavery-like practices are still relevant.
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It would also be good to hear today from the Government what action they will take in 2007 to ensure that the relevant inter-governmental organisations prioritise combating slavery as part of an integrated strategy to achieve long-term development targets such as the millennium development goals and ensure that all relevant institutions’ poverty reduction strategy papers address forced labour issues.
I should like to mention one other country specifically. With my noble friend Lady Cox, I have travelled to North Korea, and we serve as chairman and vice-chairman of the All-Party Group on North Korea. During the famine of the 1990s, around 50,000 North Koreans fled to China’s Jilin province. The exodus was spurred by a mixture of starvation, political oppression and economic necessity. Leaving North Korea without permission is a criminal offence that can carry the death penalty. Once deported, people will spend between one and three months in a prison labour camp in which they are likely to become malnourished, live in unsanitary conditions and be subjected to forced labour. From those who have escaped, there are testimonies of beatings, torture, degrading treatment, and even forced abortions and infanticide.
The work day in a prison camp begins at five in the morning and ends at seven or eight in the evening. Pregnant, elderly and sick women are not exempt from the work. Types of labour include farming, construction, collecting heavy logs and brick making. For meals they are given a meagre quantity of corn and soup. The hard labour leads to a high number of fatalities. There are many first-hand accounts which attest to malnourishment, appalling hygiene and an absence of medical care to treat illness or injury. However you choose to define it, this is slavery.
I have two questions for the Minister about North Korea. What discussions have the Government had with the International Labour Organisation and the UN special rapporteur about the use of forced labour? Are we speaking directly to the Chinese Government about the repatriation of refugees to North Korea?
Like the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool, I am deeply conscious of the role of Liverpool in the transatlantic slave trade. It is estimated that by the end of the 18th century, 60 per cent of Britain’s trading activities centred on Liverpool and, of course, it had the title of capital of the slave trade. In total, British ships are estimated to have made 12,000 voyages and to have carried 2.5 million slaves. It is a poignant and shaming experience to stand, as I have done, at the Gate of No Return in Benin, from where so many of Africa’s slaves were wrenched away from their homes, their families, their culture and their identity.
Happily, Liverpool’s role in the trade is in part redeemed by the actions of William Roscoe, who served briefly in the House of Commons and in 1807 voted with William Wilberforce against the trade. For his pains, on his return to Liverpool he was set upon by the mob and never sat again in Parliament. He
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