World Day Against Child Labor 2011

In a modern age where days should be ones of celebration, once again we find ourselves forced to reckon with the evils humanity is capable of, once again we commemorate the worst of exploitations, today is World Day Against Child Labor. The International Labor Organization estimates that there are still 215 million children engaged in illegal labor, with half being in the worst forms of slave labor. This includes, but is of course not limited to, the sex trade, child soldiering, bonded labor and the illegal drug trade. The text of their new report.

Like most forms of child exploitation, illegal child labor is born from the womb of poverty. Many children are forced to work solely for their family or for themselves to survive. Many children will not eat if they don't work. And of course this type of desperation gives greed and evil ample opportunity for the most egregious forms exploitation.

Please let your voice be heard today and everyday for the innocent victims of illegal labor. Please make sure the products you consume are slave labor free. Ask your congressmen to support the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act. Please live simply and give whatever you can to legitimate organizations that fight poverty. Inform yourself. There are also many informative and inspiring videos on the ILO's YouTube page. From all of us at COH, thank you for defending the defenseless. Thank you for being a voice for the voiceless. Thank you for helping organizations like International Justice Mission give justice for the oppressed and exploited.

Child Prostitute in Ghana

Slaves of god.

Trokosi comes from an Ewe word meaning "slave of the gods". It is a religious and cultural practice in which young girls, mostly virgins, are sent into lifelong servitude to atone for the alleged crimes of their relatives. There are more than five thousand young girls and women being kept in 345 shrines in the southeastern part of Ghana.

According to the American Anti-Slavery Group, "until the 18th century the offering typically took the form of livestock or other gifts, but that began to change and priests began demanding, and receiving, virgin girls as atonement for the sins of their relatives. Girls, often under the age of 10, are brought to the priest, ritually stripped of all their possessions, including clothes, and told they have to do anything the priest tells them. Most girls are raped repeatedly."

Juliana Dogbadzi, enslaved in a shrine in her native Ghana at the age of 6, was forced to perform sexual services for the holy man. She was able to escape seventeen years later, after several failed attempts, at the age of twenty-three.

Devadasi literally means god’s (Dev) female servant (Dasi), where according to the ancient Indian practice, young pre-pubescent girls are ‘given’ in matrimony to god or local religious deity of the temple. The girl ‘serves’ the priests and inmates of the temple. The sexual service given these men is considered service of god. The Devadasi is dedicated to the service of the temple deity for life and there is no escape for her.

The practice is prevalent in Karnataka, India and surrounding states, such as Andhra Pradesh. There are approximately 23,000 Devadasis in Karnataka today and approximately 17,000 in Andhra Pradesh. Researchers estimate that the number of Devadasis in Karnataka account, for approximately 80% of all sex workers in the area. Devadasis account for an estimated 15% of all sex workers in India.


Above, a terrified child is about to be dedicated for temple service. Each year, an estimated 5,000 young girls are brought to the festival of Yellama to be dedicated as Devadasis. On the night of the full moon in January, thousands of young girls join in a religious procession to the temple for goddess Yellamma in a remote village of Karnataka. After being dedicated, they are auctioned to the highest bidder and enter the world of prostitution.

It is impossible to overstate the particular evil this is, that in the name of god, a child is trafficked into sexual bondage, where not only their innocence is stolen, but their very conscience is torn in two as they must some how reconcile the religion they are taught and the brutalization they are experiencing. Almost every religion has these two things in common, the belief that mankind is somehow made in the image of god and the concept of personal purification through faith or ritual. How can a child ever see god as anything other than a brutal beast with an insatiable lust for innocent flesh when the men made in god's image do those things to her in god's name? And how can these madmen preach sanctity, offer atonement, when they are the ones defiling and destroying true innocence?

Please help Conspiracy Of Hope end the trafficking and sexual exploitation of children in our lifetime. And for every voiceless trokosi and devadasi child, please raise your voice with us to demand justice.

Numbers.

Some estimates are that there are 1.2 million children trafficked every year. 600,000 of those are girls, average age 13, that end up as child prostitutes.

But those are just numbers.

Numbers are not afraid to cry during the rape sessions, numbers are not afraid of the beatings they will get if they do. Numbers don't get addicted to the heroin force fed them to keep them docile, to break their will, to keep them coming back. Numbers do not have their virginity sold to the highest bidder, or have their "virginity" resold and resold and resold to the highest bidder after a surgery to "restore" that virginity. Numbers are not fed animal hormones to make them look healthy when the ravages of rape and the filth of light-less existence begin to atrophy their bodies. Numbers don't get Aids. Numbers don't get thrown out of a brothel when they do.

But children, 3200 hundred a day, 135 an hour, 2 every minute, do. They lose their childhood, their hope, their sense of justice, their will to live. What if it were your child? What if it were your little sister? I bet she has a name, bet she's not a number to you. Numbers get filed in folders, in file cabinets, between other files, and are forgotten. But you'll never forget her.

These are the real life stories of the victims of human trafficking from The Polaris Project. Their stories are unforgettable, they are the daughters, the baby sisters, the children those numbers represent, they are the statistics that suffer the most depraved of injustices. Please read their stories. Please imagine their words are your own child's, your own sisters words. Please do whatever you would do for your own child for these children. Because until we fight for them with that same passion, that same relentless resolve, they are just a number to us. And numbers have a way of being rounded down, subtracted, erased, and lost forever.

Child Prostitute in India.