This past Sunday -- April 20 -- marked the one-year anniversary of the Bangladesh factory collapse that killed 1,100 garment workers, many of whom were making cheap clothes for U.S. and European manufacturers.
The tragedy brought significant attention to the problems of poor working conditions and safety issues at factories in that part of the world. By and large, safety improvements have occurred in the past year, but according to Siddharth Kara, another big issue in labor exploitation is the increasing problem of modern slavery. Kara is one of the world's foremost experts on human trafficking, and is best-known for his award-winning book, “Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery.”
“I think we are generally aware, in the back of our minds, that there is an extensive amount of child labor and forced labor -- human trafficking around the world,” said Kara. “But until we are put face to face with it … we don’t truly appreciate the extent and expanse of child labor and slavery and just how acerbic and brutish some of these scenarios are for the workers.”
In a recent article published in Foreign Policy, Kara wrote about contemporary slavery and child labor practices employed in the Eastern Hemisphere that are used to produce cheap products for consumers in the U.S. and other Western nations. He described how dozens of boys -- ages 10 to 14 -- are locked inside shacks and forced to weave beautiful hand-made carpets that U.S. consumers buy in department stores. Many of these children are modern-day indentured servants.
Kara said that debt bondage and other forms of servile labor exploitation are prevalent across Asia.
“Recruiters, traffickers, agents for factories or landowners or other producers go to areas where they know people are deeply impoverished and need some sort of credit for food, medicine or something similar,” he said. “They make these offers promising that the recipient or his family can work off the debt in a reasonable circumstance, but of course, once they’re transported into the factory or mine ... they’re very often exploited and end up working off these debts for years or a lifetime.”
Kara’s most recent book is “Bonded Labor: Tackling the System of Slavery in South Asia.”