Child slavery

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Child slavery is the slavery of children. The enslavement of children can be traced back through history. Even after the abolition of slavery, children continue to be enslaved and trafficked in modern times, which is a particular problem in developing countries.

History

Child slavery refers of the slavery of children below the age of majority. Many children have been sold into slavery in the past for their family to repay debts or crimes or earn some money if the family were short of cash. In the Roman Empire, the children of a slave woman normally became the property of her owner.^[1] This was also the case in Korea around 1000 AD.^[2] Since slavery among the Maya and indigenous people of North America could be inherited, the children of the Indians could be born slaves.^[3][4]

Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote about a woman a slave owner bought to breed children to sell.^[5] The expectations of children who were either bought or born into slavery varied. Scholars noted, "age and physical capacity, as well as the degree of dependence, set the terms of children's integration into households".^[6]

The duties that child slaves were responsible for performing are disputed among scholars. A few representations of the lives that slave children led portrayed them as, "virtually divorced from the plantation economy until they were old enough to be employed as field hands, thereby emphasizing the carefree nature of childhood for a part of the slave population that was temporarily spared forced labor".^[7] This view also stated that if children were asked to perform any duties at all, it was to perform light household chores, such as being "organized into 'trash gangs' and made to collect refuse about the estate".^[7] Opposing scholars argued that slave children had their youth stolen from them, and were forced to start performing adult duties at a very young age.^[7] Some say that children were forced to perform field labor duties as young as the age of six.^[7] It is argued that in some areas children were put to "regular work in the antebellum South" and it "was a time when slaves began to learn work routines, but also work discipline and related punishment".^[8]

A degree of self-possession was present in some degree to adults, but "children retained the legal incapacities of dependence even after they had become productive members of households".^[6] It was reported by scholars that, "this distinctive status shaped children's standing within familial households and left them subject to forced apprenticeship, even after emancipation".^[6] There were slave owners who did not want child slaves or women who were pregnant for fear that the child would have "took up too much of her time".^[5]

The conditions of slavery for pregnant women varied regionally. In most cases, women worked in the fields up until childbirth performing small tasks. "four weeks appears to have been the average confinement period, or 'lying-in period', for antebellum slave women following delivery in the South as a whole".

Trafficking of children includes recruiting, harboring, obtaining, and transporting children by use of force or

The United Nations defines child soldier as "A child associated with an armed force or armed group refers to any person below 18 years of age who is, or who has been, recruited or used by an armed force or armed group in any capacity, including but not limited to children, boys, and girls, used as fighters, cooks, porters, spies or for sexual purposes."[18] In 2007, Human Rights Watch estimated that 200,000 to 300,000 children served as soldiers in current conflicts.^[19] In 2012, this estimation rose to be around 300,000 in only twenty countries.^[20] Around 40% of child soldiers are believed to be girls, that have been taken and used as sex slaves and 'wives'.^[21]

Forced labor

More girls under 16 work as domestic workers than any other category of child labor, often sent to cities by parents living in rural poverty^[22] such as in restaveks in Haiti.

See also

• Andrew Forrest
• Children's Care International or Aide Internationale Pour l'Enfance (AIPE-CCI)
• Contemporary slavery
• Military use of children
• Walk Free Foundation

Notes