The meaning and importance of Article 4 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Article 4 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is blunt and absolute when it comes to the important topic it covers.
The topic?
No Slavery, Period.
The article reads:
Article 4. No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
This anti-slavery declaration covers two important and related matters in its short single sentence.
1. Upholds the freedom and equality of all humans.
Each individual has all the same indelible rights as everyone else, including their freedom.
Sadly, due to the historical practice of slavery and the persistence of incorrect mentalities such as racism, sexism, classism and the outright inhumane notion that people are property, many evil people still actively enslave and abuse the vulnerable all over the world.
2. Unequivocally condemns and prohibits every aspect of buying, selling, and keeping people as slaves.
This destroys any notion that practicing slavery is acceptable in any way, shape, or form.
It also universally motivates all to actively work to end slavery where it still exists.
...and slavery certainly does still exist!
When most people think of slavery, the first example that pops into their head is the historical Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.
Taking place between the 15th and the 18th centuries, Western Empires such as the British, the Portuguese, and the Spanish would buy people in Africa, ship them across the Atlantic ocean, and would sell these people as slaves to their colonies in the Americas to produce manufactured goods to be traded as well.
Slave work generally was farming plantation work or domestic work in nature. Just under 5% of slaves were bought by American colonies in North America while the other 95% of enslaved were bought to work in the Caribbean and the South American continent.
In total, there were an estimated 10 million slaves traded in total during those 400(ish) years. Seems like a lot, right?
In comparison, Modern Slavery is far more reaching and pervasive in its scope and impact.
Consider this:
That is 4 times as many people in active slavery TODAY than there were people in slavery during the 400 YEARS of the TransAtlantic Slave Trade.
Those 40.3 millions individuals around the world are coerced, threatened, deceived, and abused into exploitation.
What is considered to be slavery has expanded in definition too. Over the centuries, governments started to recognize that people of all races, genders, and age could be exploited, not just those of African descent. They also realized there were more ways that a human could be exploited than just hard manual labor, such as forced prostitution, domestic servitude, and human trafficking.
In fact, human trafficking has become synonymous with modern slavery. According to the United Nations, human trafficking (modern slavery) is defined as
"the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation." (UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons)
All forms of slavery and its trade are condemned by Article 4 of the UDHR.
Anti-Slavery International elaborates with their following list which explains the categories of modern day slavery.
Forced labour – any work or services which people are forced to do against their will under the threat of some form of punishment.
Debt bondage or bonded labour – the world’s most widespread form of slavery, when people borrow money they cannot repay and are required to work to pay off the debt, then losing control over the conditions of both their employment and the debt.
Human trafficking– involves transporting, recruiting or harbouring people for the purpose of exploitation, using violence, threats or coercion.
Descent-based slavery – where people are born into slavery because their ancestors were captured and enslaved; they remain in slavery by descent.
Child slavery – many people often confuse child slavery with child labour, but it is much worse. Whilst child labour is harmful for children and hinders their education and development, child slavery occurs when a child is exploited for someone else’s gain. It can include child trafficking, child soldiers, child marriage and child domestic slavery.
Forced and early marriage – when someone is married against their will and cannot leave the marriage. Most child marriages can be considered slavery.
Stories of Real life Modern Slavery
Debt Bondage
Flor Melina was vulnerable and grieving the loss of her child when she was approached with a job offer to start a sewing business in Los Angeles, California. She was tricked.
Moving from Mexico to L.A for this new opportunity to support her three remaining children, her employer trapped Flor in a dressmaking warehouse. The employer said that Flor owed her a debt of $3,000 and would have to work in order to pay it back. Flor was forced to work and sleep in the warehouse with only one small meal a day. Her story of escape with the help of a concerned employee and Flors anti-slavery advocacy efforts can be read on End Slavery Now.
Human Trafficking
A young girl from Mexico, named "E" (her name is protected) was tricked into domestic enslavement by her wealthy employers. While enslaved she learned she was at the mercy of a violent drug cartel.
She was then shipped off to the USA to work as a prostitute whose earnings would go to her captor. You can read our previous post covering of her journey from capture to freedom here. Descent-based Slavery
Fatima was born and raised in the country of Mauritania. Mauritania is one of the few countries left in the world where people are literally born into slavery depending on if their parents were slaves before them. Fatima was born into subservience to the Ould Daould family and was subject to them for her whole life until she was rescued at age 40.
She was passed around between four family members as they each claimed her services as a goat herder on an rotating annual basis. You can read about her landmark courtcase victory against her owners here.
Child Slavery
In Ghana, many young boys are put to work as slaves to fishermen on Lake Volta. At 9 years old, Foli was taken from his family and sold to a harsh taskmaster. Foli had to work 18 hour days catching fish and detangling nets...all while not knowing how to swim. You can learn more about his experience and rescue by IJM by reading our previous post here.
Forced and early Marriage
Young girls (and some boys too!)are being married off by their families to much older spouses all around the world. Doing so is child exploitation and sexual abuse. Children are unable to consent to marriage and sex.
Read these 4 testimonials from Rupa, Samira, Jesmin, and Selina to learn about child marriage in Bangladesh. Their girls' families were struggling financially and decided to give their daughters away to men to lessen the financial burden of the household. The girls were targets for physical abuse, marital rape, and forced to stop their education. These girls were lucky in that they were able to secure divorce, stop the marriage, or run away.
It is stories like these, the freedom of millions of people stolen by captors and abusers, that Article 4 of the UDHR was created to help prevent. By setting the absolute standard of
No Slavery, Period.
Our civic societies, governments, and social movements have the moral and legal high ground to combat the injustice of slavery and end it where it is found to still be in existence. Humanity's freedom should be and is fought for, for the benefit of all.
Comments