New York, 2 December 2022 (TDI): The World observes International Day for the Abolition of Slavery on 2nd December. The day aims to increase public awareness of modern slavery and support international efforts to end it.
Governments, organizations, and people use this day to raise attention to modern slavery, which is still pervasive throughout the world.
The goal of the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery is to abolish modern forms of slavery such as child labor, forced marriage, human trafficking, sexual exploitation of children, and forced recruitment of young people into armed combat.
History of the Day
Since the Sumerian and Mesopotamian eras, slavery has prevailed. Terrorist groups like ISIS and Boko Haram have recently been using women as sex slaves.
Egyptian empires, ancient Greek and Roman civilizations, and the Viking reign of Britain all used slavery.
Moreover, the Portuguese were the first to engage in the transatlantic slave trade, which was later continued by Dutch, English, and French traders.
The UN passed the Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and the Exploitation of Prostitution of Others on 2nd December 1949.
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The Assembly also declared 2004 the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle against Slavery and its Abolition. It passed resolution 57/195 on December 18, 2002.
The UN considers bonded labor, forced labor, child labor, and human trafficking as modern forms of slavery. According to the UN, over 150 million children, or nearly one in ten children worldwide, are involved in child labor.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights article 4 specifies that no one should be forced into slavery and that all forms of the slave trade should be outlawed. These types of slavery are global issues and go against this provision.
The International Labor Organization established a program “50 for freedom”. It aims to eliminate slavery from societies. It succeeded in ratifying the Forced Labor Protocol in the first 50 nations in 2021, which was its primary objective.
