2004
Commemorates
Struggle Against Slavery
In
January this year, UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura launched 2004
as the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle Against Slavery and
its Abolition.
“By institutionalizing memory, resisting the onset of oblivion, recalling the memory of a tragedy that for long years remained hidden or unrecognized, and by assigning it its proper place in the human conscience, we respond to our duty to remember,” Mr. Matsuura said.
UNESCO is preparing a series of activities to deepen our knowledge of slavery and the slave trade worldwide. The promotion of historical sites connected to the slave trade and the celebration of events and personalities linked to slavery and its abolition are also being organized.
UNESCO’s activities during 2004 will focus on three areas: Scientific Research, Living Memory, and Encounters and Dialogue.
Slavery was first abolished in Saint Domingue (1793) and last in Cuba (1886) and Brazil (1888), and is banned by the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and by the 1956 UN Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery. Nevertheless, it still exists in various forms, including bonded labour for debt, forced labour of adults and children, sexual exploitation of children, trafficking and displacement of human beings and forced marriage.
The NGO Anti-Slavery says at least 20 million people are held in bonded labour around the world, while the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) puts the estimated number of people trafficked for bonded or forced labour at 700,000 a year.
The International Labour Organization (ILO) has published estimates putting the number of child labourers at 245 million in 2002. The ILO further says that 1.2 million children fall victim to traffickers every year.
For more information see www.unesco.org