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Slavery in Review

CHRONOLOGY: The State of the World in the Second Millenium.

Compiled by Dr. LESLIE JERMYN.

1441: Portugal initiates the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade along the coast of modern-day Mauritania.

1787: Establishment of the London Anti-Slavery Society, now operating as Anti-Slavery International.

1838: Britain is the first European power to abolish slavery in its New World colonies.  Others follow suit.

1888: Brazil is the last country in Europe and the Americas to join the abolition bandwagon.

1890: General Act of Brussels commits European powers to include abolition as part of their  “civilizing mission” in Africa.

1900: At the turn of the last century, slavery, at least in the Euro-American worldview, is an unfortunate chapter in world history that had been closed everywhere but Africa. 

1905: Slavery is abolished in Mauritania under the French.

1919: Convention of Saint Germain-en-Laye revises the Act of Brussels and reaffirms the European commitment to end slavery and the slave trade.

1925: League of Nations Convention to Suppress the Slave Trade and Slavery is signed; it is amended in 1926.

1948: United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 4, prohibits slavery and the slave trade.

1956: Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery expands the definition of slavery to include such practices as debt bondage and affirms the signatories’ commitment to abolish them.

1961: Independent Mauritania includes abolition of chattel slavery in its first constitution.

1966: United Nations International Convenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 8.3, bans forced or compulsory labour.

1976: Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act outlaws this practice in India.

1980: Mauritania once again abolishes slavery.

1989: United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 32, protects children against hazardous and exploitative work and suggests that children under 12 years of age not have jobs.

1992: Indentured labour is outlawed in Pakistan.

1992: The Dominican Republic amends their labour code to protect the rights of Haitian debt labourers.

1997: Brazil passes a bill to protect workers from debt bondage.

1998: The Pakistan Carpet Manufacturers and Exporters Association reaches an agreement with the International Labour Organisation to phase out industry dependence on debt labourers less than 18 years of age.

2000: Now we stand poised to begin another century, another millennium, still or once again convinced that slavery is a thing of the past.  The American Anti-Slavery Group estimates (as at 1999) that there are at least 27 million slaves in the modern world.  They are living and dying around the world in such countries as Mauritania, Sudan, Uganda, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Brazil, Dominican Republic, United Arab Emirates, Israel, and the USA.

© Dr. Leslie Jermyn and The Global Aware Cooperative.

leslie@globalaware.org      info@globalaware.org