On Wednesday, March 17th, a video and paper were presented at Barry University on the issue of international slavery. The session was attended by approximately 100 students, faculty, and staff. Participants came face-to-face with the reality of modern slavery and with its foundation – extreme poverty. For more information on modern slavery, you can visit the following web sites and check out the abstract of C. Nana Derby’s presentation below.

Awareness and Understanding of Contemporary Slavery
Presented by C. Nana Derby

A new variety of slavery exists today, resulting from forms of forced servitude that existed alongside slavery many centuries ago.

In some contemporary societies, children, in particular, live and work under conditions that deny them their freewill, while subjecting them to control through violent threats and physical abuse. As minors, they are considered to lack sufficient knowledge to volunteer participation in any job, whether paid or not. Their employment is thus tantamount to slavery.

There is, however, a critical lack of awareness about important aspects of the reality of this new child slavery. The framework and definitions of slavery in usage today, though interesting and sufficient to cover historical situations, are unable to adequately describe the conditions of modern child slavery.

Using existing literature and research, C. Nana Derby, Ph.D. Candidate at Florida International University, gave a presentation on child labor that allowed the audience to have a clearer perception of the exploitation of their labor within and beyond the household. Explanatory factors such as culture, the age of victims, the number of hours worked, and the victim’s ability or lack of ability to volunteer or withdraw their participation in the specific activities were analyzed by Ms. Derby to determine if particular situations should be considered as child slavery, repressive child labor, or merely as child work.