End Slavery Now!

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.

- Theodore Roosevelt

… but also keep on pushing for more things you can do, with even more diverse tools for change, all over the world.  Just because Teddy encouraged others to “do what you can,” I don’t think he wanted them to settle.

There is increasing criticism of social movements that use seemingly passive forms of activism, like joining a facebook group, signing an online petition, wearing a wristband, putting a sticker on your laptop, or wearing a pin on your backpack.  The term widely being used for these behaviors is slacktivism, a combination of the words “slacker” and “activism.” 

Maybe these efforts are just the desire to do something good without leaving one’s chair.  But if you multiply one “effortless” action by a million, you still have a whole lot of political will. 

Forget speculative arguments about whether these actions should be termed as “slactivism,” or whether they are indeed as productive as other forms of activism… what actually matters is what is happening.  And change is happening. 

For example, last year, after individuals and members of the anti-trafficking community wrote letters, commented on blogs, signed petitions, and generally complained, Craigslist.org declared an end to their “erotic services” section.  This section was the area of Craigslist where human trafficking and underage prostitution was most usually advertised.  That section has, unfortunately, been replaced with a “legal adult services” section, which contains many of the same lightly masked ads.    But although the ultimate change may seem small, it was still a positive step.  Other steps? The Rebecca Project created an inspiring video which outlines the reality of modern day human-trafficking and this “cyber sex market.”  In their video, they interviewed several young women who were forced to prostitute themselves, and comment on the drastic change that needs to be made to prevent the buying and selling humans over the internet.  Such publicity can have a powerful ripple effect. Change.org developed an online petition to stop this exploitation and allowance of human-trafficking on Craigslist once and for all.  Add your name to the thousands who have already signed and continue to be part of the change that needs to happen: stop the online assistance of human-trafficking in its tracks!

 Of course, don’t convince yourself that a few clicks with your computer mouse is all you can you do to stop human-trafficking.  There is oh so much more that needs to be done, and that you can do!  But also, don’t give into the idea that online activism has no impact.  It already has had an impact.

The criticism that those who might have otherwise engaged in hands-on forms of activism, such as protests, in the past are now solely focusing on online activism is a valid one.  But what about all of those people who wouldn’t even know about modern day slavery if it weren’t for facebook? Or twitter? Or an online petition? What about all of those people who are now informing themselves and becoming more involved in this movement? That alone is an impact.

Margaret Mead famously said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”  This quote has, quite justifiably, become the champion of many social movements.  It often straddles the border of cliché and inspiration… but these words are so often quoted because they will always ring true.  As you read this, you are a member of that small group. Harness the power we all have, of acting, and add your voice to the movement committed to ending modern-day slavery.

Simply put: discounting any action, including that over the internet, isn’t productive.  Encouraging individuals to work towards change, in any and every way they can, is.

On the streets of Damascus, you find men selling corn on the cob, chanting in Arabic.  You find women in bright red heels walking next to women in nekabs, fully covering their faces and bodies.  Kids playing games in front of the teal mosaic of a mosque.  You find the winding alleys of the Old City, and minarets peaking out over the horizon, and houses scattered over the steep mountain, the Jebel.  As you go towards the Southern end of Damascus, you find Jeremanah, the predominantly Iraqi neighborhood.  And if you go slightly further, along the Southern city outskirts, you can easily find some not-so-hidden secrets.

Ask any cab driver, any of those men selling corn on cob from their sidewalk stands, and they could tell you about the area on the edge of Damascus that is known for Iraqi prostitution.  They could tell you about the Maraba roads famous for brothels, and the highways that are lined with “nightclubs.”  There you can find not only scantily-clad women dancing, waiting for a man to “choose” them, but also girls as young as twelve sporting red lipstick and waiting for the same fate.

Since the war in Iraq began in 2003, over 2 million Iraqis have crossed borders and now live as refugees.  After this influx, an estimated 10% of Syria’s 18 million people are Iraqis.  Between 80 and 90 percent of these Iraqis live in and around Damascus.  After leaving their lives of violent struggles and destroyed homes in Iraq, they now face new struggles in Syria.  While Syria has certainly opened its doors to the Iraqi population in a time of need, one simple stamp in their passports as they cross the Iraq-Syria border takes away so much: a stamp that reads “Employment Prohibited.”  They are not entitled to work in Syria, and there are no clear plans laid out on how to integrate Iraqis legally, economically, or politically. 

Additionally, female-headed households account for almost a quarter of the refugees registered with the United Nations High Commission of Refugees in Damascus.  Many of these women are widowed, divorced, or separated from their husbands by war, and most have families to support. Without the rights to find legal work, many have turned to the “underground” sex market.  Iraqi women in these areas often engage in prostitution as a last means for supporting their families, but increasingly, they are tricked or forced into prostitution.  Some nightclubs (i.e. brothels) allow women to work essentially “freelance;” they are able to walk in for free, dance, and only pay the bouncer if they leave with a man.  Other brothels don’t allow for so much freewill… and other brothels don’t deal with women, but girls.  Over the last five years, Damascus has become a destination for sex tourism, thriving with low-priced Iraqi prostitutes, many of them young girls.

Deborah Amos, an NPR reporter and author, interviewed several of these women for her book Eclipse of the Sunnis.  She wrote, “Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of the Iraqi exiles in Syria had turned to the sex trade for survival.  Nearly every war brings prostitution.  But in Damascus, girls as young as ten were forced into the trade by parents- fathers or mothers, who made the deal and lived off the proceeds.”

Increasingly, families, from parents to husbands, traffic their daughters and wives.  Families bring these girls to nightclubs, where they are forced to work as prostitutes. 

 “Not all of them do it willingly.  The husbands threaten.  Often a woman will get married just to get out of Iraq and then will be forced into prostitution when she gets here,” said Asir Madaien, a protection officer at the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Damascus, to Amos.  She said that the youngest prostitute she had seen was a twelve year-old girl, who was accompanied by two men from the Gulf.

Madaien noted that there is a problem reaching out to families, even when assistance in the form of money and educational opportunities is provided.  “Even when you get a girl released, if the family is involved, she will soon disappear.”  The sex-trafficking around Damascus is being spurred mostly by families themselves.

Dietrun Günther, another official at the UNHCR in Damascus, expressed her concern over this human-trafficking in a New York Times article, saying, “We’re especially concerned that there are young girls involved, and that they’re being forced, even smuggled into Syria in some cases.”

The effects of the Iraq war are so often viewed in a purely political sense; undoubtedly the effects extend from increased sectarian tensions to a government in question to long-lasting consequences for American troops and their families.  But some of the less obvious effects involve young Iraqi women and children, forced by their families to prostitute themselves.  The less obvious victim is a young girl, who struggled her way out of Iraq and into the beautiful city of Damascus, the City of Jasmine, for a chillingly ugly life in human-trafficking. It is important that the world doesn’t ignore her, but attempts to protect her; it is important that she is given the chance for her voice to be heard.

There is no Amber Alert in Northern Uganda. 

Children aren’t told by their mothers to watch out for strangers with candy. They don’t have a 911 number to call that lets them know safety is mere minutes away.  They are forced to learn through the experiences of friends and acquaintances that safety precautions from abduction often entails fleeing for your life in the dead of the night.  The alternative is to become a child soldier, to become, physically and psychologically, a slave.

The same can be said for a large number of children from the southern edges of Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Central African Republic.  The cruel organization that victimizes these children is the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).  The Lord’s Resistance Army formed in the late 1980s as a rebel group to fight the Museveni government in Uganda, and supposedly to protect the Acholi people of northern Uganda.  However, from the get-go, the LRA, led by Joseph Kony, launched a campaign of brutality against these civilians, and built itself up through the violent abduction and enslavement of children. 

Over the past two decades, villages in northern Uganda have been attacked and decimated, families murdered, and children lost through abduction by the LRA.  These children are physically and psychologically enslaved through the addiction to drugs, threats, and sickening manipulations.  They are forced to commit acts of violence against each other and terrorize other members of the population.  A boy may be forced to rape a woman who is old enough to be his mother.  Others must choose to kill someone, or cutting off his or her hands or lips, in order not to be killed themselves by LRA commanders.  Girls are gang-raped and turned into “wives;” if the girl has a child, that child is used as a bargaining chip to prevent her from attempting to escape. U.S. Representative Brad Miller highlighted the degree of the LRA’s violent crimes when he spoke with the advocacy organization Invisible Children this past May: “The LRA has abducted more than 20,000 children over the past decade for forced conscription and sexual exploitation.  Almost 90 percent of the LRA’s soldiers are children, some as young as eight. They are brutalized and forced to commit atrocities on each other and on their own siblings.”

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) defines a “child soldier” as:

“[A]ny child- boy or girl- under 18 years of age, who is part of any kind of regular or irregular armed force or armed group in any capacity… and anyone accompanying such groups other than family members. It includes girls and boy recruited for forced sexual purposes and/or forced marriage.”

Child soldiers are indeed a hidden form of human trafficking.  Their subsequent actions after abduction may not be black and white, but they remain children, and certainly slaves. 

The conflict in Uganda has been complex and has created long-lasting tears in Uganda’s social fabric.  While LRA crimes have died down in Uganda following the shift in its base of operations into the northeastern area of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2005, its atrocities continue regionally.  Not only has the LRA created a national crisis in Uganda, it is also enhancing and extending regional conflicts in Eastern and Central Africa.  It continues to terrorize innocent civilians in the DRC and in the Central African Republic and spread its brutal campaign.  The LRA abductions of children have far from ceased.

In 2001 the United States placed the LRA on its list of terrorist organizations.  The U.S. also supported Juba Peace Talks between the LRA and the Ugandan government in 2008 (Kony later refused to sign the peace agreement and the talks were suspended).  But it is important that political will within the U.S. to take action against the LRA and towards peace not only continues but intensifies.  Silence and inaction will only let this movement of using child abductions and enslavement as a tool for war expand.

On May 24, the Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act was signed into law by President Barack Obama.  This crucial, bipartisan law gained more co-sponsors than any piece of legislation pertaining to sub-Saharan Africa in decades.  It calls for “political, economic, military and intelligence support for viable multilateral efforts” to eradicate the threat of the LRA.  Additionally, it calls for the humanitarian needs of past victims to be met, and for destroyed communities to be aided.  This is the first law that sets forth a viable U.S. role in the protection of civilians from the LRA, and for the recovery of those whose lives have been broken by LRA attacks.   

Uganda still lives in the shadow of this conflict.  Parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic live its horrors in the moment.  When you think about slavery, stop and think about these children, the most innocent of victims, who are dealing with an unimaginable reality.  Think about the trauma that lingers with children who were forced to walk miles in the middle of the night to avoid abduction, who were forced to kill friends, or burn down buildings, or keep their tears to themselves for fear of death.  Think about the children who are still trapped in this life with drugs and threats.  And make the decision that the use of child soldiers, child slavery, needs to be confronted head on.