BURMA KAREN: UN: ALMOST 21 MILLION PEOPLE WORLDWIDE ARE VICTIMS OF FORCED LABOUR, UN FINDS

ALMOST 21 MILLION PEOPLE WORLDWIDE ARE VICTIMS OF FORCED LABOUR, UN FINDS

New York, Jun 1 2012 1:05PM

Almost 21 million people worldwide are trapped in jobs into which they were coerced or deceived and which they cannot leave, according to new estimates released today by the United Nations labour agency.

Released by the International Labour Organization (ILO), the <em>2012 Global Estimate of Forced Labour</em> found that the Asia-Pacific region accounts for the largest number of the 20.9 million forced labourers in the world – 11.7 million, or 56 per cent, of the global total. This is followed by Africa at 3.7 million and Latin America with 1.8 million victims.

<"http://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/press-and-media-centre/news/WCMS_181961/lang--en/index.htm">According to ILO, forced labour takes different forms, including debt bondage, trafficking and other forms of modern slavery, with the victims normally the most vulnerable – women and girls forced into prostitution, migrants trapped in debt bondage, and sweatshop or farm workers kept there by clearly illegal tactics and paid little or nothing.

In the new estimates, 18.7 million people – 90 per cent of the total – are exploited in the private economy, by individuals or enterprises. Of these, 4.5 million are victims of forced sexual exploitation and 14.2 million are victims of forced labour exploitation in economic activities, such as agriculture, construction, domestic work or manufacturing.

Another 2.2 million people are in state-imposed forms of forced labour, such as in prisons under conditions which violate ILO standards, or in work imposed by the state military or by rebel armed forces.

The ILO also found that 5.5 million forced labourers, or 26 per cent, are below 18 years of age.

“We have come a long way over the last seven years since we first put an estimate on how many people were forced into labour or services across the world,” the head of the ILO’s Special Action Programme to Combat Forced Labour, Beate Andrees, said in a news release. “We have made good progress in ensuring most countries now have legislation in place which criminalises forced labour, human trafficking and slavery-like practices.”

She noted that it is now necessary to focus on better identification and prosecution of forced labour and related offences such as human trafficking.

“The successful prosecution of those few individuals who bring such misery to so many remains inadequate – this needs to change,” Ms. Andrees said. “We must also ensure that the number of victims does not rise during the current economic crisis where people are increasingly vulnerable to these heinous practices.”

The ILO hopes that the availability of more accurate information on the problem will enable the international community to take more effective measures to end the crime of forced labour.
________________

BURMA/INDIA WW2 ELEPHANT RESCUE 1942

Films tell story of WWII elephant rescue in Burma

AP, The West Australian November 2, 2010, 10:55 am

British tea planter Gyles Mackrell organized one of the most remarkable rescue missions during World War II - by using elephants when nothing else would do.

Now researchers have released new information that tells, for the first time, the full story of Mackrell's successful effort to use the animals to evacuate hundreds of desperate Burmese refugees stranded by a rain-swollen river. On Monday, Britain's Cambridge University put online a video shot by Mackrell, which together with his diaries and other documents brings to life a feat that with time had faded from public memory.

The material explains how Mackrell, who spent most of his life working as a planter for a tea company in British India, came to the aid of masses of people desperate to escape Burma as the Japanese army advanced. Through his work, he had access to elephants - the only safe way to cross the roiling Dapha river at the Indian border.

Tens of thousands of the refugees - many sick and starving - had trekked for hundreds of miles through dense jungle in the hope of reaching the Indian border. But by May 1942, those who made it to the border were trapped by monsoons that had turned the Dapha into a torrent.

Mackrell's diaries show that he collected some elephants to travel to the river soon after receiving a call for help from a group of refugees on June 4, 1942. His party rode the elephants for about 100 miles (160 kilometers) before finally reaching the river bank - only to find themselves helpless as they saw that fierce flood waters had trapping Burmese soldiers on river islands.

"On reaching the bank on a big tusker I discovered a number of men on an island surrounded by high and very fierce water," Mackrell, aged 53 at the time, wrote in his diary. "They signaled wildly and made signs to show us they were starving. I made several attempts to get over but it was utterly impossible."
The video shows Mackrell's elephants flailing against the power of the river, up to their eyes in water and struggling to move forward.

Mackrell and his men were about to give up when, the next morning, the waters retreated briefly and he saw an opportunity for his elephants to transport the men to safety.
"Rungdot, a Kampti elephant was the first to be ready and ... by 7 a.m. he was back in camp with the first three refugees," he wrote on June 10, 1942. "The others came in a few at a time and by midday we had the whole 68."

In the weeks that followed, Mackrell and his colleagues set up camp by the Dapha and helped 200 people cross the river.

His exploits were reported in the British press at the time - Mackrell was dubbed "The Elephant Man" - but it wasn't until his family donated the video, his diaries and other accounts by some of those rescued to Cambridge University that the story could be told in full.

"Without the help of Mackrell and others like him, hundreds of people fleeing the Japanese advance would quite simply never have made it," said Kevin Greenbank, an archivist at Cambridge's Center of South Asian Studies.

The donated collection of material will give researchers a new opportunity to study the rescue efforts organized by Mackrell and others like him who helped saved many people during the summer of 1942, Greenbank said.

Annamaria Motrescu, a research associate at the center, said Mackrell was embarrassed by the attention at the time but his story deserves new prominence now.

"It's a remarkable story of courage, spirit and ingenuity that took place at a time when no one was sure what the consequences of the war in the Far East would be. It deserves to be remembered."