Pope Francis has been pipped to the the Nobel Peace Prize by Malala Yousafzay and the Indian human rights activist Kailash Satyarthi.The pair were awarded the prize “for their struggle against the suppression of children”, according to the chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize committee, Thorbjørn Jagland.Pope Francis had been the bookies’ favourite, with Paddy Power giving him odds of 9/4.Mr Satyarthi campaigns against child slavery. His organisation says it has freed about 80,000 children from servitude.Miss Yousafzay, who at 17 is the youngest winner of the prize, campaigns for education for women and was nearly shot dead by the Taliban in 2012 while on her way to school.Mr Jagland said: “Children must go to school and not be financially exploited. It is a prerequisite for peaceful global development that the rights of children and young people be respected. In conflict-ridden areas in particular, the violation of children leads to the continuation of violence from generation to generation.”

“Showing great personal courage, Kailash Satyarthi, maintaining Gandhi’s tradition, has headed various forms of protests and demonstrations, all peaceful, focusing on the grave exploitation of children for financial gain,” Mr Jagland said. “He has also contributed to the development of important international conventions on children’s rights.”

He added: “The Nobel Committee regards it as an important point for a Hindu and a Muslim, an Indian and a Pakistani, to join in a common struggle for education and against extremism.” 
-Research by Martina Bellotta 

24 Aprile 2019

The British did not initiate, but they came to dominate the Atlantic slave trade. Few expressed moral or ethical doubts about slavery.

 The Anglican church, was directly involved in slavery. When a Christian voice was raised against the slave trade, it was led by Quakers* who also played a critical role in the campaign to end the slave trade. 

In 1807 most people agreed that the slave trade was an ethical and religious outrage, but only few people raised their voice against the Atlantic slave trade until the mid-eighteenth century. There had been isolated objectors, but on the whole, the trade developed without any real sense of religious objection. It was almost as if the slave trade was morally neutral. However, when the abolition movement took off, powerful theological criticisms and offering early evangelicalism a focus for its sense of outrage. There had been, it is true, the occasional Christian denunciation of slave trading, most notably from early Puritans and Quakers, but as the trade grew, criticisms were drowned out by the sound of profitable trade. Indeed godly men came to think of the trade as a simple fact of life. The Church of England was, by turns, complicit and then transformed, it had inherited plantations in 1710, mainly in Barbados, government official and planter. The plantations and their resident slaves were managed like any other absentee plantation, their sugar-based profits flowing back to their owners-the Church of England. The slaves were branded and there were occasional concerns expressed about their well-being. Of course, Anglican clergymen in the enslaved Caribbean were infamous for their indifference to the slaves, and for serving the planters and slave-owning class. And a serious attempt to minister to the enslaved did not emerge until non-conformist missionaries made major headway in the early nineteenth century.  What began as tiny shifts in the tectonic plates of British political life produced profound changes and began with the Quakers, in Philadelphia and London. Their unease about slavery and the trade was expressed in a variety of influential tracts.  American War of Independence (1776-83), however, forced American Quakers to be less assertive and more defensive based on a real fear that any criticism might seem treasonable. But everything changed, quickly, after the British defeat in 1783. Abolition's first major steps involved the experience  of the British black community. The arrival in London of freed slaves from the American war, and the dissemination of the language of equality from America  began to tug at the fabric of the slave system. Granville Sharp** was a one-man industry, dashing off a string of pamphlets to prove that slavery was illegal in England, and that slavery at large was contrary to Christian tenets. His theological and legal arguments forced contemporary clerics to confront the awkward frictions between contemporary reality (the brutalities of slavery) and the evidence of biblical analysis offered by Sharp. Almost single-handedly, Sharp produced a major shift in religious and political attention. But he was greatly helped by the Quakers, who had a national organisation, run from London, which was efficient and business-like. They were highly literate, with their own publishers and distribution systems, and offered support and accommodation to travelling sympathisers. Thus, when the first abolition organisation was formed in 1787, the Quaker core to that movement offered the abolition campaign a ready-made national system and propaganda machine. The Abolition Society (dominated initially by Quakers) was joined by a small band of early evangelicals, and the outcome was the launch of an instantly successful and widely based national movement directed against the slave trade. They wanted to end slavery but accepted that it was more realistic and feasible to tackle the slave trade. Literate British people: the more they heard and read about the slave trade, the more they turned against it. Tens of thousands of men and women of all social classes signed abolition petitions across the nation, but in Parliament success was not guaranteed. There were powerful interests in both Houses determined to defend the slave trade. Merchants and shippers in London, Bristol and Liverpool, aristocrats with West Indian properties, all united in their belief that an end of the slave trade would bring economic collapse in the islands-and disaster for Britain. It was an economic defence of self-interest, but it was supported by the undeniable strength of slave-based prosperity. Abolition, moreover, was a moral and ethical force and increasingly took the form of the voice of Christian outrage. Abolitionists had in effect secured the moral high ground which they were never to relinquish. When the slave trade was ended in 1807, the British simply assumed that they had ended a blot on the nation's Christian conscience.

*Quaker: a member of the Religious Society of Friends, a Christian movement devoted to peaceful principles (founded by G. Fox in 1650). 

** Granville Sharp: (10 November 1735 – 6 July 1813) was one of the first English campaigners for the abolition of the slave trade. He also involved himself in trying to correct other social injustices.

Child labour includes:

• Child labour before the minimum legal age : The basic minimum legal age at which children are authorized to work is 15 years. For light work the limit is fixed at 13 to 15 years. Finally, for hazardous work, the limit is pushed up to 18 years.

• The worst forms of child labour :This encompasses all forms of slavery or similar practices such as forced labour, trafficking and it also includes illicit activities like prostitution.

• Hazardous work : This encompasses domestic tasks carried out over long hours in an unhealthy environment, in dangerous places requiring the use of dangerous tools or materials, or forcing the child to carry objects that are too heavy.

The difficulty of tasks and harsh working conditions create a number of problems such as premature ageing, malnutrition, depression, drug dependency. 

Children have no protection infact their employers have an absolute control over them. These children work in degrading conditions, undermining all the principles and fundamental rights based in human nature.

Additionally, a child who works will not be able to have a normal education and will be doomed to become an illiterate adult, having no possibility to grow in his or her professional and social life.

•During the Industrial Revolution poor children often worked full time jobs in order to help support their families. Children as young as four years old worked long hours in factories under dangerous conditions. The practice of child labor continued throughout much of the Industrial Revolution until laws were eventually passed that made child labor illegal.

In the United States, a real effort to regulate and put an end to child labor began in the early 1900s. Many businesses were against it because they liked the cheap labor. Some families also needed the money their kids brought home. However, eventually laws were passed. In 1938, the Fair labor Standards Act was passed that placed some limitations on child labor, set a minimum wage, and put limits on how many hours an employee should work. 

 

 

Iqbal Masih was born in Pakistan in 1982. He lived in Muridke, near Lahore. Iqbal was sold into slavery at a carpet factory at age four, and worked on looms until the age of 10, when he ran away from the factory and was eventually freed by Ehsan Ulla Khan, of the Bonded Labor Liberation Front, (BLLF). He started attending the BLLF's school.

Iqbal refused to go back to the carpet mill where he had worked because he knew his rights as a citizen. Although a child labor law existed in Pakistan, it was not enforced. Soon, speaking out against the mills, he gained international attention. Iqbal eventually started making speeches around the world, talking about child labor and his life experiences.

Iqbal won many awards. He was honored by the International Labor Organization in Sweden, received Reebok's 1994 Human Rights Youth Action Award, and while in the United States accepting the award, was nominated for ABC's "Person of the Week."

Soon after receiving the award, Iqbal returned to Pakistan, where he was murdered, on April 16, 1995. He was 12 years old. No one really knows who did it, but there are assumptions that the "Carpet Mafia", was responsible, because many carpet industries were losing a lot of business due to Iqbal's speeches.

Iqbal was a hero because he had a lot of courage to stand up to such powerful people, and to speak out against evil.

   Work done by: Anna Cerullo