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8. After reading the following selection, write an argumentative passage drawing one of these conclusions:
(1) The government should ban the importation of products from countries that exploit children. (2) Most Favored Nation trading status should be linked to a nation's treatment of children. (3) The United Nations should impose economic sanctions on countries that exploit children. (4) The exploitation of children is a normal element of free trade between nations, and nothing should be done to curtail it.
The Children Condemned to Slavery by George Bryjak That powerless individuals are routinely exploited by people with more political and economic might is hardly surprising. However, few if any cases of this power discrepancy are more tragic than the current plight of tens of millions of children in the developing world. Evidence from many of these nations indicates that boys and girls as young as 4 and 5 years of age are living in a state of economic and sexual slavery. An estimated 200 million child laborers work in industries that export goods (carpets, clothes, tea, coffee, bananas and flowers) to the United States and other wealthy countries. While one might surmise that child slavery would decrease as a country advances along the path of modernization, in some nations just the opposite is occurring. Eager to establish their niche and maximize profits in the world economy, factory managers and landowners literally enslave children (who are often kidnapped) from politically powerless, desperately poor families. India has as many as 55 million laborers between 6 and 14 years of age. Toiling for up to 16 hours a day, these young workers are physically abused, sometimes tortured and half-starved as they work off debts run up by their low-caste and/or minority-group parents — debts that may have been incurred before they were born. A former Indian chief justice testified that he discovered boys in a carpet factory who were "beaten up, branded (with red-hot iron rods) and even hung from trees upside down" toward the end of maintaining discipline and increasing productivity. While economically enslaved children lead truly miserable lives, victims of the growing child sex trade in developing nations have an even grimmer existence. Collectively, India, Brazil and Thailand have an estimated 1,700,000 child (mostly female) prostitutes with thousands more at work in other poor countries. Although child prostitution is certainly not new, Aaron Sachs of the Worldwatch Institute argues that it has become a multibillion-dollar industry wherein children are "bought, sold and traded like any other mass-produced commodity." In rural Thailand, parents who can barely feed themselves knowingly sell their daughters to sex traffickers for between $120 and $1,200 — the latter figure equivalent to a year's wages. Taken to the city, these girls will live in virtual bondage until the money "advanced" their families has been worked off. So desperate are these people for funds that they sometimes contact sex traffickers before the children have finished primary school. In other instances, the procurers of young girls (posing as a kind of employment broker) tell impoverished rural villagers their daughters will find jobs as maids in upper-income families, waitresses in expensive restaurants or workers in upscale hotels. Hoping to escape the grinding poverty of rural life or an abusive family, still other girls migrate to urban areas on their own. Thai children are sometimes locked in cement cubicles where they have intercourse with up to 15 clients (many of them infected with sexually transmitted diseases) each day. After a fire in a Bangkok brothel a few years ago, the charred remains of women and girls chained to their beds were discovered. Sachs reports that in Rio de Janeiro, girls are purchased by wealthy ranchers "who gang-rape them to death in a regular Saturday night ritual." Gilberto Dimenstein, a Brazilian reporter for Folha de Sao Paulo, writes about child prostitution in the gold-mining regions of his country. In their economic odyssey, sex traffickers move young girls from one mining town to another, inasmuch as workers are always looking for "fresh meat." In this virtually lawless, frontier way of life, highly prized young virgins are publicly auctioned. "The highest bid is usually placed by a son of the fazendeiros — the rich landowners. The following day is a big event for these rich young men. To deflower a virgin is a mark of social status." In Asia, where child prostitution is increasing the fastest, young girls and boys are also victimized by foreigners from other Asian nations, Europe and North America. Some travel agencies cater to the lone male sojourner in the lucrative sex-tourism trade. Sachs reports that a Dutch tour company circulates brochures describing Thailand's child prostitutes as "little slaves who give real Thai warmth." Perhaps the saddest aspect of child exploitation in developing nations is that in all probability it will only get worse. With roughly 80 percent of the world's population growth (approximately 90 million people annually) coming from poor countries, and more than one of three individuals in these nations under 15 years of age (as opposed to one out of five in wealthy nations), the number of potential victims will increase dramatically. In a world where one of every three workers is unemployed or underemployed (not earning enough money for subsistence levels of food, clothing and shelter), neither the public nor private sectors in developing countries can possibly furnish adequate paying jobs for all who seek work. Poverty, therefore, will push more young girls into the hands of sex traffickers, as well as provide an endless supply of child laborers for unscrupulous businessmen. The fear of contracting the AIDS virus is linked to child prostitution, as males (including those from Western nations) seek out increasingly younger girls in the (mistaken) belief that these children are free from the disease. Concerning the psychological damage done to young prostitutes, one social worker in Thailand noted that if a child was sexually abused for more than two years, emotional problems were often too difficult to overcome, and many ended up back on the streets, selling their bodies. Overpopulation, greed, corruption, lust and a callous disregard for the welfare of society's most helpless individuals have all but condemned countless children to a degrading form of existence, an existence from which there may be no return. |