- About the Lecture
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About the Lecture
Jean-Robert Câdet lost his childhood, when at the age of four, he became a slave to a rich Port-au-Prince family. After years of washing floors, fetching water, and sleeping under the kitchen table, he found freedom when his owners moved to the U.S., and kicked him out. Câdet, who says the “biggest part was the emotional detachment,” wonders today why the U.S., Haiti’s biggest foreign donor, doesn’t “link foreign aid to the elimination of slavery.”
Kevin Bales describes hereditary forms of slavery in the developing world where generations of a family “are put up as collateral against a loan” that they’re never able to pay back. But, he points out, the U.S. has its own problems: “We have found young women from Ghana, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, who are called by the people who control them ‘the creature, the animal,’ and used for years, and sexually abused, as domestic servants in Washington, D.C. suburbs. …We found in 90 U.S. cities people caught up in forced slavery.”
Stephen Law describes how U.S. Labor Department investigators looking into simple violations of wage laws find “intimidation, coercion and secrecy” surrounding child labor and other illegal exploitation. What’s worse, he says, “cultural reinforcement locks people into this lifestyle,” a kind of brainwashing that inhibits people from escaping their enslavement.
Roger Plant says that of the 12 million forced laborers globally, most are women and children. He corrects the assumption that “forced labor is something imposed by states. Today four-fifths of all forced labor is imposed by private agents….People exploiting bonded labor make significant profits.”
Jagdish Bhagwati offers some hope: “Social institutions themselves can change as a result of economic and other incentives. … (Forced laborers) have to be able to walk away and get freedom, find new jobs, which is where economic prosperity abetted by globalization matters.”
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- About the Speakers
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About the Speakers
Moderator: Zeinab Badawi
Presenter, The World, BBC Four
Badawi has been in broadcasting for nearly two decades. She co-presented Channel 4 News for nearly 10 years (1989 to 1998). She joined the BBC and worked on live political programs for five years. She worked extensively abroad as a reporter in Africa, the Middle East and Europe. She has also worked in radio - regularly presenting The World Tonight on Radio 4 and BBC World's Newshour.
She is Chair of the Africa Medical Partnership, AfriMed; a board member of the British Council; a trustee of the BBC World Service Trust; a member of the advisory board of the Centre for Contemporary British History; a member of the Public Diplomacy Strategy Board (FCO committee); and a Vice-President of the United Nations Association.
Badawi is an Oxford graduate in politics and economics with a post-graduate degree on the Middle East from London University (awarded with a distinction).Jean-Robert Câdet
Author, Restavec: From Haitian Slave Child to Middle-Class American
Steven Law
Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of Labor
Kevin Bales
Director, Free the Slaves, Inc.
Professor of Sociology, University of Surrey Roehampton, in LondonJagdish Bhagwati PhD '67
University Professor of Economics and Political Science, Columbia University Author, Defense of Globalization
Roger Plant
Head of the Special Action Program to Combat Forced Labor
International Labor OrganizationModerator
Speakers
- About the Host
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About the Host
Center for International Studies
Video Player
Forced Labor: The World Debate
- Moderator: Zeinab Badawi
- Jean-Robert Câdet
Steven Law
Kevin Bales
Jagdish Bhagwati PhD '67
Roger Plant - May 14, 2005
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