·
1909 The Congo Reform Association, founded in Britain,
ends forced labor in the Congo Free State, today the Democratic Republic of the
Congo. After years of anti-slavery activism, the association’s Red Rubber
Campaign stops the brutal system of Belgium’s King Leopold II, whose officials
forced local people to produce rubber for sale in Europe and terrorized those
who refused, cutting off their hands and burning down their houses.
·
1910 The International Convention for the Suppression of
the White Slave Trade, signed in Paris, is the first of its kind, obligating
parties to punish anyone who recruits a woman or girl under age into
prostitution, even if she consents.
·
1913 After a public outcry galvanized by media reports
and subsequent peoples’ petition, the British Parliament shuts down the
Peruvian Amazon Company, a British entity that was torturing and exploiting
indigenous Indians in Peru.
·
1915 The colonial government of Malaya officially
abolishes slavery.
·
1918 The British governor of Hong Kong estimates that the
majority of households that could afford it keep a young child as a household
slave.
·
1919 The International Labor Organization (ILO) is
founded to establish a code of global labor standards. Headquartered in Geneva,
the ILO unites government, labor, and management to make recommendations
concerning pay, working conditions, trade union rights, safety, woman and child
labor, and social security.
·
1923 The British colonial government in Hong Kong bans
the selling of little girls as domestic slaves.
·
1926 The League of Nations approves the Slavery
Convention, which defines slavery as “status or condition of a person over whom
any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised.”
More than 30 governments sign the document, which charges all member nations to
work to suppress all forms of slavery.
·
1926 Burma abolishes legal slavery.
·
1927 Slavery is legally abolished in Sierra Leone, a
country founded as a colony by the British in the 18th century to serve as a
homeland for freed slaves.
·
1930 The U.S. Tariff Act prohibits the importation of
products made with “forced or indentured labor.” (In 1997, the Sanders
Amendment clarified that this applies to products made with “forced or
indentured child labor.”)
·
1936 The King of Saudi Arabia issues a decree that ends
the importation of new slaves, regulates the conditions of existing slaves, and
provides for manumission—the act of slave owners freeing their slaves—under
some conditions.
·
1938 The Japanese military establishes “comfort
stations”—actually brothels—for Japanese troops. Thousands of Korean and
Chinese women are forced into sex slavery during World War II as military
“comfort women.”
·
1939-1945 The German Nazi government uses
widespread slave labor in farming and industry. Up to nine million people are
forced to work to absolute exhaustion—then they are sent to concentration
camps.
·
1941 The Adoption of Children Ordinance Law in Ceylon,
now Sri Lanka, requires the registration of all children who are adopted and
regular inspections to prevent adopted children from working as slaves.
·
1948 The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, created
by the United Nations, provides: “No one shall be held in slavery or servitude;
slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.”
·
1949 The Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in
Persons and Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others prohibits any person
from procuring, enticing, or leading away another person for the purposes of
prostitution, even with the other person’s consent. This forms the legal basis
for international protections against traffic in people still used today.
