The abolition of slavery past and present echoes

I'm [Leila Choukroune] professor of International law and director of the University of Portsmouth democratic citizenship theme today, we have the great pleasure, a great honour to welcome our colleague, Dr.
Bonny Ling, who is an advisory board member of Human Rights at Sea, an international NGO that raises awareness of human rights abuses in the maritime sector and also delivers social justice through legal and policy development.
Bonis also a research fellow with the Business Institute for Human Rights and Business, based in the U.K.
Previously, she was working at the Centre for Human Rights Studies at the University of Zurich in Switzerland from 2014 to 2019.
She's an independent researcher affiliated with the Cambridge Centre for Applied Research in Human Trafficking, and her work has been really very much noticed on human trafficking in particular.
She has worked in the UN system and for several international society organisations.
She holds a Ph.D.
in law from the Irish Centre for Human Rights and MPhil in criminology as well.
And an Aim-A law and diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Tufts University in the US.
She's a consultant who works on a variety of topics on Asia in particular.
But not only and I must say that I'm particularly delighted because Bonnie and I met a number of years ago in Hong Kong, we work together on human rights related issues.
So extremely happy to welcome Dr Bonnie Ling, who's going to address a very important question today, the question of slavery.
As you all know, slavery, not something of the past, is something that we do see today that we have to fight against.
And as Bonny is going to explain.
We are having this conversation together in the context of the sort of celebration of the abolition of slavery in the US the 19th June.
And because, again, it's not a thing of the past.
So Bonny without further ado, I'd like to give you the floor for about half an hour and then we'll have questions and answers.
The floor is yours.
And do you want me to share the screen now? Yes, please, we'll go put the slides on.
Thank you.
So good afternoon, everybody.
I'm delighted to be here.
Yes, we just go to the beginning, Leila, yeah.
All right.
OK, so good afternoon.
So Leila and I first spoke about this talk, I had imagined it as a conversation between friends and afternoon discussion because, as Leila said, we actually know each other from Hong Kong.
Our paths crossed years ago.
And I remember I attended some of your lectures at Hong Kong U so, you know, it's a chance for us to reconnect this time in Portsmouth.
We always kind of laugh about how our path you know, we have travelled around the world only to end up in Portsmouth, you know, so that is that is the reason we're here today to talk about to keep on talking about these important topics.
So I mentioned to Leila about weeks many weeks ago that I was reading the autobiography of a former slave and I was working on an essay that trace through the abolition of slavery to the present time with respect to the sourcing of cotton, the responsible sourcing of cotton in the present day.
And when she asked me to do this, research futures and because it's always fun talking to Leila, I said, sure, absolutely.
Sign me up.
So next slide, please.
Leila.
So that was many weeks ago, and certainly that was before 19th of June was made into a US national holiday in record time in matters of days.
And the holiday June Juneteenth marked the end of slavery in the U.S.
and it became trending, you know, across all news outlet, and then the challenge for me was, well, how do I do a talk that follows this, that can properly commemorate this momentous occasion? So after some fretting.
I went back to the original idea, which was to, you know, approach it like a talk amongst friends on the abolition of slavery, using personal accounts of the materials that came across in my research, and then how we can still and then to focus on how we could still hear the echoes in our present day and how the ripples of the abolition of slavery were felt across the world in the 19th century and how it's incomplete work still inspires us today to do better.
Now, because for me, as a person who has worked in the space of human trafficking, it is always the personal accounts that inspires and drives me.
And I think these personal stories speak so deeply to our heart, this innate need to be seen, to be treated in full egality, to have agency, to lead the lives that we choose with dignity, to be well, to not be separated from our family and to have our children have the full potential, you know, to be able to meet their full potential and live a life that's free from fear and want.
So when these accounts of those who were treated in the opposite to the contrary, I think it's only natural that we feel this deep connexion across time and across place for a life that should have been very different.
So with that in mind, let me go forward.
Actually, Leila, maybe you can you do preview.
If you can do preview, then then we can go into and do full screen.
That might be easier.
Can you go to view.
Mm hmm.
View Yeah, yeah.
No, no, no, go to view and then yes, and then do full screen, full screen holding.
Yeah.
You get.
Is it better? Yes, and that way you can just move forward.
It's a lot easier.
OK, so with that in mind.
Next slide, please.
Thank you.
So now, as a caveat, you can hear it in my accent already.
I am American and I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia.
Where civil rights giants like Dr.
Martin Luther King, like John Lewis, like Andrew Young, Andrew Young is actually in the middle of this photo, is the first African-American to serve as U.S.
ambassador to the United Nations.
So I like this photo very much.
This is a photo of President Jemmy Carter in Martin Luther King Jr.'s Church in Atlanta.
This is where I grew up and it also it always reminds me, you know, of Dr.
King's speech, I have a dream towards the end where you talks about the children of former slaves and the children of former slave holders sitting together at a table meeting in a spirit of brotherhood.
So I so so so I put this here just by way of an apology that because I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, the talk has this American lens to it.
And of course, we have, you know, the famous abolitionists, abolitionists in the in the U.K., William Wilberforce, we have Thomas Clarkson, we have Mary Morris Knowles.
And, you know, they're giant in their own right.
But if you forgive me, because I'm American, I tend to see the abolition of slavery through this American lens.
So with that in mind, let's go to the year 1863 in the US.
With the signing of the Emancipation Emancipation Proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln, so Juneteenth marks the day.
In 1865, when slaves in Texas found out that they have been set free and there were the last to be told the news, actually they were free already two and a half years earlier, but it was so remote.
So by the time they heard it, two and a half years had since passed.
Now.
There's a beautiful, beautiful passage marking this point of emancipation that if I may, I would like to read out to you, Leila next slide, please.
So this is Booker T. Washington.
And he's a great American educator and an activist, and he wrote this autobiography, Up from Slavery, which was released at the turn of the century, and his autobiography started with the simple phrase, I was Born a Slave on a plantation in Franklin County in Virginia.
He was born on an unknown date.
And he had this beautiful passage of him remembering what it was like hearing the Emancipation Proclamation being read out to him in 1863.
It is so beautiful.
Let me read it out to you.
The night before the eventful day, word was sent to the slave quarters to the effect that something unusual was going to take place at the big house the next morning, early the next morning in company with my mother, brother, sister and a large number of other slaves, I went to the master's house.
The most distinct thing that I now recall in connexion with the scene was that some men who seemed to be a stranger, a United State officer, I presume, made a little speech and then read a rather long paper, the Emancipation Proclamation I think.
After the reading we were told that we were all free and could go when and where we pleased.
My mother, who was standing by my side, leaned over and kissed her children while tears of joy ran down her cheeks.
She explained to us what it all meant and that this was the day for which she had been so long praying but fearing that she would never live to see.
So the American the American chapter of chattel slavery, where individuals were owned like property by others, ended with President Lincoln's proclamation and the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, which came into it two years later in 1865 that abolished slavery.
Next slide, please.
So the American experience form a link in a long chain of key abolition events in the 19th century.
So I have here a brief chronology of these key abolition events, so they span from the first encircled, which is 1807, the abolition of the slave trade by Britain in 1807.
And lastly to 1888, the abolition of slavery by Brazil, which was the last country in the Americas to do so.
But it's important to note that the global abolition of chattel slavery is not the end of appalling human exploitation.
For law the study of slavery has centre on this pivotal moment of emancipation, the singular moment dividing old slavery, that of ownership, legal ownership of others from new slavery of all that came after.
So what is clear is that abolition was not the end of slavery, but the mere beginning of another chapter of exploitation.
Next slide, please.
So, for example, we got rid of the cotton plantations of the American South manned by slaves, one of the many ripples of the echoes of emancipation was this huge labour migration of around one point five million Chinese male labourers from South China to the Americas.
Now, it happened between 1847 and 1874, so roughly 30 years.
And they moved under a system of contract, bonded labour migration, the key destinations where Cuba and Peru, but they were not exclusive destination.
There were many others, but these two countries depended heavily on labour intensive agricultural cultivation, things like cotton, but not only also sugar, coffee and tobacco.
So although this was not chattel slavery in name because the men would be considered free after their contract was finished, in reality, the system ensured that the Chinese men filled the labour shortages, the vacuum left by the emancipation of the African slaves.
So in the three decades where this labour migration took place, it is believed that as many as 125,000 Chinese contract labourers arrived in Cuba and another 95000 went to Peru, along with other destinations.
And together, these two countries formed about 50 percent, 15 percent of the total estimated immigration from China during this period outside.
Now, next slide, please.
So I have here a contract that I just want to give you an idea of what these contracts look like.
Now, this was not a contract to Peru or Cuba, but this is a contract to British Guyana.
But, you know, I want to show that it would be very, very difficult for the Chinese labourers at that time to understand the employment conditions associated with this form of labour migration.
First of all, the text is very dense.
And then also around that time, it was only the scholars who could read and write such a classic form of Chinese.
So most of them signed it.
Oftentimes Spanish was on the other side of the contract and then Chinese form the second page.
Now, they were the contract bonded the labourers to their employers for a definite period, and this this period differed for Cuba it was six years, it was eight years excuse excuse me, eight years for Cuba.
It was much shorter for Peru, I believe it was six.
Now Both the Chinese labourer and the employer will sign this contract stipulating the legal obligation of both parties.
I just want to say that there's a lot of work as a website, so I know there's a lot of work going on now to make sure that migrant workers who before they go abroad, when they sign the contracts that it's provided in a language that they do understand and they understand the conditions attached to it.
So this this notion that those who signed contracts need to understand so that they do not fall into abusive conditions is really a hark back to this time when most people did not understand and they go into awful, you know, conditions abroad.
So as we say in English, the devil is in the details.
Right.
So I just want to go through some of those details that show this great asymmetry of power between the labourers and their employers.
So oftentimes this contract would say that contracts can be transferred and that the employers has no right to dispute that the labourers would work at the discretion of the employers that they submit to the system of punishment.
And that doing the length of the time of the contract, the Labour promise not to refuse nor escape the work place, and if the labour is too ill to work, oftentimes he agrees to that after a week's time.
If he's not better, then he's not entitled to payment while he's sick.
And I also saw examples of other contracts where it was quite telling that at the beginning they were provisions such as I know by signing this document that I'm actually getting paid less than other free labourers.
But I do not dispute this.
I will not dispute this during the length of my contract.
Sometimes the return passage home back to China is in the contract, but not always.
Sometimes there's a payment for the return passage.
Next slide, please.
Now, what happens is so the person cannot be sold, as you have under the system of chattel slavery, but you have a system where the contracts could be sold, right.
So I have here this is the passage primary source that talks about what happens when the contracts were being negotiated and sold on lending or by foreigners on horseback armed with whips, leaders like herd of cattle to the holding cell, their accounts to be sold at Havana when offer for sale.
We were divided into three classes first, second and third, and we were forced to remove all of our clothing so that our persons might be examined and the price fixed.
This covered us with shame.
I always think it's really interesting for the fact that these contracts, were they provided the political cover, that it was not slavery, right.
We could permit this even after the abolition of slavery because it is not slavery.
They had signed a contract.
They have given their consent.
But yet at the same time, we see a system where the contracts were traded and sold and it left the labourers feeling very demeaned.
And I shortened the passage.
But this was so this passage was so telling because the the the speaker actually went you know, he described what he felt when he had to cut off his Queue.
Now doing the last dynasty of China, the men had a long braid and it was considered very demeaning to have it cut off.
So the speaker here actually talks about what he felt when his braid was cut off, symbolising his, you know, this this termination of this connexion to his homeland.
And he realised that the conditions sold to him that was billed to him for his employment in Cuba was vastly different from what he had imagined.
Next, please.
Now.
We have here's another book filled with these type of primary accounts of Chinese labourers in Cuba, and it was really quite interesting how they kind of used the name slaves to describe themselves, you know, even though they were contractor labourers, but they saw themselves very much as slaves.
So the things that came up in this short passage were things like they were ill treated just as the African slaves.
They were segregated in public places, just as the African slaves there were not seen as humans, just as the African slaves.
And it ended with this question posed by one of the Chinese labourers saying, well, why are we not worthy of abolition? You know, why can we not be emancipatedt? Why can we not be? Next slide, please.
Thank you, Leila.
Now, same with the middle passage that we saw between the West Coast of Africa to the Americas, there was a very high rate of mortality during passage, except it was twice as long because they went from the Port of Macao, which is next to Hong Kong, all the way to the Americas.
So I have here.
A passage that is, you know, this this this description of the condition that speaks to to us today about what it was like on board and the person speaks, we remember that we were shut in the cabin and even put in the bamboo cages or locked up in irons.
When we were on the ship, the owners of the ship arbitrarily dragged several people out and beat them to put on a show of force.
We did not know how many of our peers died on the ship because of illness, beating, thirst or suicide by jumping into the sea.
And this is one of those unknowns because the mortality rates that we have now from our archives, they often list the ones who arrived at the port of destination in Havana or in Peru or elsewhere, but it is not known how many simply perished.
And I have here in the in the in the little table there, it's an account of a ship.
That I found, which, my goodness, it is so interesting, I found this little book, I don't know if you can see it, it's a very flimsy paperback in in Beijing, but.
In this little book, it talked about a ship that was British flagged that left the Port of Macao for Havana in 1859 on the 8th of October.
So it talks about how it had 850 Chinese male labourers.
The coolies, you see the number there 850.
And the description there talks about how the ship ran into trouble off the coast of the Indian subcontinent.
The crew survived by rowing in little boats to shore.
And then you have the French maritime authorities coming to their aid and finding out what happened, so they immediately dispatched ships to see if there were any survivors.
On the next page of this account, which is not reproduced here, it's simply said, although help was immediately dispatched, by the time we got to the place where the vessel had sunk, no survivors could be found.
We believed eight hundred fifty coolies all perished in the accident.
So they never reached the port of Havana.
Next, please.
So a few years ago, I came across this headline.
It's on Reuters about how the remains of about 16 Chinese labourers were found in Peru.
And it it really it really moved me because I remember I did my doctoral dissertation looking at the legal history of human trafficking in China.
So I dealt with some of these source materials.
And for the Chinese male labourers, the single wish to return home was one of the things they cited for putting up with the bad conditions because they had always imagined of returning home even in death when things became very tough.
So the idea was that, you know, I put here it's a Chinese expression that the leaf, when it falls, it returns to the root of the tree.
So the idea was that even in death, if you could be buried in your entirety, then your spirit would reach home, you know, so here was a passage observation of someone spoke speaking to us from two centuries ago.
After Chinese workers die, their bodies won't be buried in graves.
Instead, their bodies will be just discarded around.
We're not allowed to help bury those dead Chinese.
So already you see that there's not even much dignity in death, but at least they were buried here, which meant that they could return home in their in the spiritual in the spiritual sense.
But here we have an example of an excavation where you have 16 Chinese labourers who are buried with great respect.
They were clothed and they were carefully laid to rest.
So I just thought, you know, there was there's so many different layers to to cut through this episode, not only where intersects with our point of the Emancipation Proclamation, the US, you know, and this global movement to abolish slavery, but also how these things still pop up today.
And it challenged us to think about the abolition and its global context and much different ways.
You know, what were their longings? How were they buried? Did they form kinship? Why were they buried? Did they have that they prosper? Did they did they form business? You know, all these questions come to light.
And I just want to quickly raise that.
You know, there's one very moving passage about how one of the plantation owners.
When a Chinese male labour committed suicide because he wanted to return home, just couldn't take the physical abuse anymore, he actually burned the body, scatter the ashes, and it was done to coerce, you know, to scare the Chinese, other Chinese labourers not to do that, not to commit suicide and leave, you know, mentally leave this world because it was so it was so deeply held that if your body is not buried hole, it will not be able to find your way home.
So you here you have a plantation owner who were so knowledged.
Right.
Who who knew where the buttons to push were and to use that the scattering of ashes as a way to deter his workforce from from from disappearing.
So I think, you know, when I read this headline, I was I was greatly moved.
I want to find out what's the story behind this group of 16 Chinese labourers who escaped this fate and who had a dignified berry.
So next, please.
Now, let's return to this photo.
This is from an archive from the New York Public Library, and I don't know if you want to guess where it was taken, because when I came across it, I really, you know, I liked it so much.
Leila do you want to take a venture? Well, I can see I think, you know, Chinese labour irrigating land.
The Andes somewhere in Peru.
That's right.
That's right.
Yes.
That's because you can read the fine print.
What I mean.
But I so much love this photo because it kind of it's it's a testimony of this chapter of history that connects with the global history of abolition, but is not widely known.
Right.
So we have pure photographic evidence, but mostly, you know, what I look at the photo is that it's so hard to see their face right, because it's draped by the hat and it's the sun, the shadow.
And it could be any face.
Right.
And that's the thing I like about this photo is that it could be anyone that the victim of gross labour exploitation can be anyone.
We have to be really careful, you know, even today and more so today.
Right.
Given the fact that, you know, after the pandemic, we're expecting these probably and these problems are already cropping up.
We're expecting the progress we've made to go backwards, to regress.
We have to be really careful with the progress made in one jurisdiction.
Doesn't inadvertently lead to exploitation in another place.
Right.
So so so for me, this photo is of the Chinese labourers picking cotton at the foot of the Andes Mountains in Peru.
But symbolically, it speaks of so much more.
Next, please.
Now, what I discovered is actually very quickly, you know, trace the two slavery conventions, international law, there are two slavery conventions, one in nineteen twenty six and then one in 1956.
So because of my eastern eastern weren't gays and my work and also in my upbringing, the story of the Chinese male labourers that kind of connect to the abolition of child chattel slavery, for me it's like the story of these two different slavery conventions.
So we have the 1926 Slavery Convention that, you know, prohibits slavery, that we often we think about this slavery as the right of ownership, chattel slavery.
You know, as king, a person is a king to poverty, to property.
We have 30 know 30 years later, we have the supplementary convention to include institutions and practises similar to slavery.
So it's making that leap between old slavery and new slavery that I talked about.
So under this new slavery, we have things like debt bondage, we have serfdom.
We have certain practises of gender discrimination, you know, to transfer women through forced marriage.
And we have child labour, the exploitation of child labour.
And I think, you know, this is just kind of a slide to show that in some ways, the abolition of slavery, the emancipation that was represented, you know, in President Lincoln's proclamation was just the beginning.
Right.
In some ways, it's also the easiest step because now we're dealing with exploitation that is multifaceted, that is not just legally legal ownership and it's vast and complicated and the type of victim that encompasses next please Leila.
So we have here a form that I think has gained a lot of momentum, especially in the U.K.
owing to the 2015 Modern Slavery Act, then the U.K.
has really done some really pioneering work in this area that, you know, and it also has popularised the term modern slavery.
Right.
We hear about it quite often, but it's actually quite difficult to pin down as a definition encompassed different things.
So it has, you know, human trafficking, it has forced labour.
You have debt bondage, bonded labour, you have dissent based slavery, the slavery of children and force or early marriage.
So I think, you know, it does point to the fact that we use this term a lot, but we should be mindful of the fact that it's a shorthand.
Right.
It's a shorthand for a much more complicated, a lot more complicated definition that we do have basis in international law.
So I want to give you the example below.
Next slide, please.
But what this shorthand has done and has done so well is that it's getting us to talk a lot more about labour exploitation in different sectors.
And one of the one that has really kind of taken this this momentum and is the range of abuses of human rights at sea.
So we have reports that talk about slavery at sea, slavery at the high sea, trafficking at the high seas.
And a few years ago.
We have this, especially with regards to Thailand's fishing sector.
And what are these? Well, it's a shorthand to describe a lot of practises and the ILO, the International Labour Organisation, that's also based in Geneva.
Talks about indicators of forced labour in practise, and it lists things like cycle physical confinement.
So while you're at sea in a boat, you can't go anywhere indefinitely.
And that's one of the things that's really difficult, because you're out of sight.
Out of mind.
You're on the high seas.
Who has enforcement jurisdiction? Right.
It's it's quite difficult, right.
You have indebtedness.
You have the workers working in this vessels.
And they could be they could have paid a lot of money and they're paying off their debt through their labour on the ship.
They could be oftentimes they are deceived about their nature of work on board.
You can have them, you know, wages being withheld and that they have to work for a certain amount of time to pay off this uncertain amount of debt.
You can have their personal documents, passports being detained, so they do not have physical forms of identification, and then, of course, there are reports of physical violence, beatings, sometimes even conveniently being thrown overboard, and no one knows the fate.
So I think, you know, definitely the human rights abuses in the maritime sector is one where there is a clear vacuum and certainly a lot of efforts going into addressing this.
That woruld that we not only look at the biodiversity elements of ocean governments, but also that labour and the social components of, you know, of the oceans of our shared commons.
Next, please.
So I have here, you know, I was talking about earlier about modern slavery as a term being more of a shorthand because we do not see the term modern slavery in international law.
We see things like slavery define.
We have things like institutions and practises similar to slavery, defined international law.
But we don't have the combination of words, modern slavery, international law.
But what we have is human trafficking, trafficking persons.
And it has a very long definitions, about 200 words.
And this is why you need a shorthand, right? Because if you read the definition one, you'll lose your audience halfway through.
What I think what is so important, and this is what I see, is that I think human trafficking lends itself quite well to a holistic examination of slavery and human exploitation in all its forms.
Because if you look at it, you have what I bolded there in the definition that it actually includes slavery and practises similar to slavery in its definition for the purpose of exploitation.
Right.
So we have here an international definition that's actually in international law.
It is in the protocol on the trafficking persons and it actually has very wide ratification.
You know, we have one hundred seventy eight members of the U.N.
General Assembly saying that they are a state party to this protocol.
So I think, you know, in terms of what we're pushing for, which is to look at human exploitation in all its forms and where all these different histories that affects different regions kind of combine to give us a fuller, richer understanding like the one I just tried to trace out for the audience today, how Chinese male labourers were affected by the emancipation in the Americas, how, you know, share fate must mean a collective effort on all our parts next week.
So here, it's just a short diagram to show what this complicated definition actually means, and you see that under the column of purpose, you see a wide range of exploitation, which means that it is a very rich ground for a lot of different types of research in this area.
Next, please.
So this is a webinar about research futures you know interdisciplinary lens, so I just wrote down some of the things here that I think would be interesting.
I actually coedited collection of essays last year, along with Dr.
Isabelle Cheng, also at Portsmouth University.
And we try to kind of give a snapshot of this complicated picture, you know, from from the perspective of different stakeholders.
So it's not only legal scholars, but we also historians contributing to the issue.
We had those who work with brands, you know, a business perspective.
And here was an essay by a very renowned scholar of history focussing on the Indian Ocean slavery, Dr. Richard B. Alan And it's a it's a short piece, but it's a really ambitious piece because it's trying to look at human trafficking in Asia before the nineteen hundreds.
A preliminary census is trying to combine all these different numbers that we have scattered in different archives.
And he makes the argument, which is that we need a more nuanced examination of human trafficking and the exploitation that entails across time and space.
It is challenging because oftentimes you have local contexts where you're using different terms, right? So you have lost in translation.
You might be talking about the same thing, but using different language.
So unless you have an expert who's able to do research in that primary language, a lot is lost.
But it just symbolises, I think to me that more commitment needs to be in this area because Labour migration, both present and past is such a rich ground for more interdisciplinary research, and especially with a lot of potential for applied.
We're looking at impact and, you know, simply for applied research as well, especially when the STG the road map for the road ahead for 2030 actually has a goal.
Eight point seven looking at the abolition of slavery, ending forced labour, ending forced trafficking, human trafficking in all its forms.
And it asks for very active engagement from all stakeholders and especially also business.
Now, let me end the discussion today by going back to President Lincoln.
Next slide, please.
Leila.
So let me end by going back to President Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation that set slaves free in the U.S., which, you know, Booker T.
Washington so vividly spoke about remembering his mother, crying and hugging him now in January 1863, when President Lincoln signed it.
He apparently said, if my name ever goes down into history, it would be for this act.
And my whole heart, my whole soul is in it.
Now, you might remember because you just had the webinar on President Biden's first 100 days.
President Biden actually quoted Lincoln in his inaugural speech talking about how his whole soul is in the effort to rebuild a very divided America, you know, that that he inherited.
When I heard President Biden echo this quote from President Lincoln, I felt only goosebumps.
I was so moved because I remember another quote from Lincoln.
President Lincoln came under a huge amount of political pressure over the Emancipation Proclamation, his whole soul might have been in it, but it was definitely not an easy endeavour.
Once when he was pushed to rescind it for the sake of the union, he said simply, I should be damned in time and eternity if he were to rescind it.
Now.
My observation is my conclusion is now, two centuries later, after all the events in our modern history, that soul two world wars, the founding of a new post-war global order decolonisation, we sent a man on the moon.
We have a regulated global system for trade.
If even after all that, if 40 million people, according to the International Labour Organisation, still live in the state of modern slavery, then I have to say our whole soul has not been in anti slavery.
But it's never too late to start again and to start with a fresh commitment.
So let me end there and thank you and I'll feel some questions now, Leila.
I just have to put up my numbers.
I put up my contact information in case people would like to be in touch.
And we can continue the discussion further.
Thank you very much.
It's been such a pleasure to talk about this.
Thank you so much, Bonnie.
Thank you immensely for this great presentation.
So well prepared, so well delivered in a very pedagogic manner.
And as I often say, you know, to speak with such confidence, but also to be able to carry, you know, to a change, to present complex issues like that without any difficulty in an apparently easy manner.
It requires a lot of work.
And as you said, it's very much ample time to provide a sort of nuanced examination of what is slavery and what is still today.
We often have the Atlantic slave trade in mind, but slavery is unfortunately and has always been something extremely universal from Greece in antiquity to Spartacus in Rome to indeed the Atlantic trade, as you said, the coolies of China and today tribes in Africa perpetrating slavery.
So it's very much here.
It's always been.
And it's a fight that we need to fight because, as you said, we've progress on certain fronts, but certainly not on this particular matter.
So I have a question.
I know we've received question from our audience.
I have a first question for you, which as a lawyer, you know, is something quite interesting and striking.
And I remember these words from from Rousseau who said slavery law means nothing.
In essence, it's, you know, illegitimate, immoral.
And yet, as you explained very well, slavery was and is still contracted.
It's in a contract.
It's an exchange.
So what do you think about this sort of perverse maybe use of the law? And we still see that today in some form of exchange of contracts for the selling or for the exportation of human beings.
Well, thank you, Leila It's such an interesting question with many layers and not only for the first instance of you being established international law and saying, do we need more? Do we need definition? Does it really lead to anything? So I think let me let me go back a bit.
I think for me.
You know, the importance of Juneteenth is not the singular moment of Emancipation Proclamation, you know, it is not that.
But what I hope it can achieve is for us to gather in, for example, through seminars like this, to kind of meet and talk and to kind of pull out all the different layers and to ask questions like, well, what does it mean to have laws that are not implemented? Know what does it mean to have laws when we see similar levels of bondage today? I mean, what is this project we're embarking on and is there a goal? Can we really free, you know, the 40 million individuals that are believed to be still in modern slavery today? Well, I don't know, but I think we ought to try.
I think a lot of and that's why I ended the presentation with was our heart completely was our soul completely in this project? Was it I mean, could we say it was or was it just something convenient? We kind of tag on to, you know, in in the type of decisions that we make, like, for example, you know, one of the most innovative things to come out of the twenty fifteen Modern Slavery Act, as you know, Leila is this requirement for businesses to report.
Right.
They must report on an annual basis the steps they have taken the previous year to ensure that human trafficking and modern slavery do not exist in their business operation or supply chain.
Right.
And I think that has generated a lot of momentum for business to finally talk about modern slavery, to kind of, you know, to look at what does it mean in their Supply-Chain, how far do they go down in supply chain? And it is an ongoing project.
It is, absolutely.
We do have reporting, but it's recognised as the first step because a lot of times the public statement is not very detailed.
It's very aspirational.
And it can't be that you have that we have all these business statements saying that they do not you know, there's there's no presence of modern slavery at all in all tiers of the supply chain and still have 40 million people worldwide.
Right.
The two facts don't really compute.
Right.
So I do think that it does ask a lot of difficult questions also on consumers.
Right, in our purchasing decisions.
And if Juneteenth gets us to talk about it with great honesty, then it is only the beginning.
You know, it is only the beginning to to kind of put all these parts together and to renew our commitment to this project.
It is.
And I'm sure we're going to talk about that with our audience.
But, you know, there's something maybe essential in capitalism.
I'm thinking about the book of Eric Williams.
I'm sure, you know,Capitalism and Slavery.
You alluded to the cotton, you know, exploitation and the plantation, et cetera.
But there's something essential in the way we work.
We do exploit people in the way we make money in a very capitalistic system.
So that also has to be, well, certainly investigated.
We have a question from Tony.
So, Tony, say thanks very much for this great presentation.
Given the global economic disparities, how can we achieve an end to labour exploitation? And second question, what do you think of the sex work and the different countries legal approach to it? So the disparities globally and second question, what we call sex work.
Yes.
Wow.
Great question.
Great questions.
I'll take the second one first and I might just bounce the first one back to you, Leila.
But the second question, it's very controversial.
Right? And it almost derailed the codification of the protocol on trafficking in persons.
There were two camps on, you know, one saying that sex work is not exploitation if it's done with full informed consent by adults.
You know, and there's the other camp that just said, well, it is a form of exploitation, you know, so the two didn't talk.
You know, the disagreement still exists today.
What the convention what the protocol did was kind of left it to each government to decide.
It did not say definitively one way or another.
So it gave state parties the ability to to adopt prohibitionist approach or more like a regulatory approach.
You know, it is highly emotive.
But many ways, but I you know, I tend I, I have my views, but I think I'm also quite practical in the sense that, OK, we know what we don't agree, but let's look at where we agree.
And the thing that we agree on absolutely.
Is child prostitution under 18.
For that, there's no disagreement, you know, on consent.
So we know it's still a problem.
So that can be, you know, that needs to be addressed.
And then for the other things, I think it depends on the national processes of pluralistic society to decide what approach they want to do.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And again, that's it requires a very nuanced, to use this word again, examination, for instance.
And I'm shamelessly quoting a book which is going to be published in one of my series by colleagues Suhti Surya on that and Sex Work in Nepal based on a series of interviews with sex workers.
And what Suhti shows is that this is not exploitation.
This is not human trafficking.
This is not slavery.
A number, if not all of these women have chosen their destinies and this has empowered them.
So it's complicated.
It's counterintuitive.
But again, you know, it's so complex that we also have to have a very nuanced view.
Second question from De Lara.
There are many cultures that maintain perpetual servitude from others many times, relatives whom are not paid but given shelter, food, et cetera, for example, in South Asia.
How do you respond to arguments that such practises are part of culture and not slavery? Well, I mean I mean, Leila, you know, this this argument comes up in human rights all the time, right? Yeah.
You know, what is the cultural argument? You know, when you when you're faced with human rights abuse, you know, how much defence can you mount based on a cultural justification? You know, I think we have to I think so much about this issue is that we really need to kind of because the surface is very emotive, you know, we have to kind of delve in and kind of look at in the individual case and see what the victims themselves are asking.
I mean, yes, you have these, but there are plenty of cases where those who are entrapped in domestic servitude themselves says, we do not want this, we want schooling.
You know, the arrangement between my guardians and the household I serve was done.
I didn't I didn't know of it and I do not agree.
And they're seeking themselves remedy.
So I think in those cases, remedy needs to be right.
They.
We need to think of them as victims and find them, you know, find a way out.
I think it is as simple as that And maybe we can go back Bonny t tell me if you agree, we can go back to the very definition.
I know it's tricky and maybe problematic of slavery.
The 1926 convention, you know, this idea of ownership, this idea of transaction as well.
It's not only forced labour, it's not only debt or bonded labour.
I understand that today's situation are very complex.
But in slavery, I still believe that you have this idea of contractual ownership of someone, don't you think? Oh, my goodness, it is such a tough issue.
I mean, you know, one of the things I'm working on now is looking at how migrant workers are recruited, you know, and and Leila, you know this as well, that, in fact, the global system of labour is kind of separated based on whether or not you're skilled or low skilled.
Right.
If you are skilled, professional, it's expected that all the costs of recruitment associated with your employment is paid by the employer.
But in parallel, we have a system for low wage migrant workers where they have to pay the cost of their own recruitment.
You know, so for a lot of migrant workers, this is written into their contract and they spend the actual the first sometimes up to two years of their job paying back this debt and this debt could come in all sorts of forms.
It could be job training that's imposed by the country of destination, country of origin.
And then when they go to the country of destination for their employment, we see fees deducted from their wages in the form of service charges through labour brokers.
So in fact, the money that goes to the migrant workers themselves is is little.
Right.
So we're actually not allowing them to enjoy the fruits of their labour.
And this is legalised.
This is the system we have now.
So often, you know, when I when I talk about this type of contract labour being in debt and being another form of exploitation, I hear very much current echoes and the apparent in the imperative in the party of today to kind of put in a better system of labour migration for low skilled migrant workers.
But it's only a distinction in labour, because without their contribution to a lot of domestic economies, a lot of their jobs, you know, the typical 3D jobs, dangerous, demeaning, dirty, will simply have no one to do them.
So I think we need to change our mindset as well.
I have stopped calling myself.
I don't know if I say I am a migrant worker, you know, with this terminology that's popular used about expats and migrant worker.
Right.
There's a there's a connotation attached to it, but there's no justification for this in international law.
Migrant workers, simply someone who's employed in a state where he or she is not the national right.
So I'm a migrant worker.
You know, you are, right.
So a lot of people are.
And I think that's one thing we can do in solidarity is to say, you know, we are in this together.
This is not an act of charity.
And I think the thing that really drives me and I get so excited about Juneteenth is not just for the commemoration aspect, but for the chance that maybe finally we'll start to sit together and dive into this multiple layers and look at our past mistakes and the lessons learnt and going forward on that basis.
Well, I think that's that's a beautiful proposal, but need to call ourselves and for all of us migrant workers, because we we might have moved from one country to the other, one city to the other, one village to to another.
You know, a question from Penny as part of the campaign for reparation for the past slavery.
There's an event in Dorset on Saturday, 17th July, those that rally for slavery, justice and its solidarity with the Barbados people.
So Penny gives the details so well.
Yes, I think it's great.
We could probably join dots.
Thanks very much for sharing, Penny.
That was a comment.
More than a question, but thanks a lot.
A question from Leslie rather comment as well.
Thanks very much.
I was a great presentation.
I think that's all the questions we have.
But in terms of moving forward, Bonnie, what do you see internationally and maybe nationally? We know in the U.K. we have the Slavery Act, and that's something extremely original, quite unique, maybe not perfect, but certainly quite unique and going which goes in the right direction to so internationally and nationally what you see in terms of legal improvement? Wow.
Well, we need more great minds like you Democratic Citizenship theme to kind of bring it all together, right, because there are no easy solutions and I wish I can say I know what is there to do because I do not I do not have all the answers.
I think we have the laws.
It could be better as locals, often or always in the process of revising, amending and things like that to reflect current circumstances.
But I really think the question's implementation, right? There's a oftentimes a big gap between the labour laws that are on the books versus how they are implemented on the ground.
Right.
And if we look back to the ILO, international labour organisations four fundamental principles, for the law, for decent work, and these are considered to be so fundamental that they apply regardless of whether or not a government has signed on to the relevant treaties.
I think that's a good place to start.
Have they or have they not ratified the eight fundamental treaties associated with these four basic principles? And these four are very like such low hanging fruit where there's really shouldn't be any disagreement.
There's non-discrimination, right? There is a ability to collective bargain, trade union rights, and then there's child labour and forced labour.
Right.
So I think these are like low hanging fruit.
And yet we're not seeing the laws on the books in the in the national jurisdictions dealing with those things, implement it fully on the ground.
And I think that is a big gap that we need to look at with great, great honesty indeed.
And I don't know to what extent our audience knows that, but major countries where leaders, the US and China have not ratified the Forced Labour Convention.
So this is where we stand.
They have their reasons without certain reasons are very internal and they very, very much between the US and China, but they have not ratified this convention.
So you said that Leila and I think may be one more thing we can we can say, and I hope you agree with me, you said that before.
It calls for very interdisciplinary work.
And I think it calls for philosophers, for anthropologists as well, to to to help us understand what's in the human mind.
You know, why is it that after so many centuries of progress and limitation, we still want to exploit others? What does it mean exactly? Because I suppose that if we do not work on that as well, there's no legal solution which is going to be implementable.
Yes, it requires all minds, this is just the beginning of that discussion.
Thank you so, so much, Bonnie.
Well, there was fantastic discussion.
That was a very important discussion and I very much love the way you've approached it, your example, the way you've presented it was fantastic.
So thank you ever so much.
The meeting has been recorded and is going to be available on the website Research Futures, I'd like to thank the audience as well for being such a great audience in asking so many interesting questions.
And I'd like to thank my team in particular, Olga, Claudia, Gloria, He and Barnaby for their support.
I'll see you next week for another really interesting, dissimilar, but really very interesting presentation on woman in international arbitration.
So why are they so very few women and what can it change? Thanks very much, everyone.
Thank you, Leila.
Thank you.