Child trafficking is a long-standing global atrocity with no end in sight. As a child development specialist, I wondered why something so horrific is so difficult to stop. Living in Bangladesh gave me an insider's view of the problem's complexity, especially related to the aspect of forced and bonded labor. I wondered if I could build advocacy to promote change through a children's novel based on my experiences.
I worked to develop parenting and early childhood programs in high poverty communities in Bangladesh from 2000-2005. Bangladeshi parents love their children and have a playful spirit that brings much joy to the household, so they were eager to find ways to promote their children's potential. Singing, playing and telling stories is an integral part of child rearing.
To advance early literacy skills, I trained teachers and parents to produce simple stories for an eight-page fold and take book format, using one piece of photocopy paper. The children learned to read the stories in the village preschool, discussed the topic, and dramatized the story. Once they could read the book they were allowed to color the pictures and take it home.
When we asked the first group of parents to decide on a topic for their children's book, they chose child trafficking. They wanted the story to act as a cautionary tale, warning children to be wary of strangers who might be child traffickers. In their first story, two children received treats from a stranger who then captured them. The children eventually escaped to return to the loving arms of their parents.
I was alarmed to learn that parents in disadvantaged communities were reluctant to send their youngest children to school. The costs associated with schooling are a well-known deterrent. In addition, these parents also feared that their children would be kidnapped on their walk to school, and then sold across the nearby border in India. I am aware that it is a global problem that includes the U.S. In Bangladesh and other South Asian countries I saw a scale of child labor and child trafficking that gave me nightmares.
The problem became personal on the day that a Bangladeshi co-worker from my office shared distressing news. His sister called to tell him that she and her husband believed that their eleven-year-old son had been kidnapped. She had given him permission to walk to a nearby shop and buy a packet of cookies as an after-dinner treat but he never returned. The family was terrified until they received a phone call two days later. A police station near the border of India called to tell them that their son was safe.
Their son told the police that he remembered some men who spoke to him in a friendly way and offered to buy the cookies. They walked around the corner and one of the men put a cloth over the boy's face. He fell unconscious. When he awoke, he was in a van. There was a driver in front and a man in the back with a half dozen children. The boy started screaming, kicking and lashing out at the man who tried to control him. The men exchanged words and pulled the van to the side of the road. They pushed the boy from the van and took off.
The child stood there crying until an elderly man asked him his problem. The old man then escorted the boy to the police station where he was able to call his parents. Apparently, the boy was pushed from the car because the driver and accomplice did not want to arouse attention at the border where the car would soon be passing with a cargo of children they planned to sell. This child was saved due to his courage; the other children were lost.
International child protection organizations, such as UNICEF, the International Labor Organization (ILO), and the International Convention of Child Labor (ILOC), attempt to monitor and address the problem of child trafficking for sexual exploitation and forced or bonded labor. Significant reductions in child labor have been seen in the garment industry due to international pressure and boycotts from high profile clothing brands. The construction industry where children have been found breaking bricks in the harsh sun for more than 60 hours weekly has been more difficult to monitor and change.
The aspect of child trafficking that particularly broke my heart was the prevalence of very young children who worked as servants in middle and upper class households in Bangladesh. In some ways it is the hardest to address because it gets at the heart of the matter – the implicit sense that the people who "employ" these children are doing good, by providing impoverished children with food and shelter. In some cases, they pay the parents a fee and in others they may promise a small wage to the child. This wage is often "held" by the "employer" to ensure that the child laborer does not run away. Many young girls live and work in the same house until they are quite elderly, never receiving the promised salary.
A tension exists between the Bangladeshi understanding of charity for poor children and the international community's views that poor children are being exploited. On two occasions my husband and I had dinner in homes of prominent leaders of anti-poverty organizations. In both homes I walked into the kitchen to help with serving the meal. In each, I saw a young girl, approximately nine to ten-years old, washing pots. In both cases my hostess noticed my gaze, and responded with the same words, "Oh this is our little child laborer."
Both women said this with a smile, as if to make light of my concern. They knew that foreigners are opposed to child labor. In both cases, the hostess quickly explained how she had rescued this child from extreme poverty, and how much better off the young child was in their care. She spoke further about the child's situation and her family's wonderful treatment of the child. Neither hostess spoke the name of the child.
There are labor laws that offer some protection for children in formal labor sectors but less so in the informal sectors. At the time I was there, the only law that addressed child domestic workers was established to track runaway servants for their employers. There was no monitoring system to protect and enforce the rights of children in the informal labor sector. Bangladesh has signed the international accord on child rights and expresses best intentions to protect children. However, the issue is complicated by differing perspectives about charity for poor children; and perhaps a caste mentality, that consigns those on lowest social rungs to hereditary menial labor tasks.
The primary scope for concerned Bangladeshis to file child abuse complaints has been through the press. Over the years, a prominent newspaper, The Daily Star, has published feature stories with photos and stories of abused child servants meant to shock the public into action for child protection. An October 7, 2019 report, "Child Domestic Workers Need More Protection," stated, "There is an implicit sense of supremacy and dominance that overshadows the more human aspects of the employee." In this article, the Daily Star urged the government to establish a data base for all children working as domestic servants, along with a protection and welfare policy.
I began to wonder if there is something I might do to promote action for change.
I could see that child trafficking was a multi-faceted problem with both a supply and demand side. People ask how loving parents could sell or consign their child to long-term bonded labor. In South Asian societies female children are seen as a burden to the family. Eventually the child will be married and become an asset to her husband's family. An intractable dowry system requires the girls' parents to not only pay for a costly wedding feast, but to also provide gifts for the groom's family and laden their daughter in gold jewelry that will become treasure to the groom's family. If you spend time in the communities, you will see how much parents love all their children. But they see their female children as inducing a heavy investment with no return.
One means to enhance the value of female children to their families is to promote girls' education. Girls begin to see other options besides early marriage. Their families reap benefits when educated girls establish themselves in profitable professions and develop more egalitarian views about marriage. I was seeing progress through my work in parenting and early childhood education. A thrilling reward was for fathers to say that their girls are equal assets to the families. It has not been so long ago that we have seen a similar social shift in the U.S.
An idea to address the supply side of the child trafficking problem presented itself on a work trip to India. I was facilitating workshops for a network of early childhood education organizations that worked in high poverty communities. A manager of one group told me that the communities where they work had established an effective informal child watch and protection network to report cases of abused child domestic workers. The "child watch" idea arose from parenting education groups that discussed the concept of child rights, and then members decided they had a responsibility to protect all children, not just their own.
The program manager told me that this problem of child domestic servants has to be addressed at the family and community level. Informal dialogue in community parenting groups, for example, has been effective in exploring the disconnect between internal and external definitions of child welfare and child abuse. "Just as your country is reckoning with racial and gender bias, we are reckoning with the question of whether child rights apply to every child. We have to expose the false belief that children of poverty are lesser human beings. A step in the right direction is to ensure access to play, health, education and kind treatment for children working as domestic servants."
After leaving Bangladesh, I decided to write a novel for children about child trafficking. The Drawing Game is a story of two eleven-year old Bangladeshi children, Nadiha and Fayaz, whose friendship grows from a passion for drawing. I wanted to portray them as bright, spirited and talented children, whose aptitudes help them to be rescued from child trafficking. The young boy, Fayaz, was created from my colleague's nephew who was kidnapped while buying cookies at the corner store. When I told Nadiha's story, I saw the bright eyes and shy smile of the little girl washing pots in my friend's kitchen. In the story, a wily relative tricked Nadiha's parents into selling her to work as a servant in the city where she is befriended by Fayaz and they discover art as a tie that binds and illuminate's possibility.
I was able to color the novel with anecdotes from true stories about child trafficking rings that I heard and others reported in the newspaper over the five years that I lived there. One news story reported that over 100 young boys had been kidnapped and held in a remote jungle camp to clean seashells for tourist shops. When found, many of the children could not tell their full names or where they were from. This is the plight in which I place the character Fayaz.
I wanted to portray the adults - Nadiha's mom, Nadiha's employers, and Fayaz's rescuers -wrestling with their consciences, weighing morality with profit. The adult characters that start out as villains in the story, redeem their actions and play a pivotal role to protect these vulnerable children. I hoped to show the complexities of the issues; and to envision some solutions that readers might promote.
I wrote the story for children who will be our change agents for the future. All children deal with complex issues and problems in their lives that are often discounted by the adults around them. I choose to illustrate this through narratives of children growing up foreign cultures because I want American children to care about others outside their borders and to see human connectivity in the world. I hope that my stories demonstrate that diverse ways of viewing the world can help us make more sense of ours. A change of perspective is sometimes just what we need to see our way out of a problem.
In this blog I plan to write about the experiences and ideas that frame my creative writing. I want to further the conversation by inviting readers to share their views. I would like to hear from others with first-hand information about child trafficking or ideas for innovative solutions to drive change. I would particularly like to hear from children who read the book, and to know if it changed them in anyway.
The greatest realization and commitment I hope my readers gain from The Drawing Game was best stated by an iconic American civil rights leader, John Lewis, "Act to defend what you know is right. That is your power to change the world."
Comments