A Hero

Sorry I haven't posted for a few days; things have been really busy at work. On June 12, the U.S. Department of State release the 2007 Trafficking in Persons Report. I haven't read it carefully yet, but one section has short, inspiring descriptions of heroes acting to end modern-day slavery. Here is one such person:

Kailash Satyarthi, Activist: Global March Against Child Labor, Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA), South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude (SACCS), Rugmark, India
A global leader in the fight against child labor, trafficking and forced labor, Kailash Satyarthi has liberated more than 75,000 bonded and child laborers since 1980.

Mr. Satyarthi has worked relentlessly to free bonded children, to rehabilitate them with vocational training and education and tilted the force of public opinion against child labor. His organizations provide direct legal assistance and advocacy for victims. His efforts have taken many different forms, some of them on massive international scale. For example, in 1998 he organized the Global March Against Child Labor, across 103 countries with the participation of 7.2 million people, and more than 10,000 civil society organizations. It was the largest peoples' campaign on child labor that led to the ILO Convention 182 on the worst forms of child labor.

Mr. Satyarthi is combating the use of child labor by creating domestic and international consumer resistance to products made by children in bonded labor. He started Rugmark, a program in which rugs are labeled and certified to be child-labor-free by factories that agree to be regularly inspected.

Recently, Mr. Satyarthi lead the South Asian March Against Child Trafficking, a month-long physical march across the Indo-Nepal-Bangladesh border to raise awareness on trafficking of children for forced labor, and to demand a South Asian regional protocol to combat trafficking for forced labor.