Ecuador: products of slavery

Adults and children are recruited for trafficking through a range of methods in Ecuador. Victims of sexual exploitation can be romantically propositioned and then forced into prostitution – their parents are led to believe that their children will be educated and get good jobs, so allow them to go away for work. It is most common for these children to be trafficked into forced labour as street vendors and domestic workers.


According to Antislavery, these are some of the products highly likely to be produced by child labour or forced labour in Ecuador. 


- ''That is the life of my sons, working in the banana [fields] at such a young age,'' said Benita Menéndez, 36, who has had three sons working at Mr. Noboa's banana plantation in Ecuador, only one of them an adult. ''I did not want them to work when they were little, but this is the reality.'' Mr. Noboa is one of the richest men in Ecuador.
- In 2001, 455,000 children under the age of 15 worked in Ecuador. Brick making is a common industry for children to work in.
-In Cayambe, Ecuador, 84.5% of primary school aged children with a job work in the flower industry.
- Child gold miners in Ecuador often work alongside their parents and communities who rely on this work in the remote Andean areas that they live.
- During the rainy season from January to March in Ecuador, children working in gold mines are cut off from services such as schools and the conditions in the community become even more isolated.
- In small gold mines in Ecuador, the roles can be different for girls and boys. Boys tend to work underground in the mines, whilst the girls process the ore with their mothers, sifting the gold from the slag.


For more information: 

http://www.productsofslavery.org