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Anti-Slavery International
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History

Anti-Slavery International - History



1970-1979


-1970, United Kingdom: the great great grandson of William Wilberforce, a lord, becomes the new president of the Anti-Slavery Society, of which he had been a member since 1934. Following the model of Amnesty International, born in 1961, the organisation launches campaigns against child labour and changes its strategy. From 1946 to 1966, it did not publicize slavery “in the hope of securing governmental and international co-operation” to end it. But it noted that public support also suffered as a result of this policy of self-imposed confidentiality. In a report sent to the United Nations in 1968 and quoted by John Carey, ASI saw publication of investigations as its only option. As a consequence, it becomes more offensive, is attacked for “slander” and faces a serious challenge to its status at ECOSOC in 1978.
 
-1973, Paraguay : alerted on slaves trafficking and genocide by anthropologist Mark Munzel, the Society starts to investigate on the Aché, a nomadic Indian group in the south-east corner of the country. In September 1973, ASI chooses to be specific on Paraguay: its statement, prepared for the UN, is quite unusual because the normal procedure forbids NGOs to name countries (other than South Africa) in which gross human rights violations take place.
 
-1975, Switzerland: the United Nations Working Group on Slavery, which Anti-Slavery Society had lobbied for since 1966, is at last set up in Geneva. Amongst the selected experts is Ben Whitaker of Britain, who was a member of ASI and served as a director of the Minority Rights Group. At the beginning according to reliable sources quoted by William Korey, “almost all the information” of the Working Group on Slavery comes from the Society.
 
-1979, United Kingdom: the International Year of the Child helps the Society to promote its work against child labour. In 1975 and 1977, ASI had launched studies on child labour in the textile industry and the hand-made production of mats in Morocco and South Asia. Thanks to a grant from the Ford Foundation in 1978, it also produced a preliminary survey of child labour throughout the world, covering Colombia, India, Portugal, Hong Kong, Italy, Malaysia, South Africa, Spain and Thailand. The culmination of the Society’s efforts is the Convention on the Rights of the Child adopted by the UN General Assembly on the 20th November 1989.