Kidswear ... Made By Kids

Newsnight has just shown an excellent report by Simon Ostrovsky documenting the forced child labour that is involved in Uzbekistan's annual harvest of its "white gold" — the cotton that is then exported to Asia and ends up in the clothes that we buy from shops such as Matalan, Burton and Asda.

If you missed the programme, do watch it online to understand how what you buy and wear may be sourced by what amounts to modern slavery, with an estimated 450,000 pupils taken out of school for more than two months each year to harvest the crop by hand.

Hidden Generation of Young Carers

"I cry myself to sleep until I sleep. But no matter how much you cry it doesn't go away, it's still there when you get up in the morning."

And we complain about child labour and child slavery abroad ... The Princess Royal Trust, who are calling for an inquiry, estimates that there are 175,000 young people caring for sick or disabled parents or siblings in the UK — something like 91% of them without any help.

The most depressing thing about this statistic is not the vast number of people who are missing out on a proper childhood, but that this figure is not new. For years now the Trust and other charities, such as Barnardo's, have been trying to highlight the plight of those who struggle alone to care for their older relatives, often not asking for the help that they so desperately need owing to fear that social services might separate them from their families.

This morning's item on the Today programme was a sad insight into the lives of this hidden army of child carers. The response of Children's Minister Beverly Hughes was wholly inadequate:

"The Government has put the needs of young carers very firmly in the frame for local authorities, for health services, for schools. These are children in need. In law they have a right to information, they have a right to an assessment, and to services to support them. The whole reform of children's services with Every Child Matters, the integration of social care, education, and health is designed to meet better the needs of all vulnerable children."

Not exactly what I would call a consolation to friends and relatives of 13-year-old Deanne Asamoah, who recently died from an overdose of her terminally ill mother's morphine, no longer able to cope after four years as her mother's carer.

The Government needs to acknowledge that this is a real problem in "modern" twenty-first century Britain and urgently provide the necessary support and practical assistance required by carers — both adults and children alike.

Harnessing the Abolitionist Spirit

Simon Schama's Rough Crossings on BBC2 this evening was history at its best - the forgotten story of the African-American slaves who fled the plantations to fight behind British lines in the American War of Independence and went on to establish Freetown in Sierra Leone. Not an all-white tale, as some have complained of Amazing Grace, nor a revisionist's version erasing the contribution of British abolitionists, as was the case with Moira Stewart's In Search of Wilberforce, but a shared story involving black and white from three continents.

The way the drama intercut with present-day scenes constantly emphasised the continuity between the problems of the past and present, forcibly reminding us that slavery remains a global issue. Not just for the 2.4 million people caught up in human trafficking throughout the world, but for at least 12 million who are forced to work and treated as property to be bought and sold.

As Beth Herzfeld of Anti-Slavery International writes in The Difference Magazine, in her piece "Will we finish what the abolitionists started?":

"In the Philippines, young girls are used as domestic slaves, boys as young as four years old are abducted from their families in South Asia to be used as camel jockeys in the Gulf, in Niger people are born into a slave class; young men in Brazil are used as forced labour to clear the Amazon, and women are trafficked to western Europe and forced to work in food-processing factories.

"In Niger at least 43,000 people are enslaved as a result of being born into an established slave class. They are used as herders, agricultural labourers and as domestic servants. Many are subjected to torture and other forms of violence, including rape. They are inherited over generations as property, some are given away as gifts or as part of a dowry. They work every day without pay and are denied the freedom to make choices, whether it is deciding when to eat and sleep or whom to marry."

As Beth goes on, the problem isn't something "out there" and demands action: "You too can harness the abolitionist spirit and demand an end to slavery once and for all."  So, what will you do?