Robots Against Child Slavery
By Montag | Related entries in Good Decisions, Technology, The WorldMy eye was drawn this morning to this hilarious photograph of a remote-controlled robot camel jockey. It would seem good fodder to make light of and have some fun; but then I read the accompanying story and learned why United Arab Emirates and Quatar want to make the move to robot jockeys.
Earlier this month the UAE outlawed using children under 18 in camel races, a practice condemned internationally as a form of slavery…
[snip]
Rights groups have said that several thousand boys, some as young as four, work as jockeys in the lucrative sport in the oil-rich state.
They say many children, mainly from poor Asian countries, had been abducted or sold by their families and that the boys were kept in prison-like conditions and underfed to keep them light so the camels run faster.
The United States last month criticized four Gulf Arab allies, including the UAE and Qatar, as some of the world’s worst offenders in permitting human trafficking. But the UAE has begun returning some boys to their families abroad.
Reuters: Robots replace child jockeys in UAE camel race
And this is just a part of the human trafficking problem. Slavery and exploitation are shamefully alive and well in this world. Trafficked people are engaged in cheap or forced labor, soldiering, adult and child prostitution.
Today we can take joy in a small victory and say ‘remote-controlled robot camel jockeys are a step in the right direction.’ (Who would have ever imagined we would ever utter those words?)
I applaud the Bush Administration for their efforts in this area and hope they keep the pressure on.
This entry was posted on Thursday, July 21st, 2005 and is filed under Good Decisions, Technology, The World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
