Human rights and contemporary slave labor

Abstract

The condition of workers under the regime of “slavery’ has been widely debated and examined over the last 30 years. The proximity of the Comissão Pastoral da Terra (CPT) [Pastoral Land Commission] to areas characterized by illegal employment strengthened the commission’s leadership within campaigns and social movements combating the practice. With international political pressure on the defense of human rights, in the 1990s the Brazilian government came to recognize forums formed by social movements against rights violations (including contemporary slave labor). A number of these violations went on to be represented in commissions, created on the basis of municipal, state and national conferences, as contemporary slavery evolved from constituting a strictly labor law infringement to a human rights violation. This article analyzes the semantic slip and its political effects on the inter-ministerial management of contemporary slavery, as well as its implications on legislation on property rights. The methodology employed in this article is descriptive/analytical and bibliographic in focus, by means of the examination of books, scientific and electronic articles, documents and data from government sites.