Thousands of people died despite the worldwide attempt to eradicate slavery and apartheid

The December 2nd the International Day of the Abolition of slavery to remember the signature of the “Convention for the Suppression of Trafficking in Persons and the Exploitation of Prostitution alien“.

This Convention against slavery It was possible of all kinds at the behest of the United Nations in 1949, but it entered into force a year and a half later, on July 25, 1951.

The December 2nd It is the day chosen by the UN to remember that all forms of exploitation must be eradicated: human trafficking, sexual exploitation, child labor and the participation of minors in armed conflicts.

According to the UN, “no one can be subjected to slavery or servitude and both these as well as the slave trade and the trafficking of women are prohibited in all its forms ”.

Although the issue had been on the UN’s agenda for fifteen years, racial discrimination became one of the topics of debate in the United Nations, as some African countries became independent, and when the allegations of abuses in South Africa were not hidden , as in the case of the so-called Sharpeville Massacre, south of Johannesburg, where on March 21, 1960, 150 white policemen shot thousands of participants in a march against the apartheid in South Africa.

United Nations against apartheid

The UN condemnation was paving the way to combat the apartheid that institutionalized the National Party, made up of boers or Afrikaans, in the Union of South Africa, currently South Africa.

The apartheid was a system of segregation of people, which gradually implemented the dominant white minority in the power.

It became known as boers or Afrikaans to the settlers from the Netherlands from Europe who populated the southern tip of the South African continent, who were later joined by the French and Germans who had to flee Europe, after the First World War.

Settlers Afrikaans and their descendants created their own linguistic variant, imposed their Calvinist beliefs, created their flag, and finally imposed their separatist ideology.

That was called apartheid and was legitimized from power with his arrival to the government in 1948

While apartheid ruled, in the Union of South Africa blacks and whites could not share public or private spaces both at work, in transport, offices and places of recreation.

The Afrikaans they only represented the 21% of the population and only they and their descendants had the right to vote. Blacks did so with some limitations until apartheid was installed.

The system of apartheid it generated great resistance in the remaining 79% of the population, which was black or mestizo.

Apartheid and the struggle of Nelson Mandela

Over the years, movements emerged that opposed the apartheid, like the one led by Nelson Mandela, the African National Congress (ANC) party that pushed for the end of apartheid in South Africa in 1991.

In the democratic elections of 1994, the first in the history of that country with universal suffrage, the ANC prevailed over the National Party and Nelson Mandela was president of the country.

A year earlier he had won the Nobel Peace Prize, shared with the former president of South Africa, Frederik de Klerk

In our country, the Assembly of the XIII year of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata approved in 1813 the “freedom of bellies”And article 15 of the Argentine National Constitution declared slavery abolished in 1853.