Tehran, YJC. -- United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in his message on the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery, 2 December 2014 said according to the UN estimates, there are more than 18 million people kept as slave labourers.
It is not allowed to happen in Russia, or in Kazakhstan—but in the United States, child ren as young as 12 are allowed to toil on tobacco farms, whether it’s driving Dad’s tractor or picking leaves for R.J. Reynolds. Tobacco farming poses threats to their health thanks to heavy pesticide use and the possibility of acute nicotine poisoning, as Gabriel Thompson vividly describes in his special investigative report in this issue.