Suddenly Durga heard screams and huddled on the floor. Acting on a tip, police stormed the apartment in the heart of Bangalore. When they broke the door down, Durga crossed her arms in front of her chest and closed her eyes. She was only wearing a pair of panties — that's all the clothing that her owners had allowed her to have. Durga says: "I was ashamed."

One of the men wrapped the small girl in a sheet and brought her to a hospital. Doctors treated her for a number of days. In addition to her burns, she was malnourished, infected wounds covered her fingers and her lips were scarred. "I dropped a glass once," says Durga, "and the woman got angry and pulled my fingernails out, one by one." Sometimes they poked her in the mouth with a needle. Durga was supposed to work, not speak.

It's estimated that millions of children in India live as modern-day slaves. They work in the fields, in factories, brothels and private households — often without pay and usually with no realistic chance of escaping. The majority of them are sold or hired out by their own families.

According to an Indian government census from 2001, this country of over 1 billion people has 12.6 million minors between the ages of 5 and 14 who are working. The real number is undoubtedly significantly higher because many children are not officially registered at birth — and the owners of course do their best to keep the existence of child slaves a secret. Aid organizations estimate that three-quarters of all domestic servants in India are children, and 90 percent of those are girls. Although both child labor and child trafficking are illegal, police rarely intervene — and the courts seldom convict child traffickers and slaveholders.

'She Told Me I Would Be Well Treated'

Durga grew up in Calcutta. When she was seven, her father died, followed two years later by the death of her mother. Her grandmother took in Durga and her three elder sisters, but she couldn't manage to feed all four of them. One girl had to go, so she sold off the youngest. Via an intermediary, a family of total strangers paid 80 rupees for Durga — roughly the equivalent of €1 ($1.33).

Durga traveled alone by train the nearly 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) to Bangalore. She can't remember the journey, but she recalls her arrival. "The woman picked me up at the train station," she says. "I was afraid but she told me that I would be well treated."

From that day onwards, she cleaned the couple's apartment every day, cooked, did the laundry and the dishes. Durga was never paid, was never given time off and was never allowed to leave the building. The woman beat her often; the man hit her less often. Durga didn't try to defend herself. "Grandma told me I should always be nice," says Durga.

Today, Durga is 12 years old. Her weight has returned to normal, and she has large eyes and full lips. She wears her black hair tied in a knot behind her head. Her white teeth shine as she speaks, lighting up her soft face. Durga lives in Rainbow Home, a children's shelter run by the Catholic organization Bosco. Fifty-six girls live here in two empty rooms, with no chairs or tables. The children play, sleep and do their homework on the floor. They eat together in the hallway.

The home takes up one floor of a school building. The walls in the old building are painted blue and pink, and the caretakers teach the children to wash themselves on a regular basis, and not to immediately hit someone whenever there is a conflict. "It's hard work," says a nun named Anees. "For many children this is the first home that they have ever had," she points out, adding: "They all come from very disadvantaged families and have already experienced too much." Continue reading

Sources

• Spiegel Online
• Image: Akemi Gardens

When I became the mother of one, then two, girls I would occasionally think about the prevalence of eating disorders and what I could do to make sure my girls never suffered from one. But the more I worked in my job on this section, and in my role as patron of a women's legal organisation, I realised that there was a greater ill that could befall them: getting into an abusive domestic relationship.

Two weeks ago, I got a particularly disturbing letter from a reader who suspects her sister is in such a relationship. The sister had isolated herself from her whole family, and when they had last seen her, she appeared terrified. I couldn't stop thinking about it; 48 hours later the Sunday papers showed Nigella Lawson in a row with her husband, his hand around her throat.

Domestic violence is a particularly pernicious crime. The very place where you are meant to feel safe - home - is often the place of most danger. The very person who should look after you - your partner - attacks you or diminishes you. I wish I could say I can't imagine what that is like, but unfortunately, as I'll explain later, I can.

In March 2013, the Home Office published figures relating to violence against women and girls in the UK. It showed that the previous year, 1.2 million women suffered domestic abuse. And these are just the ones that come on to the Home Office radar. Continue reading

Sources

• Annalisa Barbieri in The Gaurdian
• Image: Capital EAP

Annalisa Barbieri is a Guardian columnist and also writes for the Economist's Intelligent Life magazine, the New Statesman and the Independent.

I tried to use that one once on my current small group to see what they would do. They just stared at me and rolled their eyes. Then they laughed because they knew I was joking.

Maybe teenagers in 1995 were a lot more corny than teenagers in 2013. Or maybe it was just me.

There are things our daughters (and sons, too!) need to hear us say. And even though the clichés may encourage some of them and may look cute on a poster, they will most likely fall flat on young ears. Here is my best attempt to come up with 12 non-cliché things our daughters need to hear us say.

1. I have hope.

I could tell her "Have hope." But, I speak as a daughter here, it means more to me to see my parents have hope than for them to tell me to have hope. My hope (or lack thereof) speaks louder to her than my words about hope.

Show her you have hope - you trust God with your family, you have hope for her future, you see light in dark places. Continue reading

Source

• Emily in Chatting at the Sky
• Image: More4Kids

Brendan Gormley, chief execution of the British Disasters Emergency Committee said: "To raise NZ$80 million in just over three weeks is a wonderful demonstration of public concern for those in need."

"We can't lose sight of the fact however, that this is an escalating crisis."

The UN's food arm, the Food and Agriculture Organisation said the famine is likely to spread across all regions of Somalia's south in the next four to six weeks, with famine conditions likely to last until December.

Despite the peoples' generosity the UN says the response so far has not been at a level required to match the humanitarian need.

"The current humanitarian response remains inadequate, due in part to ongoing access restrictions and difficulties in scaling‐up emergency assistance programmes, as well as funding gaps," said the UN's famine early warning system network. As a result, famine is expected to spread across all regions of the south in the coming four to six weeks and is likely to persist until at least December 2011. Continued efforts to implement an immediate, large scale, and comprehensive response are needed."

The UN assessment is that NZ$3 billion is needed and so far the world has not yet raised half of that amount.

Islamist insurgents who have refused access to western relief agencies have not helped the situation.

The drought and famine which has affected more than 11.8 million people has Pope Benedict repeating his calls for the world to not forget the Somali people.

Spreaking from his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo where he has been paying great attention to horror of the Somali peope, the Pope invited the faithful "to think of the many brothers and sisters who in these days in the Horn of Africa, are suffering the dramatic consequences of famine, aggravated by war and the absence of solid institutions."

Women and daughters are in particular need of institutional help.

Kenyan refugee camps built to house 90,000 people are overcrowded and cannot cope with the 1,400 refugees arriving each day and as a result the UN is reporting a 420% increase in reported rape of women and girls.

Many more rapes go unreported.

Sources

• The Telegraph
• Belfast Telegraph
• The Guardian
• Voice of America
• Image: Washington Post