A/HRC/24/43 use subcontracted labour, which can be exploited more easily. A 2003 survey estimated that 88,000 non-British workers were employed in construction. Migrant workers are attractive to construction companies because they are often seen as cheap, disposable labour. It is not possible for migrant workers to obtain a work permit for construction work, so they must enter the United Kingdom on a self-employed visa, which adds to their vulnerability and invisibility.21 26. Children as young as 3 years old were reportedly working in mines and quarries in Sierra Leone in 2012,22 with children as young as 10 subjected to contemporary forms of slavery in diamond mines.23 Children break apart, shovel and wash gravel all day, six days a week, for little to no compensation, with wages ranging from USD 0.15–0.60 per day. They are vulnerable to disease, injury and death due to collapsing mine pits. 24 Children working in mines are denied educational opportunities, preventing them from escaping the cycle of poverty and enslavement. Families often cannot afford to send their children to school because they need their labour to supplement family earnings, as 60 per cent of the population lives in poverty, according to the United Nations Development Programme. The civil war in the country exacerbated children’s vulnerability to slavery, as numerous child soldiers abducted by armed factions were subsequently forced to work in mining, many children lost their parents and schooling for most children was interrupted. 25 IV. International legal framework A. Slavery 27. Article 1 of the 1926 Slavery Convention defines slavery as the “the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised”. The Convention calls for the “complete abolition of slavery in all its forms”, including the “capture, acquisition, sale or exchange, and disposal” of persons (art. 2, in conjunction with art. 1). Since the drafting of the Convention, most international legal frameworks have included articles concerning the prohibition of slavery, including article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), article 8, paragraph 1, of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966) and, more recently, the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (the Palermo Protocol). B. Debt bondage and serfdom 28. Since 1926, a number of other international instruments have been drafted in order to address the varied forms of modern-day slavery that occur in the ever-changing social, political and economic environment. The Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery, adopted in 1956, 21 22 23 24 25 8 Bridget Anderson and Ben Rogaly, Forced Labour and Migration to the UK (International Trade Union Congress), p. 27. Available from http://ituc-csi.org/IMG/pdf/Forced_labour_in_UK_122009.pdf. Greg Campbell, “The Rock-Mining Children of Sierra Leone Have Not Found Peace”, The Atlantic, 31 May 2012. Available from www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/05/the-rock-miningchildren-of-sierra-leone-have-not-found-peace/257899/. See The International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School. Digging in the Dirt: Child Miners in Sierra Leone’s Diamond Industry (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2009). Ibid., p. V. Ibid.