Example BP Human Rights

Human Rights
Topic A: Illegal Human Trafficking
By Mariana Navarro Olivas
Human trafficking is the trade of moving or migration with people. People are purchased for
slavery, prostitution, forced labor or servitude.
The United Nations office on drugs and crime define human trafficking as “recruitment,
transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force
or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a
position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the
consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation."
The latest US Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons Report 2004 estimates that between
600 000 and 800 000 men, women, and children are trafficked across international borders each
year.
The majority of the world’s trafficking victims are usually children or women from Asia, Africa
and some other parts from the Eastern Europe, and estimations say that an 80 percent of the
trafficked people is used for sexual exploitation and de other 20 percent for forced labor or
slavery.
Many of the times trafficking is also associated with some other crimes such murder, rape,
torture, debt bondage or slavery. International Organization for Migration (IOM) recently
estimated the worldwide proceeds of people trafficking to be US$10 billion a year.
The Unites Kingdom is the major destination for trafficked women. Police believe that about
4,000 have been brought in to the country and forced to work as prostitutes. The trafficking
routes can change quickly, so police can not find them. Police says that the victims can be found
every where in UK and not just in the metropolitan area.
There’s people that pays around £2,000 and £8,000 for a person and most of the time they force
them to work 16 hours and have sex with 30 men a day.
A lot of the trafficking victims in UK are from Eastern European, Far East, South America and
Africa.
Many victims are "from poor backgrounds with little or no education", the UK Human Trafficking
Centre reports.
References:
• Parliament of Australia Department of Parliamentary Services, People trafficking:
Australia’s response. 16 November 2004,
http://www.antislavery.org.au/slavery/pdf/Australia_response_to_trafficking.pd f
• Quick guide: UK Human Trafficking, Monday, 2 October 2006 10:33 UK,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/5343036.stm

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Human Rights
Topic B: Human ethics versus scientific
advances in favor of human cloning.
by Rebeca Hernández,
Thompson, L. and Rodríguez, A.
Human cloning, raised when Scottish scientists at Roslin Institute created the celebrated
sheep "Dolly" in 1997, aroused worldwide interest and concern because of its scientific and
ethical implications. The feat, cited by Science magazine as the breakthrough of 1997, also
generated uncertainty over the meaning of "cloning" –a scientific term used to describe
different processes for duplicating biological material.
Currently, adult mammals´s cloning is possible because it´s in science reach.
However, the above process is often misunderstood due to insufficient scientific
information. Experts on the subject find cloning as an important opportunity to prevent and
cure diseases. Better yet to create immortality. So far they have pushed for their science
discovery to keep looking for the nearest future with better quality of life, to the point of
extending it.
A fact is that cloning is dangerous and that several lives have been lost during this
process. But also, if such progress is achieved, many lives will be extended.
Therefore, despite humans are being direct beneficiaries and a priority for scientists, part of
our society believes this resource is ethically unacceptable.
Many people believe that science tries to play God´s role because they don´t respect
life and the time that we´re meant to live. On one side, religion suggests that such
experiments are repulsive and so they refuse to accept these technological advances. And
secondly, there is a version that holds that humans are co‐creators with God, is perhaps
more accurate to say that humans are moving increasingly to a position of making babies
instead of having them.
An important declaration was adopted by the General Assembly of the United
Nations who called on nations to enact legislation to `'prohibit all forms of human cloning."
By a vote of 84 to 34, the Declaration received more support in the General Assembly than
when it passed in the 6th Committee few weeks ago. The measure sets an international
standard that humans should not be created through cloning for any purpose, placing
human life as a priority over scientific experimentation. The decision ends over three years
of deadlock caused by countries seeking approval for cloning research. Belgium, the United
Kingdom, Singapore and other countries that hope to profit from cloning humans opposed a
total ban, and declared they would defy the international moral agreement.
Cloning offers a remarkable insight into the power of creation that humanity has
taken into its fold. It represents a remarkable test of human restraint, wisdom and
institutional development, one that will in many ways identify the moral features of 21st
century biotechnology. We must admit that cloning offers advantages such as: the ability to
produce organs to save human beings, as well as the reproduction of endangered species
and the maintainance of the ecological balance in the planet, also there´s the possibility of
giving a barren woman a child of her own by using any of the cells inside her body. But also,
we must not forget in ethics and moral that cloning involves social discrimination, is
perfecting human beings genetics, is giving advantages of superiority before birth. A major
problem is man´s dignity; cloned people are copies of another person. So the opportunity to
develop as an individual is denied for them, they´ll forget their rights and violate its
integrity. At the end, cloned individuals will be people with their own mind and soul.
Therefore, if we see human cloning as a technique to save men we would be accepting
killing as a mean of giving life, which is unacceptable.
References:
• Anonymous (2009) What is Cloning?. Learn.Genetics. Genetic Science Learning
Center (Retrieved on August´11´2009) From:
http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/tech/cloning/whatiscloning/
• McGee, Glenn (2001). Primer on ethics and human technology. (Retrieved on
August´17´2009) From:
http://www.actionbioscience.org/biotech/mcgee.html#articlereferences
• Anonymous. Three cloning methods. Stanford University’s Human Cloning.
(Retrieved on August´17´2009) From:
http://www.stanford.edu/~eclipse9/sts129/cloning/methods.html
• Sims Bainbridge, W. Religious opposition to cloning. Evolution and Technology´s
journal ‐ Vol. 13 – (Retrieved on August´17´2009) From:
http://jetpress.org/volume13/bainbridge.html