Debt bondage, also known as debt slavery, bonded labour, or peonage, is the pledge of a person's services as security for the repayment for a debt or other obligation. Where the terms of the repayment are not clearly or reasonably stated, or where the debt is excessively large the person who holds the debt has thus some control over the laborer, whose freedom depends on the undefined or excessive debt repayment. The services required to repay the debt may be undefined, and the services' duration may be undefined, thus allowing the person supposedly owed the debt to demand services indefinitely. Debt bondage can be passed on from generation to generation.
A sweatshop or sweat factory is a crowded workplace with very poor or illegal working conditions, including little to no breaks, inadequate work space, insufficient lighting and ventilation, or uncomfortably or dangerously high or low temperatures. The work may be difficult, tiresome, dangerous, climatically challenging, or underpaid. Employees in sweatshops may work long hours with unfair wages, regardless of laws mandating overtime pay or a minimum wage; child labor laws may also be violated. Women make up 85 to 90% of sweatshop workers and may be forced by employers to take birth control and routine pregnancy tests to avoid supporting maternity leave or providing health benefits.
Child slavery is the slavery of children. The enslavement of children can be traced back through history. Even after the abolition of slavery, children continue to be enslaved and trafficked in modern times, which is a particular problem in developing countries.
Iqbal Masih was a Pakistani Christian child labourer and activist who campaigned against abusive child labour in Pakistan.
The Harkin–Engel Protocol, sometimes referred to as the Cocoa Protocol, is an international agreement aimed at ending the worst forms of child labor and forced labor in the production of cocoa, the main ingredient in chocolate. The protocol was negotiated by U.S. Senator Tom Harkin and U.S. Representative Eliot Engel in response to a documentary and multiple articles in 2000 and 2001 reporting widespread child slavery and child trafficking in the production of cocoa. The protocol was signed in September 2001. Joint Statements in 2001, 2005 and 2008 and a Joint Declaration in 2010 extended the commitment to address the problem.
The International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) is a nonprofit advocacy organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., U.S., that describes itself as "an advocate for and with the working poor around the world." ILRF, formerly the "International Labor Rights Education & Research Fund", was founded in 1986, and the organization's mission statement reads: "ILRF believes that all workers have the right to a safe working environment where they are treated with dignity and respect, and where they can organize freely to defend and promote their rights and interests. ILRF works to develop practical and effective tools to assist workers in winning enforcement of protections for their basic rights, and hold labor rights violators accountable."
Kailash Satyarthi is an Indian social reformer who campaigned against child labor in India and advocated the universal right to education.
Bachpan Bachao Andolan is an India-based children's rights movement. It was started in 1980 by Nobel Laureate Mr. Kailash Satyarthi. It campaigns against bonded labour, child labour and human trafficking, and promotes the right to education for all children. It has so far freed close to 100,000 children from servitude, including bonded labourers, and helped in their re-integration, rehabilitation and education.
Anti-sweatshop movement refers to campaigns to improve the conditions of workers in sweatshops, i.e. manufacturing places characterized by low wages, poor working conditions and often child labor. It started in the 19th century in industrialized countries such as the United States, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom to improve the conditions of workers in those countries. These campaigns are meant to improve the working conditions through advocacy for higher wages, safer conditions, unionization and other protections. While they are meant to undermine the reputation of companies using sweatshop labor, they are not statistically significant as intended.
Craig Kielburger is a Canadian human rights activist and social entrepreneur. He is the co-founder, with his brother Marc Kielburger, of the WE Charity, as well as We Day and the independent, social enterprise Me to We. On April 11, 2008, Kielburger was named a member of the Order of Canada.
A significant proportion of children in India are engaged in child labour. In 2011, the national census of India found that the total number of child labourers, aged [5–14], to be at 10.12 million, out of the total of 259.64 million children in that age group. The child labour problem is not unique to India; worldwide, about 217 million children work, many full-time.
The "Faces of Freedom" photo exhibition is a collection of photographs captured by photo-journalist, filmmaker and human rights educator U. Roberto (Robin) Romano, during his travels to India, Nepal and Pakistan. Romano explores the exploitation of child labor in the production of handmade rugs in coordination with multiple international organizations, such as the World Bank, UNICEF, International Labour Organization and others to reduce the number of child laborers in that industry. The exhibit has been shown in many United States cities since its first exhibit in 2009. Faces of Freedom has been included in CNN Freedom Projects of modern slavery.
Human trafficking in Nepal is a growing criminal industry affecting multiple other countries beyond Nepal, primarily across Asia and the Middle East. Nepal is mainly a source country for men, women and children subjected to the forced labor and sex trafficking. U.S. State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons placed the country in "Tier 2" in 2017.
Claire Phillips is a British portrait artist, whose paintings generally have a social or political narrative. Her portraits of prisoners on death row and children rescued from slave labour have received wide media coverage.
The incidence of child labour in Nepal is relatively high compared with other countries in South Asia. According to the Nepal Labour Force Survey in 2008, 86.2% of the children who were working were also studying, while 13.8% of the working children were not.
The 2014 Nobel Peace Prize was shared, in two equal parts, between Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzai "for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education". Satyarthi is from India, the seventh person from his country to win a Nobel Prize and the second to win the Peace Prize after Mother Teresa, while Yousafzai is a Muslim from Pakistan, the second Nobel Prize winner from her country after Abdus Salam, the forty-seventh woman to win the Nobel Prize, and at the age of 17 years, the youngest winner of a Nobel Prize in any field.
Muhammad Ehsan Ullah Khan is the founder of the Bonded Labour Liberation Front (BLLF) of Pakistan, an organization that has freed more than 100,000 slaves in that country.
The Price of Free is a documentary about Nobel Prize winner Kailash Satyarthi. The film, formerly known as Kailash, premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize and debuted on YouTube in November 2018. The Price of Free was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Social Issue Documentary at the 40th News and Documentary Emmy Awards.
Jhalki (transl. Glimpse) is a 2019 Indian Hindi-language drama film directed by Brahmanand S. Siingh, produced by Brahmanand S. Siingh and Annand Chavan (OMG), co-produced by Vinayak Gawande and Jayesh Parekh and co-directed by Tanvi Jain. The film featuring Boman Irani, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Divya Dutta and Sanjay Suri, follows a 9-year-old street girl Jhalki, setting out to find her 7-year-old brother against the backdrop of the child slavery trade. The trailer of the film was released at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2019.
Payal Jangid is an Indian children's rights activist. She campaigns against child marriage, child labor and for the right to education for girls.
