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.
Iqbal Masih was a Pakistani Christian child labourer and activist who campaigned against abusive child labour in Pakistan.
Asma Jilani Jahangir was a Pakistani human rights lawyer and social activist who co-founded and chaired the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and AGHS Legal Aid Cell. Jahangir was known for playing a prominent role in the Lawyers' Movement and served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief and as a trustee at the International Crisis Group.
Bandhua Mukti Morcha (BMM) (Hindi: बंधुआ मुक्ति मोर्चा, or Bonded Labour Liberation Front is a non-governmental organisation in India working to end bonded labour. Based in New Delhi, it was founded in 1981 by Swami Agnivesh who continued as its chairman until his death in 2020.
Contemporary slavery, also sometimes known as modern slavery or neo-slavery, refers to institutional slavery that continues to occur in present-day society. Estimates of the number of enslaved people today range from around 38 million to 49.6 million, depending on the method used to form the estimate and the definition of slavery being used. The estimated number of enslaved people is debated, as there is no universally agreed definition of modern slavery; those in slavery are often difficult to identify, and adequate statistics are often not available.
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.
Pakistan is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically forced labour and prostitution. The largest human trafficking problem is bonded labour, concentrated in the Sindh and Punjab provinces in agriculture and brick making, and to a lesser extent in mining and carpet-making. Estimates of bonded labour victims, including men, women, and children, vary widely, but are likely well over one million. In extreme scenarios, when labourers speak publicly against abuse, landowners have kidnapped labourers and their family members. U.S. State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons placed the country in "Tier 2 Watchlist" in 2017.
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.
Child labour in Pakistan is the employment of children to work in Pakistan, which causes them mental, physical, moral and social harm. Child labour takes away the education from children. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan estimated that in the 1990s, 11 million children were working in the country, half of whom were under age ten. In 1996, the median age for a child entering the work force was seven, down from eight in 1994. It was estimated that one quarter of the country's work force was made up of children. Child labor stands out as a significant issue in Pakistan, primarily driven by poverty. The prevalence of poverty in the country has compelled children to engage in labor, as it has become necessary for their families to meet their desired household income level, enabling them to afford basic necessities like butter and bread.
Debt bondage in India or Bandhua Mazdoori was legally abolished in 1976 but remains prevalent due to weak enforcement by the government. Bonded labour is a system in which lenders force their borrowers to repay loans through labor. Additionally, these debts often take a large amount of time to pay off and are unreasonably high, propagating a cycle of generational inequality. This is due to the typically high interest rates on the loans given out by employers. Although debt bondage is considered to be a voluntary form of labor, people are forced into this system by social situations.
Humans of New York (HONY) is a photoblog and book of street portraits and interviews collected on the streets of New York City.
Begum Zaffar Ali, née Sahibzaadi Syeda Fatima, was an Indian women's rights activist and the first woman matriculate of the Indian state of Kashmir and Jammu who went on to become Inspector of Schools in Kashmir. She was an educationist, women's liberation activist, deputy director of education and later a legislator in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. She was associated with the activities of the All India Women's Conference and was its secretary before partition, but a chance meeting with Muhammad Ali Jinnah and his sister, Fatima Jinnah in Kashmir, who would later visit the family for banquets, influenced her and she left the conference to concentrate her efforts in women's liberation movements in the pre-independent India.
Fazeelat Aslam is a Pakistani documentary filmmaker and journalist based in New York City. She is also co-producer of the Academy Award-winning documentary Saving Face.
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.
Syeda Saiyidain Hameed is an Indian social and women's rights activist, educationist, writer and a former member of the Planning Commission of India. She chaired the Steering Committee of the Commission on Health which reviewed the National Health Policy of 2002, till the dissolution of the body in 2015, to be replaced by NITI Aayog.
Najma Sadeque from Pakistan was a leading woman journalist, author, human rights activist, particularly of women's rights, an artist, an environmentalist, and a painter. She also did research on socioeconomic issues and authored many books and wrote articles. She co-founded Shirkat Gah in 1975, a women's NGO to highlight human rights violations against women. She also co-founded the Women’s Action Forum (WAF), Pakistan.
Veeru Kohli was a Pakistani bonded labor and human rights activist. She was known for starting to campaign against slavery after twenty years of living in bondage herself.
Elena Urlaeva is an Uzbek human rights activist. She is the president of the Human Rights Alliance of Uzbekistan. She focuses on "document[ing] the practice of forced labour in the cotton industry." According to the BBC, "Urlaeva's persistent work contributed to an international campaign which ultimately led major global brands to join a boycott of Uzbek cotton."
The Blood Bricks Campaign is an international campaign that focuses on fighting against the use of modern slavery in the Indian bricks kiln industry, while also exposing companies that use blood bricks in their supply chain. It was launched in 2014 by multiple, different organizations including Union Solidarity International (USi), Prayas, Action Aid Association, War on Want, and Thompsons Solicitors. This campaign's objectives include supporting unionizing efforts by workers, applying pressure to state and federal governments to enforce or amend laws, identifying companies that use bricks from bonded or forced labour, and bringing attention to the working conditions in the brick industry in India, as well as other parts of the world.
Nepal has a labour force of 16.8-million-workers, the 37th largest in the world as of 2017. Although agriculture makes up only about 28 per cent of Nepal's GDP, it employs more than two-thirds of the workforce. Millions of men work as unskilled labourers in foreign countries, leaving the household, agriculture, and raising of children to women alone. Most of the working-age women are employed in agricultural sector, contributions to which are usually ignored or undervalued in official statistics. Few women who are employed in the formal sectors face discrimination and significant wage gap. Almost half of all children are economically active, half of which are child labourers. Millions of people, men, women and children of both sexes, are employed as bonded labourers, in slavery-like conditions. Trade unions have played a significant role in earning better working conditions and workers' rights, both at the company level and the national government level. Worker-friendly labour laws, endorsed by the labour unions as well as business owners, provide a framework for better working conditions and secure future for the employees, but their implementation is severely lacking in practice. Among the highly educated, there is a significant brain-drain, posing a significant hurdle in fulfilling the demand for skilled workforce in the country.
.jpg){kind=link}