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.
Slavery in Canada includes historical practices of enslavement practised by both the First Nations until the latter half of the 19th century, and by colonists during the period of European colonization.
The United Nations Prizes in the Field of Human Rights were instituted by United Nations General Assembly in 1966. They are intended to "honour and commend people and organizations which have made an outstanding contribution to the promotion and protection of the human rights embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in other United Nations human rights instruments".
A domestic worker is a person who works within a residence and performs a variety of household services for an individual, from providing cleaning and household maintenance, or cooking, laundry and ironing, or care for children and elderly dependents, and other household errands. The term "domestic service" applies to the equivalent occupational category. In traditional English contexts, such a person was said to be "in service".
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) is an independent, democratic non-profit organisation. Founded in 1987, it is one of the oldest human rights organisations in the country.
Juan E. Méndez is an Argentine lawyer, former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and a human rights activist known for his work on behalf of political prisoners.
Migrant domestic workers are any persons "moving to another country or region to better their material or social conditions and improve the prospect for themselves or their family," engaged in a work relationship performing "in or for a household or households."
Deshamanya Radhika Coomaraswamy is a Sri Lankan lawyer, diplomat and human rights advocate who served as an Under-Secretary General and Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict from 2006 to 2012. Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed her to the position in April 2006. In 1994, she was appointed the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women — the first under this mandate. Her appointment marked the first time that violence against women was conceptualized as a political issue internationally.
The continent of Africa is one of the regions most rife with contemporary slavery. Slavery in Africa has a long history, within Africa since before historical records, but intensifying with the trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean slave trade and again with the trans-Atlantic slave trade; the demand for slaves created an entire series of kingdoms which existed in a state of perpetual warfare in order to generate the prisoners of war necessary for the lucrative export of slaves. These patterns persisted into the colonial period during the late 19th and early 20th century. Although the colonial authorities attempted to suppress slavery around 1900, their attempts were largely ineffective. Even after decolonization, slavery continues in many parts of Africa despite being officially illegal.
Prostitution in Belgium is legal and was decriminalized on 1 June 2022. Human trafficking or exploiting individuals involved in prostitution is punishable by a maximum prison sentence of 30 years.
Gay Johnson McDougall is an American lawyer who has spent her career addressing international human rights and racial discrimination. She is currently a Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at the Leitner Center on International Law and Justice of Fordham University Law School. She was executive director of Global Rights, Partners for Justice. In August 2005, she was named the first United Nations Independent Expert on Minority Issues, serving until 2011.
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.
Mary Shanthi Dairiam is a Malaysian human rights and women's rights advocate. She was the elected member from Malaysia to the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women serving the Committee from 2005 - 2008.
Slavery in international law is governed by a number of treaties, conventions and declarations. Foremost among these is the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (1948) that states in Article 4: “no one should be held in slavery or servitude, slavery in all of its forms should be eliminated.”
Rashida Manjoo is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Cape Town in Cape Town and a social activist involved in the eradication of violence against women and gender-based violence. Manjoo was the United Nations' Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women from June 2009 to July 2015.
Women in law describes the role played by women in the legal profession and related occupations, which includes lawyers, paralegals, prosecutors, judges, legal scholars, law professors and law school deans.
Reine Adélaïde Sophie Alapini-Gansou is a Beninese jurist who has been a judge of the International Criminal Court since March 2018.
Gulnara Shahinian is an Armenian diplomat and author who studies human trafficking. She is a member of the Group of Experts on Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings and the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery from 2006 until 2014.
Tirana Hassan is an Australian lawyer, social worker, and human rights activist. She is the executive director of Human Rights Watch, an international non-governmental organization based in New York City.
