Debt bondage affected half of all victims of forced labour imposed by private actors and is used as a method of control and prevents trafficking victims from escaping. Today the International Labour Organisation estimates that around 50% of victims of forced labour in the private economy are affected by debt bondage – around 8 million people worldwide.
Bonded labour has existed for hundreds of years. Debt bondage was used to trap indentured labourers into working on plantations in Africa, the Caribbean and South-East Asia, following the abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
Bonded labour is most widespread in South Asian countries such as India and Pakistan. Often entire families have to work to pay off the debt taken by one of its members. Sometimes, the debt can be passed down the generations and children can be held in debt bondage because of a loan their parents had taken decades ago.
Debt bondage
In South Asia it still flourishes in agriculture, brick kilns, mills, mines and factories. Anti-Slavery International works in India where hundreds of thousands men, women and children are forced to work as bonded labourers in brick kilns and agriculture, often suffering extreme exploitation and abuse.
Debt bondage in a wider sense is spread much beyond South Asia and is an element of many other forms of slavery such as forced labour and trafficking. People borrow money to pay their traffickers for a promised job abroad. Once at their destination their passports are taken away and they cannot leave until they pay off the debts they owe to their traffickers.
Bonded labour flourishes because of poverty and widespread caste-based discrimination. Limited access to justice, education and jobs for discriminated groups makes it difficult to get out of poverty.
The need for cash for daily survival forces people to sell their labour in exchange for a loan. In South Asia bonded labour is rooted in the caste system and predominately affects Dalits (a caste called the ‘Untouchables’).
Despite the fact that bonded labour is illegal the laws are rarely enforced, particularly where the people who exploit those from more vulnerable groups belong to the ruling classes.
Though the Forced Labour Convention of 1930 by the International Labour Organization, which included 187 parties, sought to bring organised attention to eradicating slavery through forms of forced labour, formal opposition to debt bondage in particular came at the Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery in 1956. The convention in 1956 defined debt bondage under Article 1, section (a):
"Debt bondage, that is to say, the status or condition arising from a pledge by a debtor of his personal services or of those of a person under his control as security for a debt if the value of those services as reasonably assessed is not applied towards the liquidation of the debt or the length and nature of those services are not respectively limited and defined;"
When a pledge to provide services to pay off debt is made by an individual, the employer often illegally inflates interest rates at an unreasonable amount, making it impossible for the individual to leave bonded labour. When the bonded labourer dies, debts are often passed on to children
Bonded labour is designed to exploit workers. The cyclical process begins with a debt, whether acquired or inherited, that cannot be paid immediately. Then, while the worker labours to repay the debt, the employer continues to add on additional expenses. For instance, a labourer may begin with an initial debt of $200. While working and unable to leave, this worker needs a shelter, food and water. The employer tacks on $25 per day to the debt to cover those expenses. Consequently, the employee only grows his debt while continuing to labour for his debtor, and repayment is impossible.
Oftentimes this debt is passed down from generation to generation, making it eerily similar to chattel slavery in the 18th and 19th centuries. It’s seen throughout the world when employers force the children of employees to labour in the same situation as their parents in order to help pay off their parents’ debt or when parents or family members pass away and employers require another body to fill the lost role – all under the pretence of a debt owed.
Bonded labour is used across a variety of industries in order to produce products for consumption around the world.
Migrant laborers are particularly vulnerable to this form of enslavement. In their home countries, migrant laborers contract with labour agencies and employers for a destination country, looking for an economic opportunity. These situations are ripe for exploitation because agencies and employers hold a debt or a bond over these employees. Instead of honoring a genuine term of employment, some recruiters or employers unlawfully exploit the initial debt by adding immigration, housing and other fees that are designed to keep the migrant workers from ever being capable of repayment. In some scenarios, these recruiters and employers confiscate legal immigration documents, making legal employees entirely dependent on them, or require the temporary work in order to maintain their legal status. In other instances, recruiters falsify documents or ignore them altogether, once again making migrant workers vulnerable and dependent. In these situations, workers often fear seeking redress.
Debt bondage, through the manipulation of debt by employers or recruiting agents, affected more than half of all victims of forced labour exploitation
Debt bondage is defined for the purpose of the estimates as being forced to work to repay a debt and not being able to leave, or being forced to work and not being able to leave because of a debt. Just over half the men and women in forced labour exploitation worldwide were held in debt bondage. The figure rises to more than 70 per cent of the total for adults forced to work in agriculture, domestic work, or manufacturing. It is likely that these estimates reflect a mix of cases of both traditional forms of bonded labour and newer forms of debt bondage where recruitment fees and agency charges become the debt that binds.
A regional analysis found that debt bondage was most common in Asia, Africa, and the Arab States, where roughly one-half of all victims of forced labour exploitation were in situations involving debt bondage. In the two remaining regions, the Americas and Europe and Central Asia, a little more than one-third of victims of forced labour exploitation were in debt bondage. In the Arab States, female victims of forced labour exploitation were much more likely than male victims to be in situations involving debt bondage. Eighty-nine per cent of all female victims of forced labour exploitation were held in debt bondage in the region, compared to 45 per cent of all male victims. The opposite pattern prevailed in the Asia and the Pacific and the Europe and Central Asia regions, where debt bondage affected a greater share of male victims of forced labour exploitation than female victims. Similar proportions of men and women were in debt bondage among those forced to work in Africa and the Americas.
Situations of debt bondage
In most cases of debt bondage, the initial debt grows at a rate that is unable to be met, and the individual (some- times together with family members) is unable to leave the work as the debt mounts and cannot be paid with the level of compensation the worker may be getting. A male survey respondent in Bangladesh described the unmanageable increase in the debt he owed: “I took loan to maintain the family. Later it became a high amount including the interest and original amount. To give back the loan they made me work forcefully and I paid back the loan by working for them.”
In these situations, the debt can last for years or even generations. Often, such debts transfer from one family member to another, as illustrated by a male survey respondent residing in Tunisia who described being forced “...to sell the drugs to repay debts of my brother who was in an Italian prison at that time”. Others described the burden of such loans and the situations of vulnerability they experienced. For example, a 30 year-old male victim of forced labour in India described the situation he and his wife faced as having “...become a curse on both of us. We had threats against our family and we also got the threat that we would be evicted from our house and the village. There were also threats of violence”.
Debt bondage in the context of labour migration and trafficking is a trend that can be seen across a number of countries and sectors. A re- cent report to the UN Human Rights Council said “the vast majority of people trafficked to countries in North America, Europe and the Middle East and to other developed countries are migrant workers who are trafficked into a variety of jobs including construction work, domes- tic work, agricultural work, factory work, and quite frequently for prostitution are often controlled through debt bondage and other mechanisms”.30 This is due primarily to the often illicit and prohibitive recruitment fees taken by recruiters and/or employers to enable the migration.
Bonded labour throughout the world
The international Palermo Protocol requires the criminalization of bonded labour as a form of trafficking. Still, this particular system of slavery is deeply entrenched around the world. It’s most common in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. In fact, the majority of the world’s slaves live and work in India in a form of bonded labour.
Patterns of Asian bonded labour have evolved since the first laws and policies on the subject were adopted more than 40 years ago,31 when it was seen as a largely agrarian phenomenon. Most bonded labourers were sharecroppers who took loans from their landlords to cover their families’ subsistence needs or expenses related to ill health, dowry, marriages, funerals, or festivals. These traditional bonded labour systems were characterised by feudal relationships in agriculture and by unequal power relations based on caste. Often they were inter-generational, with children born into bondage, paying off debts accumulated by their forebears.
Such traditional forms of bonded labour still survive throughout South Asia, particularly in rural areas where land and tenancy re- forms have not taken place, and where landowners still enjoy wide powers. Yet much of today’s bonded labour is associated more with internal migration, the involvement of labour contractors and recruiting intermediaries, and work in a range of sectors in the informal economy. Mining, brick-making, fish-processing, gem-cutting, and carpet-weaving are among the industries, many of them hazardous, where bonded labour has been detected. New patterns of bondage can also be seen in large and small scale commercial agriculture, where seasonal unemployment has led to conditions of bondage involving the debt- based attachment of casual and migrant workers, though of a much shorter duration than the old forms of bond- age in agriculture.
In South Asia it still flourishes in agriculture, brick kilns, mills, mines and factories. Anti-Slavery International works in India where hundreds of thousands men, women and children are forced to work as bonded labourers in brick kilns and agriculture, often suffering extreme exploitation and abuse.
Debt bondage in a wider sense is spread much beyond South Asia and is an element of many other forms of slavery such as forced labour and trafficking. People borrow money to pay their traffickers for a promised job abroad. Once at their destination their passports are taken away and they cannot leave until they pay off the debts they owe to their traffickers.
8 million people are estimated to be in debt bondage across the world. Today the International Labour Organisation estimates that around 50% of victims of forced labour in the private economy are affected by debt bondage – around 8 million people worldwide.
Bonded labour flourishes because of poverty and widespread caste-based discrimination. Limited access to justice, education and jobs for discriminated groups makes it difficult to get out of poverty.
The need for cash for daily survival forces people to sell their labour in exchange for a loan. In South Asia bonded labour is rooted in the caste system and predominately affects Dalits (a caste called the ‘Untouchables’).
Despite the fact that bonded labour is illegal the laws are rarely enforced, particularly where the people who exploit those from more vulnerable groups belong to the ruling classes.
Modern bonded labour
Though the figures differ from those of the International Labour Organization, researcher Siddharth Kara has calculated the number of slaves in the world by type, and determined that at the end of 2011 there were 18 to 20.5 million bonded laborers.[6] Bonded laborers work in industries today that produce goods including but not limited to frozen shrimp, bricks, tea, coffee, diamonds, marble, and apparel
South Asia
Although India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh all have laws prohibiting debt bondage, it is estimated by Kara that 84 to 88% of the bonded laborers in the world are in South Asia. Figures by the Human Rights Watch in 1999 are drastically higher estimating 40 million workers, composed mainly of children, are tied to labour through debt bondage in India alone.
Brick kilns
Research by Kara estimates there to be between 55,000 and 65,000 brick kilns in South Asia with 70% of them in India. Other research estimates 6,000 kilns in Pakistan alone. Total revenue from brick kilns in South Asia is estimated by Kara to be $13.3 to $15.2 billion. Many of the brick kiln workers are migrants and travel between brick kiln locations every few months. Kiln workers often live in extreme poverty and many began work at kilns through repayment of a starting loan averaging $150 to $200. Kiln owners offer laborers "friendly loans" to avoid being criminalized in breaking bonded labour laws. Bonded brick kiln laborers, including children, work in harsh and unsafe conditions as the heat from the kiln may cause heat stroke and a number of other medical conditions. Although these laborers do have the option to default on loans, there is fear of death and violence by brick kiln owners if they choose to do so.
Rice harvesting
An essential grain to the South Asian diet, rice is harvested throughout India and Nepal in particular. In India, more than 20% of agricultural land is used to grow rice. Rice mill owners often employ workers who live in harsh conditions on farms. Workers receive such low wages that they must borrow money from their employers causing them to be tied to the rice mill through debt. For example, in India, the average pay rate per day was $0.55 American dollars as recorded in 2006. Though some workers may be able to survive minimally from their compensation, uncontrollable life events such as an illness require loans. Families, including children, work day and night to prepare the rice for export by boiling it, drying it in the sun, and sifting through it for purification. Furthermore, families who live on rice mill production sites are often excluded from access to hospitals and schools.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Though there are not reliable estimates of bonded laborers in Sub-Saharan Africa to date from credible sources, the Global Slavery Index estimates the total number of those enslaved in this region is 6.25 million. In countries like Ghana, it is estimated that 85% of people enslaved are tied to labour. Additionally, this region includes Mauritania, the country with the highest proportion of slavery in the world as an estimated 20% of its population is enslaved through methods like debt bondage.
Fisheries
The Environmental Justice Foundation found human rights violations in the fisheries on the coasts of South and West Africa including labour exploitation. Exporter fish companies drive smaller businesses and individuals to lower profits, causing bankruptcy. In many cases, recruitment to these companies occurs by luring small business owners and migrant workers through debt bondage. In recruiting individual fishers, fees are sometimes charged by a broker to use ports which opens the debt cycle.
Domestic labour
After countries began to formally abolish slavery, unemployment was rampant for blacks in South Africa and Nigeria pushing black women to work as domestic workers. Currently, estimates from the International Labour Organization state that between 800,000 and 1.1 million domestic workers are in South Africa. Many of these domestic servants become bonded to labour in a process similar to other industries in Asia. The wages given to servants are often so poor that loans are taken when servants are in need of more money, making it impossible to escape. The hours of working for domestic servants are unpredictable, and because many servants are women, their young children are often left under the care of older children or other family members. Moreover, these women can work up to the age of 75 and their daughters are likely to be servants in the same households.
Prostitution
A 1994 report of Burmese prostitutes in Thailand reports compulsory indebtedness is common for girls in forced prostitution, especially those transported across the border. They are forced to work off their debt, often with 100 percent interest, and to pay for their room, food and other items. In addition to debt bondage, the women and girls face a wide range of abuses, including illegal confinement; forced labour; rape; physical abuse; and more.
IMAGE CREDIT: WikiCommons / Kim Brixen [CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]
