Debt bondage

Debt bondage, also known as debt slavery or bonded labor, is a person's pledge of labor or services as security for the repayment for a debt or other obligation.[1] The services required to repay the debt may be undefined, and the services' duration may be undefined.[2] Debt bondage can be passed on from generation to generation.[2]

Currently, debt bondage is the most common method of enslavement with an estimated 8.1 million people bonded to labor illegally as cited by the International Labour Organization in 2005.[3] Debt bondage has been described by the United Nations as a form of "modern day slavery" and the Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery seeks to abolish the practice.[2][4][5] Though most countries in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa are parties to the Convention, the practice is still prevalent primarily in these regions. It is predicted that 84 to 88% of the bonded laborers in the world are in South Asia.[4][6] Lack of prosecution or insufficient punishment to this crime are the leading causes as to why this practice exists at this scale today.[6][7]

Overview

Definition

Though the Forced Labour Convention of 1930 by the International Labour Organization, which included 187 parties, sought to bring organized attention to eradicating slavery through forms of forced labor, formal opposition to debt bondage in particular came at the Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery in 1956.[1][2] The convention in 1956[2] 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;"[2]

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 labor.[8] When the bonded laborer dies, debts are often passed on to children.[8][9]

Usage of term

Although debt bondage, forced labour, and human trafficking are all defined as forms or variations of slavery, each term is distinct.[1][10][11] Debt bondage differs from forced labour and human trafficking in that a person consciously pledges to work as a means of repayment of debt without being placed into labor against will.[1][10]

Debt bondage only applies to individuals who have no hopes of leaving the labor due to inability to ever pay debt back.[1][8] Those who offer their services to repay a debt and the employer reduces the debt accordingly are not in debt bondage.[1][8]

History

Asia

In the 19th century, people in Asia were bonded to labor due to a variety of reasons ranging from farmers mortgaging harvests to drug addicts in need for opium in China.[12] When a natural disaster occurred or food was scarce, people willingly chose debt bondage as a means to a secure life.[12] In the early 20th century in Asia, most laborers tied to debt bondage had been born into it.[12] In certain regions, such as in Burma, debt bondage was far more common than slavery.[12] Many went into bondage to pay off interest on a loan or to pay taxes,[13] and as they worked, often on farms, lodging, meals, and clothing fees were added to the existing debt causing overall debt and interest to increase. These continued added loan values made leaving servitude unattainable.[12]

Moreover, after the development of the international economy, more workers were needed for the pre-industrial economies of Asia during the 19th century.[12] A greater demand for labor was needed in Asia to power exports to growing industrial countries like the United States and Germany.[12] Cultivation of cash crops like coffee, cocoa, and sugar and exploitation of minerals like gold and tin led farm owners to search for individuals in need of loans for the sake of keeping laborers permanently.[14] In particular, the Indian indenture system was based on debt bondage by which an estimated two million Indians were transported to various colonies of European powers to provide labor for plantations.[12] It started from the end of slavery in 1833 and continued until 1920.[12]

Africa

Important to both East and West Africa, pawnship, defined by Wilks as "the use of people in transferring their rights for settlement of debt," was common during the 17th century.[15] The system of pawnship occurred simultaneously with the slave trade in Africa.[16] Though the export of slaves from Africa to the Americas is often analyzed, slavery was rampant internally as well.[15] Development of plantations like those in Zanzibar in East Africa reflected the need for internal slaves.[12][15] Furthermore, many of the slaves that were exported were male as brutal and labor-intensive conditions favored the male body build.[12] This created gender implications for individuals in the pawnship system as more women were pawned than men and often sexually exploited within the country.[12]

After the abolition of slavery in many countries in the 19th century, Europeans still needed laborers.[16] Moreover, conditions for emancipated slaves were harsh.[12][16] Discrimination was rampant within the labor market, making attainment of a sustainable income for former slaves tough.[12] Because of these conditions, many freed slaves preferred to live through slavery-like contracts with their masters in a manner parallel to debt bondage.[16]

Europe

Classical antiquity

Debt bondage was "quite normal" in classical antiquity.[17] The poor or those who had fallen irredeemably in debt might place themselves into bondage "voluntarily"—or more precisely, might be compelled by circumstances to choose debt bondage as a way to anticipate and avoid worse terms that their creditors might impose on them.[18] In the Greco-Roman world, debt bondage was a distinct legal category into which a free person might fall, in theory temporarily, distinguished from the pervasive practice of slavery, which included enslavement as a result of defaulting on debt. Many forms of debt bondage existed in both ancient Greece and ancient Rome.[19]

Ancient Greece

Debt bondage was widespread in ancient Greece. The only city-state known to have abolished it is Athens, as early as the Archaic period under the debt reform legislation of Solon.[20] Both enslavement for debt and debt bondage were practiced in Ptolemaic Egypt.[21] By the Hellenistic period, the limited evidence indicates that debt bondage had replaced outright enslavement for debt.[21]

The most onerous debt bondage was various forms of paramonē, "indentured labor." As a matter of law, a person subjected to paramonē was categorically free, and not a slave, but in practice his freedom was severely constrained by his servitude.[22] Solon's reforms occurred in the context of democratic politics at Athens that required clearer distinctions between "free" and "slave"; as a perverse consequence, chattel slavery increased.[23]

The selling of one's own child into slavery is likely in most cases to have resulted from extreme poverty or debt, but strictly speaking is a form of chattel slavery, not debt bondage. The exact legal circumstances in Greece, however, are far more poorly documented than in ancient Rome.[22]

Ancient Rome
Main article: Nexum

Nexum was a debt bondage contract in the early Roman Republic. Within the Roman legal system, it was a form of mancipatio. Though the terms of the contract would vary, essentially a free man pledged himself as a bond slave (nexus) as surety for a loan. He might also hand over his son as collateral. Although the bondsman might be subjected to humiliation and abuse, as a legal citizen he was supposed to be exempt from corporal punishment. Nexum was abolished by the Lex Poetelia Papiria in 326 BC, in part to prevent abuses to the physical integrity of citizens who had fallen into debt bondage.

Roman historians illuminated the abolition of nexum with a traditional story that varied in its particulars; basically, a nexus who was a handsome but upstanding youth suffered sexual harassment by the holder of the debt. In one version, the youth had gone into debt to pay for his father's funeral; in others, he had been handed over by his father. In all versions, he is presented as a model of virtue. Historical or not, the cautionary tale highlighted the incongruities of subjecting one free citizen to another's use, and the legal response was aimed at establishing the citizen's right to liberty (libertas), as distinguished from the slave or social outcast.[24]

Cicero considered the abolition of nexum primarily a political maneuver to appease the common people (plebs): the law was passed during the Conflict of the Orders, when plebeians were struggling to establish their rights in relation to the hereditary privileges of the patricians. Although nexum was abolished as a way to secure a loan, debt bondage might still result after a debtor defaulted.[24]

European Middle Ages

While serfdom under feudalism was the predominant political and economic system in Europe in the High Middle Ages, persisting in the Austrian Empire till 1848 and the Russian Empire until 1861 (details),[25] debt bondage (and slavery) provided other forms of unfree labour.

Americas

For more details on indentured servitude in the American colonies, see Indentured servant.

Modern practice

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.[6]

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.[6] Figures by the Human Rights Watch in 1999 are drastically higher estimating 40 million workers, composed mainly of children, are tied to labor through debt bondage in India alone.[28][29]

Brick kilns

Child labor in brick kilns in South Asia

Research by Kara estimates there to be between 55,000 and 65,000 brick kilns in South Asia with 70% of them in India.[6] Other research estimates 6,000 kilns in Pakistan alone.[30] Total revenue from brick kilns in South Asia is estimated by Kara to be $13.3 to $15.2 billion.[6] Many of the brick kiln workers are migrants and travel between brick kiln locations every few months.[6][30] Kiln workers often live in extreme poverty and many began work at kilns through repayment of a starting loan averaging $150 to $200.[6] Kiln owners offer "friendly loans" laborers to avoid being criminalized in breaking bonded labor laws.[30] 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.[30][31] 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.[30]

Rice harvesting

Workers storing rice in India in 1952

An essential grain to the South Asian diet, rice is harvested throughout India and Nepal in particular.[11][12] In India, more than 20% of agricultural land is used to grow rice.[12] Rice mill owners often employ workers who live in harsh conditions on farms.[12] Workers receive such low wages that they must borrow money from their employers causing them to be tied to the rice mill through debt.[12] For example, in India, the average pay rate per day was $0.55 American dollars as recorded in 2006.[12] Though some workers may be able to survive minimally from their compensation, uncontrollable life events such as an illness require loans.[12][32] 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.[12] Furthermore, families who live on rice mill production sites are often excluded from access to hospitals and schools.[12]

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.[33] In countries like Ghana, it is estimated that 85% of people enslaved are tied to labor.[33] 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.[33]

A worker preparing fish caught off the coast of South Africa

Fisheries

The Environmental Justice Foundation found human rights violations in the fisheries on the coasts of South and West Africa including labor exploitation.[34] Exporter fish companies drive smaller businesses and individuals to lower profits, causing bankruptcy.[34] In many cases, recruitment to these companies occurs by luring small business owners and migrant workers through debt bondage.[34] In recruiting individual fishers, fees are sometimes charged by a broker to use ports which opens the debt cycle.[34]

Domestic labor

After countries began to formally abolish slavery, unemployment was rampant for blacks in South Africa and Nigeria pushing black women to work as domestic servants.[13][35] Currently, estimates from the International Labour Organization state that between 800,000,000 to 1.1 million domestic workers are in South Africa.[36] Many of these domestic servants become bonded to labor in a process similar to other industries in Asia.[35] 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.[35] 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.[13][35] Moreover, these women can work up to the age of 75 and their daughters are likely to be servants in the same households.[35]

Consequences

Revenue

The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that $51.2 billion dollars is made annually in the exploitation of workers through debt bondage.[37] Though the employers actively take part in accruing the debt of laborers, buyers of products and services in the country of manufacturing and abroad also contribute to the profitability of this practice.[6]

On-going cycle

In many of the industries in which debt bondage is common like brick kilns or fisheries, entire families are often involved in paying of the debt of one individual, including children.[6][32] These children generally do not have access to education thus making it impossible to get out of poverty.[38] Moreover, if a relative who still is in debt dies, the bondage is passed on to another family member, usually the children.[38] At the International Labour Organization Convention, this cycle was labeled as the "Worst Forms of Child Labor."[38] Researchers like Basu and Chau link the occurrence of child labor through debt bondage with factors like labor rights and the stage of development of an economy.[38] Although minimum age labor laws are present in many regions with child debt bondage, the laws are not enforced especially with regard to the agrarian economy.[38]

Policy initiatives

The United Nations

Debt bondage has been described by the United Nations as a form of "modern day slavery"[5] and is prohibited by international law. It is specifically dealt with by article 1(a) of the United Nations 1956 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery. It persists nonetheless especially in developing countries, which have few mechanisms for credit security or bankruptcy, and where fewer people hold formal title to land or possessions. According to some economists, like Hernando de Soto, this is a major barrier to development in these countries. For example, entrepreneurs do not dare to take risks and cannot get credit because they hold no collateral and may burden families for generations to come.

South Asia

India was the first country to pass legislation directly prohibiting debt bondage through the Bonded Labor System (Abolition) Act, 1976.[6][39][40] Less than two decades later, Pakistan also passed a similar act in 1992 and Nepal passed the Kamaiya Labour (Prohibition) Act in 2002.[6] Despite the fact that these laws are in place, debt bondage in South Asia is still widespread.[6]

In India, the rise of Dalit activism, government legislation starting as early as 1949,[41] as well as ongoing work by NGOs and government offices to enforce labour laws and rehabilitate those in debt, appears to have contributed to the reduction of bonded labour there. However, according to research papers presented by the International Labour Organization, there are still many obstacles to the eradication of bonded labour in India.[42][43]

Sub-Saharan Africa

In many of the countries like South Africa, Nigeria, Mauritania, and Ghana in which debt bondage is prevalent, there are not laws that either state direct prohibition or appropriate punishment. For example, South Africa passed the Basic Conditions of Employment Act of 1997 which prohibits forced labor but the punishment is up to 3 years of jail.[7] In addition, though many of the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have laws that vaguely prohibit debt bondage, prosecution of such crimes rarely occurs.[7]

See also

Contemporary:

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Jordan, Ann (February 2011). "SLAVERY, FORCED LABOR, DEBT BONDAGE, AND HUMAN TRAFFICKING: FROM CONCEPTIONAL CONFUSION TO TARGETED SOLUTIONS" (PDF). Program on Human Trafficking and Forced Labor. Washington College of Law: Center for Human Rights & Humanitarian Law.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Article 1(a) of the United Nations' 1956 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery defines debt bondage as "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".
  3. ↑ "Global Report on Forced Labour In Asia: debt bondage, trafficking and state-imposed forced labour". Promoting Jobs, Protecting People. International Labour Organization. 2005.
  4. 1 2 Kevin Bales (2004). New slavery: a reference handbook. ABC-CLIO. pp. 15–18. ISBN 978-1-85109-815-6. Retrieved 11 March 2011.
  5. 1 2 The Bondage of Debt: A Photo Essay, by Shilpi Gupta
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Kara, Siddharth (2012). Bonded Labor: Tackling the System of Slavery in South Asia. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231158480.
  7. 1 2 3 "South Africa". U.S. Department of State. Retrieved 2016-10-29.
  8. 1 2 3 4 von Lilienfeld-Toal, Ulf; Mookherjee, Dilip (August 1, 2010). "The Political Economy of Debt Bondage". American Economic Journal: Microeconomics. American Economic Association. 2 (3).
  9. ↑ Androff, D.K. "The problem of contemporary slavery: An international human rights challenge for social work". International Social Work. Social Sciences Index. 54 (2).
  10. 1 2 "Swept Under the Rug: Abuses against Domestic Workers around the World" (PDF). Human Rights Watch. 2006. |first1= missing |last1= in Authors list (help)
  11. 1 2 Weitzer, Ronald. "Human Trafficking and Contemporary Slavery". Annual Review Of Sociology. Business Source Complete. 41 (1).
  12. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 Campbell, Gwyn; Stanziani, Alessandro (2013). Bonded Labour and debt in the Indian Ocean World. Pickering & Chatto. ISBN 9781848933781.
  13. 1 2 3 Kaarsholm, Preben (2016). "Indian Ocean Networks and the Transmutations of Servitude: The Protector of Indian Immigrants and the Administration of Freed Slaves and Indentured Labourers in Durban in the 1870s". Journal Of Southern African Studies. Humanities Source. 42 (3).
  14. ↑ Vink, Marcus (2014). "Indian Ocean Debt Slavery". Journal Of African History. 55 (3).
  15. 1 2 3 Wilks, I. (1988). "Pawnship in Africa. Debt bondage in historical perspective". African Economic History. 26.
  16. 1 2 3 4 Brown, Carolyn; van der Linden, Marcel (2010). "Shifting Boundaries between Free and Unfree Labor: Introduction". International Labor & Working-Class History. 78 (1).
  17. ↑ Kurt A. Raaflaub, The Discovery of Freedom in Ancient Greece, p. 47.
  18. ↑ Raaflaub, The Discovery of Freedom, pp. 32, 47 et passim.
  19. ↑ G.E.M. de Ste. Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (Cornell University Press, 1981), pp. 136–137, noting that economic historian Moses Finley maintained "serf" was an incorrect term to apply to the social structures of classical antiquity.
  20. ↑ Ste. Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World, pp. 137, 162.
  21. 1 2 Ste. Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World, p. 165.
  22. 1 2 Ste. Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World, p. 169.
  23. ↑ Raaflaub, The Discovery of Freedom, p. 49.
  24. 1 2 P.A. Brunt, Social Conflicts in the Roman Republic (Chatto & Windus, 1971), pp. 56-57.
  25. ↑ "Serf". Encyclopedia.com. Encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 11 June 2016.
  26. ↑ Cheesman Herrick, White Servitude in Pennsylvania: Indentured and Redemption Labor in Colony and Commonwealth (New York: Negro University Press, 1969), 26.
  27. ↑ Dean, Bartholomew Urarina Society, Cosmology, and History in Peruvian Amazonia Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2009, ISBN 978-0-8130-3378-5
  28. ↑ "Small Change: Bonded Child Labor in India's Silk Industry". Human Rights Watch. January 23, 2003.
  29. ↑ Finn, Devin. "Bonded Labor in India" (PDF). HUMAN RIGHTS & HUMAN WELFARE.
  30. 1 2 3 4 5 Ercelawn, A; Nauman, M (2004). "Unfree Labour in South Asia: Debt Bondage at Brick Kilns in Pakistan". Economic and Political Weekly. Economic and Political Weekly. 39 (22).
  31. ↑ Madheswaran, S.; Paik, Saswati (2010). "Labour Vulnerability and Debt Bondage in Contemporary India". Journal Of Social And Economic Development. Business Insights. 2.
  32. 1 2 Bagchi, Amiya Kumar. "An Iron Law of Interconnectedness of Child Labour, Bonded Labour, and Human Trafficking". Indian Journal Of Labour Economics. 57 (1).
  33. 1 2 3 "Sub- Saharan Africa - Global Slavery Index 2016". Global Slavery Index. Retrieved 2016-10-28.
  34. 1 2 3 4 "Forced labour and trafficking in fisheries" (PDF). International Labour Orgnaization.
  35. 1 2 3 4 5 Seedat-Khan, Mariam; Gunasekharan, Dharmaraja. "A New Form of Bonded Labour: A Comparative Study between Domestic Workers of South Africa and India" (PDF). Journal of Sociology and Social Anthropology. 6.
  36. ↑ "Domestic workers (Domestic workers)". www.ilo.org. Retrieved 2016-10-28.
  37. ↑ "How profitable is the exploitation of people? Sadly, extraordinarily so.". International Labour Organization. 28 May 2014.
  38. 1 2 3 4 5 Basu, Arnab; Chau, Nancy (2003). "Targeting Child Labor in Debt Bondage: Evidence, Theory, and Policy Implications". The World Bank Economic Review. 255.
  39. ↑ Belser, P. (2003). "Forced labour nowadays". Pensee. 336.
  40. ↑ Gopal, Meena (2012). "Caste, sexuality and labour: The troubled connection". Current Sociology. 2.
  41. ↑ Hart, Christine Untouchability Today: The Rise of Dalit Activism, Human Rights and Human Welfare, Topical Research Digest 2011, Minority Rights
  42. ↑ International Dalit Solidarity Network: Key Issues: Bonded Labour
  43. ↑ Ravi S. Srivastava Bonded Labor in India: Its Incidence and Pattern InFocus Programme on Promoting the Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work; and International Labour Office,(2005). Forced Labor. Paper 18

Organisational Reports

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