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Bonded Child Labor
Bonded labor takes place when a family receives an advance payment
(sometimes as little as U.S. $15) to hand a child-boy or girl-over to an employer. In
most cases the child cannot work off the debt, nor can the family raise enough
money to buy the child back. The workplace is often structured so that
"expenses" and/or "interest" are deducted from a child's earnings in such
amounts that it is almost impossible for a child to repay the debt. In some cases,
the labor is generational-that is, a child's grandfather or great-grandfather was
promised to an employer many years earlier, with the understanding that each
generation would provide the employer with a new worker-often with no pay at all.
Bonded labor is outlawed by the 1956 U.N. Supplementary Convention on the
Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to
Slavery. See also International Legal Standards on Forced and Bonded Labor.
Millions of children work as bonded child laborers in countries around the world;
the full extent of the problem has yet to be shown. Millions work in India alone, as
documented in the Human Rights Watch 2003 report, Small Change: Bonded Child
Labor in India's Silk Industry, and 1996 report, The Small Hands of Slavery: Bonded
Child Labor in India. Many bonded children are subjected to severe physical
abuse, as in a case cited in the July 1995 Human Rights Watch report,
Contemporary Forms of Slavery in Pakistan:
Two years ago at the age of seven, Anwar started weaving carpets in a village in
Pakistan's province of Sindh. He was given some food, little free time, and no
medical assistance. He was told repeatedly that he could not stop working until
he earned enough money to pay an alleged family debt. He was never told who in
his family had borrowed money nor how much he had borrowed. Any time he
made an error with his work, he was fined and the debt increased. Once when his
work was considered to be too slow, he was beaten with a stick. Once after a
particularly painful beating, he tried to run away, only to be apprehended by the
local police who forcibly returned him to the carpet looms.