Anti-Slavery - Submissions 1998

United Nations Economic and Social Council Commission on Human Rights Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and protection of Minorities Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery 23rd Session
Geneva, 18 - 28 May 1998
Debt Bondage -- the Challenge for the Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery
Child debt bondage is one of the principle abuses categorised as similar to slavery and prohibited by the United Nations' conventions against slavery. Over the past 23 years Anti-Slavery International has made more than 30 different submissions to the Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery about debt bondage or, as the phenomenon is also known, bonded labour in different countries around the world. The most reliable estimates indicate that between 10 and 20 million people are being subjected to debt bondage today. Our purpose at this session of the Working Group, coming as it does in the year marking the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is to review whether enough has been done to restore freedom to these millions of victims of slavery. Consequently, our organisation is not planning to present you this year with specific new information about current cases of bonded labour, although we are currently working on projects addressing bonded labour in a number of countries, notably Nepal and Philippines. The Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery first received evidence about debt bondage from our organisation in 1975 and has received further information on this particular form of human rights violation at virtually every one of its subsequent sessions. A great deal of the evidence has focused on countries in South Asia, particularly India, which has more bonded labourers than any other country. However, debt bondage has also been reported in countries as diverse as Bolivia, Brazil, Peru and Philippines. It is reported regularly to affect migrant workers around the world in both developing and industrialised countries, particularly in unregulated sectors where coercion is common, such as domestic service and the sex industry. The 23 years since the Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery was established have seen significant progress against bonded labour in some countries. For example, at much the same time as the Working Group was established, India passed its first country-wide legislation against bonded labour. By 1982 the Working Group was told by a representative of India that more than 133,000 bonded labourers had been freed as a result. Undoubtedly the attention given to the issue of bonded labour in this Working Group was helpful in persuading the Government of India to make greater efforts to actually implement its 1976 Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act more fully, and thus to give more people their freedom. Between 1978 and 1988 the bulk of the information presented by Anti-Slavery International to the Working Group about bonded labour concerned India. We have submitted further information about bonded labour in India most years over the last decade too, but by the late 1980s human rights activists were also pressing for legislation against bonded labour in neighbouring Pakistan and so the situation there also came to the Working Group's attention. Six years ago, in 1992, Pakistan passed its own Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act. On the whole, this law is still waiting to be implemented, and the situation in Pakistan today is rather similar to that in India at a similar stage: my predecessor representing Anti-Slavery International explained to the Working Group in 1980 that the information received at that time suggested that India's new legislation to eliminate bonded labour was not being effectively enforced, and that debt bondage was continuing unchecked through much of the country. We are saying the same thing about Pakistan today, and will be submitting to members of the Working Group for their information a four-page bulletin we recently issued about child bonded labour in Pakistan's Sindh Province. Over the past four years the resolution adopted by the Working Group each year to address the problem of bonded labour has been substantially the same. It has focused on the states where laws have been adopted against bonded labour, congratulating the governments concerned and urging them to do more to enforce the legislation. Evidently this responds directly to the situations in India and Pakistan. However, it is in danger of appearing irrelevant to activists from other states where no legislation exists and which do not appear to relate so directly to the Working Group's resolution. In the past, the Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery has on several occasions adopted a strong stance against bonded labour, although it has sometimes been thwarted by the lack of resources in the UN. Nevertheless, we want to refer you to some of those past resolutions, for these stressed that debt bondage is the genuinely serious and horrendous violation of human rights which it is, and thus to convey to the outside world that the Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery believes it requires urgent attention. Just a few years after the Working Group started receiving information about bonded labour, in 1978, it urged the Sub-Commission to arrange for an in-depth world-wide study of debt bondage to be carried out. At the same time, ILO, FAO and WFP were urged to take debt bondage into account in formulating rural development projects. In 1979 the Working Group suggested that the UN itself should organise a symposium on debt bondage, in order to study the problem in depth. At the same time it asked the Sub-Commission and specialised UN agencies to examine whether information campaigns could be organised for villagers in countries where debt bondage exists in order to inform them of their rights under national legislation and international law. Undoubtedly it was a disappointment to be told by the UN Secretariat in 1981 that no resources were available for a world-wide study. Some years later, in the late 1980s, the Working Group again made some very specific recommendations about bonded labour. The Working Group decided to give special attention to debt bondage at its session in 1990, when it adopted seven recommendations for measures which States where bonded labour was occurring could be asked to undertake (the Sub-Commission focused on four measures: to disseminate information through the media; to set up monitoring committees; to involve NGOs; and to penalise those responsible for employing bonded labour). At the same time the Sub-Commission urged the Commission on Human Rights to allow the Sub-Commission to appoint a Special Rapporteur to update Mr Abdul Wahab Bouhdiba¹s report on the exploitation of child labour and to extend the study to cover the problem of debt bondage as well. This was eventually agreed by the Commission in 1993, although the study has not yet been carried out. As recently as 1995 the Working Group noted that this study would be "of great importance". Once again in 1990, there was a suggestion that a workshop should be organised at the international level about debt bondage, although this time by the ILO, rather than the UN itself. This eventually took place in 1992 in Pakistan, with a specific focus on child bonded labour in South Asia. More recently, in addition to calling on the governments of countries which already have a law against bonded labour to do more to enforce the law, the Working Group has also urged all States to ensure that goods which are imported or exported are not produced with bonded labour. Looking back over the period since the Working Group was established, therefore, we can note several periods when a concerted attempt was made to focus on the issue of bonded labour and to make progress by initiating studies or urging States to take specific action against bonded labour. At the same time, in this anniversary year, we are under an obligation to ask ourselves whether the Working Group is really being effective in the way it deals with bonded labour. The studies which were recommended have not occurred, in part at least because of the same shortage of resources which has hampered progress in other fields of human rights. As a result, however, the issue of bonded labour has received a negligible amount of attention from other United Nations human rights bodies. Indeed, even in the International Labour Office, which considers reports of bonded labour to violate its Convention No. 29 on Forced Labour, there is no special programme to support or release bonded labourers. In 1998 it is consequently possible to conclude that over the 50 years since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed a ban on slavery and servitude, nothing much has been done within the United Nations system to put an end to bonded labour. The notable exception is the adoption of the 1956 Supplementary Convention on Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery, which condemned debt bondage. We feel that various lessons can be drawn from all this as far as the future work of the Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery is concerned. The first concerns the issue of studies. Clearly, the Working Group has expressed a view on numerous occasions that it needs more information about debt bondage -- more at least than it receives from NGOs. On the basis of any study carried out, we hope that the Working Group would be able to develop a "Programme of Action" of the sort adopted previously by the Working Group, and eventually by the Commission on Human Rights, on the exploitation of child labour and on the trafficking of women. While it is good practice to collect all the information available before reaching conclusions, it seems unfair that the Working Group is in effect being prevented from developing recommendations about what should be done about debt bondage by the delays which endlessly prevent studies about debt bondage from being carried out. The second concerns the response which the Working Group could be making to evidence that a pattern of debt bondage exists in a specific country. We noted a strong response last year from one of the treaty-monitoring bodies, the Human Rights Committee, when it heard that the actual number of bonded labourers in India was much higher than that suggested in the Government's report. The Human Rights Committee expressed its concern and also recommended to the Government of India "that a thorough study be urgently undertaken to identify the extent of bonded labour and that more effective measures be taken to eradicate this practice". Of course, on some occasions the Working Group has already responded in a similar way, as in 1979 and 1980 when it asked the Sub-Commission to bring its report to the attention of the Government of India. We also suggest that whenever members of the Working Group conclude that debt bondage is an outstanding concern in a particular country, it should add its support to calls for specific legislation to define the offence and provide both for the punishment of those responsible and the rehabilitation of the victims. We know this would be regarded as a helpful response, not only by Anti-Slavery International, but also by the non-governmental organisation from Nepal which testified to you two years ago about the serious level of bonded labour in Nepal's agricultural economy. In the meantime, to give you further information about the serious plight of bonded labourers in Nepal, about which we have presented information at three different Working Group sessions in recent years and where the authorities have not yet agreed to introduce a law against bonded labour, we are submitting to the Working Group a copy of the 100-page report published last summer entitled Forced to Plough -- Bonded Labour in Nepal's Agricultural Economy. This was prepared jointly by Anti-Slavery International and the Nepal non-governmental organisation Informal Sector Service Centre (INSEC).