United States President Bill Clinton honoured Indian human rights activist, Kailash Satyarthi, for his work on liberating children from slavery, on 19 September.

A 12-year-old child labourer who was freed from working in the carpet industry by the South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude (SACCS), the organisation chaired by Kailash, was also invited to meet the President.

The ceremony was part of the launch of the book Speak Truth to Power, by Kerry Kennedy Cuomo, in which Kailash, along with Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu, is featured.

Between 1989 and 1999 SACCS freed more than 8,000 child bonded labourers from the carpet industry.After being rescued with the help of the police, they are taken to the Mukti Ashram, SACCS' residential rehabilitation centre near New Delhi where they receive care and education enabling them to return to their communities.

Children as young as six are abducted or bonded into slavery in exchange for a loan and forced to work for an unlimited period in some carpet looms in India's carpet belt in Uttar Pradesh.

The conditions in which these children are forced to live and work damages their health and eyesight. Forced to work for more than eight hours a day, they are prevented from going to school violating the 1990 UN Convention of the Rights of the Child. The employment of children under the age of 14 in this sector also violates India's 1986 Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, which lists carpet weaving as a hazardous industry.