DAMASCUS, Dec 19 (KUNA) -- The national symposium on Arab plan to combat child labour kicked off here on Tuesday, with envoys of ministries of labor and social affairs from eleven Arab countries participating.

Addressing the opening session, Syrian Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Dayala al-Haj Arif asserted the significance of the theme of the event that dealt with one of the major problems facing families in the Arab world.
She urged the participants to focus on the social problems facing families in the Arab world including poverty, illiteracy and the tradition of training children on the crafts of their parents.

She asserted the necessity of child education and protection.
Meanwhile, Secretary General of Arab Labor Organization Ibrahim Quider deemed work against child labour a humanitarian, national and social duty and a global moral responsibility as well.
The world ratio of child labour is on the rise and hit one in every six children, he noted, estimating the number of child labourers worldwide at 760 million.
Quider urged for regional and international efforts to put an end to the problem and provide educational and health services for the children.
He pointed out that 10 million children are deprived of education in the Arab world.

The symposium is set to discuss the causes and effects of the issue of child labour in the Arab world. It attracted representatives from the Arab League and the Federation of Arab Trade Union. (end) tk.

Abidjan - Ivory Coast has repatriated 14 children who were smuggled from Burkina Faso and Mali, probably to work on farms in the world's top cocoa grower, says an aid worker.

Ivory Coast was trying to stop the worst forms of child labour on its plantations to avoid the United States sanctions.

Police foiled the smuggling operation during spot checks on two coaches carrying the minors into the western cocoa town of Soubre.

The children said they were coming to help relatives on their farms or in their corner shops, but two adults believed to have been smuggling them got off the coaches and fled.

Michel Seka, who worked on a project ran by Germany's international co-operation body, GTZ, to stop child trafficking, said the children were returned to their countries this week and were handed to the social services.

GTZ repatriates 65 trafficked kids
Seka said: "We believe they were sent to work in the cocoa fields since it's the time of year for it", adding that GTZ had repatriated 65 trafficked children so far this year, most of whom came from poor and arid Burkina Faso to the north.

Harvesting of the chocolate ingredient peaks from October to December in the West African state, which turned out about 1.3 million tons of cocoa annually and the seasonal flow of cash into the bush fuelled child trafficking, crime and prostitution.

The GTZ and Interpol had trained Ivorian security forces to detect trafficked children, who usually entered the country on public transport. GTZ was also training rural communities to spot and report any new arrival of children in their areas.

Ivory Coast was trying to eliminate the worst forms of child labour from its farms ahead of a 2008 deadline set by the US parliamentarians for punitive sanctions on its cocoa exports, but there had been little progress beyond a pilot scheme in one main town.

Farmers and local authorities in Ivory Coast, while recognising the problem of child trafficking, insisted that there was no widespread use of forced child labour on farms.

They instead pointed to cultural differences and the need to pass on skills to enable their children to earn a living as an adult.

In the US, slavery was outlawed at the national level in 1865. "Oppressive child labour" was outlawed at the US national level in 1938. Yet child labour persists around the world as national and multinational companies seek lower labor costs and greater profits. Adult consumers around the world benefit with cheap goods made with child labour.

"Will worldwide morality over this issue become so great that all countries will banish child labour forever as they did the once prevalent black slavery? Or will the benefits that accrue to consumers and corporations by child labour prevail? Will economics trump morality or not"? Stanly asked.

According to Anti-Slavery International "There are about 300,000 child soldiers involved in over 30 areas of conflict worldwide, some even younger than 10 years old. Child soldiers fight on the front line, and also work in support roles; girls are often obliged to be sex slaves or "soldiers' wives". Children involved in conflict are severely affected by their experiences and can suffer from long-term trauma. The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child entered into force on 12 February 2002, which encourages governments to raise the age of voluntary recruitment into the armed forces and explicitly states that no person under the age of 18 should be sent into battle".

Article 32 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989): "State Parties recognize the right of the child to be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child's education or to be harmful to the child's health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development."

Convention 182 of the International Labour Organization (1999): The main aim of Convention 182 is to eliminate the worst forms of child labour. It stresses that immediate action is needed to tackle the worst exploitation of children, and that measures taken by the authorities should start as soon as the government is able following ratification. The main provisions of the convention are to clarify which situations should be classified as the worst forms of child labour, and to specify what governments must do to prohibit and eliminate them. A copy of the full text of Convention 182 can be found on the ILO website (Source:Anti-Slavery International )

I see mention of torture, human rights, rule of law, and child slavery. For example, let's talk about child torture. I'll use this definition: Torture is the deliberate infliction of psychic or physical pain by a person on another person. The torture inflicted in many countries would certainly be over the top in morality for people.
Stanly further added "The same kind of thought experiments can be applied to human rights, child rights, rule of law. So all peace lovers must use the humanitarian method to assume an anti slavery action".

Children's Rights through Education
If the schooling in the countries becomes better, as it is in many of them, the students in those countries will become better scientists, engineers, programmers, and mathematicians, will outperform businesses. Eventually, I predict that if the present decline in the quality of education continues, then child living standards will decline. Stanly argued. We must remember that with declining educational achievements in high school and college, our competitiveness in the globalized economy will decline.

Nepali Journalist and Story Writer Kamala Sarup is an editor of peacejournalism.com, She is specialising in in-depth reporting and writing on Peace, Anti War, Women, Terrorism, Democracy, and Development. Some of her publications are: Women's Empowerment (Booklet). Prevention of trafficking in women through media,(Book) Efforts to Prevent Trafficking in for Media Activism (Media research). Two Stories collections. Her interests include international conflict resolution, cross-cultural communication, philosophy,feminism, political, socio-economic and literature. Her current plans are to move on to humanitarian work in conflict areas in the near future. She also is experienced in organizational and community development.

The ceaseless sound of tapping metal echoes through these muddy, garbage-strewn alleys where thousands of workers in crumbling brick hovels churn out one of Pakistan's most successful exports -- surgical instruments.

Home to more than 2,000 instrument makers, this city is one of the world's top producers of high-precision scalpels, forceps and retractors -- almost all of which are bound for emergency rooms in the United States and other rich countries, where they help to save lives.

Yet, most patients a world away are unaware that these tools are tarnished by the toil of children working in dank workshops clouded with metal dust and earning just a few dollars a month. That is starting to change, thanks to a

U.N.-backed initiative to put child labourers back in school.

While the program underlines Pakistan's growing determination to tackle one of its biggest social scourges, it highlights how difficult eradicating child labour can be in a country where per capita income is $736 a year.

"I like to work," says 12-year-old Kabir Qadeer, who has done odd jobs at a dental instrument maker for the past year-and-a-half for $18 a month. "I had no interest in school and quit. So my mother told me to get a job."

Today, Qadeer is back at school -- albeit for only two hours a day after his seven-hour shift -- under a program sponsored by the U.N. International Labor Organization and the Surgical Instrument Manufacturers Association of Pakistan.

Launched in 2000, the program is modeled after a similar initiative that has won international acclaim for reducing child labour in Sialkot's booming soccer ball and sports equipment industry, which supplies companies like Nike and Adidas.

When the program wraps up its second phase at the end of this year, it will have taken more than 2,600 of an estimated 5,000 child labourers out of the surgical tool industry. The next phase, through 2008, will target the remainder.

"We felt it was our responsibility to do something," said Syed Waseem Abbas, senior vice chairman of the surgical instrument manufacturers association, and chief executive of Professional Hospital Furnishers.

No children are employed by the group's 2,300 members, according to the International Labor Organization. The problem, however, lies with subcontractors that do as much as 70 percent of the finished product for bigger companies.

There are 2,000 of these tiny workshops, sometimes employing only a couple of people each and often operating below the radar of monitors. Precision work on heavy equipment such as lathes is not usually done by children, but they are routinely employed in jobs such as cleaning and sorting.

Nike's recent clash with its Sialkot supplier of hand-stitched soccer balls shows how child labour often slips through the cracks. Last month, Nike canceled orders from Saga Sports after accusing the company of farming out work to subcontractors that used underaged workers.

International outcry about surgical instruments is quiet, by contrast, partly because Sialkot's medical goods are resold countless times by international wholesalers.

Sometimes equipment made here is even stamped "Made in Germany" at the

request of middlemen worried about Pakistan's image -- further obscuring their origin.

Sialkot's roots in surgical instruments stretch back centuries to the Punjabi swordsmiths of the Mogul empire. But it got its modern boost during World War II, when British colonial authorities called on the city's craftsmen for badly needed medical supplies.

Nowadays, the city pumps out 100 million instruments a year, and the United States and Germany are its biggest markets. International buyers may pay Sialkot suppliers $2 for forceps that eventually fetch upward of $60 when sold to a hospital, Abbas said.

The gap is part of the problem, say some labor rights activists.

Fairer trade would give Sialkot companies a bigger slice of the final sale and allow them to raise pay and improve working conditions of their employees.

"The solution lies in purchasers promoting fair trade, rather than a simple, 'We won't buy child labour.' This only makes the poor poorer," says Mahmood Bhutta, a doctor in Britain who has written on surgical instrument labor and is trying to set up a fair-trade supplier.

But many poor Pakistani families rely on incomes from their children to get by. UNICEF estimates there are 3.6 million working boys and girls under age 14 in Pakistan, mostly engaged in carpet-weaving, brick-making, agriculture and deep-sea fishing.

"The problem with our country is that we accept child labour as a way of life," said Fazila Gulrez, spokeswoman for the Society for the Protection of  the Rights of the Child. "There's not a single economic sector in Pakistan where children are not employed."

Kabir is among those apparently satisfied with the status quo.

Gathering half-finished dental probes from the grit-covered factory floor, he says he can't wait to turn 15 so he can graduate to the grinders, lathes and other machines reserved for his elders. His boss, who started work at 14, has promised $1.60 a day then.

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Despite ratification of numerous international conventions and promulgation of legal provisions to prevent children's involvement in the labor market, almost no progress has been made so far in Nepal and the South Asian region.

To discuss the problem to address it more effectively, experts from the South Asian region are meeting in Kathmandu to formulate strategic plan for child labour, The Himalayan Times reported.

Addressing the inaugural program of a two-day South Asia Regional Strategic Planning Meeting on child labour, Subas Nembang, speaker of House of Representatives, said, "Even though we are party to many international conventions and successive governments enacted laws related to the children, they are still exploited, sexually abused and new forms of abuses like adoption, child pornography are coming up against them."

Nembang added that the commitment of the regional meet would ensure in improving the status of children within the region.

Another speaker Sudhanshu Joshi, executive director of International Center for child labour and Education, said the meeting would focus on finding out where the South Asian region stands on the Global March Against child labour (GMACL) and its challenges in the region.

He added that as child labour perpetuates poverty, it is important to invest in education for children and bring them out of the labor market.

"In the past five years, the governments have become conscious about the existence of child labour in their respective countries," he said.

According to CWIN, there are 127,000 children trapped in the 'worst forms of child labour' in Nepal such as bonded laborers, porters, mine and carpet factory workers, domestic workers, rag pickers and trafficked children.

The GMACL has estimated that there are 246 million children working as full-time workers, which is a mass phenomenon especially rampant in South Asian region.
The region alone holds more than 80 million children in servitude.

FIROZABAD, India, Dec 13 (Reuters) - In the corner of a dark room filled with the stench of kerosene, Prabhu Dayal crouches over a fire, his nimble fingers forming glass bangles in the flames.

Prabhu is only 8-years-old, but his life is already one of endless toil, making colourful, glass bangles popular among women across India.

"Sometimes I get sores on my fingers but it's okay," Prabhu said, without looking away from the flame for a moment.

"When the flame is blue, it's okay. When it turns yellow, then foul gas comes out," he explained.

"It's not that difficult. Just hold the two ends (of the bangle) like this and join them with the fire," he added, deftly showing his skill.

Despite a government ban on child labour, Prabhu is one of tens of thousands of children in India who work in horrific conditions in often dangerous industries to support their poor families.

Across the country, children stuff explosives into fireworks to be lit during religious festivals and extravagant wedding celebrations, or weave carpets, sew textiles and make everything from footballs to cricket bats to sulphur-tipped matchsticks.

Around the town of Firozabad, about 230 km (140 miles) southeast of New Delhi and the hub of India's glassware industry, 50,000 child workers endure lives similar to Prabhu's labouring away in dozens of factories, rights groups estimate.
Under India's Child Labour Act of 1986, children under 14 are banned from working in industries deemed "hazardous" such as fireworks, matchstick-making, auto workshops or carpet weaving.

The ban was extended in October to cover those employed at roadside food stalls, homes and hotels.

But the rules are widely flouted, and prosecutions, when they happen at all, get bogged down in courts for lengthy periods.

HOMEWORK BLUES
In 1996, a government survey found that 22,000 children worked in factories around Firozabad. Charges were brought against plant owners, many of whom are still involved in legal battles.

The factories stopped employing children directly, but began outsourcing their work to "household units", workshops like the tiny, dark room where Prabhu works eight to ten hours a day.

A restless boy with sparkling eyes, Prabhu earns about 10 rupees (22 cents) for joining around 1,200 bangles a day.

Child rights activists like Ramesh Singh Chandel of the Bachpan Bachao Andolan say hundreds, if not thousands, of these children become afflicted with lung disease from their exposure to chemicals.

Most refuse to be examined for fear of losing their only source of income.

"Once we held a free health check up camp here," said Chandel, a human rights worker based in the area. "Not one person came. Nearly everyone here suffers from some form of asthma."

The day begins at 3 a.m. for Prabhu, his two brothers and their father.

At 8 a.m., Prabhu goes to school but he returns to the dingy workshop at around noon and works until 5 p.m.

The finished bangles are then heaped on carts and bicycles, which are dragged back to the factories in Firozabad.

"After that we play," Prabhu said.

BRACELETS OR HANDCUFFS?
Middle-aged Ramrati lives in a one-room mud hut where she cooks in an earthen oven. She has three sons, aged between 5 and 13. All of them work in the bangle industry.

A daughter, who also grew up making glass bangles, died of tuberculosis a few years ago at the age of 16

"The bangles killed her," she said.

"She used to cough a lot and turned weak. I got her married thinking her health would improve but she died in a few months."

"What option do they have?" asked Vishwa Vimohan Kulshreshtha, who runs a UNICEF programme here to wean the children away from work.

"Where will they go? What will they do? The government has only banned child labour but it has not created any jobs".

"Until the parents get some other work, they will continue to use their children to increase their income. It's a question of livelihood," he said.

Bal Krishan Gupta is the owner of Om Glassworks, one of the biggest factories in the region. Inside his sprawling residence is a cricket field, a fish pond and ducks playing on the lawns.

Gupta, who came to Firozabad in 1946, says his factories no longer make bangles, but he knows that children in the region are making them in hazardous conditions.

"But who is responsible for this? Is it not the father of the child who is making the child work?" he asked.

KARACHI: Minors no longer work in industrial units in the province, Sindh Employees Social Security Institution (SESSI) Commissioner Rasool Bux Phulpoto said.

Industrial laws in this regard have become highly stringent, and exports can be affected if it is found that children have been working in the industry. Addressing a radio press conference Sunday, Phulpoto said that the Sindh Labour Minister, Adil Siddiqi, had ordered that any instance of use of child labour should be brought to his notice.

The concept of social security was launched in March 1967 on a limited scale, and SESSI had hundreds of thousands of registered workers since it came into being in 1970, Phulpoto said, adding that workers registered with SESSI were being paid at least Rs 4,000.

He said that SESSI had recommended that the government increase wage scales to Rs 10,000. The federal government would consult with all four provinces in this regard before amending the existing law.

At present over 0.351 million workers from 18,870 registered units benefit from social security, and if their dependents are also included, this number goes up to 2.183 million. It is the responsibility of the Minimum Wages Board to see that rules are followed, Phulpoto said.

SESSI staff also make sure that the management of industrial units does not try to conceal employee information-those found guilty are heavily penalized, with fines running up to millions of rupees.

Phulpoto said that that the Manpower Directorate trained workers in specific trades, even though this was not one of the responsibilities of SESSI.

Regarding the establishment of medical colleges for workers’ children, the SESSI commissioner said that a summary in this regard had been sent to the Federal Government, and work would begin as soon as approval is received.

NEW DELHI: Over 1,670 cases of violation have been detected by 11 State Governments and the Union Territories of Delhi and Chandigarh since the October 10 notification was issued banning employment of children under 14 in the domestic and hospitality sectors.

Chandigarh, Delhi, Haryana, Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh conducted 23,166 inspections, according to a Union Labour and Employment Ministry statement. The State Governments have sent 371 rescued children to shelter homes and 361 to their parents/home towns.

In 10,389 inspections reported by Gujarat, 602 violations were detected. In Madhya Pradesh 42 violations were detected and 32 prosecutions launched. In neighbouring Rajasthan, action has been launched against six employers for violating the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986.

Trafficking in persons and child labour, a crime punishable by law, has increased in the country largely due to porous borders, ignorance, poverty, greed and get-rich-quick syndrome among Nigerian Youths. The international crime was being perpetrated with alleged connivince of unscrupulous security officers, who provide cover, issue fake documents and ensure easy passage along our international border checkpoints.

Minister of Cooperation and Integration in Africa, Senator Lawan Gana Guba, stated this at a recent one day sensitization campaign against trafficking on persons and child labour, at the "Teachers House" Owerri the Imo State capital.

Senator Guba said thousands of Nigerians had fallen victims to this nefarious tans-national - organised crime, for economic reasons and under development.

According to him, trafficked children are being exploitatively used as cheap labour in farms and plantations in some West African countries, saying children were also exploited in the country as they are engaged as house helps in many families.

The Minister, who was represented by Dr. Tom Miachi, a Director in the Ministry, however, expressed delight that the federal government had taken steps to combat the scourge which include establishment of the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in persons and other related matters (NAPTIP) as well as partnering with other countries.

He said the sensitization campaign was a timely effort to cause awareness of people in the south about the menace.

Commending Imo State for enacting a Childs Right Law, he enjoined all participants to ensure that knowledge generated from the campaign was optimately utilized.

Although the Turkmen government insists that protecting children is a priority, NBCentralAsia analysts say their basic rights are ignored and child labour is actively encouraged.

At a November 28 round-table meeting held to mark the 60th anniversary of the United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, Turkmen officials said “the conditions are in place for our youngest citizens to have a full and happy life and to develop in harmony”.

Turkmenistan – which is a signatory to UN Convention on the Rights of the Child – passed laws in 2002 and 2005 prohibiting the employment of children under 16 years and regulating children’s right to protection from exploitation.

Despite this, NBCentralAsia analysts say the Turkmen authorities continue to cover up the real problems affecting young people: the lack of protection from exploitative work, forced labour, restricted access to pre-school education, and poor-quality schooling.

“Child labour is used to the full,” said one analyst. “Come to any marketplace in any town, and you will be struck with how many children are there trading, even though they should be in school.”

Tadjigul Begmedova, the head of the Turkmen Helsinki Fund, a human rights group based abroad, said it is common practice for children in the seventh to ninth grades [the final three years of schooling] to be sent out to nearby cotton fields after attending the first two lessons of the day, and they then have to work there until evening. In rural schools, only pupils in the first to third grades attend classes [in harvest season] - all the rest are out working in the fields. Begmedova said teachers from three regions of Turkmenistan had confirmed that this was the case.

“The authorities present the use of child labour as if it just means children helping out after lessons have finished,” she added.

Aizawl, Dec 5 (IANS) Every day, nine-year-old Sawma sets out on a two-kilometre trek to the main market to sell cigarettes and household goods in this Mizoram capital. He has no other choice - to support his sick mother and his siblings.

To that extent, he is not a child worker, who the Indian government has been outlawed. This, however, does not detract from the fact that the practice is rampant - but not forced - in this northeastern state, where hundreds of kids work in tea stalls and in myriad other occupations.

'They are not forced to work but family conditions make them work,' said Vanramchhuangi, a member of the child welfare committee and president of Aizawl based Human Rights and Law Network.

'The Supreme Court has directed that laws on child labour should be upheld sternly but we are at a loss how to uphold it. If we do that, it will mean starving the poor families,' Vanramchhuangi said.
Laws alone are not the answer, another NGO says.

'Upholding the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act strictly in Mizoram will not solve our problem. Children here are working in order to earn money for their sick parents and some to support their education. If we prohibit them, more problems will arise,' said Mahlimi Hmar, a psychologist with the Centre for Peace and Development.

Sawma agrees. 'If they stop me from working, I won't have money for my education and my family,' he said.
According to Sawma, his idol was another boy from the Ramhlun Veng locality here who also sells cigarettes to support his education.

'He got a first division in the matriculation examination,' Sawama added

When the horrific transatlantic trade in human life was finally abolished in the early 19th century, anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce could never have imagined the scale of the modern day slavery problem that would grip the world 200 years later.

During the peak of the brutal trade in the late 18th century, some 80,000 Africans were torn from their families every year and shipped by Europeans to the Americas.
The terrible human cost is hard to quantify. But anti-slavery campaigners estimate that of about 24 million people who were enslaved in Africa, only some ten million survived long enough to reach the Americas and Caribbean.

Those who survived the crossing, amid atrocious conditions on-board cramped, disease-ridden ships, were then worked to death while forced to harvest cash-rich crops like rice, coffee, sugar and tobacco, in the Caribbean and southern and northern America.

Hull-based MP Wilberforce led the parliamentary campaign against the slave trade, which was abolished in 1807.

March 25, 2007, marks the bicentenary of the Slave Trade Act, which banned British participation in the Atlantic trade.

After mass protests and slave rebellions, an act was passed in 1833 abolishing slavery in the British colonies. That sequence of events may have ended a shameful chapter in human history that started more than three centuries earlier.

But, tragically, the evils of slavery still flourish today – making the struggle as relevant now as it was in Wilberforce’s day. Despite the fact slavery is banned by the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations says that there are now at least 12 million people living in slavery. That statistic is shocking.
And Archbishop Desmond Tutu spoke for many when he said in 1999: “Slavery... I didn’t know about all these forms that existed. I think it’s largely because we aren’t expecting it. It is hidden.

“Generally people would not believe that it is possible under modern conditions. They would say: ‘No, I think you are making it all up’. Because it’s just too incredible...”
Unfortunately the problem is far from made up.

There has been a resurgence in slavery the last half century, fuelled by discrimination, booming population levels in the developing world and grinding poverty that makes people vulnerable to discrimination in a cost-driven marketplace where there’s rising pressure to keep prices down.

From India to Brazil, from the Philippines to the UK, its tentacles stretch deep into four corners of the world.

People are sold like objects, forced to work for little or no pay and are at the mercy of so-called employers.

Women from Eastern Europe are bonded into prostitution, children are trafficked between West African countries while men are forced to work as slaves on Brazilian farms, in exploitation that affects people of all ages, both sexes and all races.

Today, a slave costs, on average, the equivalent of £60. And because slaves are so cheap, they become disposable commodities, rather than people.

The types of slavery in existence today are varied, but some of the most widespread include:

Human Trafficking – The transport and/or trade of women, children and men for the purpose of forcing themselves into slavery conditions.

This is a global problem impacting every continent and most countries in the world.
It is estimated that as many as 800,000 people get trafficked across national borders annually, after being deceived or coerced into leaving their home or country to be exploited.

Most victims work in the sex industry, and it is estimated that 80 percent of the victims are female. The FBI says that human trafficking generates $6.5 billion a year and is closely linked to money laundering, document forgery and drug trafficking.

Child Labour – Some 8.4 million children across the globe are understood to be working in often dangerous conditions.

Many children are employed as domestic slaves in the Philippines, and they can be subject to physical, verbal and sexual violence.

In a recent campaign against child soldiers, Amnesty International reported that more than half a million children under-18 have been recruited into government armed forces, paramilitaries, civil militia and a wide variety of non-state armed groups in more than 85 countries.

Often abducted to join armies, many of these children – some younger than ten – have witnessed or taken part in acts of unbelievable violence, often against their own families or communities.

Forced Labour – Affects people who are illegally recruited by individuals, governments or political parties and forced to work, usually under threats of violence or other penalties.

Thousands of men are trafficked into forced labour in Brazil. They have to work to pay off debts after being told they owe money for transport, shelter, food and equipment.

Bonded Labour – Affects millions of people worldwide. People become bonded labourers by taking or getting tricked into taking a loan. This can be for as little as the cost of medicine for a sick child. Repayment is through often arduous year-long work.Basic food and shelter is the ‘payment’ for this work, although debts may sometimes never be paid off and they can be passed down through generations. Most prevalent in India when somebody becomes bonded when his or her labour is demanded as repayment for a loan. Debts are often passed through generations of the same family.

Early/Forced Marriages – Affects women and girls who are married without choice and forced into lives of service – often accompanied by physical abuse.

Descent-based Slavery – When people are either born into a slave class or are from a group that society views as suited to being used as slave labour.

Tens of thousands of people in parts of West Africa are forced to work for no pay because of their social standing or ethnicity.