|
|||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Debt bondage |
 |
This article or section includes a list of references or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. You can improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (February 2008) |
 |
This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims. Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (August 2008) |
Debt bondage or debt slavery or bonded labor are all terms describing a means of paying off loans with direct labor instead of currency or goods. It is either a kind of indenture or truck system. Historically, in the USA, it is also sometimes called peonage.citation needed (Note, however, that the word peon has broader implications and usage in Latin America.)citation needed
Debt bondage of one person to pay another's debt is called pawnage or pawn slavery, and is a common form of child labor in some parts of the world. The debt bondage of children is considered by the International Labour Organization to be one of the worst forms of child labor.citation needed
Contents |
Prior to the early modern age, feudal and serfdom systems were the predominant political and economic systems in Europe. These systems were based on the holding of all land in fief or fee, and the resulting relation of lord to vassal, and was characterized by homage, legal and military service of tenants, and forfeiture. Many historians have argued that this system was also established in some Latin American countries, following European settlement.citation needed
A modernization of the feudal system was "peonage", where debtors were bound in servitude to their creditors until their debts were paid. Although peons are only obliged to a creditor monetarily, it might be viewed that this relationship reduces personal autonomy.citation needed
Peonage is a system where laborers are bound in servitude until their debts are paid in full. Those bound by such a system are known, in the US, as peons.citation needed Employers may extend credit to laborers to buy from employer-owned stores at inflated prices.original research? This method is a variation of the truck system (or company store system), in which workers are exploited by agreeing to work for an insufficientoriginal research? amount of goods and/or services. In these circumstances, peonage is a form of unfree labor. Such systems have existed in many places at many times throughout history.
Thousands of such laborers were sold into slavery during the West African slave trade and ended their lives working as slaves on the plantations in the New World. For this reason, section 2 of the Slave Trade Act 1843 enacted by the British Parliament declared "persons holden in servitude as pledges for debt" to "be slaves or persons intended to be dealt with as slaves" for the purpose of the Slave Trade Act 1824 and the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.
It continued to be very common in Africa and China, but was suppressed by the authorities after the establishment of the People's Republic of China.citation needed
It persists in rural areas of India, Pakistan and Nepal.citation needed
In Niger, where the practice of slavery was outlawed in 2003, a study found that almost 8% of the population are still slaves.[1] Descent-based slavery, where generations of the same family are born into bondage, is traditionally practised by at least four of Niger’s eight ethnic groups. The slave masters are mostly from the nomadic tribes — the Tuareg, Fulani, Toubou and Arabs.[2]
40 million people in India, most of them Dalits, are bonded workers, many working to pay off debts that were incurred generations ago. These figures are comparable to ones in Bolivia, Brazil, Peru and Philippines. There are no universally accepted figures for the number of bonded child labourers in India. Of 20 million bonded labourers in Pakistan 7.5 million are children. An estimated 496,000 children are in slavery in Bangladesh[3]
According to Anti-Slavery International, "A person enters debt bondage when their labor is demanded as a means of repayment of a loan, or of money given in advance. Usually, people are tricked or trapped into working for no pay or very little pay (in return for such a loan), in conditions which violate their human rights. Invariably, the value of the work done by a bonded laborer is greater that the original sum of money borrowed or advanced."citation needed
According to the Anti-Slavery Society:
Pawnage or pawn slavery is a form of servitude akin to bonded labor under which the debtor provides another human being as security or collateral for the debt. Until the debt (including interest on it) is paid off, the creditor has the use of the labor of the pawn.[4]
Debt bondage has been defined 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 nations, which have few mechanisms for credit security or bankruptcy, and where fewer people hold formal title to land or possessions. According to some economists, for example Hernando de Soto, this is a major barrier to development in those countries - entrepreneurs do not dare take risks and cannot get credit because they hold no collateral and may burden families for generations to come.
Where children are forced to work because of debt bondage of the family, this is considered not only child labor, but a worst form of child labor in terms of the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 of the International Labour Organization.
Despite the UN prohibition, Anti-Slavery International estimates that "between 10 and 20 million people are being subjected to debt bondage today."
News media in western Europe regularly carry reports about one particular kind of debt bondage: women from Eastern Europe who are forced to work in prostitution as a way to pay off the "debt" they acquired when they were illegally smuggled. This form of debt bondage also takes place in other parts of the world. See article on the trafficking in human beings.
According to Marxist economists, debt bondage is characteristic of feudal economies, where families are considered the responsible unit for financial relationships, and where heirs continue to owe parents' debts upon their deaths. Fully capitalist economies are characterized by the individual taking all responsibility, and such mechanisms as bankruptcy and inheritance taxes reducing creditors' rights (while increasing the power of the state). Heirs are freed from the creditor, but at the cost of a drastically increased power accruing to the state itself.citation needed
Debt bondage is often a form of disguised slavery in which the subject is not legally owned, but is instead bound by a contract to perform labor to work off a debt, under terms that make it impossible to completely retire the debt and thereby escape from the contract.citation needed
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |