Economy & Trade, Global, Global Geopolitics, Headlines, Human Rights, Labour

RIGHTS: An End to Forced Labour on the Horizon?

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Jun 30 2004 (IPS) - It may be possible to eradicate nearly all forced labour in the world in five to 10 years, but only if the international community maintains the political will and works towards equitable social policies, says an International Labour Organisation (ILO) official.

”Serious though the problems of forced labour and modern slavery are today, they are manageable problems,” says Roger Plant, head of the ILO’s special action programme to combat forced labour.

Studies have found that forced labour is a global problem, with serious cases occurring in rich and poor countries alike.

Furthermore, said Plant, ”Most forced labour today is not exacted directly by the state, and cannot be associated with repressive state policies.”

But there are exceptions: Burma (Myanmar) and North Korea. In these countries there have been ”systematic practices of state-imposed forced labour on political and ideological opponents of closed regimes, on ethnic minorities and others,” said the ILO official.

But in general terms, ”modern forced labour is exacted by private agents, individuals or companies,” and often takes place in the informal economies, Plant stressed.

One of the great difficulties in tackling this global problem is the lack of concrete data on the people subjected to exploitation and conditions of slavery.

Jagvir Singh, an expert from India, says unofficial figures suggest there are more than 75 million people who are enduring forced labour or slavery in his country of 1.1 billion.

Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, chairman of the United Nations working group on contemporary forms of slavery, meeting this week in Geneva, agrees that the problem is difficult to study because rigorous data is hard to come by.

Forced labour is often seasonal, he said, because in many cases it is associated with agricultural activity. And it tends to be concentrated in remote areas, meaning that it often escapes the eyes of government inspectors, said the Brazilian expert.

The ILO announced that it will make an estimate of the impacts of forced labour and slavery in its Global Report to be presented in May 2005.

The first legal definition of the problem was the effort of the ILO itself, which nearly 75 years ago presented the Forced Labour Convention.

The international treaty states: ”’forced or compulsory labour’ shall mean all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily.”

These two elements – threat and lack of voluntarity – are common for migrants who work in domestic service, said Gabriela Rodríguez Pizarro, U.N. special rapporteur for migrant workers.

Many of these workers perform their jobs ”under the explicit or psychological threat of deportation or violence,” she said.

Among the main forms of coercion, said ILO expert Plant, is debt slavery, which is still found on the African continent.

”There are various forms of serfdom, usually found in agrarian systems, such as bonded labour in South Asia, or the feudal systems still found very occasionally in parts of Latin America,” he said.

Forced labour can be compelled directly by the state, said Plant. ”This can be prison labour, including the forced prison labour imposed on political prisoners. It can be the obligation to perform compulsory labour, often unpaid, in infrastructure and public works.”

He argues that the main distinction – with ever-increasing importance over the past decade – ”has been between the forced labour imposed directly by the state on the one hand, and the forced labour exacted by private individuals or entities on the other.”

The ILO official said it makes sense to talk about ”older and newer” forms of slave labour, but it should be recognised that ”the older forms are changing with globalisation and technological change.”

The older forms are associated with caste systems, ethnic discrimination and the vestiges of feudalism. The newer forms appear to be linked to the failure of the credit and financial markets, and to internal and international migration.

Singh, spokesman for India’s Sarvdeshik Arya Yuvak Parishad (International Arya Youth Federation), cited some examples of the new forms of slave labour. But in his country, he stressed, it is legally established that remuneration for work that is less than the minimum wage is considered forced labour.

In Gurgaon, a new ”cyber city” within miles of the Indian capital and ”populated with call centres and shopping malls,” there are 20,000 to 25,000 migrant workers – men, women and children – working in construction. Instead of receiving the minimum wage of 87 rupees (around two dollars) per day, they are often paid just 55 to 60 rupees.