Pervasive Human Rights Abuses in India
The New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) called
on India's donor community, which met in Tokyo on September 16th,
to cease the unique opportunity to help end one of India's most
pervasive human rights abuses the enslavement of millions
of child workers through debt bondage, and to ensure that the
aid they provide is used to eradicate, not perpetuate, these violations.
In a report released on September 16th, 1996, The
Small Hands of Slavery: Bonded Child Labour in India, the
HRW charges that twenty years after the Bonded Labour
(Abolition) Act, 1976 became law in India, employers throughout
the country continue to purchase children as virtual slave labourers
in agriculture and a wide range of industries. Although the use
of bonded labour is prohibited under domestic and international
laws, employers who coerce millions of workers into servitude
through physical abuse, forced confinement, and debtbondage
are rarely, if ever, prosecuted and punished.
Debt bondage in India is endemic and widespread.
Largely due to economic necessity, children either work alongside
their bonded families or are sold individually into what amounts
to slavery. Approximately ten to fifteen million children in
India work as bonded labour in agriculture and manufacturing.
The silver manufacturing industry, located in and around the city
of Salem in Tamil Nadu uses bonded children primarily to manufacture
small silver articles for domestic consumption throughout India.
In the World Bankfunded silk industry in the states of Karnataka,
Uttar Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu, bonded child labourers are used
in processes ranging from boiling silken cocoons to weaving apparel
on silk looms. Bonded child labour is also prevalent in the manufacture
of synthetic diamonds in Tamil Nadu, in the exportoriented
carpetweaving industry of Uttar Pradesh and in the manufacturing
of footwear in Bombay, where children are trafficked from Rajasthan
to work as shoe and sandal makers.
All of these children suffer a range of violations
of internationally recognised human rights, including the right
not to be held in slavery or servitude, the right to liberty of
movement, and the right to freedom of association. The government
of India is complicit in these violations, primarily through its
failure to enforce the rights that its citizens are guaranteed
under national and international law. Its failure to punish employers
who hold labourers in bondage is a clear signal that the bonded
child labour system can be maintained with impunity.
An effective program to eradicate the bonded child
labour system in India requires the concerted and sustained effort
of the international community. The HRW urged the World Bank and
other international lending institutions to condition receipt
of loans and other subsidies on verified compliance with all domestic
legal prohibitions on the use of bonded and child labour, and
to suspend the flow of aid to the silk industry until the government
of India has taken concrete steps to identify, eradicate, and
rehabilitate children in bondage.
The HRW in one of several recommendations to the
International Community, recommended "India's international
donors should suspend funding for any projects, such as sericulture,
that are known to employ bonded child labour unless the project
includes specific programs for the elimination of bonded child
labour, education and rehabilitation of the affected children,
and for improving the social welfare of the children and their
families."
Furthermore, trade benefits provided under the Generalised System of Preferences in both the United States and in Europe are prohibited to countries where forced labour is tolerated. Accordingly, the HRW called upon the United States Trade Representative and the European Union to initiate an investigation into the use of bonded child labour in India and into the Indian Government's enforcement of the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976. India's trading partners should use the leverage of GSP trade benefits to encourage the government to eradicate bonded child labour and to provide rehabilitation and education to the children involved.