Nowadays slavery doesn't only come in the obvious form in which one person
owns another person (which is traditionally called 'chattel slavery'). Other
practices that amount to slavery are:
Bonded labour or debt bondage
- This is when a person's work is the security for a debt - effectively the
person has not been sold, but they are on 'a long lease' which they cannot
bring to an end, and so cannot leave their 'employer'
- The conditions of employment can be such that the labourer can't pay off
their debt and is stuck for life, because of low wages, deductions for food and
lodging, and high interest rates
- The debt may be inherited by other family members who are then themselves
forced into bonded labour
- Many children become bonded labour because of family poverty - one
estimate put the number of children in bonded labour in India alone at 15
million at the end of the 20th century
- Migrant workers often become bonded labour to pay off those who smuggled
them to the new country - they dare not break free for fear of being deported
- The UN Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery put the total number
of people in debt bondage around the world at about 20 million in 1998
BBC - Ethics - Slavery: Modern slavery
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| BBC - Ethics - Slavery: Modern slaveryAlthough slavery has been outlawed, it
still exists; even on the narrowest definition of slavery it's likely that
there are far more slaves now than there were vict... |
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| View on www.bbc.co.uk | Preview by Yahoo |
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