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Debt bondage
Debt bondage, debt slavery, bonded labour or
peonage are all terms used to describe an institution where workers are held as
unfreeze labour. Work is exchanged for the paying off of loans instead of being
compensated with currency or goods. It is similar to indenture or the truck
system.
Historical background to bonded labour
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.
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.
Historical peonage
Peonage is a system where labourers are bound in servitude until their debts are
paid in full. Those bound by such a system are known, in the US, as peons.
Employers may extend credit to labourers 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 insufficient amount of goods and/or services. In these
circumstances, peonage is a form of unfreeze labour. Such systems have existed
in many places at many times throughout history.
Historical examples
In Colonial America, some settlers used indentured service to obtain passage or
an initial settlement, then continued working independently after completing
their bonded labour.
The American South - Such a system was often used in the southern United States
after the American Civil War where African-American and poor white farmers,
known as sharecroppers, were often extended credit to purchase seed and supplies
from the owner of the land they farmed and pay the owner in a share of the crop.
In Peru a peonage system existed from the 1500s until land reform in the 1950s.
One estate in Peru that existed from the late 1500s until it ended had up to
1,700 peons employed and had a jail. Peons were expected to work a minimum of
three days a week for their landlord and more if necessary to complete assigned
work. Workers were paid a symbolic 2 cents per year. Workers were unable to
travel outside of their assigned lands without permission and were not allowed
to organize any independent community activity.
Thousands of such labourers 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.. It
persists in rural areas of India, Pakistan and Nepal.
In Niger, where the practice of slavery was outlawed in 2003, a study found that
almost 8% of the population are still slaves. 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 Tare, Fulani, Tomboy and Arabs.
40 million people in India, most of them Davits, 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
Modern views
According to Anti-Slavery International, "A person enters debt bondage when
their labour 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 labourer is greater
that the original sum of money borrowed or advanced."
According to the Anti-Slavery Society:
Pawn age or pawn slavery is a form of servitude akin to bonded labour 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 labour of the pawn.
At international law
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 labour, but a worst form of child labour 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."
Modern example: prostitution
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 to destinations in Western Europe. This form of debt bondage
also takes place in other parts of the world, such as women moving from
Southeast Asia or Latin America.
Marxist analysis
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.
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 labour to work off
a debt, under terms that make it impossible to completely retire the debt and
thereby escape from the contract.
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