In Sindh, debt bondage persists as a system where an “advance” becomes a tool of control that can trap entire families for years. The report by Global Human Rights Defence, with contributions from World Sindhi Congress, explains how poverty, informal lending, and local power structures—especially in “lower Sindh”—push workers into forced labour arrangements in agriculture and brick kilns. The economic context is explicit and trackable: agriculture accounts for 18.9% of the economy and absorbs 42.3% of the labour force, which helps explain why abuse inside that sector has such wide reach.

The report describes the common entry point as peshgi, an advance repaid through labour, but one that often turns into a permanent ledger controlled by the employer through opaque accounting, added “living costs,” and interest. It links bonded labour to child labour and cites estimates of 13 million children in child labour nationwide and roughly 4 million in Sindh, while also reporting the release of 3,329 children (with family members) from agricultural settings between 2013 and 2021. The same source chain cites a much higher media estimate—1.7 million bonded labourers in Sindh, including 700,000 children—and stresses that precise counting is hard precisely because coercion is hidden on private land and reinforced by intimidation. The report repeatedly references districts where the practice is described as common, including Badin, Sanghar, Tando Allahyar, Mirpurkhas, Umerkot and Hyderabad.

Legally, Pakistan has strong instruments—constitutional protections, the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act (1992), and Sindh’s provincial law (2016)—yet the report shows how implementation stalls under political influence, local pressure, and prolonged litigation, including a constitutional petition (Const.P.69/1996) with a last hearing cited as 9 March 2007. It documents severe health harms in brick kilns (toxic smoke, respiratory disease risks, skin disease, lack of sanitation) and highlights the heightened vulnerability of Dalit women and girls to discrimination and violence, compounded by barriers to justice. At the same time, the report remains balanced by documenting resistance: consultations, union and NGO work, and a concrete legal outcome in which 43 workers were released in Khuzdar following action by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. Its recommendations focus on enforcement, prosecution, public cancellation of bonded debts, and rehabilitation. The report’s most uncomfortable implication is also its most global one: without enforceable supply-chain accountability, international markets—including Europe—continue to benefit from low prices while treating coerced labour as a distant problem.