4 February 2026
It starts as an advance to buy food, pay for medicine, or survive a bad season, and then it turns into a permanent condition. A worker cannot verify the numbers, cannot refuse the next “necessary” expense added to the account, and cannot leave without risking homelessness because the family lives on the employer’s land. That is the core mechanism described in the report authored by Global Human Rights Defence with input from the World Sindhi Congress: a methodical, carefully structured document that maps laws, patterns, case material, and the organisations trying—often with limited leverage—to pry families out of enforced dependency. The report’s strength lies in its balance, but it also points to an uncomfortable blind spot: the system is sustained by market demand and supply chains that do not stop in Sindh, and that Europe’s political leadership often treats as someone else’s problem.
The economic backdrop is explicit. Agriculture accounts for 18.9% of the national economy and absorbs 42.3% of the labour force, which helps explain why power in rural areas can be both economic and political. Against that backdrop, the report frames bonded labour as a debt-driven form of forced work where wages are nominal or absent, mobility is curtailed, and the “right to choose employment” becomes theoretical.
Lower Sindh as a hotspot, with trackable district references
The report repeatedly anchors the practice in “lower Sindh” and names specific districts where it is described as particularly common: Badin, Sanghar, Tando Allahyar, Mirpurkhas, Mithi, Umerkot, Shaheed Benazirabad and Hyderabad. It also includes a telling comparison attributed to a peasant-rights representative in Sindh: more than 3,000 cases were reported in 2020, compared with 1,700 in 2019. Those figures do not resolve the question of scale—hidden coercion resists clean counting—but they do show visibility rising, and they hint at how widespread the practice remains.
The peshgi trap: a ledger controlled by one side
The report describes the common entry point as peshgi, an advance or loan delivered “before the work is done.” In theory it is repaid through labour; in practice it becomes a one-way ledger. Additional living costs—housing, clothing, food—can be added to the debt, while workers lack the literacy, documentation, or bargaining power to contest the total. The result is a system that can bind an entire household: if one adult is “tied,” children often work alongside parents, and obligations can be pushed across generations when a main earner is disabled or dies.
Children inside the debt economy: hard numbers and hard limits
The report links bonded labour to child labour with concrete estimates, citing 13 million children in child labour nationally and roughly 4 million in Sindh, especially in agriculture, brick kilns and carpet weaving. It also gives a release figure that is both hopeful and grim: between 2013 and 2021, 3,329 children, along with family members, were reportedly released from landlords’ custody in the agricultural sector. The same bibliography contains a much larger media estimate—1.7 million bonded labourers in Sindh, including 700,000 children—presented as an cited claim rather than a definitive census, which matters because the inability to count precisely is itself part of the problem: coercion thrives where inspection is weak and victims cannot safely speak.
Law on paper, delay in practice
The report sets out the legal framework in a way that makes the gap visible. Forced labour is prohibited constitutionally, courts can order release through criminal-procedure mechanisms and habeas corpus, and the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act of 1992 defines bonded labour as forced service within a debt arrangement that can strip wages, movement, and property rights. It nullifies agreements that perpetuate the system, declares bonded debts “fully satisfied” upon the law’s commencement, and prescribes penalties that can include substantial fines and multi-year imprisonment, while also allowing corporate accountability. The report then notes that Sindh adopted its own abolition act in 2016 with similar definitions but heavier prison terms, and it highlights how legal effectiveness can still stall: a constitutional petition filed in 1996 questioned whether the 1992 act was truly curbing bonded agricultural labour in Sindh, and the report records that the last hearing it cites took place on 9 March 2007, with the case still pending at the time referenced. In a debt system, delay is not neutral; it reinforces the party that already controls land, credit and local influence.
Health, humiliation and violence in brick kilns
The report also documents how bonded labour collapses workplace and living space into one zone of harm, especially in brick kilns where families often reside on site. It cites descriptions of unsafe fumes and black smoke contributing to asthma and increasing the risk of tuberculosis, water exposure linked to skin disease, the absence of proper toilets, and claims of high child mortality in kiln settings. This is not only “exploitation” in an abstract sense; it is a daily environment where health, safety, education and dignity are simultaneously eroded.
Gender and caste status as multipliers
A dedicated section focuses on Dalit women and girls, described as disproportionately exposed to discrimination and violence, including sexual violence and trafficking risks, with barriers to justice rooted in socio-economic status and power imbalance. The report’s point is not merely that abuse happens, but that structural exclusion makes reporting and redress far less accessible for those already pushed to the margins.
A rare table where stakeholders sit together, and a rare case that ends in release
The report does not ignore agency. It describes civil-society and labour initiatives, and it records a Provincial Consultation on Bonded Labour held on 23 December 2021 by the Labour Education Foundation, attended by representatives of a brick-kiln workers’ union, a brick-kiln owners’ association, and government-linked bodies such as an old-age benefits institution and a treaty-implementation cell dealing with human rights and minority affairs in Punjab, alongside trade-union leaders and civil society organisations. The composition matters because it acknowledges that enforcement, inspection, credit and employment alternatives have to move together.
The report also details a concrete release: following a petition by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, 43 bonded labourers were released in Ornach in Khuzdar district (Balochistan) after a complaint travelled from Hyderabad to Quetta and into proceedings before the Balochistan High Court. It is a reminder that legal pressure can work when it is sustained, but also that rescue remains exceptional when routine enforcement is weak.
The European blind spot: trade without accountability
One recommendation in the report is to withdraw export licenses from companies producing goods under conditions that do not conform to labour laws. That line matters beyond Pakistan because it is a direct bridge to international trade and price pressure. Europe’s leaders often speak the language of rights, but when supply-chain responsibility is treated as a soft promise rather than enforceable policy, coercive labour remains “cheap enough” to survive. The report’s blind-spot message is not that Europe caused the system, but that Europe can help sustain it when it demands low-cost goods without demanding verifiable labour standards.
What breaking the cycle actually requires
The report’s recommended direction is cumulative rather than symbolic: stronger enforcement with dedicated capacity, prosecution that shifts fear from workers to employers, public cancellation of bonded debts so workers are not tricked into paying what the law already nullifies, an end to punitive or arbitrary arrests of bonded labourers, and rehabilitation that includes medical and psychological care plus economic support so families do not fall straight back into debt. It also calls for cooperation with international institutions such as the World Bank to fund programmes with local NGOs, because implementation without resources often collapses.
Sources (end):
Global Human Rights Defence UN Team, with contributions from World Sindhi Congress, “Bonded Labour Report” (sections on economy, district prevalence in lower Sindh, legal framework, consultation, case material, and recommendations). GHRD_Bounded_Labour_Pakistan
Key references cited inside the report (selection): Pakistan Economic Survey 2017–18; ILO Convention No. 29 (Forced Labour Convention, 1930); Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1992; Sindh Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 2016; Supreme Court of Pakistan Const.P.69/1996; documented HRCP petition leading to release in Khuzdar; health and child-labour references linked to brick kilns and Sindh. GHRD_Bounded_Labour_Pakistan
Andy Vermaut +32499357495
With thanks to Sital Sradhanand – Chief Global Human Rights Defence – for his tireless dedication and courageous leadership in the global defence of human rights. His commitment to justice and the protection of the rights of the most vulnerable is a constant inspiration.