Contemporary Forms of Slavery in Pakistan

Throughout Pakistan employers forcibly extract labor from adults and children, restrict their freedom of movement, and deny them the right to negotiate the terms of their employment. Employers coerce such workers into servitude through physical abuse, forced confinement, and debt-bondage. The government of Pakistan is complicit in these abuses, both by the direct involvement of the police and through the state's failure to protect the rights of bonded laborers. It rarely prosecutes or punishes employers who hold workers in servitude, and workers who contest their exploitation are often imprisoned under false charges. We call on the government of Pakistan to comply with its own national laws as well as with international human rights and labor laws outlawing bonded labor, to ensure that all workers are allowed to organize and be represented by unions, and to prosecute to the full extent of the law employers who have held workers in bonded labor and those who have physically or sexually abused bonded laborers.