Debt bondage, also known as debt slavery, bonded labour, or peonage, is the pledge of a person's services as security for the repayment for a debt or other obligation. Where the terms of the repayment are not clearly or reasonably stated, or where the debt is excessively large the person who holds the debt has thus some control over the laborer, whose freedom depends on the undefined or excessive debt repayment. The services required to repay the debt may be undefined, and the services' duration may be undefined, thus allowing the person supposedly owed the debt to demand services indefinitely. Debt bondage can be passed on from generation to generation.
Child labor in brick kilns in South Asia
Workers storing rice in India in 1952
A worker preparing fish caught off the coast of South Africa
International Labour Organization
The International Labour Organization (ILO) is a United Nations agency whose mandate is to advance social and economic justice by setting international labour standards. Founded in October 1919 under the League of Nations, it is one of the first and oldest specialised agencies of the UN. The ILO has 187 member states: 186 out of 193 UN member states plus the Cook Islands. It is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, with around 40 field offices around the world, and employs some 3,381 staff across 107 nations, of whom 1,698 work in technical cooperation programmes and projects.
ILO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland
International Labour Organization flag
Samuel Gompers (right) with Albert Thomas, 1918
Greenwood, Ernest H. (of the United States – Deputy secretary general of the conference) / Secretary General: Harold B. Butler (Great Britain) / Deputy Secretaries General: Ernest H. Greenwood (United States) / Guido Pardo (Italy) /Legal Adviser: Manley 0. Hudson (United States) / with staff of the first International Labour Conference, in Washington, D.C., in 1919, in front of the Pan American Union Building