A - Forced labor may take on several different forms. Shortly, it is the coercion of one person to perform certain types of work and the imposition of a penalty in case this work is not done. Forced labor may be related to the people trafficking, which grows quickly worldwide. It may arise from abusive practices of recruitment, which lead to debt bondage; it may involve the imposition of military obligations to civil persons; it may be linked to traditional practices; it may involve punishment for political opinions through forced labor and, in some cases, it may assume the characteristics of slavery and slave trafficking of the past.

Next, a few examples, beginning with debt bondage. A small farmer is recruited for working in a plantation that is faraway from his area of origin during the harvest season. The recruiter offers the farmer an advance payment, for which the farmer agrees to pay for by working at the plantation. While working at the plantation, the small farmer needs to buy food and other goods at the farm warehouse, for which he pays highly inflated prices. He or she becomes increasingly indebted, and a vicious circle of debt bondage begins. No union takes part in this process in order to provide assistance to workers - they are isolated and there is no one they can resort to. For the next harvest the laborer may bring his family, thus increasing the network of forced labor and depriving his children from the right to go to school, for example. A similar type of debt bondage exists in traditional rural societies dominated by large land owners. In other cases, it involves the trading of children. These types of forced labor feed themselves from poverty and lack of information, perpetuating the practice.

Another type of forced labor that is spreading is related to people trafficking. A young woman or man may be seduced by the offer for a legitimate job at a restaurant, night club or family home in a faraway large city. Naively they agree to travel illegally to another country, often paying very high for the trip, taking on the commitment to pay for their debt with their future work. But once they arrive, traffickers take away their passports and their money and force them to work in small domestic firms or, even worse, in prostitution. The worst cases involve adolescents and children.

These examples of forced labor partially are related to economic circumstances. But political factors also may stand behind forced labor, as it occurred during the Hitler and Stalin regimes last century and on some more recent occasions.

Whatever the reasons - political or economic - the truth is forced labor suppresses the human being's freedom. There is no room for that in the 20th century.

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