- Also called:
- Slave Labour
- Related Topics:
- slavery
- debt slavery
- Repartimiento
- Blackbirding
- laogai
forced labour
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What is forced labour?
Forced labor is involuntary work performed under duress, differing from slavery because it involves exploitation rather than ownership. It has existed throughout history, becoming prominent in totalitarian regimes like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. These regimes used forced labor extensively, confining those deemed undesirable in harsh conditions within concentration camps and labor colonies.
The International Labour Organisation condemned forced labor in 1957, although it is still practiced in some countries today. Forms of modern involuntary servitude include debt bondage and contract slavery. Victims are often forced into domestic service, agriculture, sweatshops, and the sex industry.
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How is forced labour different from regular work?
Forced labour is work performed involuntarily and under duress, differing from regular work because it does not entail ownership of one person by another but rather the exploitation of that person’s labour. It has existed in various forms throughout history, and it was a prominent feature of totalitarian regimes such as Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Those deemed undesirable were arrested and confined to camps, where they were forced to work under harsh conditions. The International Labour Organization condemned the use of forced labour in 1957.
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Why might people be forced into labour?
People may be forced into labor due to different forms of exploitation, including sex slavery, debt bondage, or contract slavery. Sex slavery forces individuals into prostitution, pornography, and other sex-related occupations. Debt bondage, or peonage, enslaves people for unpaid debts. Contract slavery uses deceptive contracts to justify forced servitude.
Historically, totalitarian regimes like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union used forced labor on a vast scale, confining those considered undesirable in harsh conditions. Children are also vulnerable, often trafficked into domestic service, small-scale industries, or military service, facing hazardous conditions and minimal wages.
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Where does forced labour commonly happen in the world?
Forced labor exists worldwide but is especially prevalent in Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, and sub-Saharan Africa, where unfavorable conditions drive people to seek opportunities elsewhere. Traffickers exploit migrants through false promises of employment, seizing documents, and subjecting victims to abuse to pay off debts through forced labor or sexual exploitation. This exploitation occurs in various sectors, including the international sex industry, domestic service, agriculture, sweatshops, and the military. The causes of human trafficking and forced labor include poverty, political unrest, and natural disasters.
The International Labour Organisation condemns forced labor and advocates for its elimination.
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What impacts does forced labour have on individuals and communities?
Forced labor, distinct from slavery, entails involuntary work under duress, impacting individuals and communities. Throughout history, it was a prominent feature of totalitarian regimes like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
Under such regimes, people faced harsh conditions in concentration camps, labor colonies, or industrial camps, leading to disease, starvation, overwork, and mistreatment. Millions died in these systems.
The International Labour Organisation condemned forced labor in 1957, but it persists on a smaller scale in some authoritarian countries.
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What are some ways governments and organizations try to stop forced labour?
Governments and organizations combat forced labor through various strategies, including legal measures, international cooperation, and monitoring efforts.
The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) in the U.S. employs a three-pronged strategy: prosecution, protection, and prevention. The UN's Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons encourages countries to enact laws, assist victims, and promote international coordination.
The International Labour Organization (ILO) develops and promotes standards for national legislation to improve working conditions and living standards. The ILO also monitors policies concerning human trafficking through the Global Program Against Trafficking in Human Beings (GPAT).
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forced labour, labour performed involuntarily and under duress, usually by relatively large groups of people. Forced labour differs from slavery in that it involves not the ownership of one person by another but rather merely the forced exploitation of that person’s labour.
Forced labour has existed in various forms throughout history, but it was a peculiarly prominent feature of the totalitarian regimes of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union (especially during the rule of Joseph Stalin), in which it was used on a vast scale. Under these regimes, persons either suspected of opposition or considered racially or nationally unfit were summarily arrested and placed under long or indefinite terms of confinement in concentration camps, remote labour colonies, or industrial camps and forced to work, usually under harsh conditions.
The Nazi Party’s rise to power in Germany during the 1930s was accompanied by the extensive use of concentration camps to confine classes of persons who were opposed to the regime or who were otherwise undesirable. The outbreak of World War II created a tremendous demand for labour in Germany, and the Nazi authorities turned to the concentration-camp population to augment the labour supply. By the end of 1944 some 2 million prisoners of war (mostly Russians and Ukrainians) and some 7.5 million civilian men, women, and children from every German-occupied nation of Europe had been put to work in German arms factories, chemical plants, mines, farms, and lumber operations. Although the earlier arrivals in Germany were “volunteers,” the vast majority (from 1941 on) were rounded up by force, transported to Germany in boxcars, and put to work under appallingly harsh and degrading conditions. A large percentage of the slave labourers had died from disease, starvation, overwork, and mistreatment by the time the war ended. Many of those who had become unfit for further labour because of the harsh conditions were simply exterminated.
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Forced labour was also extensively used by the early Soviet government. In 1923 the Soviet secret police established a concentration camp on Solovetski Island in the White Sea in which political prisoners were first used extensively for forced labour. The secret police established many corrective labour camps in the northern Russian S.F.S.R. and in Siberia beginning in the late 1920s; and, as the number of those arrested in Stalin’s great purges of the 1930s grew into the millions, a network of hundreds of labour camps grew up throughout the Soviet Union. The Soviet concentration-camp system became a gigantic organization for the exploitation of inmates through work. The inmates of the camps in the northern Soviet Union were used primarily in lumbering and fishing industries and on large-scale public-works projects, such as the construction of the White Sea–Baltic Sea canal. The inmates of the Siberian camps were used in lumbering and mining. The inmates of the Soviet labour camps were inadequately clothed for the severe Russian climate, and the standard rations of bread and soup were scarcely adequate to maintain life. It is variously estimated that from 5 million to 10 million persons died in the Soviet labour camp system from 1924 to 1953. (See Gulag.) The use of forced labour greatly diminished after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953 and the subsequent de-Stalinization of Soviet society. Forced labour was also used by Japan during World War II, and by the communist government of China at times from the 1950s to the 1970s. The Khmer Rouge regime (1975–79) of Cambodia made a particularly widespread and brutal use of forced labour.
In 1957 the International Labour Organisation adopted a resolution that condemned the use of forced labour throughout the world. The convention was ratified by 91 member nations. Forced labour continues to be used by a few authoritarian and totalitarian governments on a relatively small scale.