Child labour in the primary production of sugarcane (ILO)

International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour Safety and Health Fact Sheet Hazardous Child Labour in Agriculture – Cotton (ILO, 2025)

Cottonseed survey found ” 87% of the families of working children came from lower castes such as tribal people and dalits … Cotton seed producers usually employed children on a long-term contract basis by paying advances or loans to their parents. A survey of 320 chil- dren working on cotton seed farms revealed that about 95% of the children were in debt bondage: the children were effectively working off their parents’ debts in conditions of near slavery”

Report of the Working group on the UPR India 4th cycle 2022

The Working Group on the UPR reviewed India in November 2022 and the outcome report was adopted at the Human Rights Council 52 March session in 2023. This report includes recommendations on Dalits, caste, hate speech, racism, water and sanitation, women and girls' rights and many more.

EU briefing on human rights situation for Dalits in Pakistan (2022)

Contemporary forms of slavery affecting persons belonging to ethnic, religious and linguistic minority communities Report of the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, including its causes and consequences, Tomoya Obokata

The report is focused on contemporary forms of slavery affecting persons belonging to ethnic, religious and linguistic minority communities. In that context, the Special Rapporteur identifies the main causes of contemporary forms of slavery affecting these groups and the main manifestations, such as chattel slavery; forced and bonded labour; domestic servitude; sexual slavery; child and forced marriage; and child labour.

Provincial Consultation: Health, Safety, and Job Security of Sanitation Workers in Sindh

The Sindh Human Rights Commission organised a one-day consultation with key stakeholders at Hotel Avari Towers, Karachi, on August 18, 2022. The purpose of the consultation was to identify the gaps in the legislation covering labour rights of sanitation workers and build a consensus to gear efforts toward driving legislative interventions for the inclusion of sanitation workers in the labour laws. The event was organised in technical partnership with The Knowledge Forum.

The situation regarding Dalits and modern forms of slavery

Despite being prohibited in many countries, slavery is widespread in South Asia. Forced and bonded labour, resulting in a loss of control over labour conditions and terms of work, is often interlinked with the caste system and related types of customary feudal agricultural relationships.

Feedback from: International Dalit Solidarity Network

IDSN Response to EU Call for Evidence in the framework of the drafting of an EU forced labour Instrument

Leave no-one behind: Addressing business-related human rights issues and exclusion of communities on the basis of caste and descent – International Dalit Solidarity Network

IDSN and the UN OHCHR Minority section brought together an experts’ round table discussion to mark the 30th Anniversary of the UN Minority mandate.

Call for inputs to report on contemporary forms of slavery as affecting persons belonging to ethnic, religious and linguistic minority communities

Survey by the SR on contemporary forms of slavery

Global forum addresses the caste and sanitation work nexus (IDSN News)

The links between caste and hazardous forms of sanitation work were highlighted by speakers at the Sanitation Workers Forum 2021 from 29 November – 2 December. Participants at the forum urged that immediate steps are taken to ensure the safety and dignity of millions of sanitation workers worldwide – and ensure social protections.

Forgotten Issues of Sanitation Workers in Pakistan – The Knowledge Forum

In Pakistan, sanitation workers face dangerous and dreadful conditions everyday. Unfortunately, not much has changed for sanitation workers in the country over the last many decades. An increasing numbers of sanitation workers continue to lose their lives to poor sanitation planning and management.

Pakistan’s disposable labour needs attention – The Norwegian Human Rights Fund

The Global Slavery Index estimates that 3,186,000 people are held in modern forms of slavery in Pakistan, ranking the country at 8th place among the world’s 167 nations with the highest prevalence of modern slavery. The most common form of modern slavery prevalent in Pakistan is bonded labour, mainly in agriculture and brick kilns sectors (production of bricks).

Occupational health and safety should be a fundamental right at work | Ethical Trading Initiative

Two years ago, the centennial International Labour Organisation (ILO) conference agreed that occupational health and safety should become a fundamental right at work. The death toll of work – five people every minute of every hour of every day around the world – was so tragic that action was needed.

EU Consultation for an Initiative on Sustainable Corporate Governance

Need and objectives for EU intervention on sustainable corporate governance

Nepal Human Rights Year Book 2021: Accountability Towards Commitment

The Informal Sector Service Centre (INSEC), a leading human rights organization in the country, documented 5,543 victims of human rights violations in 2020.

Full article: Sustainable sanitation jobs: prospects for enhancing the livelihoods of pit-emptiers in Bangladesh

Manual pit-emptying – the removal of faecal sludge from pits and tanks using hands or basic tools – is a widespread practice in Bangladesh, and in other low- and middle-income countries. Despite this, little is known about the livelihoods of pit-emptiers. This paper analyses data from six cases of pit-emptying in three cities in Bangladesh, across three different operational modes: private cooperatives, government employees and self-employed workers.

Majority of Indian domestic workers ‘work seven days a week with no annual leave’ | The Independent

A survey of domestic workers revealed across six northeastern Indian states, a large majority of maids, cooks and other domestic staff worked seven days a week and were not given a single day of annual leave without having their pay docked.

Caste extracts from: Health, Safety and Dignity of Sanitation Workers: An Initial Assessment.” By World Bank, ILO, WaterAid, and WHO – 2019

“Low-grade, unskilled sanitation workers often face social stigma and discrimination. This is especially true when sanitation is linked to a caste-based structure and often allocated to castes perceived to be lower in the caste hierarchy, such as in India and Bangladesh, where sanitation work is perceived to belong to the Dalit caste. This stigma compounds the social ostracizing and limitations on social mobility that workers face and often results in intergenerational discrimination, where children of sanitation workers often struggle to escape the vicious cycle of limited opportunities and sanitation work.” “[In Bangladesh] Many live in segregated sweeper colonies, which are unhygienic slumlike areas offering poor and overcrowded living conditions. Dalits (low-caste Hindus) and Christian and Muslim Bengalis” "challenges include combating the systemic discrimination Dalits face, which affects their education and real opportunities to become entrepreneurs, and the multiple layers of subcontracting that enable manual scavenging to continue without oversight or enforcement of laws by local authorities"

ILO Resource Handbook for ending manual scavenging

The International Labour Organisation have now released the ILO Resource Handbook, a very useful tool in combating caste-based forced labour, and have also made a short summary of the handbook.