Debt Bondage

Cambodia's farmers fight debt bondage

Bopha should be in school but instead toils seven days a week in a searing brick kiln on the outskirts of Phnom Penh – a 14-year-old trapped in debt bondage in a boom industry preying on the poverty of Cambodia's farmers.Unpredictable weather linked to climate change is laying waste to Cambodian fields.Saddled with debt from failed harvests, tens of thousands of farmers are turning to brick factories, where owners pay off their bills in exchange for labour.The factories feed a surging co

6 January 2019
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Myanmar migrant workers in debt bondage

A "mafia" of recruitment agents is trapping Myanmar migrants to Thailand in debt bondage despite a 2017 law meant to fight exploitation in the kingdom's notoriously shadowy job market, activists and workers say.Migrant labour - much of it from Myanmar - has propped up Thailand's economy for years, with foreigners working everywhere from factories to fishing boats, part of a global chain to produce standard supermarket items such as frozen shrimps, ready meals and pet food.

5 October 2018
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