The event attracted among others a large number of children’s rights activists working through a network of Children Rights Committees (CRCs) in the province.

Speakers included high court lawyer and political activist Ayaz Latif Palejo, Qindeel Shujaat and Iqbal Detho and Akhtar Hussain Baloch, SPARC's executive director and national co-ordinator on bonded labour, respectively, Joint Director of the Sindh Labor Department Abdul Sattar Daudpota and Naila Osman, a sociologist from the Karachi University.

Iqbal Detho said inhuman practices like child labour, debt labour, human trafficking, genocides and unwarranted wars, particularly in poor countries, despite all human progress in the spheres of information and communication technologies.

He said the practice deprived a human of freedom that was everybody's inherent fundamental right. Multi-national corporations, he said, were exploiting the world through bondage-oriented economic policies. He said that debt bondage kept people trapped in a vicious cycle of slavery for generations.

He cited ILO statistics and said that there were about 40-50 million people who were trapped in some form of slavery in the world, mostly in the poor countries, adding that South Asia, including Pakistan, India and Nepal had the highest rate of bonded labor.

He said that there were about 300 international mechanisms against bondage or slavery. He urged rights activists to make best use of international and national legal mechanisms to expose and eliminate bonded labor practices in the province.

Ayaz Latif Palejo termed bonded labour, child labour and other political and socio-economic problems faced by the poor section of the society outcome of long years of military rule and corrupt pro-feudal domestic politics.

He said dictators patronised feudals to prolong their rule. Similarly, political parties also preferred to support landlords who kept bonded labour institution intact besides running illegal tribal judicial system, jirga, under which children and women were bartered to settle disputes.

He said it was impossible to resolve the problems of bonded labour and other political and socio-economic evils until the basic issue of democracy was resolved.

Abdul Sattar Daudpota said that the government should not be blamed for the prevalence of bonded labour as it had legislated laws against bonded labour besides providing sufficient resources to address the problem.—PPI