On this episode of Until All Are Free, Preston sits down with Drew and James, two volunteer investigators with The Exodus Road. The two recount their recent travels to Pakistan, where they assisted a separate nonprofit organization in securing the release of a family from debt bondage in Pakistan’s brick-making industry.
As recent as 2018, the Global Slavery Index estimates that nearly 3.2M individuals are living in slavery in Pakistan. The most prevalent form of exploitation in the country is bonded labor, “in which traffickers exploit an initial debt assumed by a worker as part of the terms of employment and ultimately entraps other family members, sometimes for generations.” (U.S. TIP Report, 2022)
Debt bondage is inherently complex, like many of the topics discussed in Until All Are Free. Many individuals ensnared in Pakistan’s debt-bondage schemes are suffering from generational enslavement where the possibility of freedom from debt is unrealistic. In the landscape of human rights organizations addressing debt bondage worldwide, conversations often arise about the best tactics for intervention efforts to dismantle systems of exploitation that prop up this mechanism of trafficking. This episode is intended as an educational source about the nature of human trafficking in this region of the world. As an organization, The Exodus Road does not participate in transactional exchanges with traffickers to secure the freedom of a survivor of human trafficking.
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