Under the Convention concerning Forced or Compulsory Labour, No. 29 (1930), ratified by 173 countries, including Brazil in 1957, the member States of the ILO undertake to:
“Suppress the use of forced or compulsory labour in all its forms within the shortest possible period.”
In order to achieve this goal, Convention No. 29 defines forced labour under international law as:
“All work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily.
Thousands of people still toil in forced labor in Brazil, despite government attempts to curtail the practice.
The workers were found to be mostly black males who grew up in poverty, began working as children and had little formal education.
Many of them were working in near slave-like conditions without contracts and did not receive any salary, doing long hours of manual labor without the possibility of leaving their remote work sites. …
