HYDERABAD: The ‘State of Peasants Rights in Sindh 2025’ report, launched by the Hari Welfare Association (HWA), has described bonded labour as “deeply entrenched” across Sindh with 1,311 labourers having been rescued from brick kilns and agricultural sector.
These labourers were rescued in police raids under judicial orders and through emergency interventions, which indicated the scale of exploitation in rural labour systems, the report said.
Compiled by the association, the report was released at a conference held recently to review the progress of implementing peasants’ protection laws in Sindh.
Speakers at the conference regretted that the Sindh Tenancy Act (STA) of 1950, Sindh Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act of 2015 and Sindh Women Agriculture Workers Act of 2019 were not in force since their promulgation.
HWA executive director Akram Khaskheli noted that the Sindh Cabinet notified rules under the Sindh Women Agricultural Workers Act 2019 in March 2026, but unions were registered under the Act, leaving women vulnerable. He added that the Sindh government had not withdrawn its petition in the Supreme Court of Pakistan against the SHC’s 2019 pro-peasant-rights judgment although the provincial government claimed to be pro-peasants and pro-workers’ rights.
Women activist Rabia Rehman, Iqbal Ahmed Detho, Prof M Ismail Kumbhar, Pushpa Kumari, Sattar Sarki, former MPA Farheen Mughal, Sarwan Baloch from Welthungerhilfe, peasant leader Shanti and Manzoor Laghari said that peasants and rural workers survived in difficult conditions. They said meaningful land reforms were essential to improve their socio-economic conditions.
The report 2025 mentioned that bonded labour remained deeply entrenched across Sindh with 1,311 laborers released from brick kiln and farm sectors. The brick kiln sector accounted for 743 releases. The near equal proportions of men and children highlighted family-based bondage in the brick kiln sector, in which entire households were confined under the pretext of debt arrangements. Umerkot, Sanghar, Matiari and Badin districts emerged as hotspots of illegal confinement and forced labour.
In the agricultural sector, 568 labourers were freed (206 men, 171 women and 191 children). Children accounted for nearly one-third of those rescued. Major operations took place in Umerkot, Sanghar, Mirpurkhas and Shaheed Benazirabad, where private jails and violence by landlord were repeatedly uncovered.
It said figures showed 468 men, 391 women and 452 children were among those released. High proportion of children, over one-third of all the victims, demonstrated bonded labour in Sindh functioned as an intergenerational system, trapping entire families in cycles of debt and coercion.
The district-level data (2018-2025) showed 10,053 bonded labourers were released in the agriculture sector. Umerkot alone accounted for 4,068 cases (40.5pc), making it the epicenter of bonded labour followed by Mirpurkhas with 1,764 cases and Sanghar with 1,576. These districts together accounted for nearly three-quarters of reported cases, highlighting concentration of exploitation in lower Sindh.
It said that although numbers declined after 2021 (1,465 releases in 2021, 653 in 2022, 542 in 2023, 620 in 2024 and 568 in 2025), persistence of hundreds of rescues each year demonstrated bonded labour remained a structural feature of Sindh’s rural economy. The dominance of women and children among those released confirmed that bondage functioned as a household system of exploitation, deeply tied to poverty, landlessness and feudal control.
Enforcement patterns showed most rescues were reactive, triggered by police raids, judicial orders or media exposure. There was little evidence of sustained prosecutions, rehabilitation or compensation for victims. Recurrence of raids in the same districts indicated bonded labour remained structurally embedded in both industrial exploitation at brick kilns and feudal control in the farm sector.
It also documented 337 victims of tribal and communal violence in rural Sindh. Of them, 201 were injured and 136 were murdered, indicating a high proportion of lethal outcomes. Majority of victims were men but women and children were also affected. Khairpur district recorded the highest combined number of victims with repeated tribal clashes. These incidents jeopardised lives and livelihoods of thousands of marginalised groups, especially peasants and rural workers.
The report contained details of 772 cases of violence against women and girls in Sindh in 2025, including 218 murders, 138 kidnappings, 124 suicides, 104 rapes/sexual assaults, 74 domestic violence incidents, 72 honour killings, 35 forced marriages and seven harassment/injury cases.
Published in Dawn, September 19th, 2026.
