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Report

7 Apr 2016

Author:
FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard University (USA)

India: Assessment of NGO’s community empowerment model to eradicate forced & bonded labour

"When We Raise Our Voice: The Challenge of Eradicating Labor Exploitation", Mar 2016

Manav Sansadhan Evam Mahila Vikas Sansthan (MSEMVS) is a non-governmental organization (NGO) that has worked for decades with communities in the Indian State of Uttar Pradesh (UP) to eradicate forced and bonded labor...To assist the local community in combating these conditions, MSEMVS utilizes a community empowerment model that enables community groups to identify their own key priorities [and] helps them take steps to achieve those changes by developing education opportunities, generating alternative labor training in new skill sets, increasing an understanding of legal rights and providing legal support, and linking these groups together to achieve changes across a wider area...This is the first independent study to examine the impact of a multifaceted, community-based intervention on eradication of forced and bonded labor... It demonstrates the complex web of factors that contribute to a life dominated by exploitation and the multiple dimensions that need to be targeted to eliminate or reduce it...The research project had two primary aims: 1) To determine whether forced and bonded labor had been eradicated in villages where targeted interventions by MSEMVS took place; and 2) To measure the effect that the intervention had on a wide range of social and economic factors relevant to households within those villages...[The report uncovers] a nuanced and changing picture in relation to the exploitative labor conditions and challenging socioeconomic circumstances in which the studied communities live...