Domestic Slavery

People's Union for Democratic Rights v. Union of India‍

(1982) 3 SCC 235- In this judgment, the honourable Supreme Court defined forced labour, while discussing the scope of Article 23 of the Constitution of India, stated: The word force must therefore be construed to include not only physical or legal force but also force arising from the compulsion of economic circumstances which leaves no choice of alternatives to a person in want and compels him to provide labour or service even though the remuneration received for it is less than the minimum wage.

Siliadin v. France

The applicant, a Togolese national having arrived in France in 1994 with the intention to study, was made to work instead as a domestic servant in a private household in Paris. Her passport confiscated, she worked without pay, 15 hours a day, without a day off, for several years. The applicant complained about having been a domestic slave.  The European Court of Human Rights found that the applicant had not been enslaved because her employers, although exercising control over her, had not had “a genuine right of legal ownership over her reducing her to the status of an “object”. It held, however, that the criminal law in force at the time had not protected her sufficiently, and that although the law had been changed subsequently, it had not been applicable to her situation. The Court concluded that the applicant had been held in servitude, in violation of Article 4 (prohibition of slavery, servitude, forced or compulsory labour) of the European Convention on Human Rights.