Brickmakers in Bengal

Thousands of brick kilns line the riverbanks in Bengal and the surrounding states of India. Most of the workers here are bonded slave laborers. The families that work here are exploited 12-16 hours a day, 7 days a week. Their world consists only of these mud holes, drying fields, and kilns. At night they sleep in the open or in makeshift shanties, where sanitary conditions are nonexistent. There are no schools, and for many of the children there aren't even families. Over a quarter of the children working here have been trafficked from other areas, where their parents have either been forced to sell them into slavery, or are dependent on the meager wages their children collect.