A/HRC/12/21 page 12 50. According to information gathered from NGOs, bonded labour of indigenous people is mainly due to a combination of poverty and discrimination. In many countries, institutional and social discrimination limits their opportunities to find fairly remunerated jobs, pushing the entire family to work in exploitative conditions. This discrimination has left tens of thousands of indigenous people without access to jobs, land, education or health care and extremely vulnerable to bonded labour. In some cases, workers are aware of the exploitative situations they may be getting into but, due to their extreme poverty and desperation for work, they are willing to take the risk. 51. ILO research shows a clear link in Asian countries between forced labour and long-standing patterns of discrimination. In India, the overwhelming majority of bonded labour victims in agriculture, brick making, mining and other sectors are from Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.16 52. According to information received, modernized methods of agriculture have also increased vulnerability to bonded labour. Firstly, because of the increased reliance on machines, demand for labourers has declined overall and become more seasonal. Therefore, many workers take advances against their salaries and must work the full season to receive the rest of the remuneration, should any be deemed to be owed them. Wages may be particularly low and the conditions of repayment of the debt or advance exploitative. Secondly, the development of transport infrastructure has enabled landlords to recruit workers from outside their villages, and provided more labourers with the means to migrate. Migrant labourers can often face heightened vulnerability to bondage and exploitation due to unfamiliar surroundings, their status as migrants, lack of social networks, language barriers, close surveillance and other forms of control by employers. 53. Bonded labour can also be linked to sexual exploitation. According to information gathered from NGOs, in some countries multiple wives are bonded into prostitution, a practice that is embedded within the system of polygamy and bride procurement. Men take a number of loans to procure several wives. Women may then be sent to work in brothels, or alternatively “loaned” to brothel owners, where their earnings are shared between the brothel owner and the husband. The bonded woman is not allowed to leave the brothel until the debt of her husband has been cleared. Men who are unable to pay their debts to landowners are also reported to have bonded their wives into prostitution. 54. Research shows that legislation prohibiting bonded labour and factors such as the impacts of globalization are leading to modified or new forms of bonded labour. For example, they have 16 A global alliance against forced labour: Global Report under the Follow-up to the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, report of the Director-General to the International Labour Conference, 93rd session, Report I (B), International Labour Office, Geneva, 2005, para. 141.