Iqbal Masih was a Pakistani boy who was sold to a carpet industry as a child slave at the age of 4 for the equivalent of (12) USD.
At twelve years of age, Iqbal was the size of a six-year old. At the age of 10, he escaped the slavery and later joined a Bonded Labor Liberation Front of Pakistan to help stop child labour around the world, and Iqbal helped over 3,000 Pakistan children that were in bonded labour, escape to freedom. Iqbal gave talks about child labor all round the world.
There are an estimated 20 million bonded laborers in Pakistan today; at least 7.5 million of these bonded laborers are children. More than 500,000 children, like Iqbal, work in the carpet industry.
He was murdered on Easter Sunday 1995. Five years later, when The World’s Children’s Prize for the Rights of the Child was formed, he was posthumously awarded this prize as one of the first laureates.
