Do you drink coffee, tea or hot chocolate? If so, pay close attention to what country harvested your beans or leaves, says the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB). According to an ILAB report released September 10 (PDF), over 120 goods from 58 countries — ranging from coffee and cotton to diamonds and gold — may have been produced through child labor and/or forced labor.
The September 10 report, required by the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) of 2005 and commonly known as the TVPRA List, is intended to help individuals, companies and governments “translate their economic power into a force for good that ultimately will eliminate abusive child labor and forced labor,” Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis said in a statement released the same day.
“Child labor and forced labor are inexcusable abuses of human rights,” and reports such as the TVPRA List “show that they continue to be a problem in 21st century society. We must do everything in our power to end these shameful practices,” Solis said. “While the United States is fundamentally opposed to the exploitation of any worker, the plight of children and adults working in forced labor is especially severe. These individuals are among the world’s most vulnerable, and we have a moral duty to help and protect them.”
“It is also important to note that these are global challenges. All countries — including the United States — face situations of labor abuses,” she added.
So the next time you want a hot drink, a cheap T-shirt or a piece of jewelry, you might want to ask who made it before you buy it. I know I will.
Only if life could thrive on pious idealism! Sadly, it does not. Life for many is a saga of stark and harsh choices, the likes of which confront people who send their children to work.
In a poor household a small child can either be one more mouth to feed with the meager stock of food available, or become a source of additional food for the family by bringing in a small income. As a rule such poverty exists in poor nations and to expect such states to eradicate child labour is to ask them to make the curse of poverty more deadly.
So, next time you buy any of the items listed by you, be glad that you are helping a young child share the burden of life with dignity. Compassion is far more important than cold logic when dealing with complex issues of human existence and its dilemmas. What appears unjust to a wealthy American may strike as fair and just to those struggling to wreak an existence.
The alternative to child labour would be greater poverty for the poor, lawlessness for society and unbearable financial strain for nations with already strained resources. Utopias, invariably, turn into nightmares like America’s Healthcare.
I feel the way as anybody else does when I see small children labouring to get a few bucks to support their family make both ends meet. But one must also realise why it is so. In India the government that vouch for people’s welfare is unable to provide them employment that they can rear a family. They, therefore, have to bank upon some supplementary source to earn that extra buck. The do not do so out of choice but out of compulsion. If the civilized world bars things in which children have a hand we would only be hastening their starvation. Let us not overlook this important point.
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Has America with its over two centuries of free market economy succeeded in eradicating poverty? No, probably not.
Communists tried to make Marx work bring about total material equality but failed. Disparity in wealth among men is a reflection of disparity in human potential, skills and opportunities.
Poverty of sorts will remain a reality in even in the most affluent and egalitarian of societies. Demonstration effect needs to be discouraged and compassion and readiness to share should be encouraged are laudable social virtues.
There goes a saying that we put off benevolence in the hope of doing charity some day. How does the Bill Gates phenomenon help transform ghettos in New Orleans or Newark?
Will not Rio’s abandoned kids be thankful to God for some kind of work to buy themselves food and a modicum of human dignity provided by a home of one’s own, however dispossessed materially?
Disrupting economies and social fabric of poorer nations is not a very fair method of defeating competition, is it? And to look upon it as a humane gesture is naive.
Hello all,
Reading the blog, comment, counter-comment, counter-counter comment, counter-counter-counter comment …, I realized that there is a lack of practical exposure to harsh realities of Human Trafficking here.
If looking at statistical data and imagining through your fertile mental grounds, you are trying to argue, you should have realized, by now, the emptiness of the whole exercise.
There are families in for example, Romania, where the children help out during harvest time. In Greece, tobacco growing families use all hands to finalize the leaves.
I feel the blog post is talking of the “painful” experience of children working in inhuman conditions without care and mostly after being trafficked from one point to other.
Best NOT to confuse the realities of life with fascinating idealism. Amen!
I also saw many clening, dish washing chils was working on restaurants they may have been forced labor as well.
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It is not criticizing people who employ children out of compassion for their families.
I certainly don’t condemn families who believe they must depend on the small amount of income a child can earn. There are a number of places in the United States where families face difficult economic choices (yes, we have poor people in America too). But the heart of the matter is poverty. Buying items made with child labor will neither stop the problem of child labor nor break the cycle of poverty these families face. Rather,
as economist Eric V. Edmonds has written,
what is needed are specific strategies to help vulnerable families, such as programs to compensate them for the financial loss they would suffer by sending their children to school instead of work.
Just this week, for example, Western Hemisphere countries launched the Inter-American Social Protection Network to fight poverty and social inequality on a regional level. Participating countries are examining conditional cash-transfer programs such as Brazil’s Bolsa Familia, Chile’s Solidario, Colombia’s Familias en Acción, and Mexico’s Oportunidades. Mexico’s Opportunidades, for example, pays children stipends to attend school, and these stipends increase with their age. According to the World Bank, these programs have reduced national poverty rates by 8 percent in Ecuador and Mexico, nearly 5 percent in Jamaica and 3 percent in Brazil. How many families does that equal, I wonder?
In the United States, New York City has begun a similar program called Opportunity NYC that pays at-risk families to go to regular medical checkups, keep their kids in school, and take other steps to improve their lives.
Another U.S. program targets poverty in other countries. The McGovern–Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program provides food, financial aid and technical assistance to countries that do not have much money or food, but do have a strong commitment to universal education.
In short, I don’t agree that “the alternative to child labour would be greater poverty for the poor, lawlessness for society and unbearable financial strain for nations with already strained resources.” I believe the alternative to child labor is protection of vulnerable populations and investment in the future.
How idealistic!
I found this to be very interesting.
Do you believe these programs would work in other countries?
That’s right. Ivory tower world reformers ought to make it clear whether a child labourer in India is preferable as a world citizen to a drug junkie of his or her age in an American slum or not?
Consider this: Is it better for a family to have a child work and bring in a few extra dollars, or is it better for a parent to work at a job that provides enough money to support the family?
Now consider this: What would motivate a company to hire an adult trying to support a family, and pay him/her adequate wages to do so, rather than hire and pay a pittance to a child to do the same job?
Evidently, you do not believe in the theory of demand and supply. Poverty stricken nations, invariably, have oversupply of unskilled labour and scarcity of jobs. In such situations employing a child is a humane act too. For in any case even if unemployed such a child is unlikely to be attending school for many reasons.
I think we’ve gotten a bit far afield from the original thrust of this blog entry. Let me be clear: the ILAB report criticizes ABUSIVE child labor and forced labor, i.e. slavery. It is talking about children and adults who have been trafficked, about children and adults who have been enslaved, about children and adults who are being badly exploited by companies to make a profit. It is not criticizing people who employ children out of compassion for their families.
The report is an effort to alert consumers about products that may have been made with abusive child labor or forced labor so that consumers — as is their right — may take this into account when making purchases. If two similar products have very different costs because one is made using what is essentially slave labor and the other is made in a company that pays its employees decent wages and maintains good working conditions, the consumer should be aware of that fact when deciding which to buy. The one that is cheaper may not be the better purchase.
Regarding supply-and-demand, demand is increasing for products that do not use abusive child labor or forced labor. For example, people are specifically buying from fair trade companies in India such as Archana Handicrafts, TARA Projects and the Asha Handicrafts Association even though they may be more expensive than those produced by companies that are not certified as fair trade. As demand increases, how will suppliers respond?
Yes, I understand and agree with your point about how poverty-stricken countries have high rates of unemployment and often have poor educational opportunities. So how do you suggest breaking this cycle of poverty?
It doesn’t look like we’re going to come to agreement on the issue of child labor. But I certainly have appreciated hearing your perspective.