Child Labor Harms Many Young Lives

The number of child laborers dropped by 27.8 million between 2000 and 2004, according to the International Labour Organization (ILO), a U.N. agency.1 Citing this 11.3-percent decline, the ILO declared that the end of child labor is “within reach.”2 Despite the encouraging trend, nearly 218 million children worldwide were engaged in child labor in 2004, the most recent year with data.3 (See Table 1.) The term “child labor” includes all children between the ages of 5 and 11 who are involved in economic activity, children aged 12–14 who perform more than a few hours of permitted light work a week, and children aged 15–17 who are engaged in hazardous work.4

In the first four years of this decade, children who are considered economically active—a broader category than child labor—fell by 34.5 million, or 9.8 percent.5 (All children who report having worked at least one hour on any day during a seven-day period are considered economically active.)6

The percentage of children who are economically active varies greatly by region.7 Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rate, with more than one in every four children 5–14 years old at work.8 In Latin America, the figure is just 5 percent.9 Asia and the Pacific region is home to 122.3 million children who are economically active, nearly two thirds of the global total.10

The ILO estimates that it would cost $760 million to eliminate child labor, or about $38 million a year over 20 years.11 In return, the potential quantifiable benefits in improved education and health are estimated at $4 trillion— more than five times the investment.12 Brazil is an example of a country that has quickly reduced child labor rates—the number of fiveto nine-year-olds working fell by 60 percent in 12 years.13 The ILO points to two Brazilian social programs—bolsa escola and bolsa familia—that provide low-income families with stipends to keep their children in school and that raised primary school attendance to 97 percent as key factors in the rapid reduction of child labor.14

In Liberia, many children of rubber-tapping families that work for Firestone Tire and Rubber Company do not go to school. They work beside their parents, up to 12 hours a day, to fulfill high quotas by carrying heavy buckets of pesticide-laden latex on their heads.15 If they do not tap enough trees, meager family wages are halved.16 A coalition of U.S. and Liberian organizations is pressuring Firestone to reform its labor practices.17 Unfortunately, this is just one example of child labor used in products sold throughout the world.

For 10 years, reports have exposed the expansive use of child labor in the cocoa industry. 18 With an estimated 70 percent of the world’s cocoa grown in West Africa, child slavery in this industry is integral to the ongoing political instability of countries like Côte d’Ivoire, in the same way that profits from “blood diamonds” were used to fund ongoing violence in Angola and Sierra Leone.19

Pressure from the U.S. Congress resulted in the Harken-Engel Protocol—a promise by the chocolate industry to voluntarily end child labor on cocoa farms by July 2005.20 The deadline passed, but no significant progress is apparent. 21 The International Labor Rights Fund subsequently filed suit against cocoa buyers and importers Nestlé, Archer Daniel Midlands, and Cargill to represent children from Mali who were brought to Côte d’Ivoire and forced to work long hours for no pay, picking cocoa beans that the companies then purchased.22 In August 2006, the companies filed a brief asserting that, as buyers, they cannot control the labor force used to pick cocoa beans.23 As of March 2007, both sides were waiting to learn if the case would go forward.24

In late 2006, U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao announced a $4.3-million initiative to eliminate the “worst forms of child labor” within the cocoa industry.25 Researchers working under this initiative will study the health of exploited children, train officials in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana to monitor for child labor, and report on progress toward implementing a child-labor-free cocoa certification system in those two countries.26

The vast majority of child laborers (69 percent) work in agriculture.27 Another 22 percent work in retail, restaurants, or other service economies, and the remaining 9 percent do industrial work such as mining or manufacturing. 28 Agricultural work frequently entails long hours in hot environments, exposure to pesticides, heavy loads, and injury from sharp tools.29 In Egypt, more than 1 million children work to manually remove pests from cotton plants.30 And in the United States, an estimated 300,000 children are hired to weed and pick commercial crops.31 According to the ILO, the number of children working in agriculture outnumbers sectors that have received more attention (such as carpet weaving or garment manufacturing) by a ratio of nearly 10 to 1.32

The ILO estimates that 1.2 million children are sold into labor each year, in transactions that total as much as $10 billion, and that about one sixth of this trade affects African children.33 Though these children are subjected to horrific work conditions and brutality, their families— many of whom live on less than $1 per day— often argue that learning work skills is a more positive prospect than constantly trying to find sufficient food at home.34 Traffickers may play to this sentiment when convincing families to sell their children.

Children also become vulnerable to hazardous labor and trafficking in the aftermath of natural disasters. Those whose parents have died or become unable to work must suddenly fend for themselves. Also, disasters cause many families to become temporarily separated, enabling traffickers to capitalize on the ensuing chaos. If schools are damaged or teachers are unable to work, children may turn to hazardous work. With the number of natural disasters increasing, the post-disaster scenario is a major concern for children’s rights advocates.35

To counteract this alarming trend, many African countries have recently passed antitrafficking laws. Burkina Faso reports that the formation of village surveillance committees helped police find and free 644 children in 2003.36 And in three years, the International Organization for Migration claims to have freed 587 children from the fishing industry in Ghana’s Lake Volta region.37

Children are engaged in domestic labor as well. India, where as many as 15 million children have been sold into labor, extended its Child Labour Act in October 2006 and banned children younger than 14 from working as domestic servants, at tea stands or food stalls, in restaurants or hotels, or in the hospitality industry.38 A BBC report filed two months later, however, found that police misunderstood the law or were reluctant to enforce it.39 After three girls, ages 6 to 13, were rescued from jobs as domestic servants in Faridabad, a city just outside Delhi, police refused to prosecute the girls’ employer, saying that the law only applied when the children were not being paid or had been trafficked, neither of which was true in this case.40

The Convention on the Rights of the Child is an international document that says children under 18 years of age have the right “to be protected from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous to the child’s health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral, or social development.” 41 Only two countries have not agreed to implement the rights spelled out in the convention: Somalia and the United States.42