1.7m children involved in commercial sexual exploitation worldwide

 

Growing numbers of children globally are being pulled out of school and into work, the head of the UN's labour body has told the BBC, putting their futures at risk. It comes as economic problems hit families around the world. The world is at a “critical moment” when it comes to child labour, says Gilbert Houngbo, head of the International Labour Organization.

It's Okay to Break the Rules in China... Until it isn't!

You can get away with breaking so many rules in China and in some cases it's actively encouraged but the government there can change this in a heartbeat and they will do this again and again and again to protect their fragile regime!

 

Afghanistan: Children in Kabul working for a piece of bread (video)

 

More and more children are having to work to help support their families, amidst an economic collapse in Afghanistan.

Even before the Taliban takeover, hundreds of thousands of Afghan children were forced to earn a living because of widespread poverty.

However, since the group came to power, international funding has been largely cut off. Sanctions have also been imposed and, as a result, unemployment is rising.

The child slaves of Myanmar

 

Child labor is common in Myanmar. Impoverished families are often faced with the hard choice of exploiting or abandoning their children. Some underage workers are even adopted by their employers, leaving them exposed to physical and emotional abuse.

COVID & child labour: Some kids may never return to school | COVID-19 Special

 

An estimated 152 million children are being put to work around the world. Hard manual labor in mines, in fields, on family farms. In Africa, one in five children is involved in child labour. Girls are especially vulnerable. The number of children at work is set to dramatically worsen because of the pandemic.

Behind the Glitter: Mica and Child Mining in India

Children in India are being exploited in the dangerous search for mica, the mineral that gives cosmetics their shine.

From nail polish to lipstick, mica is found in cosmetics that millions of people use every day.

But unknown to consumers, the mineral that gives these products their shine is often extracted using antiquated methods in slave-like conditions, in one of the poorest regions of the world.

In the dusty hills of Jharkhand, India, deep crevices have been cleaved into the hard earth. Men, women and children rummage through the dirt, using their bare hands and a few rudimentary tools to scrape the ground.

Riders Of Destiny: Risking Life as a Child Jockey in Indonesia

Seven-year-old Sila risks life and limb as a child jockey to provide for his family on the island of Sumbawa, Indonesia.

Seven-year-old Sila is a child jockey supporting his family financially on the remote island of Sumbawa, Indonesia.

With the high unemployment rate on Sumbawa, Sila's parents no longer work because the money their young son earns takes care of the whole family.

Each race poses an enormous risk to Sila and the other young jockeys who spend up to 10 days competing in several traditional horse racing tournaments each year. Injuries are common, deaths occur, and Sila is one of the most in-demand jockeys of all the young riders.

These photos ended child labor in the US

The 1900 US Federal Census revealed that 1.75 million children under the age of 16, more than one in five, were gainfully employed. They worked all over the country in cotton mills, glass blowing factories, sardine canneries, farms, and even coal mines. In an effort to expose this exploitation of children, the National Child Labor Committee hired a photographer to travel around the country and investigate and report on the labor conditions of children. Lewis Wickes Hine photographed and interviewed kids, some as young as 4 years old, and published his findings in various Progressive magazines and newspapers. Once the public saw the plight of these children, state legislatures were pressured to pass bills regulating labor for workers under the age of 18, effectively bringing an end to child labor in the United States.

Myanmar's Cycle of Debt

A look at the slums of Yangon and how families are crippled by high-interest loans as others profit from their despair.

With its gleaming new shopping malls and high-rise apartment blocks, Yangon has become the symbol of Myanmar's rapid economic growth. Yet in its poorest neighbourhoods, 85 percent of households are borrowing money from loan sharks, just to cover their basic living expenses.

While the loans may rescue them from an immediate financial emergency, the interest rates - which range from five percent daily to 60 percent monthly - trap borrowers in a perpetual cycle of debt. As families struggle to make their repayments, many send their children out to work.

Who's responsible for child slavery?

This year's World Day Against Child Labour is focusing on children working in supply chains.

Almost one in 10 children wakes up each morning and goes to work. These children slave away in factories and fields, and as maids and sex workers.

United Nations declarations specifically guarantee the rights of a child to be protected from economic exploitation. But vague laws, or sometimes a complete lack of legislation, mean that millions of children find themselves at work when they should be at school - often in hazardous conditions.

At least 168 million children around the world work, with more than half of them in dangerous conditions, according to the International Labour Organization.

Almost 80 million children are working in the Asia-Pacific region. That's equivalent to the entire population of Turkey. And one in five children in Sub-Saharan Africa has a job. That's almost 60 million children.

Indonesia tobacco plantations using child labour

Who could imagine a large multinational corroboration exploiting it's workforce? It's not like every major clothing manufacturer does this, or companies like Nike or Apple. Common people these are your favorite socially responsible brands.  That coffee you buy from Starbucks, do you truly believe those employed to pick coffee beans aren't exploited through low wages and dangerous working conditions of course they are.  For you the consumer of these and other products it doesn't matter as long as you're able to purchase them  at the lowest possible price.   So, don't act all surprised and indignant when you discover that major corporations also exploit child labour for higher higher profit margins.  

Big cigarette companies accused of feigning ignorance while young children work in plantations in hazardous conditions.

Some of the world's best known tobacco companies have been accused of turning a blind eye to the exploitation of child labour in Indonesian plantations that serve as their suppliers.

The tobacco industry employs about six million Indonesians. The figure includes many children that face hazardous conditions while working on the fields.

Researchers say tobacco companies insist their cigarettes are legal products without appearing to check whether their suppliers are complying with the law.

Human-rights groups have long noted the dangers of working in tobacco farms, especially for vulnerable youth children.

Child labour rife in India's coal mines

Three years ago Al Jazeera filmed children working in coal mines in the Indian state of Meghalaya. A year later, the government banned coal mining in the area. Now, we’ve returned, to see what effect the ban has had on people’s livelihoods.

Tackling child labour

Despite existing laws and regulations, the world has so far failed to eradicate child labour.

Some 168 million children are made to work across the world. To raise awareness on the issue, the world holds a day against child labour. The initiative started back in 2002, with the aim of focusing attention on the global extent of child labour and the action and efforts needed to eliminate it.

But 13 years later, the problem is far from solved. In many parts of the world, it's been further aggravated by armed conflicts, the Middle East is a case in point.

So, what should be done to eradicate child labour? And what lies behind this problem?

When The Global Brands You Love Exploit The Vulnerble

In March 2013 more than 1,100 garment workers were killed in Bangladesh when the building they  were working in collapsed.  They garments they were sewing are sold by the worlds major retail outlets like the Gap, Walmart and Benetton.  Given the number of people killed you'd think these clothing retailers would work to change the conditions which these women work. Instead they stonewalled efforts to protect these workers. You'd be wrong as these women continue to be exploited by these corporations.

Apple the corporation beloved by liberals has been implicated in worker exploitation in the factories which under license to a Taiwanese corporation  has seen worker riots and suicides due to working conditions.

Consumerism marches on as they turn a blind eye to the abuses. What's more important, the appearance of a social conscience  or cheap consumer products? Cheap consumer products always wins.

Wishing not to be left behind in the exploitation circus and the race for higher profits the worlds major manufacturers of cosmetics have no problem with using child labor in Indian mines. 

 

Ugly truth behind global beauty industry

 Top cosmetic brands rely on Indian children working in illegal mines to extract mica, key ingredient in makeup products.

Koderma, India - Children toiling illegally in Indian mines are producing a key ingredient used in the products of some of the global cosmetics industry's most prominent names.
A report by campaign group DanWatch said child labour is being used in the eastern states of Jharkhand and Bihar to extract mica, which is then added to the make-up produced by at least 12 multinational companies.
At least 5,000 children may be producing mica - used to add glitter to natural cosmetics - which is bought by intermediaries and then exported to high-profile international customers such as L'Oreal and Estee Lauder.

Deadly work
The abandoned mica mines start shimmering under the rising sun in Koderma, Jharkhand, as a group of sleepy children trudges towards the Charki mine holding their tools.
Five-year-old Ajay Das hurriedly slips into a narrow hole and starts his day. His tiny hands can barely balance the hammer, but he still hits the glistening wall accurately.
Ajay works six days a week and after labouring for seven to eight hours each day in hazardous conditions,he manages to earn a paltry 20 rupees ($0.33) - barely enough to kill his hunger pangs.

It's all for the greater good. Of corporate profits and lower prices. 

Why India's brick kiln workers 'live like slaves'

In the world of the consumer we never seem to ask where the products we cherish come from or who makes them.  All we care about is how cheap these products are and whether they will make our lives easier or perhaps more manageable.   Yet, those who manufacture these prized must have consumer products are often exploited in the name of profit.    

Just outside of the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, by country roads in a flat green landscape, smoke rises off huge furnaces.
The heat hardens mud clay into the bricks that are making modern India.
Close by the air is acrid with coal soot, catching in the throat.
Like a scene from a long-gone age, men and women walk in single file up and down steps as if climbing a pyramid. They strain under a load, balanced in yoke-like hods, to deliver freshly-moulded bricks to the furnace.

Here we are in the 21 century and one doesn't need to travel  through time to find images that conjure up what life might have been like for the slave laborers that constructed the pyramids of Egypt they just have to travel to India.

  "All of this is against the law," says Aeshalla Krishna, a labour activist with the human rights group Prayas."This is against the minimum wage act of 1948, the bonded labour act of 1976, the interstate migrant workers act of 1979. Child labour. Sexual harassment. Physical abuse. It's all happening. Every day."
The bricks are used to build offices, factories and call centres, the cityscapes of a booming economic miracle, and more and more, these buildings are used by multi-national companies with a global reach.

It doesn't matter that it's against the  law what matters is that modern India is emerging through the abusive labor practices of corporations whose only goal is higher profits and happy shareholders.

Children were everywhere. There was no safety equipment. Stories of illness, withheld wages and other issues were common place.
"They work 12 to 18 hours a day, pregnant women, children, adolescent girls," says Mr Krishna. "Their diet is poor. There is no good water. They live like slaves."
The situation has been like this for decades, if not centuries. Until recently, it was widely accepted as something that would improve slowly time. Campaigners say there's been little sense of urgency.

Though children are being denied an education or any type of future other than working in those kilns to manufacture bricks isn't important money is.  

 

Child miners: India's crying shame

Thousands face death, alcoholism and rising crime while eking out a dangerous livelihood in eastern state of Jharkhand.

As many as 28 million child labourers work in India every day, according to UNICEF [Ipsita Pati/Al Jazeera]

Jharkhand, India - Every morning at the crack of dawn, 13-year-old Sagar Kujur joins many others of his age and even younger to trudge towards the coal pits of Ramgarh in Jharkhand, a state in eastern India.

Armed with shovels and cane baskets, they tip-toe over the jagged surface, settle down in a corner and start digging a hole through rocks of solid coal. A few back-breaking hours later, their baskets fill up with pieces of coal that had been chipped away, and they hurry to the nearest market to sell their day’s treasure.

However, people venture into these mines to extract coal illegally. At times, they burrow into mines that have been abandoned, or poach into mines that are operational but not properly policed.

With thousands of mines and a large area to cover, it is often impossible for the companies to monitor every mine, allowing an illegal mining industry to flourish.

I used to study, but then who will earn for my family? There is no other option. All my family members have to work together all day so that we don't starve. Rakesh Kumar, 12, miner

Government figures also point to the deep-rooted scourge of illegal mining. According to the ministry of coal, 583 cases of illegal mining were reported in the state between 2006 and 2010. Strangely, however, not a single person was arrested for the trade. In the four years up to September 2009, 21,702 tonnes of illegally mined coal were seized by officials.

According to a report published by the Jamshedpur-based Xavier LabourRelation Institute in 2008, there are some 195 illegal mining sites under CCL's purview, 49 under BCCL and 203 under ECL.

State-owned coal companies blamed the government for failing to curb illegal mining. “Inadequate infrastructure of law enforcement agencies offers scope for illegal extraction of coal from the area. We are working according to the Mines and Minerals Act, but it is not possible on our part to curb illegal mining from the area,” said R R Prasad, the public relations officer of BCCL.

Similarly, R B Sharma, the general manager of CCL in Ramgarh, said that although he is well-aware of the situation, “it’s a vast area and fencing the entire area is not possible. The state government never enforced sufficient force to monitor the area”.