Writes Solidarity Center’s Tim Ryan: “Over the past 20 years, awareness and activism around the issues of child labor, slavery and human trafficking have grown significantly, mirrored by both growing economic inequality and broad concerns about that inequity. [There] is a clear recognition that decent work for adults can create a more secure environment for children and their opportunities for education.”
More than 80 countries have demonstrated they are “upholding their commitments to abolish forced labor and the worst forms of child labor,” according to U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez, in the Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor report released today.
More than 168 million children are toiling under harsh conditions, with more than half of them—85 million—engaged in hazardous work such as mining and construction, which puts their health and safety at risk. The report finds that 16 countries—half of them in Latin America and the Caribbean—made “significant advancements” in combatting child labor. Sixty-eight other countries made “moderate advancements,” including 30 in sub-Saharan Africa and 16 in Asia and the Pacific.
Fifteen countries made “no advancements” in the fight against child labor or were even “complicit in forced child labor,” among them Eritrea, South Sudan, Swaziland and Uzbekistan.
The report, issued annually by the U.S. Department of Labor, evaluated the efforts of nearly 140 countries to eradicate child labor and forced labor through implementing and enforcing laws, increasing labor inspection efforts and creating social programs to assist vulnerable children.
The report is available in a downloadable app, Sweat & Toil: Child Labor, Forced Labor and Human Trafficking around the World.
Also released today, the List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor found child labor and forced labor in supply chains for 139 different goods in 75 countries. Some 27 new industries have been implicated since the 2014 list, including the fishing industry in Indonesia and the silk industry in Uzbekistan.
The garment industry in Jordan, on the other hand, was removed from the list, after investigations showed a significant reduction in forced labor in the industry.
The list reveals how child labor contributes to the global supply chains that produce everyday goods—from sugarcane to bricks, coffee to tobacco, diamonds to gold, and electronics, carpets, clothing and footwear.
Both reports explain their findings in the context of the United Nation’s new Sustainable Development Goals, an ambitious project to eliminate poverty and increase global prosperity. Goal 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth calls for the eradication of forced labor, human trafficking and child labor in all its forms by 2025.
“Conscious capitalism recognizes that by working collaboratively, governments, businesses, workers, and civil society can do well by doing good,” says Perez.
The “Worst Forms of Child Labor” report is required under the 2000 Trade and Development Act (TDA), and the List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor was first published in 2008, as mandated by the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act. Both acts aim to promote global economic growth and build strong international trade partnerships that hinge upon the reduction of child labor, forced labor and human trafficking.
Uzbek human rights defender Elena Urlaeva has been detained against her will in a psychiatric hospital in Tashkent and the government should release her immediately, the Cotton Campaign said today. The Cotton Campaign is a coalition of worker rights and human rights groups that includes the Solidarity Center.
“Holding Elena Urlaeva in a psychiatric hospital without a clear medical rationale is a grave breach of medical ethics,” says Umida Niyazova, director of the Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights (UGF). “She should be released immediately, and the Uzbek government must cease using hospitals as extrajudicial detention centers.”
Urlaeva for years has documented forced labor in Uzbekistan’s cotton fields, where some 1 million teachers, medical professionals and others are forced to toil during harvest seasons. She has been credited with helping significantly reduce child labor in cotton fields, and this month was among human rights defenders in Uzbekistan to receive the International Labor Rights Forum 2016 Labor Rights Defenders Award.
Urlaeva was detained last year after interviewing and photographing teachers forced by government officials to work in the cotton fields, and says that she was physically assaulted during the subsequent interrogation.
The International Labor Organization (ILO) has pushed the Uzbek government to end forced labor. Following a complaint by Uzbek civil society, the World Bank attached covenants stipulating its loans to Uzbekistan could be stopped and subject to repayment if forced or child labor was detected in project areas by ILO monitors contracted by the World Bank to carry out labor monitoring during the harvest. In March, members of the Cotton Campaign urged the World Bank to make good on its promise.
The Uzbek government has responded to global pressure to end forced labor by cracking down on Uzbek labor rights activists who monitor cotton harvests.
Uktam Pardaev, another Uzbek labor rights activist was jailed while he was monitoring last fall’s cotton harvest in Uzbekistan and now is serving three years’ probation at his home, where he is under constant surveillance by security services. (You can take action to help Pardaev.)
Also last fall, Uzbek human rights defender Dimitry Tikhonov reported that his home office was burned and all the equipment and documentation he collected on Uzbekistan’s use of forced labor in the country’s cotton harvestsm destroyed. No other room in his home was touched by the fire, he said. Tikhonov also was arrested and beaten by police as he took photos of some 20 busloads of teachers and school employees forced into the cotton fields for the annual harvest. Tikhonov has since fled the country.
The stories of all three Uzbek human rights defenders are featured in a video created as part of the Labor Rights Defenders Award ceremony, in which a voice-over points out that “the Uzbek government treats them as enemies of the state because of their peaceful human rights activities.”
Addressing unemployment and underemployment, especially for young workers, is the most pressing issue for trade unions across Africa, according to participants in an African Labor Leaders Exchange Program sponsored by the Solidarity Center.
Speaking at a December 9 panel discussion at the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C., six union leaders from Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria and South Africa discussed the challenges in securing economic prosperity for working people—and their strategies for empowering workers in the formal and informal economies.
“What faces us is high levels of unemployment, poverty,” said Edward de Klerk, deputy general secretary of South Africa’s United National Transport Union (UNTU).
“Unemployment is an African issue,” said Philip Kwoba, director of Youth Organizing with the Central Organization of Trade Unions (COTU) in Kenya. Unions in Kenya are reaching out to informal economy workers, which include many young workers, helping them form worker savings associations as a step toward unionization and gaining bargaining rights. “We are allocating resources to help,” said Kwoba.
Members of the panel, moderated by Solidarity Center Regional Program Director for Africa Imani Countess, said poverty also is fueled by low wages. “Wage inequality is this battle still we have got,” said de Klerk. In Nigeria, unions are tackling wage issues by addressing government policies that reduce the pay of public-employees, including teachers, said Muhammed Nasir Idris, National Treasurer Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT).
Lack of employment opportunity and poverty in Liberia puts youth at risk of labor trafficking within the country’s borders, said Liberia Labor Congress (LLC) General Secretary David Sackoh.
Sackoh said labor recruiters take children from parents in their villages, promising the children will go to school in the city. Instead, the children are used in forced labor. “Even though our research shows (the children) want to return,” they are unable to do so for seven to 10 years,” he said.
Sackoh pointed to the Liberian trade union movement’s tremendous victory in eradicating child labor at the Firestone Natural Rubber Liberia plantation, and said the union movement now is working to address the issue at the seven other plantations across the country.
During questions with the audience, which included a packed crowd of union activists, policy experts and international experts, union leaders also discussed drawing more women into trade union leadership.
“Getting women elected to high offices is now on the union agenda,” said Boniface Kavuvi, general secretary of the Kenya Union of Commercial, Food and Allied Workers (KUCFAW). Kavuvi pointed to domestic workers in Kenya, represented by KUDHEIHA, as an example of dynamic organizing and strong leadership by women in Kenya. “They have done a tremendous job,” he said.
In Liberia, unions are pushing for 30 percent representation by women in union leadership, mirroring the country’s effort to increase women’s representation in the national legislature, said Isaac Grant, LLC organizing coordinator.
The six union leaders traveled to the United States for a South–South labor leaders’ exchange in which African labor leaders met with community and trade union organizers across the southern United States. The Solidarity Center worked with the U.S.-based labor education program, the National Labor Leadership Initiative (NLLI), to facilitate the exchange, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
Today, Universal Children’s Day, is a good time to remind people that more than 168 million children around the world are forced to work nearly every day.
Global March against Child Labor, a coalition of organizations working to end child labor that includes the Solidarity Center, created a powerful short video clip you can email, post on Facebook, Tweet and send to your networks.
Here are some sample Tweets and Facebook posts:
Tweets
Global March Against Child Labor fights to end child labor! WATCH to know why are we doing this? http://bit.ly/1QeZmdu #EndChildSlavery
Global March can help you do your bit to end child labor from this world! Support us http://bit.ly/1QeZmdu #NotMadebyChildren
Facebook Posts
Everything that you buy isn’t worth it! WATCH http://bit.ly/1QeZmdu #NotMadebyChildren #EndChildSlavery
1 in every 6 children work. The shirt you are wearing may be made by a child slave. WATCH http://bit.ly/1QeZmdu #EndChildSlavery