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GLEANINGS
FROM THE MEDIA
US move on working
children will burden youngsters
The Businessline datelined June 17, reported
about the US President Bill Clinton's executive
order directing federal agencies to list products
suspected to have been made by forced child
labour. This, correspondent Janaki Murali
reported from Bangalore, could become another
unfair trade barrier against developing nations,
including India, which has a large component of
child workers.
The announcement, the paper said, is also seen as
Mr. Clinton's efforts to further open overseas
markets to US products.
The paper mentions that while accepting that
international commitment and pressure were
important, UNICEF states in its 1997 report,
State of the World's Children, that such boycotts
and other sweeping measures could only affect the
export sectors. Guesstimates say that "only
a small proportion of all child workers are
employed in export industries - probably less
than five per cent".
UNICEF, in fact, has exploded several myths
regarding child labour. The report, mentions four
myths about child labour - that child labour is
uniquely a problem of the developing world; that
it will never be eliminated until poverty
disappears; that most child labourers were at
work in the sweatshops of industries exporting
cheap goods to the stores of the rich world; and
that the only way to make headway against child
labour is for consumers and governments to apply
pressure through sanctions and boycotts.
The UNICEF report points out that children
routinely work in all industrialised countries
and hazardous forms of child labour could be
found in many countries, including the US, where
children work in the agriculture sector.
That the US is also guilty of employing child
labour is evident from a paper brought out by Mr.
Douglas Kruse and Mr. Douglas Mahony from the
Rutgers University, 'Illegal Child Labour in the
United States: Prevalence and Characteristics, in
November 1997. (The CWC's website has links where
you can read the report.) The report's main
findings were that "an estimated 1,48,000
minors are employed illegally in an average week
- working too many hours or in hazardous
occupations - and 2,90,000 are employed illegally
at some point during a year" in the United
States.
It comments on the existence of child labour in
sweatshops: "Of 7,000 apparel firms with a
total of 1,05,000 employees in New York city,
about 4,500 firms employing 50,000 workers are
estimated to be sweatshops. An investigation of
339, or 5 per cent, of the apparel firms found a
total of 130 minors employed in violation of
child labour laws."
According to Ms. Kavita Ratna, Director,
Concerned for Working Children (CWC), if the US
move goes through, many children would lose their
jobs overnight, with no space or time to provide
other alternatives or educational opportunities
as governments do not want to lose the export
market for their goods. Another thing that could
happen is that these children could become
invisible, pushed to the background, to the
unorganised sector or move to the domestic sector,
where work conditions and human rights violation
are much worse.
According to Ms. Ratna, children working in the
export sectors were generally better paid and had
better working conditions. "What we need to
do is to prioritise other sectors, where children
are working in worse conditions, which need
urgent attention."
Several papers and studies have been published on
the situation arising in Bangladesh, when between
35,000 and 50,000 children, mostly girls, were
thrown out of jobs when Senator Tom Harkin's
Child Labour Deterrence Act was introduced in the
US Senate in 1995. The Act prohibits import of
goods produced abroad with child labou. "Although
out of work, the children were still left in a
harsh environment, with limited skills, no
education and few alternatives," says
Businessline, quoting an ILO study.
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