Global trade body has failed to check child labor

Dipak Basu, The Statesman, Asia News Network, Calcutta

The victory of the "developing countries" in the recent World Trade Organization meeting in Doha in stopping the inclusion of labor standards in trade issues is hollow, as labor exploitation in general, child labor and even slavery is getting worse in the developing countries.

In areas of India, Ghana, Indonesia and Senegal, according to the recent International Labor Organization survey, 25 percent of the children are working. If seasonal laborers are taken into account in Senegal the percentage can reach 40. In Ghana, more than 75 percent of the working children aged 10-14 were female.

There are an estimated 250 million child workers between the age of five and 14 in the world, without taking into account those who work with their families in mainly domestic activities.

The largest numbers of child laborers are in Asia, 44.6 million; followed by Africa, 23.6 million; and Latin America, 5.1 million.

Figures are only the tip of the iceberg. No reliable figures for workers under 10 are available, though their numbers are significant. In central and eastern Europe, the difficulties connected with the transition from a centrally planned to a market economy has led to a substantial increase in child labor. The same is true of the United States, where the growth of the service sector, the rapid increase in the supply of part-time jobs and the search for a more flexible work force have contributed to the expansion of the child labor market.

The largest group of working children is that of the unpaid family workers. A high proportion of the children give their wages to their parents or other relatives with whom they live.

Children's work is considered essential to maintain the economic level of the household, either in the form of work for wages, of help in household enterprises or of household chores that free adult household members for economic activity elsewhere.

Many of their parents, who suffer from illiteracy and ignorance, do not understand the importance of education. Moreover, the high cost of education is another obstacle for these children.

With the government shying away from the education sector to be replaced by the private sector, as part of the structural adjustment program initiated by the IMF and the World Bank, many children have to work to pay for their school. But many schools serving the poor are of such abysmal quality that many children drop out of school in frustration.

Child laborers in hazardous and other industrial work lead lives of degradation and hardship. Most are involved in farming and are routinely exposed to harsh climate, sharpened tools, heavy loads and increasingly to toxic chemicals and motorized equipment.

They are seldom aware of the potential risks involved in their specific occupations. A very high proportion of the children are physically injured or fall ill while working.

Girls working as domestic servants away from their homes, sometimes in various Middle Eastern countries, are frequent victims of physical, mental and sexual abuses which can have devastating consequences on their health.

ILO reports on child labor (December 1999) detailed conditions of forced prostitution to which female children are subjected. "The AIDS epidemic is a contributing factor to this trend, as adults see the use of children for sexual purposes as the best means of preventing infection."

There are child slaves in both South Asia, Middle Eastern countries, sub-Saharan Africa and in Latin America. In many cases a child is sold into slavery as a result of a labor contract that his or her parents have signed into or in exchange for a sum of money that is often described as an advance on wages.

Child slaves are to be found in agriculture, sex industry, carpet and textile industries, quarrying and brick making. It predominates where there are social systems based on exploitation of poverty such as debt bondage. It is also simply a means of survival. Brick kiln workers in Pakistan are a clear example of slave child labor.

Laborers are bonded to the owners through a system of advance payments whose interest rates are so high that workers can never repay them fully. Their children and wives are then forced to take responsibility for the debt. That creates a pool of bonded or slave child laborers who are tied to the owners of the brick making factories for life and unable to escape their "obligation".

Workers and their children are traded from one owner to another. Some workers are sold more than 10 times. No education or medical facilities are available for these children. Escape is not possible due to the close associations between the owners and the local police force. About 60 percent of the children start work below the age of 13.

The mortality rates among children are high and they suffer from blindness due to the presence of high degrees of lead in the mud. Blindness among older workers is around 15 to 20 percent. Owners insist that the children work unless they have to look after younger siblings. The children live in fear, witness physical violence meted out against their parents.

Slave markets operate openly in Bihar, one of the most backward parts of India. In the Sonepur cattle fair in Bihar state child laborers are sold like cattle. The operators there not only send child laborers to different states such as Punjab, Haryana and Delhi, but also "supply" them to various factories in some industrialized states.

The slave market has been operating for over a decade with the children brought to Bihar by contractors from Raxaul, Sitamarhi, Jogbani and some other towns close to the Nepal border. In the beginning, some poverty-stricken children were sent here by their parents so that they could earn something.

Taking advantage of their helplessness, some contractors engaged in supplying laborers to factories, grabbed the opportunity to sell these child laborers. The whereabouts of these sold children are not known. Many UNICEF-sponsored non- government organizations have set up their stalls at the fair but have failed to stop child abuse.

The arguments of the developing countries that inclusion of labor rights and environmental issues are meant to stop their exports to the developed world should not cut much ice. Developing countries suffer much more when they have liberated imports. The result is growing unemployment in the developing world where industries and agriculture are unable to compete.

Most developing countries, while gladly accepting unequal treaties from the World Trade Organization, opposed the inclusion of labor rights and environmental issues which are meant to benefit poor workers and children in the developing countries. If the developing countries would face trade sanctions through the WTO, they would be forced to implement fundamental human rights of workers and children.

Progressive measures sometimes come out of reactionary set- ups. Legislation implemented after the long campaigns of Lord Wilberforce against the slave trade or of Abraham Lincoln against slavery in the southern U.S. are some examples. The WTO is against the interests of the developing countries, no doubt, but inclusion of labor rights in trade issues, which may help to abolish child labor and slavery, can be a progressive act indeed.