Child Labour

With more than 350 million children aged 5-17 classed as “economically active” by the International Labour Organisation, children account for a substantial proportion of the global workforce. Around half of this total is considered to be acceptable: 15- and 16- year-olds working full time in safe conditions, or younger children doing hours after school. But much of the rest, in the ILO's words, “is not jobs for kids…its is adults exploiting the young, naïve, innocent, weak, venerable and insecure for personal profit”.

While the issue is widely associated in the West with stitching footballs and sports shoes, in reality the problem is much more diverse, the most widely affected industries include silk, carpet, weaving, brassware and glassware, precious stone cutting, mining, leather tanneries and farming. A frightening 170 million children are involved in work classified as hazardous, and of these more than a third- roughly an equivalent number to the entire population of the UK- are aged eleven or under. At the most shocking end of the spectrum, at least eight million children are stuck in what the ILO describes as the “unconditional worst forms of child labour”: armed conflict, forced and bonded labour, prostitution, pornography and illegal activities.

While (nearly) everyone agrees that it's imperative to end all dangerous and degrading forms of child labour, there's no consensus on the best response to the hundreds of millions who are working in safe, or at least relatively safe, conditions. Studies by the ILO have shown that if all child workers were put through education instead of working, the result would be an enormous boost not only to the children's quality of life, but also to the economy of their countries. However, in most cases, no one is offering to pay for these children to be educated and, until someone does, a clampdown may simply exacerbate the problems, forcing it underground and further marginalizing and impoverishing the children involved. After all, child labour tends to be primarily a symptom of poverty (though interestingly it appears to be more common in households which own land), and banning it is unlikely to reduce this poverty.

So where does all this leave the concerned shopper? One thing worth noting is that the vast majority- probably around 95%- of child labourers are not working in the formal economy creating goods for export to the West. They're largely for local or domestic market on subsistence farms, or producing silk, bricks, cigarettes or matches; a large number are also working in “domestic service”. As such, some people say that the best way forward is to encourage more global trade- since child labour is a symptom of poverty, and world trade, they argue, is the best way to make countries richer. Others claim that it's none of our business- it's a cultural issue and we shouldn't meddle. This debate is bound to run and run.

But what about the 5% of children- still a number in the millions- who are producing goods for the West, making clothes, carpets, shoes and furniture, tanning leather and mining and polishing gems? Should we demand that all our goods are “child labour free”?

For factory-produced goods, at least, the obvious answer is yes. If global trade, as its advocates claim, is providing valuable and in-demand jobs in the poor world, then surely it would make sense for these jobs to go to poor adults rather than poor children (not least as the adults may then be able to afford to send their children to school). But in other areas, such as more craft-based industries, there's an argument to say that an unqualified demand for child-labour-free goods may add up to refusing to do business with the poorest people, hence worsening their position.

Partly, it all depends on who's in charge and what other opportunities- if any- will be offered to children who currently are working. A faceless directive from corporate headquarters to stamp out all child labour- or to pull out from any regions where child labour is widespread- may do more harm than good, with desperate children left with no option but to turn to dangerous work, crime or even prostitution. According to Oxfam, this is exactly what happened in Pakistan , where large numbers of child labourers were found to be making Western footballs a few years ago.

But local schemes set up specifically to deal with the problem- such as RUGMARK ( www.rugmark.org ) label for South Asian rugs- have shown that with appropriate monitoring and focus it's possible to reduce child labour constructively, using a labelling system both to inform Western consumers and fund education for ex-child labourers.

The Rough Guide to Ethical Shopping by Duncan Clark