Child labour incidents

Cocoa production
Main articles: Children in cocoa production and Harkin-Engel Protocol
In 1998, UNICEF reported that Ivory Coast farmers used enslaved children many from
surrounding countries.
[90]
In late 2000 a BBC documentary reported the use of enslaved children
in the production of cocoathe main ingredient in chocolate
[91]
in West Africa.
[92][93]
Other
media followed by reporting widespread child slavery and child trafficking in the production of
cocoa.
[90][94][95]
In 2001, the US State Department estimated there were 15,000 child slaves
cocoa, cotton and coffee farms in the Ivory Coast,
[96]
and the Chocolate Manufacturers
Association acknowledged that child slavery is used in the cocoa harvest.
[96][not in citation
given][better source needed]

Malian migrants have long worked on cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast, but in 2000 cocoa prices
had dropped to a 10-year low and some farmers stopped paying their employees.
[97]
The Malian
counsel had to rescue some boys who had not been paid for five years and who were beaten if
they tried to run away.
[97]
Malian officials believed that 15,000 children, some as young as 11
years old, were working in the Ivory Coast in 2001. These children were often from poor
families or the slums and were sold to work in other countries.
[94]
Parents were told the children
would find work and send money home, but once the children left home, they often worked in
conditions resembling slavery.
[92]
In other cases, children begging for food were lured from bus
stations and sold as slaves.
[98]
In 2002, the Ivory Coast had 12,000 children with no relatives
nearby, which suggested they were trafficked,
[92]
likely from neighboring Mali, Burkina
Faso and Togo.
[99]

The cocoa industry was accused of profiting from child slavery and trafficking.
[100]
The
European Cocoa Association dismissed these accusations as "false and excessive"
[100]
and the
industry said the reports were not representative of all areas.
[101]
Later the industry acknowledged
the working conditions for children were unsatisfactory and children's rights were sometimes
violated
[102]
and acknowledged the claims could not be ignored. In a BBC interview, the
ambassador for Ivory Coast to the United Kingdom called these reports of widespread use of
slave child labour by 700,000 cocoa farmers as absurd and inaccurate.
[101]

In 2001, a voluntary agreement called the Harkin-Engel Protocol, was accepted by the
international cocoa and chocolate industry to eliminate the worst forms of child labour, as
defined by ILO's Convention 182, in West Africa.
[103]
This agreement created a foundation
named International Cocoa Initiative in 2002. The foundation claims it has, as of 2011, active
programs in 290 cocoa growing communities in Cte d'Ivoire and Ghana, reaching a total
population of 689,000 people to help eliminate the worst forms of child labour in cocoa
industry.
[104]
Other organisations claim progress has been made, but the protocol's 2005
deadlines have not yet been met.
[105][106][107]

Mining in Africa


Children engaged in diamond mining in Sierra Leone.
In 2008, Bloomberg claimed child labour in copper and cobalt mines that supplied Chinese
companies in Congo. The children are creuseurs, that is they dig the ore by hand, carry sacks of
ores on their backs, and these are then purchased by these companies. Over 60 of Katanga's75
processing plants are owned by Chinese companies and 90 percent of the region's minerals go to
China.
[108]
An African NGO report claimed 80,000 child labourers under the age of 15, or about
40% of all miners, were supplying ore to Chinese companies in this African region.
[109]

BBC, in 2012, accused Glencore of using child labour in its mining and smelting operations of
Africa. Glencore denied it used child labour, and said it has strict policy of not using child
labour. The company claimed it has a strict policy whereby all copper was mined correctly,
placed in bags with numbered seals and then sent to the smelter. Glencore mentioned being
aware of child miners who were part of a group of artisanal miners who had without
authorisation raided the concession awarded to the company since 2010; Glencore has been
pleading with the government to remove the artisanal miners from the concession.
[110]

Small-scale artisanal mining of gold is another source of dangerous child labour in poor rural
areas in certain parts of the world.
[111]
This form of mining uses labour-intensive and low-tech
methods. It is informal sector of the economy. Human Rights Watch group estimates that about
12 percent of global gold production comes from artisanal mines. In west Africa, in countries
such as Mali - the third largest exporter of gold in Africa - between 20,000 and 40,000 children
work in artisanal mining. Locally known as orpaillage, children as young as 6 years old work
with their families. These children and families suffer chronic exposure to toxic chemicals
including mercury, and do hazardous work such as digging shafts and working underground,
pulling up, carrying and crushing the ore. The poor work practices harm the long term health of
children, as well as release hundreds of tons of mercury every year into local rivers, ground
water and lakes. Gold is important to the economy of Mali and Ghana. For Mali, it is the second
largest earner of its export revenue. For many poor families with children, it is the primary and
sometimes the only source of income.
[112][113]

Meatpacking
In early August 2008, Iowa Labour Commissioner David Neil announced that his department
had found that Agriprocessors, a kosher meatpacking company in Postville which had recently
been raided by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, had employed 57 minors, some as young
as 14, in violation of state law prohibiting anyone under 18 from working in a meatpacking plant.
Neil announced that he was turning the case over to the state Attorney General for prosecution,
claiming that his department's inquiry had discovered "egregious violations of virtually every
aspect of Iowa's child labour laws."
[114]
Agriprocessors claimed that it was at a loss to understand
the allegations. Agriprocessors' CEO went to trial on these charges in state court on 4 May 2010.
After a five-week trial he was found not guilty of all 57 charges of child labour violations by the
Black Hawk County District Court jury in Waterloo, Iowa, on 7 June 2010.
[115]

GAP
A 2007 report claimed some GAP products had been produced by child labourers. GAP
acknowledged the problem and announced it is pulling the products from its shelf.
[116]
The report
found Gap had rigorous social audit systems since 2004 to eliminate child labour in its supply
chain. However, the report concluded that the system was being abused by unscrupulous
subcontractors.
GAP's policy, the report claimed, is that if it discovers child labour was used by its supplier in its
branded clothes, the contractor must remove the child from the workplace, provide it with access
to schooling and a wage, and guarantee the opportunity of work on reaching a legal working age.
In 2007, The New York Times reported that GAP, after the child labour discovery, created a
$200,000 grant to improve working conditions in the supplier community.
[117]

H&M and Zara
In December 2009, campaigners in the UK called on two leading high street retailers to stop
selling clothes made with cotton which may have been picked by children. Anti-Slavery
International and the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) accused H&M and Zara of using
cotton suppliers in Bangladesh. It is also suspected that many of their raw materials originates
from Uzbekistan, where children aged 10 are forced to work in the fields. The activists were
calling to ban the use of Uzbek cotton and implement a "track and trace" systems to guarantee an
ethical responsible source of the material.
H&M said it "does not accept" child labour and "seeks to avoid" using Uzbek cotton, but
admitted it did "not have any reliable methods" to ensure Uzbek cotton did not end up in any of
its products. Inditex, the owner of Zara, said its code of conduct banned child labour.
[118]

Silk weaving
A 2003 Human Rights Watch report claimed children as young as five years old were employed
and worked for up to 12 hours a day and six to seven days a week in silk industry.
[119]
These
children, claimed HRW, were bonded child labour in India, easy to find in Karnataka, Uttar
Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.
[120]

In 2010, a German news investigative report claimed that in silk weaving industry, non-
governmental organisations (NGOs) had found up to 10,000 children working in the 1,000 silk
factories in 1998. In other places, thousands of bonded child labour were present in 1994. After
UNICEF and NGOs got involved, after 2005, child labour figure is drastically lower, with the
total estimated to be fewer than a thousand child labourers. The released children were back in
school, claims the report.
[121]

Primark
In 2008, the BBC reported
[122]
on Primark using child labour in the manufacture of clothing. In
particular, a 4 hand-embroidered shirt was the starting point of a documentary produced
by BBC's Panorama programme. The programme asks consumers to ask themselves, "Why am I
only paying 4 for a hand embroidered top? This item looks handmade. Who made it for such
little cost?", in addition to exposing the violent side of the child labour industry in countries
where child exploitation is prevalent.
As a result of the BBC report, Royal Television Society awarded it a prise, and Primark took
immediate action and fired three Indian suppliers in 2008.
[123]

Primark continued to investigate the allegations for three years,
[124]
concluding that BBC report
was a fake. In 2011, following an investigation by the BBC Trusts Editorial Standards
Committee, the BBC announced, "Having carefully scrutinised all of the relevant evidence, the
committee concluded that, on the balance of probabilities, it was more likely than not that
the Bangalore footage was not authentic." BBC subsequently apologised for faking footage, and
returned the television award for investigative reporting.
[125][126][127]