17 – Child Labor

The issue of cocoa harvesting raises the matter of child labor—which is a much more complicated issue than it may appear to be at first.

Much of the clothing we stock at Cultures Boutique, the YMCA’s fair trade gift and clothing store in Fredericton, carries two labels. One identifies the article as a fair trade product. The other attests that no child labor was used in the production of the item.

While it is important to insure products do not make use of exploitive child labor, Fair Trade principles do not prohibit child labor per se.

Many young North American children are encouraged to take employment which earns them less than the official minimum age. Baby-sitting is an example. It is generally considered that such work provides not only a useful service but also “builds character.”

Children can also have household obligations. In farming families, those responsibilities may include caring for livestock, working during harvests, and so on.

The issue in developing countries is not that children should be prohibited from contributing to the economic well-being of their families, but that in doing so they are not deprived of those basic rights due to all children and young people. Non-exploitive conditions will allow the child to work without interfering with his or her ability to attend school and will allow adequate time for play and other social activities. Working conditions must also be appropriate; they must not put physical or psychological strain on the child.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is based on four core principles: 1) non-discrimination, 2) ensuring the best interests of the child, 3) the right to life, survival and development, 4) and respect for the views of the child. For much of the world, the right to life, survival and development also requires that children contribute to the economic stability of their families. And as long as they do so in a manner which is non-exploitive and guarantees that the other principles are respected, such work is reasonable.

Article 32 of the convention defines exploitive child labor as any work which “is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child's education, or to be harmful to the child's health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development.” UNICEF estimates that nearly 160 million children between the ages of 5 to 14 are currently engaged in some form of labor which contravenes the convention. And the horrors of the conditions under which some of these children labor have been well publicized.

The campaign to eliminate child labor is rooted in a basic recognition that children have the right to be children and should not be exploited. However, if the campaign is not tempered, it can have dangerous and unexpected consequences. In one carefully document case, when legislation was passed in the United States to deter the importation of clothing produced by child labor, some 50,000 children in Bangladesh lost their jobs in the garment industry. According to UNICEF, many of those children then had to resort to much more dangerous ways of earning a living, including entering into prostitution.

Those who seek to abolish child labor would serve those children better if they worked to insure that any labor children are involved in is humane, safe, and allows freedom for other childhood activities including both education and play. It must also be recognized that child labor cannot be dealt with independently. A genuine desire to curtail child labor must include a commitment to promote development in Southern Nations so that the families of these children have access to a reasonable standard of living and the satisfaction of basic human needs.