The Right to Education
This week at Media Voices, we have a trailer for a film that reminds us that poor children have a right not just to education, but to quality in their education. Daniela Kon’s film, Talibe, exposes a persistent issue with some Islamic boarding schools in Senegal, where teachers treat their students as cash cows, requiring [...]
Getting to a New Push on Child Labor
“It is really difficult to combine school and work. One cannot do the two at the same time. I am always tired.” Nanfadima A, age 11, tells an interviewer in Mali. The eagerly awaited report by Gordon Brown, UN Special Envoy for Global Education, Child Labor and Educational Disadvantage: Breaking the Link, Building Opportunity, has [...]
EO 13126 – Products Produced by Forced or Indentured Child Labor
The Executive Order is intended to ensure that U.S. federal agencies do not procure goods made by forced or indentured child labor. It requires the Department of Labor, in consultation with the Departments of State and Homeland Security, to publish and maintain a list of products, by country of origin, which the three Departments have a reasonable basis to believe, might have been mined, produced or manufactured by forced or indentured child labor. Under the procurement regulations implementing the Executive Order, federal contractors who supply products on a list published by the Department of Labor must certify that they have made a good faith effort to determine whether forced or indentured child labor was used to produce the items listed.
2012 List of Goods Produced by Child Labor and Forced Labor
2012 report by DOL/ILAB required by the Trafficking Victims Protection Act on goods produced using child labor or forced labor worldwide. See also the 2011 DOL Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor, which is a file too long for us to upload, but well worth reading.
Where are the Victims? Where are the Prosecutions?
For the last several years, ECPAT-USA has been collecting news articles, press releases and, particularly, court documents that identify hotels that have been used as venues for the commercial sexual exploitation of children. By now, about 350 hotel properties have been found. This is by no means a complete enumeration of the hotels that have [...]
The Real Price of Cheap Clothing
This week at Media Voices, we are excited to introduce a new contributor, Sarah Johnson. Between her graduation from high school and college, Sarah spent several months working with kids who were living in Egypt as refugees, either internally displaced or fleeing wars in Libya and other trouble spots. She discovered that while it’s important [...]
Update on ‘Sumangali Scheme’
July 2012 update issued by the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO) and the Dutch NGO India Committee of the Netherlands on the efforts to combat the Sumangali Scheme at manufacturers in Tamil Nadu. Some brands have taken steps to distance themselves from questionable suppliers, but others, including “Diesel, Marks & Spencer, Ralph Lauren, Quicksilver and buying house Cristal Martin, that supplies well-known brands such as Mothercare, Next and GAP” still recruit poor girls to work for several years for a lump sum that is supposed to set them up with a dowry.
Understanding the Sumangali Scheme
A May 2012 report by the Fair Labor Association on the Sumangali Scheme in the South India textile industry. The textile and clothing industry in India employs an estimated 35 million people, and much of the country’s production occurs in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. Behind the scenes of this bustling industry, a troubling practice called the Sumangali Scheme continues to put the rights and lives of millions of young women at risk. In May 2012, the Fair Labor Association (FLA) and Solidaridad-South & South East Asia released a research report on the Sumangali Scheme – the practice of paying young women a lump sum to be used for a dowry at the end of a three-year term. Written by Solidaridad with support from the FLA, this report provides an overview of the Sumangali Scheme, presents stakeholder views, and offers the perspectives of some of the women and their families who are affected by this practice.
Slavery on the High Street
2012 Anti-Slavery International report on the routine use of forced labor of girls and young women in the spinning mills and garment factories of five Indian clothing manufacturers that supply major western clothing retail brands.
These were SP Apparel, Bannari Amman, SCM, Eastman and Prem Group. Export data from two Indian ports confirms dozens of major western brands purchasing garments from these companies.
The Indian companies recruit unmarried girls and women from poor ‘lower’ caste families to be spinners in their mills or workers in their factories. Around 60 per cent have a Dalit (“untouchable”) background.
Framework of Action on Child Labour in Agriculture
Global March Against Child Labour International Conference on Child Labour in Agriculture Washington DC, USA July 28-30, 2012 This International Conference on Child Labour in Agriculture (28-30 July 2012, Washington D.C., U.S.A.): • organised by the Global March Against Child Labour; • and attended by 156 participants from governments, intergovernmental agencies, trade unions, teacher organisations, [...]
Act Now to Urge Congress to Fight Child Traffickers
It’s been a year since the debt-ceiling standoff in Congress, a year in which deadlock has become the standard fare in American politics. Yet even in an election year, some crucial issues still transcend partisanship. Combating human trafficking is one such opportunity for Democrats and Republicans to cooperate and strengthen human rights in this country [...]
2011 Trafficking in Persons Report – Introductory Material
Executive summary and introductory material from the 2011 Trafficking in Persons report issued by the U.S. Department of State. For the first time this year, the Trafficking in Persons report includes the United States in the countries analyzed on how they are doing in the prevention of human trafficking and prosecution when it does occur. The report is too large to post here; for country profiles and the relevant international conventions, click here.
Child Trafficking: Changing the Odds, Denying the Profits
The first thing I noticed about Sanju Maya – the first child rescued by GoodWeave in 2012 – was her hands. I met Sanju Maya only weeks after she was found by our inspectors in Kathmandu. At 11, Sanju Maya has the body of an eight-year-old and hands of an 80-year-old, scarred from countless hours [...]
Getting to Social Justice – Inch by Inch
This week at Media Voices, we are looking at the Dalits’ struggle for full equality and the incremental shifts that are taking place in India and Nepal. SOMO, the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations, a Dutch NGO, has a follow-up on last year’s report, Captured by Cotton, on young Dalit girls working as bonded [...]
What They Have to Tell Us
This week at Media Voices, we have a wonderful film, I Have Something to Tell You, produced, directed and shot by Loch Phillipps for Unicef and UNFPA. Ten extraordinary young women, girls really, most of them orphaned in Liberia’s recently concluded civil wars, several of them living with no family support whatsoever, write down their [...]
Haiti Country Profile
from the 2010 US Department of Labor’s Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor
Down on the Farm
This week at Media Voices, Julia Perez highlights the Congressional Farm Belt resistance to changing labor regulations in a way that extends the same protections to youth working in agriculture as we have in all other labor sectors. Her piece, The Parental Exemption on Family Farms: If Corporations Are People, Are They Parents Too?, points [...]
Ukraine Country Profile
The US Department of Labor Bureau of International Labor Affairs releases a comprehensive study on the worst forms of child labor worldwide every year, tracking how individual countries are doing in the effort to eradicate child labor.
Moldova Country Profile
The US Department of Labor Bureau of International Labor Affairs releases a comprehensive study on the worst forms of child labor worldwide every year, tracking how individual countries are doing in the effort to eradicate child labor.
‘Supply’ and ‘Demand’
This week at Media Voices, we consider the phrase ‘supply and demand’ when thinking about how to combat the traffic in human beings. The Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women brings us a very insightful report this week, Moving Beyond ‘Supply’ and ‘Demand’ Catchphrases: Assessing the uses and limitations of demand-based approaches in anti-trafficking. Based [...]
Moving Beyond ‘Supply and Demand’ Catchphrases
This 2011 Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women report examines whether anti-trafficking initiatives to curb demand for commercial sex may actually end up creating a more favorable environment for trafficking of women and girls. GAATW suggests expanding the consideration of demand to include demands by migrant laborers for a safe and fair working environment.
Children For Sale
This week at Media Voices, I’ve been thinking about various ways in which children are commodified. Some are obvious, others less so. We have a piece with Frequently Asked Questions about child sex tourism from ECPAT International this week, Combating Sex Tourism: Questions and Answers.
Combating Sex Tourism: Questions and Answers
A report by ECPAT on frequently asked questions about child sex tourism, along with recommendations for governments, tourism operators and tourists for the prevention of commercial sexual exploitation of children
2011 List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor
Open publication – Free publishing – More bonded labor
