David Castro
Soccer4life
Top 10 Child Labor Facts. 10 Child Labor Facts Child labor, as defined by the International Labor Organization, is “work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development.”
The persistence of child labor is one of the biggest obstacles to human rights globally. Child labor perpetuates poverty by depriving children of education and subsequently renders these children without the skills needed to secure the future of their countries. 10 Child Labor Facts Australia annually imports $16 million worth of tobacco produced by child labor, including tobacco produced in the U.S. Many parents in impoverished countries push their children to work out of necessity.
One of the best ways to combat child labor is to provide fair wages and safe working conditions for parents so that they can provide for their families without being forced to depend on their children. Child slavery and chocolate. In "Chocolate's Child Slaves," CNN's David McKenzie travels into the heart of the Ivory Coast to investigate children working in the cocoa fields.
(More information and air times on CNN International.) By David McKenzie and Brent Swails, CNN Daloa, Ivory Coast (CNN) - Chocolate’s billion-dollar industry starts with workers like Abdul. He squats with a gang of a dozen harvesters on an Ivory Coast farm. Abdul holds the yellow cocoa pod lengthwise and gives it two quick cracks, snapping it open to reveal milky white cocoa beans. Abdul is 10 years old, a three-year veteran of the job. He has never tasted chocolate. During the course of an investigation for CNN’s Freedom Project initiative - an investigation that went deep into the cocoa fields of Ivory Coast - a team of CNN journalists found that child labor, trafficking and slavery are rife in an industry that produces some of the world’s best-known brands. For Kids: Children's lives. Stolen Childhoods. Iqbal Masih and Craig Kielburger: children against child labour. Young people have the power to make a difference The single biggest problem we've had is adults who will not take us seriously, who think that because we are young we will oversimplify the issue of child labour and not do our research.
Many of our members are as young as nine or ten years old but we do our research as well as taking action. Child labour is a very complex problem, that's the truth. But that can't be used as an excuse not to take action. Consumer pressure can change things. We're a group of young people who volunteer to give up some of their spare time to work on this issue. NI: You're only 14 years old, but you've travelled all over the world, you've often been interviewed on TV, you've talked to prime ministers and senators - isn't this difficult for a fourteen year-old? Well, I've met children who work 12 hours a day in agriculture, or sweatshops, or fighting a war. Laura Hannant is a girl aged 12, from Ottawa. Free the Children. Young Migrant Workers Toil in U.S. Fields. Santos Polendo remembers his first day of work like it was yesterday.
He was just 6 years old. "The weather was terrible," says the 16-year-old migrant farmworker from Eagle Pass, Texas. "I had blisters on my hands. My back was hurting. My head was hurting. Yet, for the past 10 summers, backbreaking farmwork has been part of Santos's life and that of some 800,000 other children in the U.S. Migrant children travel with their families throughout the United States to work in agriculture. Santos, however, is eager to break that cycle of unending labor. "We have tutors and instructors here that help migrant children with their assignments," says Roberto Oliveras, MET Youth Coordinator in Eagle Pass. Lost Education In many ways, Santos is lucky. Each May, the school year ends early for 15-year-old Dora Perez so that she can make the 30-hour drive with her family to Minnesota. "The work starts before school ends, so we just have to go," says Dora, a freshman at Eagle Pass High School. Mexico shuts down more than 20 coal pits.
Mexico's labour ministry has shut down more than 20 coal pits due to an investigation into illegal child labour, after snap inspections at 200 operations between December 2012 and February this year showed evidence of illegal employment of minors.
According to local news agency Notimex (in Spanish), the Ministry of Labour is preparing a draft bill that seeks to fully eradicated the high-risk practice, particularly in the state of Coahuila, which holds 80% of the country’s coal deposits. The Coahuila mines are noteworthy for being particularly unsafe. Tunnel collapses and methane gas explosions are common in the area’s north, which shares a border with Texas.
According to Mexican human rights groups, since the infiltration of the Zetas drug cartel in the industry, Mexico’s most violent and feared gang, miners are no longer allowed to utilize what limited safety protocols they previously had access to, making the environment all the more hazardous.