WOULD IT BE POSSIBLE TO ELIMINATE CHILD LABOR FROM SUPPLY CHAIN?
I. PREVALENCE OF CHILD LABOR
According to the Guardian, Friday 25 January 2013, Apple’s annual supplier report in 2012 reported that one hundred and six (106) children - under the age of 15 or under the legal working age in any jurisdiction, which is 16 in China – had been employed at eleven (11) factories making its products during its internal audit and 70 cases historically. A number of them had been employed using forged identity papers. And, according to the results of the study of Nestlé’s cocoa supply chain carried out by the FLA with Nestlé’s support that started in November 2011 and published in June 2012, Nestlé's cocoa supply chain was found numerous child labor violations.
Two examples of child labor in supply chain above are just specific cases. However, if we are looking at the worldwide picture, there are over 215 million children working across the world and of these 115 million are thought to be involved in hazardous work according to the International Labor Organization (ILO). The number of those between the ages of 5-14 and engaged in child labor is estimated by UNICEF at around 150 million.
According to the Guardian, Friday 25 January 2013, Apple’s annual supplier report in 2012 reported that one hundred and six (106) children - under the age of 15 or under the legal working age in any jurisdiction, which is 16 in China – had been employed at eleven (11) factories making its products during its internal audit and 70 cases historically. A number of them had been employed using forged identity papers. And, according to the results of the study of Nestlé’s cocoa supply chain carried out by the FLA with Nestlé’s support that started in November 2011 and published in June 2012, Nestlé's cocoa supply chain was found numerous child labor violations.
Two examples of child labor in supply chain above are just specific cases. However, if we are looking at the worldwide picture, there are over 215 million children working across the world and of these 115 million are thought to be involved in hazardous work according to the International Labor Organization (ILO). The number of those between the ages of 5-14 and engaged in child labor is estimated by UNICEF at around 150 million.
There are no easy answers to this question: “How can businesses and related stakeholders ensure ethical production, free from child labor in this rapidly changing environment?”, but we can study the causes that lead children to work and if it would be possible to eliminate child labor successfully in the supply chain.
II. WHY CHILDREN WORK?
According to the Maplecroft’s Child labor index 2012, it is noted that the extreme risks of child labor are concentrated in the developing countries. Then, a question would be why child labor is popular in developing countries. Child labor is a complex and baffling problem that is influenced by numbers of contributing factors.
Poverty: Poverty is often cited as the main causes of child labor and is the most compelling reasons why children work. Most of the working children are from the poor and low income families. They need to have some income to cover their merely basic needs such as food to eat, water to drink, clothes to wear, a place to stay. These families cannot afford to NOT let their children work and the income provided by working children is often critical to their survival. Parents simply have no other choice. For example, a major problem in Africa is HIV/AIDS. Millions of children on this continent have to care for their sick parents or are orphaned as a result of the AIDS epidemic and children do need to work to earn penny.
Further, eighty per cent of the world's population has to live without any social security or free social benefits access. They have no protection against risks and/or very limited access to social security and benefits such as sickness, unemployment and poverty in young age and old age. In addition, existing systems are often under-funded and redistribute existing resources to benefit more affluent population groups. Therefore, those families that have limited access to social security or social benefits or no protection at all, especially the poor and low income families, have to stand on their own feet to manage by themselves and in special circumstances such as father dies, mother is sick who could not afford to work and need money for treatment, child’s younger siblings need to be fed and taken care, the parents have no choice but let their older kids to work to keep them survived. Numerous poor and low income families rely on the income of their children contribution.
Education: Education systems, school compulsory and accessibility vary from country to country, especially the developing countries. There are many factors that make the parents and children decide to go to work instead of going to school.
Awareness, culture and tradition – Poverty, cost of education, availability of school, level of relevance of education to the daily life needs, the parents are likely to share a cultural norm in which labor is seen as the most productive use of a child’s time.
Parents who are poor and has limited access to school or education or never attended school, for example, believe that education is not for them or do not see the point of it or the benefits of it. They think that work is part of a child’s upbringing and that children learn more from working than at school. Supposedly, children learn more practical skills and are better prepared for themselves in future and in the labor market if they work. Therefore, it is considered normal and more benefits for children to work. In those developing countries where the poverty reduction is still one of the priority in the governmental agenda of social economic development, and there is little governmental and social pressures to send children to school.
Further, those parents who are struggling to survive and could not afford for their children to school perceive that it is a better option to let the children work than leaving them idle and staying around home because there are many temptations and social evils in their surroundings and in the society. Just being ignorant and/or negligent for a minute, their kids would be tempted and abused.
Even when schools are accessible and affordable, parents face a trade-off and the loss of their children’s labor in deciding to send their children to school. Families have to see a net advantage to themselves and to their children from forgoing children’s full-time participation in domestic and economic activities. Children are often expected to follow in their parents’ footsteps and are frequently summoned to “help” other members of the family, often at a young age. For example, those rural parents unable withdrew or kept them away from school during important seasonal events like harvest and fishing.
Market demand – Labor force shortage, child labor is not accidental. Child labor is intentionally employed because there is labor shortage. Further, child labor is normally “cheaper” than the adult labor, they can be dispensed of or dismissed easily if labor demands or production orders fluctuate and also form a docile, obedient work-force that will not seek to organize itself for rights protection and support, or campaigns against the employers.
Income shock – households that do not have the means to deal with income shocks, such as natural disasters, the impact of epidemic diseases, economic or agricultural crises …that usually leading severe loss, may have to use the last resort of sending their children to work as child labor as a coping mechanism, especially in those countries with poor or lack of national insurance, or national social security or social benefits to cover or share the loss with the people in circumstances. The phenomenon of child-headed households and/or orphaned children has to work to care for their families and younger siblings.
Legislation and policies to protect children - Child labor persists when national laws and policies to protect children are lacking and/or not effectively implemented. Further, constituted attitudes, social injustice, discrimination, exclusion, bureaucratic obstacles, and lack of political will are the main reasons that children work and do not go to school. In some areas and some countries, it is still considered normal for children to work instead of going to school.
Governments do not provide compulsory, free and accessible education to all kids, and/or the education system excludes poor and vulnerable children. People accept child labor and invent excuses for it. Consumers worldwide demand cheap products, employers can benefit from cheap labor, no decent work or adequate work for adults, international agreements and conventions are not observed or strongly executed. The related parties have not done enough to stop child labor and children’s rights are not respected in full spirit.
III. HOW TO STOP CHILD LABOR:
Child laborers are at a high risk of illness, injury and even death due to a wide variety of machinery, biological, physical, chemical, ergonomic, welfare/hygiene and psycho-social hazards, as well as from long hours of work and poor living conditions. The work hazards and risks that affect adult workers can affect child laborers even more strongly. For example, physical strain, especially when combined with repetitive movements, on growing bones and joints can cause stunting, spinal injury and other life-long deformation and disabilities. Children often also suffer psychological damage from working and living in an environment where they are belittled, denigrated, harassed or experience violence and abuse. In addition, child labor has a profound effect on a child’s future. Childhood is a critical time for safe and healthy human development because children are still growing they have special characteristics and needs, in terms of physical, cognitive, conceptual and behavioral development and growth, that must be taken into serious consideration.
As briefly analyzed above, there are multiple reasons and causes leading to child labor both subjectively and objectively. Besides, it is a trauma that there are many cases that the children themselves voluntarily applied for a job using fake documents and I.D since they have no other choice: joining workforce for better life or joining gangster groups or social evil gang groups out there in the society .
In practice, many stakeholders including global brands and suppliers have made multiple efforts to eliminate child labor from the supply chain and their workplace. It would not be easy to stop child labor practice as long as poverty exists. Efforts from one or two parties would not help to stop it successfully. It required multiple efforts from multiple stakeholders from the parents, the children themselves, global brands, business owners and upstream to the national governments and international organizations. So, the only effective way of solving the problem of child labor is to improve the living standards of a country including eliminating poverty, creating decent, stable and sustainable jobs and opportunities for adults and/or parents, innovating the national social security and social benefits to ensure all children’s rights and benefits are provided, protected and to ensure the children have free access to schools or education, improving the education quality and opportunities and so forth. In order to improve the living standards, there must have an effective government because eliminating child labor must be solved from the system of government itself. It is believed that the family may have enough to support themselves without having to send their children to work if there are effective social security backups provided by the governments and related stakeholders.
It would not work if the related stakeholders just ban child labor since work is necessary for some people to survive. What needed are the effective laws to protect the rights and well-beings of the child and family income, the well enforced systems and legal structures to make this work. Global brands and business owners can just contribute a fraction of its profits and governments from developed countries can just donate a fraction of its money to the developing countries to assist and support them with capacity building, with the establishing and functioning of the governmental programs including poverty elimination, effective compulsory and assessable educational systems to all children, social security and social benefits mechanism, job creation, life skills programs, backups programs, awareness raising, fair and decent workplace as well as capacity to control and monitor workplace affairs. Together with the strong will of national governments itself in eliminating child labor, the problem could be solved successfully as it works in the developed countries.
Posted by: July 15, 2013
Written by: Huong Vu
Compliance, CSR and Sustainability Advisor
II. WHY CHILDREN WORK?
According to the Maplecroft’s Child labor index 2012, it is noted that the extreme risks of child labor are concentrated in the developing countries. Then, a question would be why child labor is popular in developing countries. Child labor is a complex and baffling problem that is influenced by numbers of contributing factors.
Poverty: Poverty is often cited as the main causes of child labor and is the most compelling reasons why children work. Most of the working children are from the poor and low income families. They need to have some income to cover their merely basic needs such as food to eat, water to drink, clothes to wear, a place to stay. These families cannot afford to NOT let their children work and the income provided by working children is often critical to their survival. Parents simply have no other choice. For example, a major problem in Africa is HIV/AIDS. Millions of children on this continent have to care for their sick parents or are orphaned as a result of the AIDS epidemic and children do need to work to earn penny.
Further, eighty per cent of the world's population has to live without any social security or free social benefits access. They have no protection against risks and/or very limited access to social security and benefits such as sickness, unemployment and poverty in young age and old age. In addition, existing systems are often under-funded and redistribute existing resources to benefit more affluent population groups. Therefore, those families that have limited access to social security or social benefits or no protection at all, especially the poor and low income families, have to stand on their own feet to manage by themselves and in special circumstances such as father dies, mother is sick who could not afford to work and need money for treatment, child’s younger siblings need to be fed and taken care, the parents have no choice but let their older kids to work to keep them survived. Numerous poor and low income families rely on the income of their children contribution.
Education: Education systems, school compulsory and accessibility vary from country to country, especially the developing countries. There are many factors that make the parents and children decide to go to work instead of going to school.
- Cost of education: basic education is not free and not compulsory in majority of developing countries. The compulsory or basic education delivery does not include compensatory programs within the formal education system to schools and/or no additional funds provided to the families, especially the poor and low income families, to the children themselves or to the schools which enroll disadvantaged children and most of these schools are of fairly low quality in most senses. Many families and parents can’t afford to pay school fee or cost of attending school such as activity fees, uniforms, paper and pens, learning materials, transport, lunches, expenses for boarding and other expenses including fees or contribution in kind to the construction and maintenance of the schools. Children of the poor are least apt to attend or complete school than children from better off families. In situations where education is not affordable or parents see no value in education, children are sent to work rather than to school and/or children themselves opt to work rather than to school.
- Availability of school: School is not always available for all children and lack of comprehensive school network, especially in remote rural areas or poor urban districts. Children are likely to live in marginal or relatively inaccessible areas with poor infrastructure. Children in rural areas or poor urban districts have to walk extremely long distances to school. The opportunity of attending school is challenging to them. However, if schools were to be within walking distance in sparsely populated areas, this would result in the construction and maintenance of schools for small numbers of children.
- Relevance of Education: Where schools are available, the quality of education can be poor and the content not relevant. The present education systems do not have relevant curricula; not related to the daily lives of students and not providing practical skills for students. All these have been organized because it is believed that in the formal school system, content and teaching methods are often inappropriate to tackle the needs of the disadvantaged children and the poor children. The curriculum fails to take into account of the economic realities of the society, the existing power structures, and lack of employment opportunities. Lack of teaching staff, existing staff is poorly trained and ill-prepared for what awaits them in schools. The literature is also full of many reasons as to why poor and low income families and children opt to work rather than to school.
Awareness, culture and tradition – Poverty, cost of education, availability of school, level of relevance of education to the daily life needs, the parents are likely to share a cultural norm in which labor is seen as the most productive use of a child’s time.
Parents who are poor and has limited access to school or education or never attended school, for example, believe that education is not for them or do not see the point of it or the benefits of it. They think that work is part of a child’s upbringing and that children learn more from working than at school. Supposedly, children learn more practical skills and are better prepared for themselves in future and in the labor market if they work. Therefore, it is considered normal and more benefits for children to work. In those developing countries where the poverty reduction is still one of the priority in the governmental agenda of social economic development, and there is little governmental and social pressures to send children to school.
Further, those parents who are struggling to survive and could not afford for their children to school perceive that it is a better option to let the children work than leaving them idle and staying around home because there are many temptations and social evils in their surroundings and in the society. Just being ignorant and/or negligent for a minute, their kids would be tempted and abused.
Even when schools are accessible and affordable, parents face a trade-off and the loss of their children’s labor in deciding to send their children to school. Families have to see a net advantage to themselves and to their children from forgoing children’s full-time participation in domestic and economic activities. Children are often expected to follow in their parents’ footsteps and are frequently summoned to “help” other members of the family, often at a young age. For example, those rural parents unable withdrew or kept them away from school during important seasonal events like harvest and fishing.
Market demand – Labor force shortage, child labor is not accidental. Child labor is intentionally employed because there is labor shortage. Further, child labor is normally “cheaper” than the adult labor, they can be dispensed of or dismissed easily if labor demands or production orders fluctuate and also form a docile, obedient work-force that will not seek to organize itself for rights protection and support, or campaigns against the employers.
Income shock – households that do not have the means to deal with income shocks, such as natural disasters, the impact of epidemic diseases, economic or agricultural crises …that usually leading severe loss, may have to use the last resort of sending their children to work as child labor as a coping mechanism, especially in those countries with poor or lack of national insurance, or national social security or social benefits to cover or share the loss with the people in circumstances. The phenomenon of child-headed households and/or orphaned children has to work to care for their families and younger siblings.
Legislation and policies to protect children - Child labor persists when national laws and policies to protect children are lacking and/or not effectively implemented. Further, constituted attitudes, social injustice, discrimination, exclusion, bureaucratic obstacles, and lack of political will are the main reasons that children work and do not go to school. In some areas and some countries, it is still considered normal for children to work instead of going to school.
Governments do not provide compulsory, free and accessible education to all kids, and/or the education system excludes poor and vulnerable children. People accept child labor and invent excuses for it. Consumers worldwide demand cheap products, employers can benefit from cheap labor, no decent work or adequate work for adults, international agreements and conventions are not observed or strongly executed. The related parties have not done enough to stop child labor and children’s rights are not respected in full spirit.
III. HOW TO STOP CHILD LABOR:
Child laborers are at a high risk of illness, injury and even death due to a wide variety of machinery, biological, physical, chemical, ergonomic, welfare/hygiene and psycho-social hazards, as well as from long hours of work and poor living conditions. The work hazards and risks that affect adult workers can affect child laborers even more strongly. For example, physical strain, especially when combined with repetitive movements, on growing bones and joints can cause stunting, spinal injury and other life-long deformation and disabilities. Children often also suffer psychological damage from working and living in an environment where they are belittled, denigrated, harassed or experience violence and abuse. In addition, child labor has a profound effect on a child’s future. Childhood is a critical time for safe and healthy human development because children are still growing they have special characteristics and needs, in terms of physical, cognitive, conceptual and behavioral development and growth, that must be taken into serious consideration.
As briefly analyzed above, there are multiple reasons and causes leading to child labor both subjectively and objectively. Besides, it is a trauma that there are many cases that the children themselves voluntarily applied for a job using fake documents and I.D since they have no other choice: joining workforce for better life or joining gangster groups or social evil gang groups out there in the society .
In practice, many stakeholders including global brands and suppliers have made multiple efforts to eliminate child labor from the supply chain and their workplace. It would not be easy to stop child labor practice as long as poverty exists. Efforts from one or two parties would not help to stop it successfully. It required multiple efforts from multiple stakeholders from the parents, the children themselves, global brands, business owners and upstream to the national governments and international organizations. So, the only effective way of solving the problem of child labor is to improve the living standards of a country including eliminating poverty, creating decent, stable and sustainable jobs and opportunities for adults and/or parents, innovating the national social security and social benefits to ensure all children’s rights and benefits are provided, protected and to ensure the children have free access to schools or education, improving the education quality and opportunities and so forth. In order to improve the living standards, there must have an effective government because eliminating child labor must be solved from the system of government itself. It is believed that the family may have enough to support themselves without having to send their children to work if there are effective social security backups provided by the governments and related stakeholders.
It would not work if the related stakeholders just ban child labor since work is necessary for some people to survive. What needed are the effective laws to protect the rights and well-beings of the child and family income, the well enforced systems and legal structures to make this work. Global brands and business owners can just contribute a fraction of its profits and governments from developed countries can just donate a fraction of its money to the developing countries to assist and support them with capacity building, with the establishing and functioning of the governmental programs including poverty elimination, effective compulsory and assessable educational systems to all children, social security and social benefits mechanism, job creation, life skills programs, backups programs, awareness raising, fair and decent workplace as well as capacity to control and monitor workplace affairs. Together with the strong will of national governments itself in eliminating child labor, the problem could be solved successfully as it works in the developed countries.
Posted by: July 15, 2013
Written by: Huong Vu
Compliance, CSR and Sustainability Advisor