Jun 12, 2012
More than 215 million children worldwide are involved in child labor, reports the International Labor Organization (ILO). More than half are exposed to slavery, forced labor, armed conflict, drug trafficking, and prostitution. Child labor denies young boys and girls the basic health, education, and childhood to which they are entitled.
Ten years ago today, the ILO launched “World Day against Child Labor” as a way to create awareness and educate the international community about the exploitation of children through child labor. This year’s theme is “Human Rights and Social Justice: Let’s End Child Labor.” Commemorative events include high-level panels, press conferences, awareness raising campaigns, and cultural performances in more than 50 countries around the world. Participating are governments, employers, UN organizations, NGOs, and others working to eradicate child labor. Additionally, the ILO is publishing a Policy Note titled, “Tackling Child Labor: From Commitment to Action,” that illustrates the steps being taken by ILO member states to address the issue.
“There is no room for complacency when 215 million children are still laboring to survive and more than half of these are exposed to the worst forms of child labor, including slavery and involvement in armed conflict,” said ILO Director-General Juan Somavia. “We cannot allow the eradication of child labor to slip down the development agenda—all countries should be striving to achieve this target, individually and collectively.”
Jun 12, 2012
Poor education, poverty, and unemployment due to decades of occupation have pushed children in Palestine into the streets, where they beg passersby to purchase chewing gum, clothing, and other items. By raising awareness of this humanitarian crisis and pushing for better laws, the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) is part of the fight to end child labor and make sure children can stay in school. PGFTU recently published the stories of two children, Ahmed and Jarrah, in an effort to spread the word.
Ahmed: ‘I Will Not Leave School’
Ahmed (not his real name) stands at a traffic light in the cold, carrying packs of chewing gum in his little hands, knocking on the windows of the stopped cars in the hope that someone will buy the chewing gum he is selling. Some buy the gum, some reprimand him, and some ignore him. As a luxury car comes to a stop, he pleads with his eyes. The woman in the car condescends to him and buys a pack of gum, giving him 5 shekels (about $1). His face shows his delight at the generosity of this rich woman.
Ahmed is 14 years old. After his father died, as the oldest of four brothers, he had to take responsibility and help provide for his family. Although his mother receives a widow’s pension from the ministry of social affairs, it is not enough to support all of them in light of prohibitive prices, which increase day by day. “Almost every day, as soon as school ends, I go to the traffic light carrying gum to sell,” he says. “I spend three to four hours per day selling it and earn a maximum of 30 to 50 shekels ($6 to $10), which goes to help my family.”
Ahmed is focused on getting a good education, though. “I will not leave school,” he says, “but will work after school, and I will complete my education and enter university, and I will realize the dream of my father, with Allah’s mercy, and become an engineer.”
On the way to Nablus from Haifa Street, near the Mosque of Peace, the bearded Sheikh sees him selling the Quran—the little boy who jumps from one corner to another, chasing this car and that, trying to persuade passengers to buy a copy of the holy book, asking them how many shekels they can spare, begging them to take pity on a child who must earn a livelihood in this way.
Jarrah (not his real name) is 12 years old and lives in the Ein refugee camp, near Nablus. He has been selling the Quran for a year. Before that he sold clothes, he says, but people refused to buy them, so he switched to prayer papers, but the prayers were not popular either. “Then I was asked by a bearded young man living in the camp to sell Qurans for him for 5 shekels each, and he told me that he would give me a half-shekel for each Quran I sell,” says Jarrah. “The demand for the Quran is acceptable.”
Sometimes Jarrah does not succeed in the hunt for customers, and he must work for several additional hours, regardless of the harshness of the night or the cold of winter. He recognizes that selling in traffic scares him even more than the cold weather. Often he returns to his home at the camp with only a few shekels to spare for school expenses. Jarrah admits that most of the time he does not get home until after midnight and falls asleep before he can review his lessons for the next day. Because of this, he says, his grades at school are bad, but he has no choice: He must work to support himself and his family.
Jun 8, 2012
With the safety and security of staff under increasing threat, the Worker Support Center (CAT, Centro de Apoyo al Trabajador) in Mexico has been forced to close its office in Puebla. The decision was based on a risk assessment conducted following the kidnapping and torture of one of CAT’s human rights defenders, Enrique Morales Montaño, on May 15, and ongoing threats against other CAT staff.
The director of CAT, Blanca Velázquez Díaz, who received a death threat in 2011, received a text message just hours after the kidnapping saying that she would be next. CAT’s office also was robbed and vandalized in December 2010.
Mexico’s Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Project (Proyecto de Derechos Económicos, Sociales y Culurales, ProDESC) and CAT, with broad national and international support, last year requested that the National Commission of Human Rights and the Puebla State Commission of Human Rights grant immediate precautionary measures to protect CAT members in their work. While this request was granted and implemented in 2011, the Puebla State Commission suspended the measures in April 2012 without any headway having been made in the investigations of these threats and without having conducted a risk analysis that would have justified the decision, according to the CAT and ProDESC. The attack on Morales took place one month later. An online petition campaign to the Mexican government on behalf of CAT has gained more than 5,000 signatures.
The Mexican mineworkers union, Los Mineros, together with national and international human rights groups including ProDESC, the UN Office for the High Commission on Human Rights, and Amnesty International, held a press conference last week in Mexico City, calling on the federal government to protect human rights defenders. Despite complaints filed with numerous government agencies and with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights at the Organization of American States, the culprits remain at large.
“The systematic campaign against worker rights defenders must end—and the only way that will be done is if the Mexican government opens an investigation into the kidnapping, the break-in, and death threats and brings these violent and dangerous perpetrators to justice,” said Lorraine Clewer, Solidarity Center country program director in Mexico.
CAT has led multiple successful worker organizing drives at auto parts and garment assembly factories in the state of Puebla. Formed in 2001, CAT has developed strong relationships with unions and human rights organizations in Mexico, Europe and North America, including the mine workers union of Mexico. Many of CAT’s organizing initiatives have sought to oust protection unions and replace them with democratic, independent organizations. Blanca Velázquez is CAT’s founder and current director.
Jun 8, 2012
U.S. Ambassador to Bangladesh Dan Mozena warned garment industry leaders in Dhaka that recent developments in the ready-made garment industry, including the unsolved murder of union activist Aminul Islam, could coalesce into “a perfect storm that could threaten the Bangladesh brand” in the United States.
“Although this murder has elicited little attention or interest in Bangladesh, that is not the case in the United States, where worker rights supporters have seized on this issue, highlighting it as a major escalation in the erosion of worker rights in Bangladesh,” Mozena told executives of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers Export Association at a meeting on Wednesday. His remarks came only weeks after a town meeting in Dhaka at which Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton fielded a question about the murder of Islam, a longtime friend of the Solidarity Center.
Mozena also cited other concerns by major U.S. brands that could have a negative impact on the garment industry. He described how the CEO of one of Bangladesh’s major buyers had called him at midnight to express concern about critical reports on such issues as the recent spate of fires in garment factories. The fires result from lack of labor organization, he said the CEO told him, as union workers do not accept dangerous health and safety conditions in the workplace.
“Bangladeshi activists who monitor labor in the RMG sector tell me that workers are becoming increasingly restive,” Mozena continued, “due mainly to the growing failure of wages to keep up with the rising cost of living and the increasing vulnerability labor leaders feel as a result of the murder of Aminul Islam and harassment of other labor activists.”
Mozena stressed that the BGMEA had the power to overcome these hazards and make Bangladesh the next “Asian tiger.” But he made it clear that failing to address them presented a potential threat to Bangladesh’s economic well-being.
Read Full Remarks
Jun 7, 2012
Iraqi unions are strongly protesting the government’s continued, systematic harassment and punishment of union workers in the oil industry who are engaging in actions protected by international labor standards and conventions, and they are calling for a new labor law that ensures worker rights for all Iraqis. ACT NOW! Join the LabourStart campaign!
Although the right to peaceful protest is covered under Arabic and international conventions, the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Iraq Constitution, Iraqi government agencies frequently interfere with internal union affairs, punishing union activists by imposing forced transfers, demotions, fines, travel restrictions, and other penalties allowed by Iraq’s labor law, which dates from the Saddam Hussein regime. The suppression of worker rights has been most severe in the oil sector, where the Oil Ministry has worked hand in hand with the oil companies to enforce these punishments.
This harsh approach is evident in the April 17, 2011, arrests of 25 workers at the Maysan Oil Company in southern Iraq who were peacefully demonstrating against corporate corruption. Even though they had received advance permission to hold their demonstration, a Ministry of Oil investigation led to the reprimand of seven workers and a warning to 18 others. All 25 were instructed that further actions would lead to greater penalties being applied against them. Individual letters sent by the company on December 13, 2011, essentially stated that the workers’ livelihoods would be jeopardized if they continued to engage in such activity.
Other recent retaliations have targeted top union leaders who engage in peaceful protest. Abdul Kareem Abdul Sada, vice president of the General Federation of Trade Unions and Workers’ Councils of Iraq (GFTUWCI)–Basra Branch, received a reprimand and six-month suspension of his salary bonus, in accordance with recommendations made by investigative committee No. 1129 on January 11, 2012. Hassan Juma’a Awwad, president of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions (IFOU), received a three-year grade demotion and Adel Abood, a board member of the southern oil union of the IFOU and member of the IFOU assembly board, received multiple written reprimands, based on the recommendations of the same investigative committee. All were accused of “inciting unrest.”
Government repression hinges on Iraq’s 1987 labor law, which prohibits union activity in the public sector and contravenes International Labor Organization conventions 87 and 98 on the rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining. A new draft labor law, which is currently before parliament, not only fails to secure those rights for Iraqi workers but also no longer contains a chapter on trade union organization. So far, there is no indication of when a separate law on trade unions might be introduced.
“The new draft law disenfranchises public-sector workers, who constitute the majority of Iraqi workers, and leaves them highly vulnerable to government retaliation for participating in union activities,” said Shawna Bader-Blau, executive director of the Solidarity Center. “We strongly denounce these repressive measures, intended to muzzle workers’ speech and intimidate union activists, and we call on the global labor movement to join us in condemning them.”
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