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Author(s): Zehra F. Arat
Source: Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Feb., 2002), pp. 177-204
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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Zehra F. Arat*
I. INTRODUCTION
The international community has been concerned about child labor for a
long time and attempted to curb it at the first session of the International
* Zehra F. Kabasakal Arat is Professor of Political Science and Women's Studies at Purchase
College of the State University of New York. She also serves as the Founding President of the
Human Rights Section of the American Political Science Association. Her publications
include journal articles and book chapters on topics related to democracy, human rights, and
women's rights. She has also authored the books Democracy and Human Rights in
Developing Countries (1991) and Deconstructing Images of "The Turkish Woman'' (1998).
Currently she is working on a book manuscript, tentatively entitled Human Rights Policies
and Politics in Turkey.
1. Convention Fixing the Minimum Age for Admission of Children to Industrial Employ
ment (ILO No. 5), adopted 28 Nov. 1919 {entered into force 13 June 1921), revised in
1937 by Convention No. 59 and in 1973 by Convention No. 138, art. 2, available on
International Labour Organization <http://ilolex.ilo.ch:1567/scripts/convde.pl?C5> (vis
ited 11 Nov. 2001).
2. Convention Concerning Minimum Age for Admission to Employment (ILO No. 138),
adopted 26 June 1973, entered into force 19 June 1976, art. 2, reprinted in International
Human Rights Quarterly 24 (2002) 177-204 ? 2002 by The Johns Hopkins University Press
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entering into force on 25 September 1990, less than a year after being
adopted.4 As this paper was written at the end of 2000, this Convention was
the closest to achieving universal ratification with 191 state parties?the
only exceptions being the United States, which signed it but did not ratify it,
in it, and many children are denied childhood. While Article 32 of the
eighteen.6
3. See Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted 20 Nov. 1989, G.A. Res. 44/25,
U.N. GAOR, 44th Sess., Supp. No. 49, U.N. Doc. A/44/49 (1989) (entered into force 2
Sept. 1990), reprinted in 28 I.L.M. 1448 (1989).
4. Cynthia Price Cohen et al., Monitoring the United Nations Convention on the Rights of
the Child: The Challenge of Information Management, 18 Hum. Rts. Q. 439, 440 (1996).
On the extensive use of reservations in ratification, see William A. Schabas, Reserva
tions to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, 18 Hum. Rts. Q. 472 (1996).
5. Convention on the Rights of the Child, supra note 3, art. 32.
6. Id. art. 3. Article 3 defines the worst forms of child labor as comprising: (a) all forms of
slavery or practices similar to slavery, such as the sale and trafficking of children, debt
bondage and serfdom, and forced labor or compulsory labor, including forced or
compulsory recruitment of children for use in armed conflict; (b) the use, procuring or
offering of a child for prostitution, for the production of pornography, or for porno
graphic performance; (c) the use, procuring or offering of a child for illicit activities, in
particular for the production and trafficking of drugs as defined in the relevant
international treaties; (d) work which, by its nature or the circumstances in which it is
carried out, is likely to harm the health, safety, or morals of children. Id. For a critique
of this prioritization by the ILO, see David M. Smolin, Strategic Choices in the
International Campaign Against Child Labor, 22 Hum. Rts. Q. 942 (2000).
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the widespread use of child labor results in lower wages for all
laborers;
children usually work under the worst working conditions, and
these unhealthy, unsafe, dangerous, and poisonous work environ
ments cause physical deformations and long-term health care
problems in children;
child labor perpetuates poverty because child laborers, deprived of
education or healthy physical development, are likely to become
adults with low earning prospects;
countries that allow child labor are able to lower the labor cost,
thus, they not only attract investors but also benefit from "unfair
trade" due to their low production cost.7
No matter which consequence of child labor has been their primary
concern, the critics, especially those located in the industrial societies, tend
to organize their efforts around banning child labor through trade sanctions,
7. See Charles Diamond & Tammy Fayed, Evidence on Substitutability of Adult and Child
Labor, 34 J. Dev. Stud. 62 (1998) (for a brief review of the arguments about the impact
of child labor on the adult labor market). Regarding the harm done to children, see
Robert Weissman, Stolen Youth: Brutalized Children, Globalization and the Campaign
to End Child Labor, 18 Multinat'l Monitor 10 (1997); Lee Tucker, Child Slaves in
Modern India: The Bonded Labor Problem, 19 Hum. Rts. Q. 572 (1997); Myron E.
Wegman, Foreign Aid, International Organizations, and the World's Children, 103
Pediatrics 646 (1999); Roger Sawyer, Children Enslaved (1988).
8. UNICEF, The State of World's Children 1997, at 24-25 (1997) (regarding the develop
mental impacts of child labor); Erika de Wet, Labor Standards in the Globalized
Economy: The Inclusion of a Social Clause in the General Agreement on Tariff and
Trade/World Trade Organization, 17 Hum. Rts. Q. 443 (1995).
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This paper addresses the child labor issue as a human rights violation
and examines the root causes of the problem. In addition to the immediate
violators of the rights of children, the paper identifies parties that encourage
the use of child labor by violating other human rights. It treats child labor as
Rich countries are not immune to the problem either. The United
Kingdom and the United States are estimated to have two million working
sweatshops in the United States.12 While their numbers may not be known
for sure, the fact remains that a considerable number of six-year-olds in
Texas, for example, pick fruit and vegetables and earn as low as $2.00 per
day.13 The problem, however, has been colossal in developing countries:
one in three children in Africa works, one in four in Asia, and one in five in
Latin America (Table 1).14 Although the estimates range from sixty to 115
million, it is widely accepted that "India has the largest number of working
children in the world."15
9. ILO, Child Labor: Targeting the Intolerable: Report VI (1) of the International Labor
Conference, 86th Sess. (1998).
10. 5ee/d.
11. See Christian Huot, The Global Crisis of Child Labour, 32:6 Canadian Dimension 33
(1998).
12. Stacie Garnett, Taking Steps Against Child Labor, 217 Dollars & Sense 6 (1998).
The largest numbers of children workers are in Asia, where in some countries they make up more
than 10% of the labour force. But there are also large numbers in Africa, where several countries
are reported to have up to 20% of their children working. And in Latin America, more than a
quarter of children in some countries are thought to be working.
5ee United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 1993, at 33 (1993).
15. Human Rights Watch, The Small Hands of Slavery: Bonded Child Labor In India 122 (1996).
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Source: Kebebew Ashagrie, Statistics on Working Children and Hazardous Child Labour in
Brief. Revised Version. International Labor Office, Geneva, 1998. <www.ilo.org/public/
english/comp/child/stat/stats.htm>
Some country-specific studies and surveys also find that many children
who are not even five years old work in harsh conditions, usually without
pay, in family farms and businesses, or for their parents' creditors as bound
laborers.16 It is estimated that 15-20 percent of children in developing
countries work for no pay, usually as domestic help or farm workers.17
Although child laborers tend to be more visible in cities, more of them work
in rural areas. Rural children are estimated to constitute two-thirds of all
16. See Weissman, supra note 7, at 10; Tucker, supra note 7, at 572; UNICEF, supra note 8,
at 24; Katherine Cox, The Inevitability of Nimble Fingers? Law, Development, and Child
Labor, 32 Vand. J. Transnat'l L. 115 (1999); Emad Mekay, A Story of Children and
Cotton, Middle East Times, 19 Oct. 1997, at 38-39; Lee Tucker & Arvind Ganesan, The
Small Hands of Slavery: India's Bonded Child Laborers and the World Bank, 18
Multinat'l Monitor 17 (1997).
17. Sophie Boukhari, Child labour: a lesser evil?, UNESCO Courier, May 1999, at 38;
UNICEF, supra note 8, at 32-35, 43-45.
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Parents, who normally care about the welfare and future of their
children, participate in the process by allowing, or even forcing, their
children to work. Poor parents who are unable to make an adequate living
rely upon the contribution of the youngsters, either in the form of unpaid
Child labor is provided by lower classes and poor households which are
unproportionally high among immigrant and ethnic minority groups.29 In
25. Bureau of International Labor Affairs, U.S. Department of Labor, Foreign Labor Trends Report:
26. See Tucker, supra note 7; Human Rights Watch, supra note 15, at 22; Bureau of
International Labor Affairs, supra note 25, at 18.
27. See Brent McClintock, The Multinational Corporations and Social Justice: Experiments
in Supranational Governance, 57 Rev. Social Econ. 507 (1999); Deborah Leipziger & Pia
Sabharwal, Companies That Play Hide and Seek With Child Labor, 95 Bus. & Soc'y Rev.
11-13 (1995); S.L. Bachman, The Political Economy of Child Labor and Its Impacts on
International Business, 35 Bus. Econ. 30 (2000). For a more optimistic view on the use
of multinational codes of conduct to protect labor rights, see Deborah L. Spar, The
Spotlight and the Bottom Line: How Multinationals Export Human Rights, 77 For. Aff. 7
(1998).
28. For a review of various micro- and macro-economic analyses of child labor practices,
including parental and employer choices, see S.L. Bachman, A New Economics of Child
Labor: Searching for Answers Behind the Headlines, 53 J. Int'l Aff. 545 (2000).
29. The reliance on the productive labor of non-elite children has been observed
throughout the history. Elizabeth Ann Kuznesof, The Puzzling Contradictions of Child
Labor, Unemployment, and Education in Brazil, 23 J. Family Hist. 225, 226 (1998).
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fact, "[t]he harder and more hazardous the jobs become, the more they are
likely to be considered traditionally the province of the poor and disadvan
taged, the lower classes and ethnic minorities."30
Child labor was common in industrial countries during the earlier stages
many developing countries. Most countries also have laws that ban child
labor, but governments often fail to enforce these laws. The state contribu
tion to the child labor problem, however, is not limited to its failure in law
enforcement or regulations.
Most governments deny the existence of the problem, and some of them
forced labor and child labor, Indian governments have been unsuccessful in
enforcing these laws, several officials have insisted that there were no child
laborers in their provinces,36 and the government itself has been using child
32. Joan Aldous, The Political Process and the Failure of the Child Labor Amendment, 18
J. Family Iss. 71, 72 (1997).
33. Kaushik Basu & Pham Hoang Van, The Economics of Child Labor, 88 Am. Econ. Rev. 412
(1998).
34. See Harry Anthony Patrinos & George Psacharopoulos, Educational Performance and
Child Labor in Paraguay, 15 Int'l J. Educ. Dev. 47 (1995); Hideo Akabayashi & George
Psacharopoulos, The Trade-off between Child Labour and Human Capital Formation: A
Tanzanian Case Study, 35 J. Dev. Stud. 120 (1999).
35. See Bruce Wydick, The Effect of Microenterprise Lending on Child Schooling in
Guatemala, 47 Econ. Dev. & Cultural Change 853 (1999).
36. Human Rights Watch, supra note 15, at 28-41, 118-44. The apathy and corruption
among government officials, caste and class biases, obstruction by employers, lack of
accountability, and the lack of adequate enforcement staff are listed as obstacles for
enforcement.
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agencies, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World
Bank, influence state policies and create socioeconomic conditions which
are not conducive to the protection of child rights or elimination of child
labor. I will discuss the impact of these agencies on child labor in Section V.
poor and exploitative work conditions, weak labor laws and unions,
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with 50,000 people, more than 30 percent of the adult males are
unemployed, while others work for low wages in rice, wheat and corn
fields.43 The cotton fields of the village, however, including those owned by
the state, are full of child laborers picking cotton. Even though children are
paid no more than $1.50 for an eight-hour day, their earnings provide a
major source of income for their families.44
the population in more than one third of the developing world. In other
words, nearly 1.2 billion people live on less than a dollar a day and cannot
meet their basic needs.47 According to ILO reports, children commonly
contribute around 20-25 percent of family income.48 Since more than four
fifths of private income is spent on food in developing countries,49 the
meager earnings of children are critical to their survival. Most of the child
employees give their entire wages to their parents, and a study of nine Latin
American countries indicates that "without the income of working children
aged thirteen to seventeen, the incidence of poverty would rise by between
10 and 20 percent."50
The demographics and population trends of developing countries also
work against their children. According to UNICEF, nearly nine out of ten (87
percent) of the world's children (ages zero to eighteen) live in developing
countries.51 The population below the age of fifteen constitutes 33.6 percent
of the population in developing countries.52 With the elderly constituting
42. The United Nations reports that "at least 150 million of the world's workers were
unemployed by the end of 1998." Human Development Report 2000, supra note 41.
44. Id.
46. Id.
47. Id.
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Fertility % work
Country Groups
All Developing
rate age % 65
1995- (15-64 and
2000 years) older
3.0 61.8 4.9
% % not
4.9 54.4
4.1 57.8
1.8 67.9
3.1
3.6
6.6
1.7
71.1
6.6
22.3
40.7
4.6
2.7
3.3
62.3
59.9
5.2
4.5
32.5
60.5
66.9
9.7
15.7
57.3
3.5
39.2
74.6
15.6
62.9
52.4
4.5
3.0
32.6
44.6
91.0
58.9
12.0
34.6
1.6 66.6
11.5
21.9
50.2 8.1
OECD
1.8 66.5
12.8
20.7
50.3 3.9
World
2.7 62.9
6.8
30.3
59.0 12.3
Least Developed
Arab States
East Asia
East Asia
(excuding China)
Latin America &
Caribbean
South Asia
South Asia
(excluding India)
South-East Asia &
the Pacific
Sub-Saharan Africa
the CIS
2.7
5.5
35.6
Source: Compiled and calculated from Human Development Report 2000, New York: Oxford
University Press, 2000.
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55. Id.
56. Human Development Report 2000, supra note 41, at 79.
57. Myron Weiner, The Child and the State in India: Child Labor and Education Policy in
Comparative Perspective (1991); International Bureau of Education, The Country Dossiers,
available at <httpy/www.ibe.unesco.org/lnternational/Databanks/Dossiers/mainfram.htm>
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Public Expenditures
On Education On Health
Country Groups
All Developing
Least Developed
Arab States
East Asia
East Asia (excluding
(%ofGNP) (%ofGDP)
1995-97 1996-98
2.2
3.8
5.4
2.9
Primary Secondary
1.6
1.5
85.7 60.4
60.4
86.4
31.2
61.7
99.8
71.0
China)
3.5
2.4
97.9
93.7
Caribbean
4.5
3.2
3.1
0.9
93.3
78.0
65.3
3.2
1.4
80.8
3.3
6.1
1.2
2.4
97.8
56.2
58.3
41.4
4.9
4.5
OECD
5.0
6.2
99.9
88.8
World
4.8
5.6
87.6
65.4
South Asia
South Asia (excluding
India)
South-East Asia &
the Pacific
Sub-Saharan Africa
the CIS
Source: Compiled from Human Development Report 2000, New York: Oxford University
Press, 2000.
Given these problems, it should not be surprising that more than 260
million of the primary and secondary school-age children of the world are
out of school.58 Enrollment rates are particularly low in least developed
countries and in Sub-Saharan Africa (Table 3). Moreover, enrollments are
58. See Human Development Report 1999, supra note 41, at 22.
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Vol. 24
in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing, and with the same
emphasis. "61
The issue of child labor shows not only that the full enjoyment of one
right by an individual depends on his ability to enjoy other rights, but also
that the fulfillment of children's rights depends on the recognition and
realization of their parents' rights. Denying the right to employment or the
ignore human rights and their interdependency in their dealings with the
developing world. The conditions that the IMF and the World Bank set for
lending, commonly referred to as the "structural adjustment policies," do
exactly the opposite of what is necessary to promote the rights of the poor
and improve the lives of poor people. Although these policy formulations
have no direct reference to children, their adverse impacts are probably
1993).
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not only increased poor households' dependency on child labor but also
enabled the local elite who employed poor children to run exploitative and
unsafe businesses that subsequently escaped government regulations and
law enforcement. According to the Commission on Labor Standards and
International Trade, child labor in India grew at an annual rate of 4 percent
in the 1990s, as the cost of living and unemployment increased.65 Similarly,
in Zimbabwe, reports by both the national government and the ILO "linked
family income, poor parents stop sending children to school or take them
out of school to reduce household expenses, to send children to work, or to
keep them at home to watch their younger siblings, since their mothers have
to enter the labor market or increase their work hours. Given the patriarchal
63. Jeanne Vickers, Women and the World Economic Crisis 22-30 (1991).
64. Vijay Prashad, Calloused Consciences: The Limited Challenge to Child Labor, 225
Dollars & Sense 21-23 (1999).
65. Tucker & Ganesan, supra note 16, at 17-20.
66. UNICEF, supra note 8, at 28.
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Vol. 24
policies open. Even Joseph Stiglitz, who has subscribed to the same
neoliberal economic theories followed by the IMF and shaped the policies
of the World Bank as its chief economist, finds himself agreeing with the
protestors of the IMF: "They'll say the IMF's economic 'remedies' often
make things worse?turning slowdowns into recessions and recessions into
depressions. And they'll have a point."69
While working for less has been prescribed to the developing countries
with the promise of prosperity in the future, after years of "structural
adjustment," the benefits of development in some countries, which experi
enced economic growth, are still waiting to trickle-down. Real income, on
the other hand, and especially for the working class, has declined in many
countries.70 Indeed, the poorest countries have failed to show any improve
ment at all.
It is noted that the average annual growth of income per capita for the
1990-1998 period was negative in fifty countries (only one of them is an
OECD country).71 The GDP per capita has shown a steady decline during
the last two decades for the least developed countries, from $287 in 1975 to
$245 in 1997 (measured in 1987 US$), with the largest decline observed in
South Asian and Sub-Saharan African countries (Table 4).
Moreover, the aid from the developed world has shown a steady
decline itself. The World Bank notes that while donor countries' economies
grew after 1992, their development assistance shrank.72 The net official
to $33.5 in per capita values (Table 4). The net capital transfer through
loans, exports and other means also marked a net benefit for the industrial
world. UNIFEM noted that while the net transfer of funds from the North to
South was $19.1 billion in 1980, by 1990 the direction of the flow had
changed and $27.5 billion was transferred from South to North.73 In fact, the
69. Joseph Stiglitz, The Insider: What I learned at the world economic crisis, New Republic,
70.
71.
72.
73.
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2002
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In addition to its poor economic policies, Stiglitz criticizes the IMF for
being undemocratic: "In theory, the fund supports democratic institutions in
the nations it assists. In practice, it undermines the democratic process by
imposing policies. Officially, of course, the IMF doesn't Impose' anything. It
mention, however, is that the World Bank has also been guilty of imposing
the very same structural adjustment policies?policies that are also known
late 1960s.76 In case of funding, however, the Bank has been slow in
74. The report also notes that a "study of worldwide income distribution among households
shows a sharp rise in inequality?with the Gini coefficient deteriorating from 0.63 in
1988 to 0.66 in 1993," and "gaps between rich and poor are widening in many
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help India increase its silk exports, the Bank has been lending India millions
of dollars since the 1980s. The Bank's support, which was intended to
create jobs and alleviate poverty began with loans of $54 million to support
child labor," yet "in some areas child labor is essential for families to
survive"; also that India's silk projects have been "regularly appraised" by
the Bank, but the problem of child labor "has not shown up in any of our
reports."79 Although an official of the Bank claimed that "the Bank has tried
the industry. The Bank was also urged to set up educational and other
programs that would allow the bonded child laborers to attend school.81 As
a result of this pressure, the Bank hired an official in 1998 to oversee the
process to avoid lending to businesses that use child labor.82
This and other recent changes in the approach of the World Bank, e.g.,
moving away from large scale projects and increasing funding for education
and health care, are all promising developments. However, they are not
likely to be effective if the Bank, the IMF, and other international agencies
heavily influenced by the US Treasury Department continue to subscribe to
79. Id.
80. Id.
81. Id.
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the policy principles that are known as the "Washington Consensus"?a set
of neoliberal economic policies that require developing countries to limit
government spending, eliminate subsidies, privatize state enterprises, de
regulate private businesses, protect property rights, broaden the tax base but
reduce the marginal tax rates, encourage direct foreign investment, devalu
ate their currency, and liberalize trade.83
even if they had the will to do so. Moreover, the price competition in
systems, retirement policies and labor laws. Such a "labor law reform"?
which intends to reduce the negotiating power of unions, limit workers'
benefits, and undermine job security?was recently legislated in Argentina
on 27 April 2000. President Fernando de la R?a, who pushed for the bill,
expressed his satisfaction with the legislation by describing it as "a law that
will contribute to the development of small- and medium-sized business
and work in Argentina."84 What he did not mention is the fact that these
expected gains will come at the expense of the unions and workers who can
now be dismissed in six months or a year after their employment without
any benefits.85
83. The IMF and the World Bank employ a "cookie-cutter approach" to economic stability,
and require all loan applicants to implement essentially the same structural adjustment
policies. These policies are supported and promoted by the US Treasury Department as
well, and the Department has been influential in formulating the lending policies of the
two international financial agencies. Since they are all located in Washington, D.C., the
underlying economic philosophy of the structural adjustment policies is commonly
referred to as "the Washington Consensus" by the critics. Although they all uphold the
principles of neo-liberalism, the key players in these agencies may have some minor
differences on the specifics. See Mois?s Nairn, Washington Consensus or Washington
84. Clifford Krauss, Argentine Leader Wins Reform of the Nation's Rigid Labor Code, N.Y.
Times, 28 Apr. 2000, at A9.
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slide from a low 30 percent to about 15 percent during the last three
decades.88
86. For example, Sweden (85 percent), Iceland (78 percent), Denmark (73 percent), Finland
(71 percent) and Norway {55 percent). See Human Development Report 1993, supra note
14, at 43.
87. Id.
88. Id.
89. Id.
90. Jay Mazur, Labor's New Internationalism, 79 For. Aff. 88, 90 (2000). The labor leaders
in the US, however, have tried to achieve this through imposing trade bans and
restrictions. This is a misguided strategy that will be discussed in the following pages.
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Simply adding a social clause that links banning child labor to trade would
not only fail to improve the living conditions of poor children in developing
countries but would cause further deteriorations.91 Similarly, relying on
consumer labels and hoping that consumers in wealthy countries will refuse
to buy goods produced by child labor, even if effectively managed, would
only mean closing an employment opportunity for the needy child, not
creating options for her.92 These solutions cannot be effective because they
fail to address the multiple factors that cause and perpetuate the problem
and they apply only to the export-oriented industries.
Selectively addressing the child labor issue in export-oriented industries
is problematic for a number of reasons. First, even if sanctions were carried
out effectively, their impact would be limited because export industries
employ only 5 percent of child workers. According to the ILO, the majority
of the full-time working children are located in the commercial agricultural
sector.93 Second, such sanctions would miss the fact that many export items
that are produced solely by adult labor may depend on raw materials and
intermediary goods that are created by child laborers. Third, trade bans on
goods produced by child labor would pull down the demand for such goods
between 1980 and 1990, the share of least developed countries declined
from 0.6 percent to .05 percent.)94 Finally, banning child labor in export
industries could push children from these relatively (though not always)
more secure and better paying jobs to seeking employment in less protected
91. 5ee Erika de Wet, supra note 8, at 443 (for an overview of efforts to include a social
clause in trade agreements); Human Development Report 1993, supra note 14, at 85 (for a
brief critical assessment of using trade sanctions as a way of improving labor rights).
92. Janet Hilowitz, Social labelling to combat child labour: Some considerations, 136 Int'l
Lab. Rev. 215, 231 (1997); Kaushik Basu, International Labor Standards and Child Labor,
42 Challenge 80 (1999); McClintock, supra note 27; Leipziger & Sabharwal, supra note
27; Bachman, supra note 28.
93. See Table 1; Kebebew Ashagrie, Statistics on Working Children and Hazardous Child
Labour in Brief (revised version) (1998), available on <http://www.ilo.org/public/
english/comp/child/stat/stats.htm> (visited 11 Nov. 2001).
94. These countries attracted also less than $3 billion in foreign direct investments in 1998.
See Human Development Report 2000, supra note 41, at 9.
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the United States, UNICEF, and the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and
workers would be hired but none would be fired either until alternative
arrangements were made, and the businesses would pay monthly stipends
that would help compensate for lost wages so the children could attend
UNICEF-funded schools.100 Ironically, in the middle of this crisis, the United
States was also working with the IMF on conditions for lending to
Bangladesh and in effect forcing its government to reduce expenditures on
Recently, some of the child workers from urban areas have started to
organize, asserting their opposition to trade sanctions and claiming that they
have a right to work. This now international movement started with Ni?os y
Adolescents Trabajadores (Child and Teenage Workers) in Peru in the 1970s
and later spread to other Latin American countries. More recently child
laborers in Africa and Asia have joined this movement, which demands the
UN and other organizations make a distinction between the exploitation of
children through labor and other forms of work that help them. Similarly,
95. Id. at 4.
96. India probably has the greatest number of street children?New Delhi, Bombay and
Calcutta are reported to have around 100,000 street children each?and the juvenile
crime rate in India is reported as 3.1 per 1,000 people. Human Development Report 1993,
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some NGO leaders, who help child workers, point to administrative and
institutional incongruities, noting that in African countries, for example, the
legal work age is usually fifteen and education is supposedly free and
compulsory up to the age of twelve, they question what the children
between the ages of twelve and fifteen should be doing.101 Michael Bonnet,
a former ILO official, recognizes the fact that these children who demand
the right to work face a risk of being manipulated but also supports their
position: "They want to be respected, get a decent wage, have work breaks,
and access to education and health care. What they don't want is to wake
up and find in their district some ill-thought-out project from a rich country
used clothing. UNICEF also points out that while domestic workers
constitute the most vulnerable and exploited children of all, they are also
the most difficult to protect.104
child labor. For example, the state of Kerela in India, and China until
recently, have emphasized education, and consequently both states have
taking care of the younger siblings, and many other chores. Those girls who work
outside home come back home to pick up household chores. In Guatemala, for
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Grajew, the Director and President of the Foundation for Children's Rights
in Brazil (a country which has 3-4 million children below fourteen years old
working),106 argues in support of paying a stipend to the family and requiring
the parents to send the children to school. He states that the problem in
Brazil is not the absence or quality of schools (although this might be the
case in some rural areas), but "the main reason children work is because the
family needs money."107 In fact, in the war-torn and impoverished Cambo
dia, 98 percent of girls in prostitution are found to be the main providers for
their families.108
Monitor 20 (1997).
107. Id. at 21. Although some of her conclusions on the causal links between child labor and
school enrollments are debatable, a survey of Kenyan households by Claudia Buchmann
includes valuable information about the value of children's schooling. See Family
Structure, Parental Perceptions and Child Labor in Kenya: What Factors Determine Who
is Enrolled in School? 78 Soc. Forces 1 349 (2000).
108. From the report by the UN's Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific
(ESCAP), as posted by Stop-traffic list serve, available on <http;//fpmaiI.friends-partners.org/
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Such data demonstrate that the lasting solution to the problem of child
labor would be improving the income and living conditions of the world's
poorest families?that is, to eliminate poverty. That can be achieved only if
the adult labor force is paid meaningful wages and has access to credit,
training programs, health care, and safety nets. According to UNICEF, some
of these goals are not out of reach:
An additional $40 billion a year could ensure access for all the world's people
to basic social services such as health care, education and safe water.
Two thirds of this amount could be found by developing countries if they
realigned their own budget priorities. Redirecting just one quarter of the
This premise is set out in the 20/20 initiative, which calls for developing
countries to increase government spending on basic social services from the
current average of approximately 13 percent to 20 percent, and for donor
countries to earmark 20 percent of official development assistance (ODA).109
Many child laborers are aware of the causes of their predicament and
they know what they need. More than 1,000 child workers participated at a
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Kaushik Basu and Pham Hoang Van, inferring from their economic
modeling of child and adult labor substitutability, reach the conclusion that:
If the market has only one equilibrium which is likely in very-poor countries,
then a ban can worsen the condition of the labor households. Partial bans are
laws were effective in cracking down on child labor in the United States and
other industrial countries only after the standard of living had risen to a level
where the economic need for child labor ceased to exist.112 He argues that
"the greatest enabling factor for social legislation is economic growth" and
proposes foreign aid as an important solution to the problem.113 Foreign aid
is essential, but for the reasons already discussed, it should be directed to
the development of human resources and enable governments to pay for
needed social services.114 Nevertheless, neither these arguments nor the
devastating case studies deter people like New Jersey Representative Chris
Smith from sponsoring bills that would punish countries that allow child
labor not only by imposing trade sanctions against them but also by cutting
off foreign aid.115
child labor or other social clauses are interested in promoting the rights of
the child or labor rights. They are advocates of "fair trade," mostly located
in developed countries, who try to limit imports from those countries that
20.
113. Id.
114. See Weissman, supra note 7, at 10; de Wet, supra note 8, at 443.
115. See International Child Labor Elimination Act o? 1997, H.R. 2678, 105th Cong. (1997).
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An illustrative case for the latter is the executive order that President Clinton
This is the point that some of the protestors were trying to make recently in
116. See Exec. Order No. 13,126, 64 Fed. Reg. 32,383, at Sec. 5 (12 June 1999).
117. Prashad, supra note 64, at 23.
118. World Development Report 2000-2001, The World Bank (2001 ).
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