Child labour is a serious problem. There are entire generations being raised that are being forced to work in adverse and potentially harmful circumstances.
Child labour is a serious problem in the modern world especially in the cocoa industry. Children are being trafficked from countries such as Burkina Faso to work in Ghana and the Ivory Coast. They are forced to harvest cocoa pods and then split and dry these cocoa beans. This is dangerous work that involves using climbing trees and using sharp knives. Often the children can’t go to school because they are being forced to work. These issues breach a lot of human rights that are listed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
One of the issues is the negative effect on education that child labour has. Children that are forced to work must work during the daytime. This obviously has a negative effect on the children’s education. If they are working then they can’t go to school. This means that there are generations of children in places like Africa, China, and India all growing up with little to no education and they are being forced out of an education. Only 15% of children that work have an opportunity to go to school. This is a direct breach of the Universal Declaration of Human rights Article 26. Article 26 outlines that education should be available to everyone by not allowing children to have an education the people that are forcing children to work are breaching this law.
International charity groups such as Fair Trade have recognised this problem and are trying to help it with things like their Fair-Trade chocolate where a portion of the money that is made from the selling of the product is sent directly back to the producers. This means that the producer can afford to pay their workers more and that means that they in turn can hire legal workers so the children won’t be forced to work. They can then have an education. So, although they aren’t specifically ending child labour their efforts are having a large impact on reducing the number of children in adverse conditions.
There is a lot of wrong going on in the world. People have always tried to fix this. The way that this type of aid is implemented has changed a lot over the years.
A past example of this kind of aid is the Harkin Engel Protocol. In 2001 the Harkin Engel Protocol was negotiated by U.S Senator Tom Harkin and U.S Representative Elliot Engel. It was created in response to multiple documentaries and articles in relation to the widespread use of child labor in cocoa plantations. It originally was to eliminate all child slavery but was then changed to abolish the worst forms of child slavery. The reason Harkin and Engel changed the protocol was so that it would better suit the ILO (International Labor Organization). The protocol to abolish the worst forms of child labor and adult forced labor in cocoa production was signed in September 2001 by 8 of the largest Chocolate companies, Two senators, One congress man, the ambassador to Ivory Coast, some NGO’s, other industry representatives (World Cocoa Foundation, Chocolate Manufactures Association). The agreement laid out six date specific action points. They are as follows; 1 Produce a public statement and action plan, 2 Create advisory groups to be completed by Oct 2001, 3 A joint child labor statement to be presented to the ILO by Dec 2001, 4 A memorandum was to be written up by May 2002, A joint foundation was to be created before July 2002, and finally 6 They would begin to build to credible success by July 2005. The result of this was horrible, many believe that it has had no effect on reducing the amount of child labor in Ghana and the Ivory Coast.
A more modern example of aid is Fair Trade. Fair Trade is a social movement whose goal is to help producers from developing countries have better trading conditions. Fair Trade products are slightly more expensive than non-Fair-Trade goods. This is because a proportion of the profit from the product goes directly to co-ops created by the producers that helped make the product. The aim of this is to improve trading conditions and to also improve the lives of the producers and the laborer’s. Increasing the amount that the farmers get means that they can pay their workers a fairer wage, also the money given to the co-op can be used by the co-op to build houses, schools, and wells. This system isn’t perfect because it doesn’t directly stop child labor as the Harkin Engel Protocol was intended to.
Both the Harkin Engel Protocol and Fair Trade have weaknesses but I think that Fair Trade has been more successful in relation to reducing child labor in cocoa production. The main weakness with the Harkin Engel Protocol is that it was a voluntary protocol therefore cocoa companies could decide not to follow its legislation. With Fair Trade, they are not specifically stopping child labor just increasing the amount that cocoa farmers are paid. While this can mean that child labor will decrease it doesn’t specifically guarantee this. Whereas the Harkin Engel Protocol if followed means that the worst forms of child labor will be abolished. The Harkin Engel Protocol has a weakness in the fact that it is only targeting the ‘worst’ forms of child labor but Fair Trades’ giving more money to producers means that child labor could be reduced. The Harkin Engel Protocol also only targets Ghana and the Ivory Coast whereas Fair-Trade targets all producers from developing countries. Therefore, I believe that Fair Trade is a more effective form of aid. As it is more personal and helps the producer and does not harm the producer.
Bibliography
- https://www.worldvision.com.au/global-issues/work-we-do/child-labour (5/6/18)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labour#Cocoa_production (5/6/18)
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3425238/ (5/6/18)
- http://www.globalissues.org/article/62/child-labor (5/6/18)
- http://www.claiminghumanrights.org/universal_declaration.html (5/6/18) Map-Miss Brooking (11/06/18)
- https://www.icco.org/about-cocoa/growing-cocoa.html (11/06/18)
- https://www.chocolateriedelopera.com/en/the-planters/the-cocoa-belt/ (11/06/18)
- https://www.cnn.com/2013/10/15/world/child-labor-index-2014/index.html (11/06/18)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandt_Report (11/06/18)
- https://www.thebalance.com/gdp-per-capita-formula-u-s-compared-to-highest-and-lowest-3305848 (11/06/18)
