Category Archives: Child labour

Fashion retailer Shein finds child labour in its supply chain

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Disclosure comes as campaigners call on UK to oppose company’s planned listing on London Stock Exchange

The online fashion seller Shein has admitted it found two cases of child labour and factories failing to pay the minimum wage in its supply chain last year, as it tries to gain backing for a potential £50bn UK stock market flotation.

The disclosure, in Shein’s 2023 sustainability report, comes after workers’ rights campaigners called for the government to oppose a possible listing of Shein on the London Stock Exchange over concerns about a lack of transparency about its supply chain and ethical questions. The British Fashion Council (BFC) has also said the listing, which could be announced as early as next month, would be a “significant concern” to the industry.

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‘Brands to avoid’: Mars and Cadbury among chocolate firms criticised in ethics report

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Only 17 out of 82 companies investigated were found to use suppliers that paid cocoa farmers enough to live on

Leading chocolate brands have been criticised for having “inadequate” ethical standards in their cocoa supply chain in a report from Ethical Consumer. Only 17 out of 82 brands investigated by the consumer organisation were judged to be using chocolate from suppliers that ensured farmers were paid enough to live on.

As a result, there is a risk that Advent calendars, chocolate Santas and other Christmas treats will have been produced with child labour. About 60% of the world’s cocoa comes from west Africa, and about six in 10 cocoa-growing households in Ghana are estimated to use child labour, with four in 10 in Ivory Coast.

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Republicans continue effort to erode US child labor rules despite teen deaths

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Violations have soared but legislative effort to strengthen protection for young workers have received little support

Child labor violations have been soaring in the US, but efforts to render solutions through legislation have received little support, and Republicans at the state level continue pushing bills that would roll back current child labor protections.

In most recent fiscal year, the US Department of Labor wage and hour division reported 835 cases of child labor violations affecting 3,876 minors, and 688 minors employed in violation of hazardous occupation, a 283% increase since 2015. Civil penalties against employers totaled just under $4.3m.

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Flyer distributor charged with 2,400 breaches of Victoria’s child labour laws

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Ive Distribution allegedly hired more 400 children aged under 15 between July and September 2022

One of Australia’s largest catalogue distribution companies has been hit with more than 2,400 criminal charges for allegedly breaching Victorian child employment laws, by allegedly hiring youths aged under 15 without permits.

The state’s wage regulator, Wage Inspectorate Victoria, has filed the 2,425 criminal charges against Ive Distribution Pty Ltd in the Melbourne magistrates court.

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Republican Iowa governor rolls back state’s child labor law protections

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Change in law allows teenagers to serve alcohol in restaurants and could allow children to operate heavy machinery like power saws

Iowa’s Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, has signed a bill that rolls back several child labor law protections in the midwestern state, including how many hours children can work and at what type of establishments.

Iowa and several other states in the US have loosened regulations on child labor in response to some businesses complaining about a workforce shortage. The moves have been met with widespread criticism by Democrats and labor groups.

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‘They were little’: photos show children illegally working in US slaughterhouse

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Images released by US labor department show conditions over 100 children faced at Packers Sanitation Services Incorporated

Harrowing photos released by the US labor department taken at a slaughterhouse plant in Nebraska show the conditions more than 100 children faced while illegally working for Packers Sanitation Services Incorporated (PSSI) before the department cracked down on the company for violating child labor laws.

The pictures show employees covered in protective gear, using chemicals to spray down and sanitize equipment. In some of the pictures, made public on Sunday by the television news show 60 Minutes, some of the employees appear to be young children, wearing protective face glasses and holding buckets.

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Over 100 children illegally employed by US slaughterhouse cleaning firm

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Labor department investigation finds Packers Sanitation Services Inc employed children between ages of 13 and 17 in eight states

More than 100 children have been discovered to be illegally employed by a slaughterhouse cleaning firm across the country, federal authorities said.

The Department of Labor announced that a federal investigation found Wisconsin-based Packers Sanitation Services Inc (PSSI) employed at least 102 children, ranging from 13 to 17 years old, to work overnight shifts at 13 meat processing facilities in eight states.

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Sanitation firm accused of employing 31 children at animal slaughter facilities

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Department of Labor complaint says Nebraska firm employed children ages 13 to 17 to work with ‘dangerous equipment’

A Nebraska sanitation services firm is facing a major complaint from the Department of Labor for allegedly employing 31 children in job duties that are illegal for those under 18 years old.

The Department of Labor filed the complaint against Packers Sanitation Services (PSSI) on Wednesday, issuing a request for a temporary injunction, as reported by the Daily Beast.

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Children as young as nine say they are ill from work recycling plastic in Turkey

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Human Rights Watch says failure to enforce laws worsens health impact at centres, amid steep rise in EU and UK waste exports

Children as young as nine are working in plastic waste recycling centres in Turkey, putting them at risk of serious and lifelong health conditions, according to Human Rights Watch.

Workers including children, and people living in homes located “dangerously close” to the centres, told researchers they were suffering from respiratory problems, severe headaches and skin ailments.

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Cadbury faces fresh accusations of child labour on cocoa farms in Ghana

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A new TV documentary alleges that children as young as 10 are using machetes to harvest pods

The food giant that owns the Cadbury brand is embroiled in fresh allegations of employing child labour after an investigation obtained footage of children working with machetes on cocoa farms in its supply chain.

Children as young as 10 have allegedly been found working in Ghana to harvest cocoa pods to supply Mondelēz International, which owns Cadbury. Campaigners say the farmers are being paid less than £2 a day and can’t afford to hire adult workers.

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Scared, hungry and cold: child workers in Kabul – picture essay

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As temperatures fall below freezing, children as young as four trying to make a living on the Afghan capital’s streets are all that stand between their family and starvation

Amid the roadside restaurants and bustling crowds in one of Kabul’s busiest markets, a 10-year-old girl is trying to sell plastic bags to shoppers squeezing past her. “If I don’t work, we will go hungry,” Shaista says. Shops in the Afghan capital are stacked with food, but her family cannot afford any of it.

Each morning, Shaista buys a few shopping bags for 5 afghani (4p) each, then goes to the market to sell them for double that. As the UN predicts that 97% of Afghans could be living below the poverty line by June, the number of child labourers and beggars has tripled in Kabul, aid workers say. Many are fighting just to survive.

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Urgent action needed to halt trafficking of children in world’s orphanages – report

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Millions of children worldwide are at risk of abuse and exploitation in institutions, often to attract funding from donors, says Lumos charity

Immediate action must be taken to prevent trafficking and exploitation of children in orphanages, according to a report published on Monday.

International children’s charity Lumos says that an estimated 5.4 million children worldwide live in institutions that cannot meet their needs and neglect their rights and where they are exposed to multiple forms of exploitation and harm.

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Battery power: five innovations for cleaner, greener electric vehicles

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EVs are seen as key in transition to low-carbon economy, but as their human and environmental costs become clearer, can new tech help?

While the journey to a low-carbon economy is well under way, the best route to get there remains up for debate. But, amid the slew of “pathways” and “roadmaps”, one broad consensus exists: “clean” technology will play a vital role.

Nowhere is this truer than for transport. To cut vehicle emissions, an alternative to the combustion engine is required.

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‘Hidden pandemic’: Peruvian children in crisis as carers die

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With 93,000 children in Peru losing a parent to Covid, many face depression, anxiety and poverty

When Covid-19 began shutting down Nilda López’s vital organs, doctors decided that the best chance of saving her and her unborn baby was to put her into a coma.

Six months pregnant, López feared she would not wake up, or that if she did, her baby would not be there.

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Child labour worldwide increases for first time in 20 years

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UN warns that coronavirus crisis threatens to push millions more children into work

Child labour has risen for the first time in two decades and the coronavirus crisis threatens to push millions more youngsters towards the same fate, Unicef has said.

In a joint report, the International Labour Organization and the UN children’s agency say the number in child labour stood at 160 million at the start of 2020 – an increase of 8.4 million in four years.

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‘I had to step up’: Child labour in poorest countries rose during Covid, says report

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Study finds children in Ghana, Nepal and Uganda in dangerous, exploitative work, with long hours and little pay

Gopal Magar’s father has had a drinking problem for as long as he can remember, but when Kathmandu went into lockdown last spring, it got worse. With five members of his family confined to a small room in the south of the city, tempers frayed and the 14-year-old saw his father beat his mother again and again. One day Gopal could stand it no longer. He fought back, and then fled, leaving his parents, and his school, behind.

Gopal now lives with his older brother on the other side of the city, and has swapped his classroom for a construction site. “I have fewer problems now, but I need to work really hard,” he says. He starts work at six in the morning and for the next 12 hours hauls sand, loads bricks and mixes concrete. He earns about £7 a day and sends some of it to his mother to help her buy food and pay the rent.

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Price of gold: DRC’s rich soil bears few riches for its miners – photo essay

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As the value of gold reached new heights last year, those mining it continued to face crippling deprivation and dangerous conditions

  • Produced as part of Congo In Conversation, with the support of the Carmignac photojournalism award. Text and photographs by Moses Sawasawa, a photographer based in Goma and co-founder of Collectif Goma Oeil

The muddy slopes surrounding the eastern Congolese gold-mining town of Kamituga hold vast wealth and crippling deprivation.

In South Kivu province near the borders of Rwanda and Burundi, Kamituga has mineral resources estimated to be worth $24tn (£17tn) in untapped deposits. Yet the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has one of the lowest levels of GDP per capita in the world and people work in dangerous conditions with little hope of scratching out anything more than a meagre existence from tough and dangerous work.

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Nine and looking after the family: the children working to survive in Malawi

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As sole provider for his family, nine-year-old Gift is exhausted and, despite hopes of being a teacher, gets little chance to study

While other children play football or watch cartoons at home after school, nine-year-old Gift Phiri goes to work.

After his day at primary school in Mchengautuwa, in Malawi’s northern city of Mzuzu, the nine-year-old goes home to start work, hammering sharp-edged metal sheets, shaping them into charcoal cooking stoves. Gift, who lives with his grandmother, two younger siblings and another relative, started making the stoves after being trained by his grandfather when he was six.

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Mars, Nestlé and Hershey to face child slavery lawsuit in US

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Chocolate companies are among the defendants named in a lawsuit brought by former child workers in Ivory Coast

Eight children who claim they were used as slave labour on cocoa plantations in Ivory Coast have launched legal action against the world’s biggest chocolate companies. They accuse the corporations of aiding and abetting the illegal enslavement of “thousands” of children on cocoa farms in their supply chains.

Nestlé, Cargill, Barry Callebaut, Mars, Olam, Hershey and Mondelēz have been named as defendants in a lawsuit filed in Washington DC by the human rights firm International Rights Advocates (IRA), on behalf of eight former child slaves who say they were forced to work without pay on cocoa plantations in the west African country.

The plaintiffs, all of whom are originally from Mali and are now young adults, are seeking damages for forced labour and further compensation for unjust enrichment, negligent supervision and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

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Child labour is exploitation: there’s no such thing as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ work

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For health, wellbeing and life chances children need an education – and we must not let Covid drag us back to the bad old days

Covid has brought with it a spate of disturbing reports of schoolchildren reverting to child labour, increases in child marriage, trafficking, domestic violence and a sharpening digital divide in education. Children the world over are falling through the cracks, with governments ignoring child rights violations under the guise of having more urgent crises to tackle. Equally disturbing is any acceptance of this as a regrettable necessity. For activists, civil society groups and international agencies working to reverse regressive norms legitimising child labour, any message that appears to condone it in any form is dangerous.

Apologists for child labour often argue in favour of “good” work – usually done in household settings, against “bad” work – which takes place in commercial settings and is deemed exploitative and hazardous. But in reality, it is virtually impossible to draw a clear line between good and bad work. The negative impacts of child labour on physical and mental health are well documented – poor growth, malnutrition, serious skin and other infections, chronic lung disease, musculoskeletal deformities, impairments to hearing, vision and immune function, and behavioural and emotional disorders. These harms are not restricted to the most hazardous forms of child labour but can be equally true for activities undertaken within the household. Even a seemingly benign task such as cooking the family meal will expose a girl to the risks associated with indoor pollution caused by cooking fires.

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