11 May 2005

U.S. Legislative Initiatives to Stop Abusive Child Labor

After a tobacco harvest in Laos, a child prepares the leaves for drying.

By Senator Tom Harkin

It is a moral imperative that all countries act now to stop abusive child labor practices. Such practices not only are evil, the author says, but are bad economic policy and impede development goals. The U.S. Congress has taken both legislative and nonlegislative actions to penalize countries that engage in the worst forms of child labor and to rehabilitate the child victims of such practices. Senator Harkin plans shortly to introduce legislation that calls for even stronger measures, including a ban on imports of products produced by abusive child labor.

Tom Harkin is a U.S. senator from the state of Iowa. A member of the Congress since 1975, Harkin is currently ranking Democrat on the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations subcommittee and a long-time leader in the fight to end abusive child labor.

Abusive child labor is a profound moral evil. It is also bad economic policy, and it undermines the development goals of emerging nations. When a child is exploited for the economic gain of others, the child loses, the family loses, the country loses, and the world loses. Nations that engage in abusive child labor make bad trading partners. A nation cannot achieve prosperity on the backs of its children. There simply is no place in the global economy for the slave labor of children.

During my three decades in the U.S. Congress, I have witnessed firsthand the horrors of abusive child labor in many countries. Once you see children toiling in fields and factories, children who are beaten and starved, children who live without love or even basic care, you can't help but be passionately committed to ending this scourge.

CONGRESSIONAL ACTIONS

To reduce child labor internationally, Congress has developed a wide range of tools, both legislative and non-legislative, to combat abusive child labor practices. For example, Section 1307 of the Tariff Act of 1930 forbids the importation of goods made with forced or indentured labor. In 2000, this act was amended to ensure that the statute also applied to goods made with forced or indentured child labor.

The Trade and Development Act of 2000 was a great step forward in the fight against abusive child labor in the developing world. Under this act, countries eligible to receive trade preferences under the Generalized System of Preferences are obliged to implement their commitments on abusive child labor. The Office of the United States Trade Representative is required by law to conduct a yearly review of countries receiving these benefits to determine, among other things, whether they are implementing their commitments under International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention 182 to eliminate the worst forms of child labor.

Under Convention 182, for the first time, countries reached agreement on the definition of the worst forms of child labor. This definition includes all forms of slavery, the trafficking of children, debt bondage, and recruiting children for prostitution, pornography, and the production of or trafficking in drugs. Also included in the definition is work that by its very nature is likely to harm the health, safety, or morals of children. Convention 182 was negotiated in 1999. As of April 2005, 153 of the 178 ILO member countries, including the United States, had ratified the convention. In ratifying the convention, these nations, including many developing countries, have agreed to eliminate abusive child labor as an "urgent" matter.

Children work along the salt flats in Kampot province, Cambodia.

In the Trade Act of 2002, the law that contains the trade promotion authority for U.S. trade negotiators, I attempted to include a requirement that the elimination of the worst forms of child and slave labor be a principal negotiating objective in all U.S. trade negotiations. Regrettably, in the final form of the 2002 act, this objective was seriously weakened, stating only that U.S. negotiators may raise the issue of abusive child labor with trading partners.

In 1999, I introduced the Child Labor Deterrence Act. I will soon reintroduce this bill, which instructs the president to work with our trading partners to secure an international ban on trade in products made with abusive child labor. If passed, such legislation would prohibit the importation of manufactured and mined goods that are produced by abusive child labor into the United States. It also would require the development and maintenance of a list of foreign industries that use abusive child labor. Companies violating the prohibition against importing these products would be subject to stiff penalties. Although this legislation stalled in 1999, I was able to amend the Trade Act of 2000 to ensure that the statute also applied to goods made with forced or indentured child labor.

THE HARKIN-ENGEL PROTOCOL

Parallel with these legislative initiatives, I have pursued voluntary, nonlegislative approaches—most prominently, the Harkin-Engel Protocol to eliminate abusive child labor and slave labor in the chocolate industry.

In 2001, Representative Eliot Engel, from the state of New York, joined me in crafting an initiative to eliminate abusive child and slave labor in the chocolate industry in West Africa. The Harkin-Engel Protocol prescribes a comprehensive, six-point, problem-solving approach, along with a time-bound process for credibly eliminating the use of abusive child and slave labor in the production of cocoa beans and derivative cocoa products in the countries of West Africa. The protocol specifically provides for the development of global industry-wide standards and independent monitoring, reporting, and public certification. Industry has agreed to certify that cocoa used in chocolate or related products has been grown and processed in West Africa without abusive child labor.

Through the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Subcommittee, I secured funding for an ILO program to monitor and rehabilitate child labor in West African cocoa fields. Rehabilitation consists of removing children from abusive work and providing them with education or vocational training. The ILO program is called the West Africa Cocoa and Commercial Agriculture Project (WACAP), which combines awareness-raising of families and communities with a child labor monitoring and feedback system that produces accurate and credible reports on child labor in West African cocoa production. Through the WACAP program, the ILO will monitor and assist approximately 80,000 children. While WACAP has provided the necessary resources, the chocolate industry ultimately bears the social, moral, and financial responsibility for fully implementing the protocol.

The Harkin-Engel Protocol ensures that organized labor and other non-industry stakeholders, along with experts on the ground in cocoa-producing countries, play an active role in working with the industry to monitor child labor practices. Representatives of the ILO; the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco, and Allied Workers' Association; Free the Slaves; the National Consumers League; and the Child Labor Coalition are all part of an advisory group to help implement the terms of the protocol.

Finally, a key commitment under the protocol calls for the implementation of an industry-wide certification system by July 1, 2005.

THE CHALLENGE AHEAD

In sum, the U.S. Congress has helped to develop a number of effective national and international legal and voluntary tools to combat and finally eliminate abusive and slave child labor. The challenge today is for nations, international organizations, nongovernmental groups, and industry to use these tools robustly and aggressively.

No one underestimates the scale and difficulty of the challenge ahead of us. But the moral imperative is obvious, and the economic and development arguments are compelling. It is our solemn duty—as nations, as organizations, and as human beings—to end, once and for all, the scourge of abusive child labor. It takes government, industry, and international organizations, all acting in concert, to implement these tools effectively.

From the May 2005 edition of eJournal USA