White paper: Kailash Satyarthi
All the 2007 Principal Voices are submitting a White Paper to the Web site explaining their views at length.
Kailash Satyarthi, founder of Rugmark, believes that the elimination of forced and child labor is possible in our lifetimes.
In this age of economic globalization and digitalization of every sphere of life, more than 12 million people are still victims of forced labor. Furthermore, of the 218 million child laborers worldwide, most are engaged in the undeniably worst forms of child labor. Over the last 25 years, I have encountered numerous forms of forced labor. Children, women and men are brought and sold like animals, enslaved and confined to live and work in appalling conditions with either low or no wages. They are abused and denied every human right. Ironically, this goes on despite national legislations and international conventions enacted decades ago.
Poverty, illiteracy, absence of strong legislations or effective enforcement, large-scale corruption, social exclusion and disparity combined act to
aggravate forced labor situations. Privatization and liberalization increase
demand for informal, cheap and less-protected workforces. Children,
women, illiterate masses, indigenous and socially-marginalized people
make easy prey as forced labor.
There are many obstacles in the fight against forced labor. Improved and
comprehensive research needs to be conducted to act as the foundation for
awareness-raising activities and to promote policy change. A general lack of
political will to implement laws and investigate forced labor plus the
reluctance of victims to testify in court is also a challenge that needs to be
addressed.
Modern day forced labor is linked to migration and trafficking,
bringing further difficulties for the victim in testifying-including the threat
of deportation. Under law, forced labor is often badly defined which makes
identification and prosecution difficult for the concerned authorities. It is
thus clear that manifold approaches and multiple strategies are needed to
combat this menace-preventive, curative and rehabilitative action must be
taken to ensure that business' production and supply chains are free from
forced labor.
Businesses have to respect the core standards set by the International Labour
Organization. These include the provision of decent wages and working
conditions, equal opportunity and wage for women and men, freedom of association and no child labor. Lower and middle-level management have
to be sensitized and trained, a strong transparent code of conduct for
production and supply-and possibly independent inspection systems
be-encouraged, and education and healthcare treated as a priority sector.
I would like to share some of my personal experiences in the global businesses
of rug, sporting goods, clothing and chocolate (cocoa) production in finding
solutions to the problem of forced labor.
In the course of the physical rescue of children from the rug making
industry of South Asia, it was realized that the number of children in
slavery consistently grew in parallel to the demand for cheap rugs in the
West. This compelled my colleagues and I to launch a consumers'
campaign for selective boycott as well as selective promotion. We have
successfully initiated an independent, transparent, professional and
voluntary monitoring, certification and labeling mechanism named
Rugmark.
A sustained campaign demanding fair sports only through
fairly produced sporting goods, or living clean by wearing clean clothes,
or chocolate without the bitter taste of forced labor has effected a
remarkable decrease in forced and child labor in these industries. This
has also helped in building mutual partnerships between industry and
non-industry actors by lessening the wide gap and reducing mistrust.
Finally, looking at the very positive trends in recent years I am confident
that forced labor as well as child labor elimination is achievable and possible
in our lifetimes.
What do you think?
The origin of child labour is not simply the poverty. It is the mix of poverty along with lack of awareness. Parents want to make out money from their children and want to enjoy. My say is making the parents aware and working towards the removal of poverty can solve the problem.
Sometimes I think the 2020 dream is ridiculous. India's main power is it's huge - 70% of people live in villages and villages are almost ignored!! Nobody even knows what's going on. We need millions of people like Kailash. Otherwise we'll be waiting for another 150 years to change the whole system!
The child labor issue in India is so much larger than finding the businesses who traffic and employ children. You could stop them tomorrow and it won't make a dent in the problem. Every day on the streets of Bangalore I see hundreds of kids working selling vegetables, shining shoes, working in darshinis... anything to help their parents make a living. The police do nothing, and the parents are the principal ones who need to be convinced that school will make a difference in their child's life. For these people, there's no sense in being educated if you starve to death in the meantime.
Also, if you read the news, many children are sold by their own parents as cheap labor. In Hyderabad recently, one woman was caught selling her daughter for 2,000 rupees. Poverty leads people to do desperate and horrible things.
There needs to be a monetary incentive for poor families to send their children to school, with a higher premium paid for every girl child that attends. This is the only way to convince destitute parents to keep their children in school and out of the streets, tanneries, zari workshops and brothels.
It is true that it needs to be a multi-pronged campaign. I believe it has to be supported by the governments involved, though implemented by private parties as to eliminate the "paying off" of government officials. We, in the USA, are the recipients of the cheap labor and we should be ashamed of ourselves. Whatever I can do to help stop this and also be one of your soldiers, please let me and all of us know.
Kailash has only tackled one problem in child labor, vis-à-vis the rug industry. The problem of child labour in India is vast and there is not a corner that is free of such a curse. Children are found in manufactories such as firecrackers, sari embellishment brass item manufacturing and the list goes on.
They are also made to beg at crossroads in major cities by the "Beggar Mafia" which deposits them every morning at the city's crossroads and picked up at nights and taken to a "Collection Centre" where the boss gives them a handout corresponding to the amount collected.
From this he has to feed himself and countless members of his family or maybe pay a part of it as protection money. This is what I have experienced in my living in Mumbai and also on my travels to various cities in India, mixing business and researching in part on the life of these children. The Government department concerned is fully aware but turn a blind eye as they are paid off by the perpetrators of this crime in employing child labor.
It is achievable. But for that the attack on the problem has to be multi-pronged. Not only from government legislation as we have in India but action groups need to work to discourage individual households from engaging little boy servants or little housemaids at a very cheap rate as we find here. This is a particular field in which we are working. And we feel that political will may also be a very decisive factor in this.
Child labour is a scourge which needs to be eliminated from this planet and in our lifetime. I have heard and read about Kailash Satyarthi and his bold, and often perilous, campaigns against child labor, mostly endemic to Eastern India. I would like to join his campaign in an active way and be a committed soldier in this fight against child labour. Please convey my good wishes and congratulations to him, and please let him know that I am prepared to help him in this noble cause in whatever way he wants.
Well said and done. Also, by strengthening the family, the smallest part of the society, the objective to eliminate child labor and forced labor during our lifetime could become closer to being achieved.
