As
Sub-Saharan Africa strives to break the shackles of poverty, its population of
nearly one billion people is hard at work.
A
2014 report by the U.S. Department of Labor concluded that one out of five
Sub-Saharan children are working under difficult if not squalid conditions.
Poverty
is the driving force behind child labor, says Alex Soho of the International
Labor Organization in South Africa.
“They
are poor. Their income is low. They cannot afford hiring adult laborers,” he
said. ”So they have to rely, you know, on the work of their kids. This is true
for farmers. This is true, also, for farm workers, who have to take them
[children] along with them to the plantations, in particular, the whole family,
to complete the tasks they’ve been assigned.”
For
these children, daily life consists of more than just backbreaking labor.
Hazardous conditions are commonplace — not just on the farms, where pesticides
abound and machinery meant to be run by adults poses threats to children, but
also in mining, where conditions are sometimes abominable.
FILE
- Boys pan for gold on a riverside at Iga BarFILE - Boys pan for gold on a
riverside at Iga Barriere, 25 km (15 miles) from Bunia, in the resource-rich
Ituri region of eastern Congo, Feb. 16, 2009.
Day
after day, children stand in muddy creeks and rivers scouring the water for
specks of gold dust. There are dangers everywhere — machinery, man-sized or
bigger rocks, hazardous chemicals and water-borne diseases.
Cocoa
industry
Another
Sub-Saharan African industry dependent on child labor is cocoa, used in the
production of chocolate. The U.S. Labor Department report said child labor is
prevalent on cocoa plantations in Cameroon, Ghana, Guinea and Sierra Leone. In
two other nations — Ivory Coast and Nigeria — it’s not only that children are
working; it’s that they are being forced to work.
What’s
worse, the use of children in the cocoa industry is increasing. A study by
Tulane University found that the number of children working in the cocoa
industry in 2013 and 2014 was 51 percent higher than five years earlier. The
Tulane report said 1.4 million Sub-Saharan African children were working in the
cocoa industry in 2014.
An
organization representing the industry says families, not corporations, are
mainly responsible for the growth of child labor.
FILE
- Children living in a cocoa-producing villagFILE - Children living in a
cocoa-producing village walk back from the fields carrying wood and food stuffs
on their heads on the outskirts of the town of Oume, Ivory Coast, June 30,
2005.
“More
than 99.5 percent of child labor that exists is taking place on the family
farm,” said Nick Weatherill, executive director of the International Cocoa
Initiative. “And, therefore, the much more extreme and definitely concerning
[aspect] of [human] trafficking and kids working in indentured labor — that’s
less than 0.5 percent. It’s still a phenomenon. It’s still real, but it’s
principally driven by criminality. It is not driven by industry [and] corporate
business practices.”
Anti-child
labor activists in the United States are trying to use the courts to confront
the chocolate industry. Lawsuits pending in California state courts against
Hershey, Mars and Nestle are asking for money for residents who bought
chocolate. State law requires candy makers to declare on product packages that
child slavery was involved in their making.
A
Guest Editorial
