News Release

ILAB News Release: [05/20/2013]
Contact Name: Gloria Della or Egan Reich
Phone Number: (202) 693-4679 or x4960
Email: Della.Gloria.D@dol.gov or Reich.Egan.2@dol.gov
Release Number: 13-0972-NAT

$9 million in funding available from US Labor Department to reduce child labor in Colombia

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs today announced a $9 million competitive grant solicitation for one or more projects to reduce child labor in the artisanal mining sector of Colombia.

Thousands of children work in Colombia’s mining sector, where they labor alongside adults and are exposed to physical injuries, dangerous tools, hazardous substances, toxic gases and explosions. Many people are not aware that children face these hazards.

One or more qualifying organizations will receive funding to support Colombia’s efforts to identify and combat child labor in the mining sector, including by increasing educational opportunities for children and improving the livelihoods of families involved in artisanal mining. The project(s) will address occupational safety concerns to reduce the risk of injuries to adult miners and the corresponding loss of household income that can contribute to child labor. In addition, the project(s) will improve interagency coordination to provide social services to children engaged in mining and fund an exchange program with other countries to share strategies on activities covered by the grant(s).

Applications must be submitted by July 19 at 5 p.m. EDT electronically via http://www.grants.gov or as hard copies mailed to the U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Procurement Services, 200 Constitution Ave. NW, Room S-4307, Washington, DC 20210, Attention: Brenda White.

All awards will be made by Sept. 30. The solicitation for grant applications (SCA 13-06) is available online at http://www.dol.gov/ILAB/grants/ and http://www.grants.gov.

Twenty-five to 30 kids a year die at work. Through its advocacy and co-chairmanship of the Child Labor Coalition, the National Consumers League (NCL) has worked to reduce that number over the years. Each spring, NCL produces a report called “The Five Most Dangerous for Teens.” For several years, we worked to help enact proposed rules to protect kids working in agriculture. Last April, working through the CLC and its members we helped organize a press conference to highlight the dangers that young workers can encounter while working on farms and agricultural facilities.

Unfortunately, the organized farm lobby succeeded in forcing the Obama administration to withdraw the youth farm safety rules—a decision that we estimate will lead to the unnecessary deaths of 50 to 100 youth working on farms over the next decade.

This week, we heard the sobering story on National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting System’s News Hour each featured in-depth stories about a particularly lethal type of agricultural work: labor in grain silo facilities, which in a typical year kills 15 or more workers. According to recent data, 20 percent of the victims of grain engulfments are young workers.

NPR and PBS worked with the Center for Public Integrity, highlighting a terrible tragedy in Mount Carroll, Illinois nearly three years ago. Two teens, “running down the corn,” were engulfed by grain and killed while working in a silo: 14-year-old Wyatt Whitebread and 19-year-old Alex Pacas. Will Piper, a 20-year-old co-worker, barely escaped with his life because someone threw him a bucket that he was able to put over his head. The bucket prevented the flowing grain from asphyxiating him. Today, Piper lives in guilt because he found the job that killed his best friend Alex.

Among the worst aspects of the Whitebread-Pacas accidentally deaths, which we highlighted in our April 2012 press conference, are the facts that Wyatt, at 14, was too young to be doing such dangerous work. He and Alex also should have been wearing safety harnesses as they walked on top of the crusty grain trying to loosen it. The facility possessed the mandatory harnesses that would have saved the boys lives, but did instruct or compel the teens to wear them.

The NPR and PBS stories grew out of reporting from the Center for Public Integrity, which found something very disturbing: fines levied by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) as a result of preventable grain engulfments were  typically reduced over 50 percent and in some cases well over 90 percent by OSHA.

In the deaths of Alex Pacas and Wyatt Whitebread, OSHA found 12 “willful violations” and initially leveled $555,000 in fines. This amount was later reduced to $200,000. A Center for Public Interest-NPR analysis found that the $9.2 million in fines proposed by OSHA for engulfments that had killed 179 people between 1984 and 2012 were eventually reduced to $3.8 million. Rarely, if ever, are criminal sanctions imposed even with repeat offenders.

” Too often we find that teens are sent in to do this work –without harnesses or protective equipment — and when disaster strikes and workers die OSHA fines are negotiated ever downward and often are a fraction of the authorized fines and penalties,” said Sally Greenber, NCL’s executive director and a  co-chair of the CLC.

NCL and the CLC believe strongly that youth working on farms and agricultural facilities need to have stronger protections. We urge the Obama administration to reconsider the youth occupational safety rules it withdrew last April.

Why allow teen workers to engage in jobs–like working in grain facilities–that we know to be extremely dangerous? And in cases where employers are found to be at fault for the death of teen workers, why are fines consistently and dramatically reduced?

When you are a child labor activist, you spend a surprising amount of time sitting at your desk writing emails and blogs or in meetings with federal officials and others concerned about child labor. Opportunities for street activism are not common, but earlier this month, the members of the Child Labor Coalition and the Cotton Campaign hit the streets for a protest (video) in Washington, D.C. to send the government of Uzbekistan a message: stop the forced labor of a million-plus children and adults in your annual cotton harvest.

Every year, Uzbekistan’s ruling elite forces children and adults – students, teachers, nurses, doctors, public servants and private sector employees  –  to pick cotton under appalling conditions. Those who refuse are expelled from school, fired from their jobs, denied public benefits, or worse. Some harvesters have reported being beaten because they did not meet their cotton quota.

Uzbekistan’s government is unique in its complicity in bringing out about widespread forced labor. The country is one of the largest cotton producers in the world, and Uzbek cotton sometimes finds its way into the U.S. apparel industry. More than 130 apparel companies have signed a pledge that they will not knowingly use Uzbek cotton in their garments.

Despite this widespread concern in the apparel industry and intensifying scrutiny from non-government organizations all over the world, the regime, led by dictator Islam Karimov, has steadfastly refused to abandon forced labor in the country’s cotton fields. Still, persistent pressure from activists may have altered the harvest a little. This year for the first time, fewer schools with young students were closed and fewer young students were compelled to harvest cotton. However, an even greater number of teens and young adults were forced to go to the fields and work for pennies an hour under conditions that are often very difficult.

It’s not always easy to get the attention of one of the world’s most brutal dictators, but that’s what the advocacy community did during New York City’s Fashion Week in September 2011, when several CLC members and the Cotton Advocacy Network successfully pressured event organizers into ousting Uzbekistan’s Gulnara Karimova from the prestigious fashion show. A designer and, at the time, an Uzbek diplomat, Gulnara is the daughter of Uzbekistan’s brutal leader Islam Karimov. Gulnara’s fashion line was the perfect vehicle for highlighting the abuses of her father’s regime because cotton is a common component in many clothing items. Thanks to our protest, Gulnara was forced to move her fashion show to a private restaurant where attendees and the media were met with our chants and picketing.

Flash forward 16 months and the Cotton Campaign learned that Uzbek Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov was about to visit Washington, DC to seek increased support from the U.S. government for Uzbekistan. Rumor has it that Uzbekistan wants the U.S. to leave behind hundreds of millions of dollars worth of military equipment when the U.S. pulls out of Afghanistan.

The CLC and Cotton Campaign quickly called its members together to send a message: stop human rights abuses and forced adult and child labor immediately. At our March 11 protest 25-plus activists gathered to express their concern. We picketed the Embassy of Uzbekistan and let our voices be heard with chants like, “Uzbek kids should be in school, child labor isn’t cool!” and “Hey hey, ho ho, child labor’s got to go!”

Representatives of both groups tried to deliver a letter to the Foreign Minister, offering to sit down with him and discuss the human rights situation in Uzbekistan. Our knocks on the embassy door went unanswered, but we could see staff filming us from behind curtains. Hopefully, news of our protest has made it back to President Karimov and instills an increased desire to end forced labor in Uzbekistan’s cotton fields. Coverage of the protest by the Voice of America helped to ensure that the Uzbek people know that Americans care about their plight.

Members of the Cotton Campaign, including Mark Lagon, former US Ambassador-at-Large to Combat Trafficking in Persons. CLC member Bennett Freeman of Calvert Investments, and Nate Herman of the American Apparel and Footwear Association have written an insightful essay about this issue, which can be read here.

Shipbreaking (Photo by Pierre Torset)

Of Ships and Men

There are ships like hotels horizontal

and there are children and children

breaking, dragging these dead vessels

through beach sand soiled with oil

through the swirling peace rainbows

of slavery, a six month deconstruction

of scrap metal and tiny little lives

scraping by one then two then twenty

broken walls of asbestos at a time

when there is no gear, no gloves

and masks only of signage bold fronted

“No Child Labour, We Take Safety First”

while Nasima, 8, of Chandan Baisha,

tries to hide just beyond the gates.

Bits of rust from the iron plates jump

into my eyes. Tomorrow? Don’t know.

We have too much work to do today.

And Sohel, 11, who came from Comilla:

My mother works at the jute mill and I

started working last year at the yards

as a cutter helper. My father never visits.

He sometimes looks for me in the streets

and tries talking to me, but I refuse.

He harmed my mother too much.

In the village, no work. Here, work.

My ambition is high. I want to become

a cutter-helper. Maybe in five years.

And Robani, 12, from Moheshkali Island

who left his village to come here after

the river took his family’s strip of land,

who watched as his father was crushed

by some falling part from the floating

dustbin, who saw his father’s shin bone

jutting white out from temple red

and who was told by the foreman

Your father was too weak for this job.

Now is your time to be the real man

of your family, a strong man that does

not break. Robani recalls not the years

when he and his father caught fish

or the time they played hours of cricket

with a bamboo bat and old compass case

but of that white and red mangle of man.

At night as he sleeps he hears orders

and he hears the hushed sound of heavy

steel ship part thump into black sand,

the sound that killed his father as if

his father had not stood between

the black steel and the blacker sand,

the weight of it all so fast that a man

can’t sound, no moan, no emotion,

bones and memories and history ground,

crumpled quietly, unlike a paper sheet

loud in crumpling and capable of reuse

or the sagor waves out beyond the black

or the thunder or of an echo which is

not even alive but an imitation, no,

his father was pestled silently unlike

the rice or flour or tea or other fined

things at the mad market. How much

to buy the silence of a man crippled?

Depends on how crippled. 10,000 taka

if one can still walk, talk, use both arms.

It’s been forty years since the first vessel.

No facts for flesh, only for things metaled:

Bangladesh is world’s largest shipbreaker.

Bangladesh is world’s first shipbreaker.

Gets 30% of steel shipbreaking.

Has thousands of jobs from shipbreaking.

But what of shipbreaking beating out

child prostitution in dangerous jobs?

Or the people, miles away from the yards,

who have for generations survived on

fish that are no longer. Their choice:

be broken by labor or by starvation.

What of how 20% of the workers

are preadolescent boys? Or the activist

who knows Chittagong needs these ships

but wants only safety and no child labor,

who says to me: You watch. When they

kill me nobody will care. One replaces

another here. The steel of these beasts

has shaped more than our men’s bodies.

*******************************

Cameron Conaway is the Social Justice Editor at The Good Men Project.

He may be followed on Twitter by going here.

Today is an important day if you care about the welfare of children. Advocates have named February 12 “International Day against the Use of Child Soldiers” to highlight one of the worst forms of child labor. It’s hard to imagine that in 2013 the use of child soldiers is alive and thriving, but the BBC estimates that there are 300,000 child soldiers internationally. This number includes children of elementary school age who are handed automatic weapons and asked to kill, as well as others who are used for slave labor to support armies. Since January 2011, child soldiers have been used in at least 19 countries.

Many of the children suffer the worst forms of psychological warfare from their captors, who in many cases break them down by forcing them to kill or maim their friends or family. Many girls are sexually assaulted and forced to serve as sexual slaves. Many child victims are given drugs to keep them compliant. Their years of enforced service often produce intense psychological scarring that makes it hard to return to their communities. In some cases, they are shunned by their villages. Hear one girl’s compelling story in this YouTube video.

The Child Labor Coalition has tracked dozens of stories regarding the use of child soldiers over the last year and engages with its members to perform advocacy to reduce the use of child soldiers. Most recently, the warfare in Mali led to the recruitment of child soldiers, including children as young as 12. In early January, the United Nations decried the use of child soldiers in the Central African Republic, and in India, reports emerged that the militant group, the Garo National Liberation Army was using children in a variety of roles to support combat, including possibly the use of armed children. In early December, 2012, the U.S. government imposed sanctions on two “March 23 (M23)” leaders in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) for allegedly using child soldiers.

Not all the news has been bad. In June 2012, Burma made significant strides in reducing its use of child soldiers when it released an action plan to tackle the problem. In 2012, Yemeni authorities said they were committed to stopping the use of children in the military.

The challenges governments face to end the use of child soldiers are often formidable, however. A February 6th Huffington Post blog by Jake Scobey-Thal noted that despite some progress, child soldiers are still being used in Burma and cited the International Labour Organization that their numbers may be as high as 5,000.

Two members of the Child Labor Coalition, World Vision and Human Rights Watch (HRW), have been leaders in the effort to pressure the US government into abiding by a congressional law, the Child Soldiers Prevention Act, which prohibits military aid to countries that use child soldiers. They’ve also provided a valuable service with early warnings when civil strife reaches the point that children begin to be dragged into military conflicts as they have been recently in Mali, Syria and the DRC.

Is the U.S. doing enough to protect children from becoming child soldiers or from being harmed by military conflict? On February 5^th, HRW cited recent recommendations by the United Nations (UN) committee of experts and urged the United States to do more to protect children harmed by conflict. The UN committee had expressed alarm about reports that hundreds of children have died during US airstrikes in Afghanistan over the last four years and noted that children have been arrested and detained in Afghanistan. US laws, said the committee of experts, have also excluded former child soldiers from securing asylum here.

“The US can and should do more to protect children affected by armed conflict,” said Jo Becker, children’s rights advocacy director at HRW, who urged the U.S. to “take decisive action” on the children rights committee’s recommendations to address these problems.

In November 2012, Jesse Eaves, a senior policy advisor for child protection for World Vision told IRIN Humanitarian News and Analysis that the use of presidential waivers which is becoming a frequent occurrence is weakening the authority of the Child Soldiers Prevention Act. “When the United States government gives a waiver to a country identified in the State Department’s [Trafficking in Persons] report as country using children in their national military, this weakens the authority of the law by not holding the country accountable for removing children from their armed forces,” said Eaves.

In a press release about International Day to End the Use of Child Soldiers, Amnesty International called on governments to adopt a global Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) to prevent armed forces, like those in Mali, from using weapons to recruit children as soldiers. Final talks on an ATT treaty are scheduled to occur in March, and according to Amnesty, “the current draft ATT text proposes weak rules to help prevent arms transfers to states or groups using child soldiers.”

Clearly much work remains to be done to get the U.S. and other governments to do the right thing when it comes to child soldiers, but working together, the members of the CLC and its allies hope that in the near future the use of child soldiers will be banished. Readers interested in this issue should visit the White House comment page and let their concerns about the use of child soldiers and presidential waivers of the provisions of the Child Soldiers Prevention Act be known.

January 30, 2013

Dear Mr. President:

The members of the Child Labor Coalition (CLC), representing millions of Americans through unions, human rights organizations, and socially-responsible investment organizations, write in regard to the pending nomination of Secretary of Labor. We urge you to select a nominee who will make protecting children here in the U.S. and abroad a priority—just as Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis has done.

We believe all working youth deserve the strongest labor, health and safety protections. Yet today, children who work in U.S. agriculture do not enjoy the same protections as children who work in other industries, despite the industry’s high injury and fatality rates. Youth working for wages on farms are permitted to work at younger ages, for longer hours, and under more hazardous conditions.

An estimated 300,000 to 500,000 children work for wages in the fields each year. Many children migrate with their parents each year. The impact of migration on the education of farmworker children is often profound, as migrant students are often forced to miss or repeat classes and suffer other educational disruptions. More than half of migrant children will not finish high school, and fewer still will go on to college, trapping most farmworker children in a cycle of poverty.

The next Secretary of Labor has the opportunity to improve child safety in the workplace and ensure that children, regardless of their socio-economic status, have an opportunity at fulfilling their full potential by working hard in school and not in the fields.  Internationally, child labor on farms is responsible for over 60 percent of all child labor and exposes a disproportionate number of child workers to hazardous work.

We ask that the nominee demonstrate:

• A deep concern about the plight of migrant farmworker families, especially the children who toil in U.S. fields.
• A determination to seek creative avenues toward ending discrimination in U.S. child labor law and the inequalities that confront children who work in U.S. agriculture.
• A desire to protect children who work in the United States from the most hazardous forms of employment, especially in agriculture.
• An understanding that children and immigrant populations are extremely vulnerable to exploitation, including child labor and human trafficking.
• A commitment to increase child labor enforcement efforts.
• A willingness to seek creative solutions in addressing the worst forms of child labor internationally.
• An eagerness to consult with the NGO community to improve child labor remediation efforts here and abroad.

We respectfully ask you to give these criteria full consideration, and urge you to nominate an individual as Secretary who will work to protect our nation’s greatest and most precious asset—children.

Apple Inc. announced today that its internal audits had found more than 106 underage employees at 11 different locations in its supply chain; it found another 70 “historical” cases of child labor. The company also said that it had terminated contracts with a Chinese supplier, Guangdong Real Faith Pingzhuou Electronics, which employed 74 workers under age 16. Auditors found eight facilities with “bonded labor” –cases in which workers were compelled to labor to pay off excessive recruiting fees.

The National Consumers League (NCL), the nation’s oldest consumer advocacy organization with a long history of working to reduce child labor in the U.S. and abroad, applauds the termination of supplier contracts that rely on the work of child labor. “After much criticism, it appears that Apple has finally stepped up auditing of its supply chain. We urge the company to continue on that path as aggressively as possible. With 1.5 million workers in 14 countries, the 106 children found working may be the tip of the iceberg,” noted NCL Executive Director Sally Greenberg who is a co-chair of the Child Labor Coalition, which represents 28 organizations, trying to eliminate the worst forms of child labor.

“Children should not be working in electronics manufacturing–with its accompanying dangers. They should be in school and allowed to realize their full potential,” added Greenberg. “Given  Apple’s enormous profitability, it’s essential the company does everything in its power to stamp out child labor. Other electronics companies should take warning, and conduct rigorous audits of their supply chains.”

Apple suppliers in China, including the manufacturing behemoth FoxConn, have been criticized for poor working conditions and safety standards. Conditions were so bad, FoxConn felt compelled to install suicide nets to stop employees from plunging to their deaths off company rooftops. According to analyst Steven Millwood of TechAsia, Apple’s new  “supplier responsibility” report “details the same grim scene” for workers depicted in prior reports.

NATIONAL CONSUMERS LEAGUE PRESS RELEASE
For immediate release: January 25, 2013
Contact: Reid Maki, (202) 207-2820, reidm@nclnet.org

The world is celebrating great news that came in with the New Year: 15-year-old education activist Malala Yousafzai walked out of a Birmingham, England hospital on January 4^th, nearly three months after the Taliban shot her in the head and neck during an assassination attempt in Pakistan’s Swat Valley. Malala spoke out on behalf of her generation of girls having access to education —a position that was in sharp variance with Taliban extremists who tried to silence her.

Malala’s recovery, although far from complete, is being hailed as a miracle and her resilience is being celebrated far and wide. Malala’s courage has touched many, including pop-star Madonna, who dedicated a song to the girl in the days after the attack. She appeared at a concert with Malala’s name in large letters across her back.

Former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown cited Malala as a hero and visited Pakistan to press for open access to education. “Can Pakistan convert its momentary desire to speak out in support of Malala into a long term commitment to getting its three million girls and five million children into school?” asked Brown, who is currently serving as the United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education. Brown’s advocacy in support of Malala has led to calls to provide school access to all girls by 2015.

For more than two decades, the Child Labor Coalition has fought to protect children from the worst forms of child labor and Malala’s vision is central to that effort. “Access to education is one of the keys to reducing child labor—that’s what Malala is fighting for and that’s why her work has been so important,” noted CLC Co-Chair Sally Greenberg and the Executive Director of the National Consumers League. According to the Global Campaign for Education, 53 percent of out-of-school youth worldwide are girls, and millions of girls face discrimination, sexual and physical abuse, neglect, exploitation and violence.

In Pakistan, educational inequalities abound. The World Bank estimates that only 57 percent of girls and women can read and write, and in rural areas, only 22 percent of girls have completed primary-level schooling, compared with 47 percent of boys. According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs, nearly one third of Pakistani children aged 5-14 are deprived of schooling, and the country is making “no advancement in efforts to eliminate the worst forms of child labor.” Inspired by Malala’s case, however, the government of Pakistan has signaled its desire to provide equal access to education.

“The right to education is fundamental, and we stand with Malala and all those around the world who are working with us to make sure all children have equal access to high-quality public education,” said American Federation of Teachers Secretary-Treasurer Lorretta Johnson, also a CLC co-chair, in the days following the attack.

Malala’s education advocacy began at age 11, when she blogged about Taliban atrocities in Pakistan’s Swat Valley. She wrote about the closing of schools for girls, which were a result of ultraconservative views—supported by the Taliban—toward women’s roles in Pakistani society. According to published reports, Malala felt forced to hide her school books and feared for her life, knowing that advocacy might make her a target of the Taliban. At age 11 she said, “All I want is an education. And I am afraid of no one.”

“Education is power, especially for girls. Malala knows this and has used her voice to advocate for others,” Lily Eskelsen, vice president of the National Education Association, a Child Labor Coalition member reminded us at the time of the shooting. “The Taliban underestimated Malala from the beginning, but her power has already been unleashed. They cannot call it back. An educated girl becomes an informed woman, able to make the best choices for her own well-being and that of her family; generations are impacted.”

Despite the unequal access to education faced by many girls around the world, there is some good news. According to the International Labor Organization’s latest statistics, the number of girls in child labor worldwide fell between 2004 and 2008 from 103 million to 88 million. “We need to keep that progress up. We need to keep Malala’s vision alive and provide girls with unfettered access to education,” said the CLC’s Greenberg.

Although Malala faces many challenges ahead, including additional surgeries, her recovery is nothing short of miraculous. Her heroism and advocacy for girls inspires us all and may indeed lead to lasting changes in educational access for girls and women.

#

About the Child Labor Coalition

The Child Labor Coalition is comprised of 28 organizations, representing consumers, labor unions, educators, human rights and labor rights groups, child advocacy groups, and religious and women’s groups. It was established in 1989, and is co-chaired by the National Consumers League and the American Federation of Teachers. Its mission is to protect working youth and to promote legislation, programs, and initiatives to end child labor exploitation in the United States and abroad. For more information, please call CLC Coordinator Reid Maki at (202) 207-2820 [reidm@nclnet.org]. A complete list of CLC members can be found at our web site: www.stopchildlabor.org .

The Child Labor Coalition and the Cotton Campaign are seeking your help:

Stop Forced Labor, Forced Child Labor and Human Rights Abuses in Uzbekistan During the Uzbekistan Foreign Minister’s visit to Washington, DC

March 11, 2013, 12 – 1 PM EST, at the Embassy of Uzbekistan in Washington, Massachusetts Ave. near Dupont Circle (1746 Massachusetts Ave NW Washington, DC 20036)

Every year for decades, the government of Uzbekistan has forced millions of children and adults – teachers, nurses, doctors, public servants and private sector employees – to pick cotton under appalling conditions. Those who refuse are expelled from school, fired from their jobs, denied public benefits or worse. The government combines these penalties
with threats, detains and harasses Uzbek activists seeking to monitor the situation, and continues to refuse the International Labor Organization’s access to monitor the harvest. Uzbekistan is one of the largest cotton producing countries in the world, and cotton harvested there by forced labor finds its way into the U.S. apparel industry.

Modern-day slavery in the cotton fields persists as long as Uzbek citizens are denied fundamental human rights. Under the rule of long-time President Islam Karimov, torture is an enduring problem in Uzbekistan’s detention facilities, journalists and human rights defenders are imprisoned for legitimate civil society activism, and religious practice is
persecuted. Gulshan Karaeva, Uktam Pardaev and Elena Urlaeva were among the victims of harassment and arrest for attempting to document the 2012 cotton harvest.

Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov is visiting Washington, DC to seek increased support from the U.S. Congress and the Executive for the government of Uzbekistan. Join us outside the Uzbek Embassy to call for an end of forced labor and human rights abuses as conditions for support from the American people. When political change inevitably comes to Uzbekistan, the Uzbek people will remember if the United States did everything it could to help end their servitude.

With the holidays upon us, many American look forward to trimming their Christmas tree and spending time with their loved ones, especially their children. For many kids, Christmas invokes the happiest of memories, but not all kids are so lucky.

Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who is now the United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education, noted earlier this month that many children in India are virtually enslaved in sweatshops that manufacture Christmas ornaments. Check out what Brown had to say in this video and learn about the “nightmare” suffered by Indian children who make ornaments for consumers in the U.S. and other countries in the Western hemisphere.

In the video, Brown talks about a rescue raid by Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA) which freed 14 of the child laborers—some as young as eight—from a sweatshop in Delhi. BBA, like the Child Labor Coalition is a member of the Global March Against Child Labor, an international umbrella group that works to reduce the worst forms of child labor.

“Children are being asked to work 17, 18, 19 hours a day,” said Brown. “They are being asked to work in unsanitary conditions. They are being asked to work without sunlight. Some of them are lacerated because they are working with glass. We found these children in this basement, they were not being paid, they had been trafficked…” Several children had been beaten by their crew leaders. The rescuers actually found 12 of the children imprisoned in a locked 6-foot  by 6-foot cell

The children are now free, but many children around the world are not so fortunate. Brown notes that there are tens of thousands of sweatshops around the world, where grossly underpaid workers, including many children, produce goods for us.

“The people I know in America who do not want to celebrate Christmas on the backs of the exploitation of these young children would be appalled if they knew that these decorations and trinkets and gifts and presents were coming because children had been violently kept prisoner to make these goods.” The UNESCO Institute for Statistics notes that 61 million children around the world of primary age do not attend school—often because they work instead. “That’s an unacceptable thing for 2012,” said Brown.

India is currently considering a ban on all child labor for workers under 18. However, even if the ban passes, enforcement of the law would provide enormous challenges.

In its annual report this year, the U.S. Department of Labor found that 134 goods are still produced by forced labor and child labor in 74 countries. In India, children help produce more than 20 different goods ranging from bricks to carpets to leather goods and often do so under the harshest conditions.

As you put up and take down your Christmas tree and put the bulbs away, think for a moment about the small child who might have made those decorations, who might have been beaten because he or she did not work hard enough; who may have cut his or her hand on the glass of broken bulbs; or who dreams of the school that he or she is not allowed to attend.

When we buy products at ridiculously low prices, there is often a reason for those low prices. The real cost—as Gordon Brown notes—may be the freedom and the safety of children.

Read Brown’s excellent Huffington Post column about the raid here and check out what other products we use that may be manufactured by child labor and forced labor.

Consumers who wish to support the Child Labor Coalition’s and the National Consumers League’s efforts to educate the public about child labor issues may make a donation here.