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10 Facts about Child Labor in Turkey’s Hazelnut Production

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  • Child labor in Turkey remains prevalent. In 2012, around 900,000 children worked in Turkey. 45 percent of Child laborers worked in agriculture. Children make up to 8.5 percent of the workforce in hazelnut supply chains.
  • Two to three million Turkish agricultural workers derive some income from hazelnut production. Seasonal agricultural workers are especially dependent on hazelnut production.
  • The majority of these harvesters are from the southeast region of Turkey which borders Syria. However, hazelnuts are grown throughout the eastern and westerns regions along the Black Sea, requiring harvesters to migrate throughout the season. Syrian refugee children and other immigrant children are vulnerable to exploitation in the agricultural sector.
  • Syrian refugee and other children were also vulnerable to exploitation in the agriculture sector, where Syrian families tended to receive lower pay and live in worse conditions than Turkish workers.
  • Migratory workers tend to travel with their families. Children often work in the fields with their parents to increase their family income.  However, the harsh nature and span of seasonal migratory work inhibit the development of these children.
  • 90 percent of hazelnut harvesters work 11 hours per day; 99 percent of harvesters work 7 days a week. Children often work the same hours as their parents and are often, unable to attend school.  Even when a child is not working alongside their parents, the migratory nature of seasonal agricultural work does not allow children to consistently attend school.
  • Seasonal migrant laborers involved in the hazelnut supply chain are typically involved in other agricultural supply chains. 16 percent of seasonal hazelnut harvesters are involved in the sugar beet industry, 38 percent are involved in the apple industry, 34 percent are involved in the citrus industry, 27 percent work in the potato industry.
  • The workers are highly depending on the subcontractors. Although Turkish law requires all labor contractors to register with the Turkish Employment Agency, study shows that only 15 if the 277 labor contractors are registered. Limited government supervision of labor contractors perpetuates labor abuses such as child labor, poor working conditions, and low wages.
  • Usually, workers cede around 8 to 10 percent of their income to labor contractors.
  • Turkey is the world’s leading source of hazelnut production; hazelnuts account for 20 percent of Turkey’s agricultural exports and supplies around 70 percent of the total world supply.
  • In Turkey, employment under the age of 14 is banned by law.

Sources:

  1. Fair Labor Association.
  2. Fair Labor Association
  3. USDOL/ILAB, 2016 Findings on Child labor.
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10 Basic Facts about Child Labor Globally

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  • Worldwide 218 million children between 5 and 17 years are in employment; 152 million are victims of child labour.
  • Almost half of them, 73 million, work in hazardous child labour.
  • Hazardous child labour is most prevalent among the 15-17 years old.
  • Nevertheless up to a fourth of all hazardous child labour (19 million) is done by children less than 12 years old.
  • In absolute terms, almost half of child labour (72.1 million) is to be found in Africa; 62.1 million in the Asia and the Pacific; 10.7 million in the Americas; 1.2 million in the Arab States and 5.5 million in Europe and Central Asia.
  • In terms of prevalence, 1 in 5 children in Africa (19.6%) are in child labour, whilst prevalence in other regions is between 3% and 7%: 2.9% in the Arab States (1 in 35 children); 4.1% in Europe and Central Asia (1 in 25); 5.3% in the Americas (1 in 19) and 7.4% in Asia and the Pacific region (1 in 14).
  • Almost half of all 152 million children victims of child labour are aged 5-11 years; 42 million (28%) are 12-14 years old; and 37 million (24%) are 15-17 years old.
  • Among 152 million children in child labour, 88 million are boys and 64 million are girls.
  • 58% of all children in child labour and 62% of all children in hazardous work are boys. Boys appear to face a greater risk of child labour than girls, but this may also be a reflection of an under-reporting of girls’ work, particularly in domestic child labour.
  • Child labour is concentrated primarily in agriculture (71%), which includes fishing, forestry, livestock herding and aquaculture, and comprises both subsistence and commercial farming; 17% in Services; and 12% in the Industrial sector, including mining.

Source:The ILO, Global Estimates of Child Labour: Results and trends, 2012-2016 , Geneva, September 2017. [These ILO estimates are updated every four years].

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Child Soldiers

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The countries identified by the US government in 2018 as using child soldiers:

Burma, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Iraq,

Mali, Niger, Nigeria,

Somalia, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

 

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American 12-Year-Olds Can’t Buy Cigarettes. Why Can They Work in Tobacco Fields?

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[This op-ed appeared in The Guardian on June 28, 2018. You may view it there by clicking here.]

It’s no surprise that working in tobacco fields is dangerous. Smoking tobacco kills 6 to 7 million people a year, according to the World Health Organization. The same nicotine that makes tobacco so dangerous – and addictive – harms workers in tobacco fields. What is a surprise to many is that child workers are among those harmed and the United States allows 12-year-olds to work for wages in toxic tobacco fields where children are exposed to nicotine and toxic pesticides.

In the U.S., many teens who work in tobacco fields wear plastic garbage bags to try to avoid nicotine poisoning. [Photo courtesy Human Rights Watch]

When the seminal legislation the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed in 1938, it exempted agriculture from its extensive labor protections, including child labor. Most analysts agree that racism played a part in this decision – many agricultural workers were poor black people and the southern congressional leaders who controlled many committees had little interest in protecting them from labor abuses.

Human Rights Watch (HRW), whom we partner with on the US-based Child Labor Coalition, has confirmed that tobacco work is too dangerous for teen workers. Its 2014 report, Tobacco’s Hidden Children: Hazardous Child Labor in United States Tobacco Farming, featured the results of interviews of 140 child tobacco workers and found the majority had suffered symptoms that correlated with frequent bouts of “green tobacco sickness” – essentially nicotine poisoning.

The child laborers described nausea, dizziness, fatigue and other symptoms that left them feeling “like you’re going to die”. It’s clear that children absorb nicotine while they work from residue on tobacco leaves and from particulates in the air, but just how much is uncertain. Estimates differ from the equivalent of smoking six cigarettes a day to smoking over 30. The long-term impact of that absorption is not yet known.

In the US, a 12-year-old cannot legally walk into a store and buy cigarettes, but the law allows that same child to work in a tobacco field. A 16-year-old child tobacco worker told HRW that tobacco was “the hardest of all the crops we’ve worked in. You get tired. It takes the energy out of you. You get sick, but then you have to go right back to the tobacco the next day.”

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