Entries by CLC Contributor

How Climate Change Can Make More Children Vulnerable to Human Trafficking

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By Colleen O’Day Hurricane Maria, the worst natural disaster ever to hit Puerto Rico, wipes out the island’s power grid. A heat wave nicknamed Lucifer scorches southern Europe. Hurricane Harvey, the second-costliest Atlantic tropical cyclone in history, submerges Texas and Louisiana under trillions of gallons of rain. Drought again grips East Africa, leaving millions of people short of food and water. Natural disasters have always been a part of the weather cycle. But with climate change, the cycles of floods and droughts are expected to grow both more frequent and more severe. That may well drive more children around the globe into the hands of human traffickers. Poverty and natural disasters are a recipe for desperation. In 2015, Nepal, where 1 in 5 children under 18 are laborers – one of the highest rates in the world – was rocked by a pair of earthquakes that left some 3 million people homeless. World Vision, GoodWeave, and other nonprofit organizations working on the ground in Nepal found signs that the calamity had led to dramatic increases in child labor and child trafficking. Global criminal rings exploit any disruption to people’s lives to lure victims into bonded labor, fraudulent adoptions, coerced commercial sex, or outright slavery. Extreme weather exacts the greatest suffering on the world’s poorest people. And children are the most […]

127 Groups Ask EPA Not to Reverse Ban on Pesticide Application by Children

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Dear Administrator Pruitt: The undersigned organizations write to oppose any changes by the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) to the requirements in the Agricultural Worker Protection Standard (“WPS”) and Certification of Pesticide Applicators rule (CPA). Over 15 years ago, an EPA report stated that “pesticide poisoning in the United States remains under-recognized and under-treated…despite the ubiquity of pesticides in our homes, workplaces, and communities, and despite the considerable potential for pesticide-related illnesses and injury.” Farmworkers have one of the highest rates of chemical exposures among U.S. workers and they suffer acute pesticide poisoning every year through occupational exposures and pesticide drift. Studies have shown that agricultural workers suffer serious short- and long-term health effects from exposure to pesticides. The WPS and CPA rules provide vital protections from exposure to toxic pesticides for hired farmworkers, pesticide applicators, their families and the general public in communities across the United States. In revising these rules, the EPA recognized that the weight of evidence suggests that the new requirements, “will result in long-term health benefits to agricultural workers, pesticide handlers,” and “to certified and noncertified applicators, as well as to the public and the environment.” After more than a decade of stakeholder input and analysis, the EPA revised the WPS and CPA rule to prevent injury and illness to the children, women and men who work […]

Guest Blog: Ending ‘Temporary Protected Status’ May Increase Human Trafficking of Children

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By Colleen O’Day       With one sweeping announcement, the Trump administration recently began dismantling an almost 30-year-old program that has sheltered some of the nation’s most vulnerable immigrants from being forcibly returned to their homelands. So far, almost 250,000 adults and children from El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Haiti – most of whom arrived here illegally – have been stripped of their Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and given months to leave the U.S. Begun in 1990, the humanitarian program exempted from deportation people who fled natural and man-made disasters in their countries. At the same time, the White House has embraced a broader approach to immigration that equates open borders with permitting “drugs and gangs to pour into our most vulnerable communities,” as President Trump said. Taken together, the Trump administration’s actions have diminished the U.S.’s historical role as a safe harbor for the world’s refugees. And some of the foreigners denied entry may well fall prey to human traffickers, says Annalisa Enrile, professor at the University of Southern California’s online Doctor of Social Work program. Some 21 million people around the world are victims of human trafficking, forced or deceived into modern-day slavery and the sex trade. Traffickers exploit poverty and desperation – and children may be most vulnerable of all. Enrile says people living in nations riven […]

Teen Workers May Be Dying to Produce Sugar in Nicaragua

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By Deborah Andrews, Contributing Writer Legal protections for children working in hazardous conditions in Nicaragua are robust on paper, but systematic publicity, implementation and enforcement of the law is missing. Nicaragua has ratified all of the core international covenants in regards to child labor and has passed national laws that clarify in which hazardous environments child labor is prohibited, but the positive impact of these has not become reality. In 2015, La Isla Foundation produced a report entitled, ‘Cycle of Sickness: A Survey Report on Child Labor in the Nicaraguan Sugarcane Fields of Ingenio San Antonio’ which investigated child labor among Nicaraguan sugarcane workers. Agriculture, particularly the rapidly expanded sugarcane industry, is one of the most hazardous sectors of the economy and child labor within it is widespread. Nearly four in 10 Nicaraguan children live in poverty.  In rural areas poverty, affects 50% of children. The Teenage pregnancy rate is 23.3%. Only 49% of Primary School students successfully completed 6th Grade and over 72% of the population does not finish Secondary School. Child labor is a major problem in the country and a huge barrier to education, reducing life-time earnings for many individuals. Nicaragua is the only Latin American Country where school is compulsory only up to age 12, as opposed to age 15 in all others. Although illegal for […]

International Labour Organizaton (ILO) Experts Comment on U.S. Government Efforts to Implement Convention 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labor

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[Adopted in 2016 and published in 2017]   Articles 4(1), 5 and 7(1) of the Convention. Determination of types of hazardous work, monitoring mechanisms and penalties. Hazardous work in agriculture from 16 years of age. The Committee previously noted that section 213 of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) permits children aged 16 years and above to undertake, in the agricultural sector, occupations declared to be hazardous or detrimental to their health or well-being by the Secretary of Labor. The Government, referring to Paragraph 4 of the Worst Forms of Child Labour Recommendation, 1999 (No. 190), stated that Congress considered it as safe and appropriate for children from the age of 16 years to perform work in the agricultural sector. However, the Committee noted the allegation of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) that a significant number of children under 18 years were employed in agriculture under dangerous conditions, including long hours and exposure to pesticides, with risk of serious injury. The Committee also took note of the observations of the International Organisation of Employers (IOE) and the United States Council for International Business (USCIB) that section 213 of the FLSA, which was the product of extensive consultation with the social partners, is in compliance with the text of the Convention and Paragraph 4 of Recommendation No. 190. […]

Investing in Our Future, One Transaction at a Time—How a Financial Transaction (FTT) tax would work–from the experts

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Sarah Anderson, Director of Global Economy Project, Inst. for Policy Studies: Many countries already have some form of a financial transaction tax, including those with strong and fast-growing financial markets, such as the UK, South Africa, Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland, and India. Recently, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Austria, Portugal, Greece, Slovakia and Slovenia agreed on the range of financial assets that will be taxed and how the revenue will be captured for what will be the first regional financial transaction tax. Dean Baker, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research: Even small taxes on trading can raise large amounts of money. The Joint Economic Committee calculated that a tax of just 0.03 percent imposed on all financial transactions could raise more than $40 billion a year. A scaled tax with a rate of 0.2 percent on stock trades, and 0.01 percent on derivatives, could raise more than $110 billion a year. Several bills are working their way through Congress. Worldwide, FTTs have the potential to raise up to $300 billion in annual revenue. Susan Harley, Deputy Director, Public Citizen’s Congress Watch Division: The tax will help avoid market meltdowns by cutting the profit margins of high-frequency trading. Computerized trading by milliseconds is not long-term, job creating capital investment—it’s gambling with the integrity of the market–more than once […]

Jim Leonard Remembers Claire White, Recipient of the National Consumer League’s Florence Kelley Award

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REMARKS BY JIM LEONARD AT THE CELEBRATION OF CLAIRE WHITE’S LIFE Jim Leonard, retired attorney with the US Department of Labor and a long-time colleague of Claire White made the following remarks at a ceremony celebrating her life on September 10, 2016: The most important thing about Claire White, as I see it, and as I think all of you see it, if that you just couldn’t help loving her.  Her human warmth, her many kindnesses, and her amazing empathetic eyes were, to me at any rate, what most endeared her to all of us. This gathering is a very emotional time.  But the emotion we are focusing on here is not our profound sorrow at Claire’s passing, but instead the pleasure we feel in recalling and celebrating her life. Quite a few others will be talking today about Claire, so I want to keep my remarks short.  So here are two scenes from Claire’s life that some or even all of you may not recall or even know about. The first scene dates from the late 1970s, when Claire came to the Department of Labor for a job interview in the Fair Labor Standards Division of the Solicitor’s Office.  I was the first person to interview her.  She also had interviews some other lawyers, and I did not have […]

Statement by Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi on the passage of India’s Child Labour Amendment Bill of 2016

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The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2016 is a missed opportunity. I was hoping that today the elected leaders of our country will acknowledge that the value of freedom and childhood is greater than the value of a vote; that they would respond to the voices of the most exploited and vulnerable children. I had hoped that the first phase of my struggle of thirty-six years would culminate in the creation of a strong law and I would work with the Government for its effective implementation. Despite its progressive elements, the lacunae in this Bill are self-defeating. The definition of family and family enterprises is flawed. This Bill uses Indian family values to justify economic exploitation of children. It is misleading the society by blurring the lines between learning in a family and working in a family enterprise. The Bill reinforces status quo in society by hindering socio-economic mobility of the marginalised and furthers the rigid norms of social hierarchy. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals have fixed targets for elimination of child labour and accomplishment of universal, inclusive education for children, rights which I had fought and advocated for.  As the world progresses towards this goal, India threatens to unravel the pace of progress by opening a back door for large number of children to enter workforce. […]

Independence Day: Freedom to….

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By Jonathan Todres Even amidst the barbeques, beach trips, and sales during 4th of July weekend, most Americans are quick to declare proudly that July 4th is about our independence, our freedom. However we choose to celebrate/observe the holiday, I think we ought to spend some time asking, independent or free to do what, to be what. To be clear, though history matters, I am not suggesting we ask what the signatories to the Declaration of Independence wanted, because we know that they permitted, and in some cases embraced, certain ideas we now reject (read: slavery, no voting rights for women, etc.).  Independence means we can choose what type of society we want to create. My wish? I want to live in and contribute to a society that elevates every child and is committed to protecting and ensuring the rights and well-being of all children. On that front, we have a long way to go, as evidenced by the newly-released State of the World’s Children report, published by UNICEF. The annual report has sobering news for those who care about children around the globe. And it shows that the United States has work to do as well.  Sure, the United States is performing better than many other countries, but the comparative analysis is not the full picture (after all, what […]

A Better Brick: Addressing Child Labor in Nepal’s Brick-Making Industry

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      By Deborah Andrews Prior to the April 2015 earthquake, Nepal was in the midst of a construction boom that was struggling to keep up with the rapidly increasing population and urbanization trends. After the earthquake, the need to rebuild further increased the demand for bricks. For workers on Nepal’s kilns, the brick industry played a much needed role as a source of income for unskilled labor, although the industry has been characterized by exploitative employment practices. The Global Fairness Initiative (GFI) with its partners – GoodWeave International, Brick Clean Group Nepal (BCN) and Humanity United (HU) – recognized the importance of the sector and saw an  opportunity to create incentives based partnerships to bring improvements to an informal, migrant, working population with little government representation or oversight. A project named ‘Better Brick Nepal (BBN)’ is paving the way for nationwide change throughout the brick kiln industry.   Here are the top 10 facts you need to know: The number of kilns currently operating in Nepal is thought to be between 1,200 and 3,000 –with a large number of unregistered kilns. Many kilns exist on the periphery of communities where there is little government oversight, community organization or worker association representation which leaves the workers wide open to exploitative practices. Approximately 250,000 people are thought to work annually […]