Entries by Reid Maki

U.S. Government’s Latest Weapon in the Fight Against Child Labor

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Viewpoint/Elizabeth Gardner In an effort to combat child labor, the U.S. Department of Labor recently updated its list* of products made with forced or indentured child labor in foreign countries. Federal contractors are prohibited under U.S. law from using these products. Under Executive Order 13126 federal contractors are required to make a good faith effort to verify that no child labor was used in the products filling government contracts. It’s a good measure, and the list turns out to be a bit of a Who’s Who among nations with the worst forms of child labor. Making the most appearances on this list of notoriety is Burma (a.k.a. Myanmar). (They almost completely monopolized the list in its first iteration* back in 2001.) The nation’s bamboo, beans, bricks, rice, rubber, sugarcane, and teak (a type of wood) all made the Department of Labor product watch list.

Gap, Next, and M&S in New Sweatshop Scandal

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By: Gethin Chamberlain The Observer Indian workers are paid just 25p an hour and forced to work overtime in factories used by some of Britain’s best-known high street stores Gap, Next and Marks & Spencer have all launched their own inquiries into abuses of working regulations at their Indian suppliers, which have resulted in children such as six-year-old Bubli being left alone while her parents work. Photograph: Gethin Chamberlain Some of the biggest names on the British high street are at the centre of a major sweatshop scandal. An Observer investigation has found staff at their Indian suppliers working up to 16 hours a day. Marks & Spencer, Gap and Next have all launched their own inquiries into the abuses and pledged to end the practice of excessive overtime, which is in flagrant breach of the industry’s ethical trading initiative (ETI) and Indian labour law. Some workers say they were paid at half the legal overtime rate. Gap, which uses the same factory as Next, confirmed it had found wage violations and gave its supplier a deadline of midnight last night to repay workers who lost out. M&S says it has yet to see evidence to support the wage claims.

Child Soldier Resources

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There has been a range of data collected about the plight of child soldiers in the world today. For further resources on the ongoing campaigns, on the ground conditions, and diplomatic situation surrounding child soldiers around the world please see the links below:

Gartner: Achieving the Millennium Development Goals: Education is Key

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Achieving the Millennium Development Goals: Education is the Key Missing Link David Gartner*, Co-Director, Center for Universal Education* The Brookings Institution July 30, 2010 — President Obama is releasing a plan for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015 in advance of the largest gathering of world leaders in at least a decade at the United Nations. While the Administration’s outline includes useful ideas on tracking development outcomes and increasing transparency and accountability, it also represents a missed opportunity to deliver on Obama’s commitment to invest $2 billion in a Global Fund for Education to achieve universal primary education. For most of the MDGs, particularly those that are most off-track, success will be nearly impossible without the achievement of universal primary education, MDG 2. With 72 million children still not in primary school, achieving universal education would offer extraordinary leverage in the broader fight against global poverty. While there is some progress in poverty reduction for MDG 1: “Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger,” there is much less progress on the commitment to halve the number of people suffering from hunger by 2015.  Child malnutrition is a key dimension of world hunger and 137 million children under the age of 5 are still underweight globally. Educating women is an important tool for reducing child hunger, according to a cross-country analysis of 63 countries. […]

2 Teen Workers Trapped Inside Grain Bin Die in Illinois

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MOUNT CARROLL, Ill., July 29, 2010 [This brings to 4 the number of young workers who died in grain silos in the Midwest this summer.from CBSNews.com:] Rescuers Drain Thousands of Pounds of Corn to Free Trapped Workers from Bin in Ill.; OSHA Says Accident “Very Preventable” (AP) A grain bin accident that left two teenagers dead and a third hospitalized could have been prevented and preliminary investigations found one worker was underage and employees lacked safety equipment, a federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration spokesman said Thursday. “This was very preventable,” said OSHA spokesman Scott Allen in the Department of Labor’s Chicago office. “There are OSHA regulations that should have been followed and it appears they were not.”

Human Rights Watch Report Exposes “Fields of Peril”

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Fields of Peril Child Labor in US Agriculture May 5, 2010 In this 99-page report Human Rights Watch found that child farmworkers risked their safety, health, and education on commercial farms across the United States. For the report, Human Rights Watch interviewed 59 children under age 18 who had worked as farmworkers in 14 states in various regions of the United States. https://www.hrw.org/node/90126

Brazil’s Bolsa Família How to get children out of jobs and into school The limits of Brazil’s much admired and emulated anti-poverty programme

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ELDORADO, SÃO PAULO STATE THREE generations of the Teixeira family live in three tiny rooms in Eldorado, one of the poorest favelas (slums) of Greater São Paulo, the largest city in the Americas. The matriarch of the family, Maria, has six children; her eldest daughter, Marina, has a toddler and a baby. Like many other households in the favela, the family has been plagued by domestic violence. But a few years ago, helped in part by Bolsa Família (family grant)—which pays mothers a small sum so long as their children stay in education and get medical check-ups—Maria took her children out of child labour and sent them to school. The programme allows the children to miss about 15% of classes. But if a child gets caught missing more than that, payment is suspended for the whole family. The Teixeiras’ grant has been suspended and restarted several times as boy after boy skipped classes. And now the eldest, João, aged 16, is out earning a bit of money by cleaning cars or distributing leaflets, taking his younger brothers with him. Marina’s pregnancies have added to the pressure. She gets no money for her children because she lives with her mother and the family has reached Bolsa Família’s upper limit. After rallying for a while, the Teixeira family is sliding backwards, struggling […]