New Us Child Labour Bill Seeks To Penalise India, Others

The United States proposes to penalise nations that do not prohibit child labour or fail to effectively enforce child labour laws.

Countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal, where child labour is widely prevalent, would attract sanctions if they are identified by the United States for failure to curb the practice, according to a new bill introduced in the House Subcommittee for International Operations and Human Rights.

The International Child Labour Elimination Act of 1997, sponsored by Committee chairman Christopher H Smith and eight others, requires the Secretary of Labour to identify those nations to ensure that goods produced with the help of child labour do not enter the United States .

 

Among other things, the bill prohibits United States assistance - except for humanitarian aid - to countries and companies that use child labour; it denies Export Import Bank and Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) assistance to industries that exploit children for producing goods.

It also requires the United States to use its voice and its vote to stop multilateral lending institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from sanctioning loans and other subsidies for any industry in those countries identified by the Labour Secretary for sanctions.

The bill authorises an appropriation of $30 million contribution in each of the next five fiscal years to the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) of the International Labour Organisation. (ILO).

The IPEC programmes, which aim to work towards the progressive elimination of child labour, are currently on in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, the Philippines and Brazil.

The bill also defines child labour as: work by children below either the age at which they complete compulsory schooling or 15 years of age (14 years of age in underdeveloped countries, pursuant to international agreement) - whichever is less - or work by children under 18 that would be likely to jeopardise the health, safety, or morals of a young person.

Exceptions specified by the bill are those that are internationally recognised such as: part-time work by children 14 or older that does not interfere with their health or education; work on family agricultural holdings that produce primarily for local consumption; work done by children 14 or older as part of an educational programme; and participation in artistic performances.

The bill (H.R. 2678) says that the exploitation of child labour is escalating worldwide with as many as 200 million children prematurely forced into adult lives and working in abysmal conditions. More than 95 per cent of those child workers live in developing countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal, it says.

Workers as young as five years of age are made to toil up to 15 hours a day, seven days a week, for little or no wages. Many are malnourished, beaten and sexually abused and suffer from occupational diseases such as asthma, arthritis, retarded growth, spinal deformities, poor eyesight and tuberculosis.

The bill, which came up for mark-up hearing before the Subcommittee on February 12, was referred to the House Committee on International Relations and in addition to the Committee on Banking and Financial Services.

The latest in a series of such laws championing the cause of child labour, the bill quotes the International Labour Organisation. to estimate that 13.2 per cent of all children, 10 to 14 years of age around the world were economically active in 1996. Besides this, it says, many children in developing countries are forced to work as debt-bonded and slave labourers in hazardous and exploitative industries. It quotes the United Nations Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery and the International Labour Organisation to say that there are tens of millions of child slaves in the world today.

Large numbers of those slaves are involved in agricultural and domestic labour, the sex industry, the carpet and textile industries and quarrying and brick-making, it says. IANS