I. Overview

A recent government census found that about 800,000 children between the ages of 12 and 17 work in Colombia.¹ The flower agribusiness, where children are used in both the processing and harvesting of flowers, is the only industry identified in Colombia which uses child labor and directly exports to the United States. The coal mining and leather tanning industries also use child labor but, to date, a direct link to exports to the United States has not been established. In addition, there are allegations of children working in emerald mines.

II. Child Labor in Export Industries

Cut Flowers

A recent report by Colombian sociologist and children rights activist María Cristina Salazar describes the use of children in the flower industry, one of Colombia's primary export industries. The information for this document was drawn from research currently being carried out by the Center for Social Studies (CES) at the National University in Colombia under agreement with the Inter-Institutional Flower Committee (CIIF), a census of 56 enterprises in the Municipality of Madrid, as well as observational notes from field trips to the flower plantations in the Spring of 1994.²

The flower industry in Colombia currently includes 300 large enterprises of which 250 are located in the Bogota plateau.³ These establishments generate approximately 140,000 jobs. The flowers are exported to over 50 countries with the United States being the primary importer. Since 1982, Colombia has been the dominant supplier of fresh cut flowers to the United States. Colombia's flower plantations produce carnations, roses, pompoms, and other species.⁴

The areas surrounding the flower plantations have grown rapidly in recent years and are characterized by over-population, poverty, insufficient educational facilities, violence, and single parent families. Due to such conditions, many children are forced to work and contribute to the family income.⁵

Children formally employed on the plantations range in age from 11 to 18 with the majority being older than 14. There are also children as young as nine who assist their parents on Saturdays and receive payment. It seems that most children first come into contact with the enterprises through their parents who are already employed.⁶ Most children work eight hours a day, Monday through Friday, and six hours on Saturday, and are paid between half and the full amount of the weekly minimum wage. Salazar's study could not establish reliable figures for the overall employment of children on the plantations but one child worker reported that there were 50 children working at his plantation out of a total of 200 workers.⁷

Children who work on the plantations perform virtually all tasks required for the cultivation and processing of cut flowers, with the possible exception of work in the cold rooms.⁸ Most flower plantations are composed of cultivation areas, cold rooms, and areas for packaging and classification.⁹ The tasks performed by workers include rooting, planting, lifting the plants, clipping the stalks, placing guide wires, forking, debudding, placing rubber bands around flowers, cutting, flower classification, cold storage rooms, packaging, and loading onto trucks.¹⁰ Some of the tasks performed by children in the flower industry, including packaging, debudding, and rubber-banding, contribute to the processing of flowers for export.

Children working on flower plantations are exposed to the same risks as adult workers. Children are often exposed to toxic substances present during and after the spraying of pesticides. Physical exhaustion, accidental injuries, posture problems and impaired development are also found among child flower workers. On many farms children are not provided with protective clothing and adequate work implements.¹¹

Coal Mining

One of Colombia's major export industries is coal mining.¹² The majority of Colombia's total coal production comes from small, informal and marginal mining operations.¹³ The mining which takes place in these enterprises is characterized by chamber and post underground operations, the use of manual implements and explosives, and the employment of two to eight workers who are usually families or friends. It is in these small scale marginal mining operations, which are illegal and generally more dangerous, that children are commonly employed.¹⁴ The coal produced in the small scale mines is sold to either small coal enterprises or to intermediaries; its ultimate destination is unknown. The United States imports a significant portion of the 76 percent of Colombian coal which is exported.¹⁵

A study recently conducted by Salazar and others of the use of child labor in the marginal coal mines of Amaga and Angelopolis in the Department of Antioquia in northwestern Colombia, documents the hazardous conditions that children work under. Child miners as young as six generally come from rural areas and work with their families in the coal mines so that they may contribute to the family income. Children are involved in all of the mining tasks, with the youngest engaged in carrying water out from the mines, taking the mules loaded with coal to the road, and packing the coal into bags. The older children are primarily engaged in the more physically demanding tasks such as carrying heavy bags of coal on their backs, dragging tins of coal tied to the shoulders from the inside of the mines to the outside, driving the electric car to take coal out of the mine, and digging charcoal with a pike inside the mine.¹⁶

The mine workers face work related hazards such as landslides, floods, fires, explosions, and gas problems. In addition, children and adult miners alike face physical dangers including overexertion, hernias, lack of oxygen, and, especially for children, deformation of the bone structure. Children usually work in the mines from 4:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. five to six days a week. Some children work only part-time, or on weekends or vacations, but the majority do not attend school because of their full-time work at the mines.¹⁷ Some children are provided only with room and board while others are paid according to the hours worked and the amount of coal extracted. Payment is often late and less than the legal minimum wage.¹⁸

The Salazar study found that the socio-economic conditions of the coal mining areas had a significant impact on child labor in the mines. It is common for child miners to come from unstable and poor families where the parents themselves are uneducated and may have worked in the coal mines as children. There is very little appreciation of the value of education or recreation and, therefore, parents do not encourage their children to attend school. Salazar observed that children are generally undervalued and seen primarily as additional income earners for the family.¹⁹

Emerald Mining

The American Embassy in Bogota reports that there may be some instances where children work in emerald mining.²⁰ The United States imports emeralds from Colombia. Further investigation is needed to substantiate these allegations.

Leather Tanning

The growing Colombian leather tanning industry currently accounts for only a small amount of exports. The industry is partially comprised of small cottage industries and workshops which utilize primitive technology and unskilled manual labor. The workers in this sector of the industry are paid low wages and work long hours. It is likely that these conditions will remain, and perhaps worsen, as long as the work process is intensified to boost production and to compete on the international market.²¹ The majority of leather produced in the small workshops appears to be sold to large leather manufacturers who produce bags, luggage, and other leather products.²² The United States imports raw hides and skins, and leather manufactures from Colombia.²³

A 1994 study by Salazar and anthropologist-historian Wilman Díaz of the leather tanning industry in Villapinzon, Department of Cundinamarca, is one of the first documents to describe the use of child labor in this industry. The researchers confirmed that children as young as five are found working in the small, commonly family operated enterprises. They fall into one of the following categories: paid employee (usually 14 years or older), apprentice under verbal contract, or uncompensated worker without a contract.²⁴ Children aged 12 to 14 are engaged in most tasks of the three-phase tanning process, including: rinsing, sinking, conserving, and dying the hides with chemical mixtures; hanging hides to dry; pigmenting the skins; and measuring the finished hides.²⁵ Children often begin leather tanning work at age five or six as apprentices or helpers and continue until they have acquired the skills to perform all tasks in the process. This usually occurs around age 14.²⁶

Child workers in the leather industry are exposed to numerous health hazards. Among the obvious hazards mentioned in the study of leather tanning in Villapinzon are burns, intoxication, fumigation, injuries, fractures and amputations (some have lost their hands and fingers working with machines), and vision impairment.²⁷ One tannery owner interviewed confirmed that the work with chemicals is dangerous and children generally work without any protective clothing.²⁸ Children work up to nine hours a day, six or seven days a week, and although some attend school, their attendance suffers due to work. For child workers under the age of 12, monetary compensation for their work is at most a pittance and for those who work outside of the home payment often comes in the form of room and board. The older child workers who do receive payment usually get half of what adult workers are paid.²⁹

III. Laws of Colombia

A. National Child Labor Laws

The basic minimum age for work, established in the Constitution and reinforced in Article 237 of the Minors code, is 14. Children aged 14 to 16 are only permitted to work for a maximum of six hours a day. On occasion, children aged 12 to 14 are allowed to work if determined appropriate by the Family's Defender.³⁰ This exception is made in special cases such as those where the child is a single mother or is the head of a family or where the work is classified as "light work" and the child only works 4 hours a day.³¹ Minors, who are defined as those persons under the age of 18, are forbidden from engaging in night work and jobs that may pose risks to their physical integrity including: underground mining; handling of explosives; work with heavy loads; work with shears, cutters, laminators or other dangerous machines; welding; manufacturing bricks, tubes or similar products; in factories; high risk agricultural or agroindustrial activities; or in steel and other metal industries.³²

Article 44 of the Colombian Constitution reads: "The following are fundamental rights of the children: life, physical integrity, health and social security. . .They will be protected against any form of abandonment, physical or moral violence. . .economic or labor exploitation and risky works. They will enjoy as well, all the other rights stipulated in the Constitution, in the laws, and in the international treaties ratified by Colombia.."³³ Article 14 of Decree 2737 of November 27, 1989, known as The Minor's Code, reasserts the message of the Constitution in stronger language: "All minors have the right to be protected against economic exploitation and the performance of any work that could be dangerous to its mental or physical health, or that impedes its access to education. The state will review that these provisions are complied with."³⁴

Minors are required to get a written authorization from the labor inspector, or the next highest local authority, in order to work. This provision, stated in Article 238 of the Minor's Code, also includes that the child's parent or Family Defender must request this work permit.³⁵ Law 20 of 1982 was the first piece of legislation to grant the responsibility to the state for issuing authorization to minors for work. This was a shift from parents directly authorizing the work of their children.³⁶ If a minor or his/her employer does not comply with the regulations laid out in Article 238 of the minor's code, "the employer is subject to the fulfillment of all the contract obligations, but the labor component authority can terminate the relation and sanction the employer with fines."³⁷

In 1992, the ILO Committee of Experts reported that Colombia's Minor's Code was not in total compliance with ILO Convention No. 5 on Minimum Age in Industry which the Colombian Government has ratified. The point raised by the ILO addresses the ambiguity of Colombia's laws concerning the dimensions of legal work for 12 to 14 year olds and asserts that:

Colombia's laws go beyond the derogations allowed by the Convention which prescribes that the exception from the prohibition of "employment" or "work" of children under the age of 14 years in any public or private industrial undertaking shall be limited to employment or work in an undertaking in which only members of the same family are employed (Article 2) or to work in technical schools, provided that such work is approved and supervised by public authority (Article 3)."³⁸

In addition, "light work," unless more clearly defined, provides a loophole in Colombia's child labor provisions.

The Ministry of Labor and the Social Security Institute are responsible for enforcing child labor laws. The recent study by Salazar of the cut flower industry in Madrid revealed that neither agency had visited plantations in the area during the six month period prior to the survey. Many enterprises reported that they had never been visited. The report states that, "(t)his indicates that supervision and surveillance of labor and social security conditions for all workers in the flower industry, including children. . . has been practically non-existent . . . (o)ne could therefore conclude that there is no type of punishment for non-compliance either."³⁹

B. Education Laws

Colombian law requires that children attend school until the age of 14.⁴⁰ However, the educational system is weak, particularly in the rural areas. The prevailing societal attitude is that it is more important for children to work than to attend school. A recent survey in the city of Amaga found that close to 70 percent of children did not complete primary school.⁴¹

C. International Conventions

Colombia is a party to the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child.⁴²The Government of Colombia has not ratified ILO Convention No. 138 Concerning the Minimum Age for Admission to Employment⁴³ but has ratified ILO Convention No. 5 on Concerning Minimum Age for Admission to Employment in Industry (predecessor to Convention 59).⁴⁴

IV. Programs and Efforts To Address Child Labor

In 1980, the Government of Colombia established a special Program for Child Workers aimed at improving working conditions for child laborers, decreasing children's participation in the work force, achieving better labor norms and implementing child labor legislation effectively. The program focused on children under 14 who were working with their parents' permission and those working under conditions which impeded their development. The General Directorate of Child Workers, established under Law 20 of 1982, was created to protect and gradually abolish child labor. In addition, the Ministry of Labor currently has a pilot program for educating some child miners in handicraft production as an alternative to the dangerous work in the mines.⁴⁵

In a 1988 article María Salazar evaluates the Government's performance as follows: "In practice . . . protection has been limited almost exclusively to the granting of licenses allowing young people aged between 15 and 18 to enter the labor force under certain conditions established by law."⁴⁶

There are several non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that have established alternative schools to train and accommodate the scheduling needs of child coal miners. Defense for Children International-Colombia has also been active in documenting and publicizing the plight of child laborers but, on the whole, NGO activity in the area of child labor has been minimal.

¹ Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1993 (U.S. Department of State, February 1994) 402 [hereinafter Country Reports].

² Maria Cristina Salazar et al., Child Labor in Industrial Sectors in Colombia (Santafé de Bogota, 1994) Part 2.2, p.1 [hereinafter Salazar].

³ Id. at Part 2.2, p. 6.

⁴ Id.

⁵ Id. at Part 2.2, p. 8.

⁶ Id. at Part 2.2, p. 13.

⁷ Id. at Part 2.2, p. 16.

⁸ Id. at Part 2.2, p. 13.

⁹ Id. at Part 2.2, p. 4.

¹⁰ Id. at Part 2.2, p.11.

¹¹ Id. at Part 2.2, p. 15.

¹² The World Fact Book (The Central Intelligence Agency, 1993) 86.

¹³ Salazar at Part 1, p. 18.

¹⁴ Id. at Part 2.3, p. 7.

¹⁵ Id. at Part 1, p.21.

¹⁶ Id. at Part 2.3, p. 18.

¹⁷ Id. at Part 2.3, p. 19.

¹⁸ Id. at Part 2.3, p. 20.

¹⁹ Id. at Part 2.3, p. 15.

²⁰ American Embassy-Bogota, unclassified telegram no. 17643, November 17, 1993.

²¹ Salazar at Part 1, p.16.

²² Telephone interview with Maria Salazar by Department of Labor official (June 23, 1994).

²³ More than $7 million worth of skins and hides (1993) and more than $6 million worth of leather manufactures (1992) were imported by the United States from Colombia. United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Merchandise Trade-Imports by Commodity (June 1994).

²⁴ Salazar at Part 2.1, p. 4.

²⁵ Id. at Part 2.1, pp. 14-15.

²⁶ Id. at Part 2.1, p. 16.

²⁷ Id. at Part 2.1, p. 33.

²⁸ Id. at Part 2.1, p.45. From interview with tannery owner by Wilman Díaz (April 27, 1994).

²⁹ Id. at Part 2.1, p.37.

³⁰ "Memorandum: The Working Minor (Informal Translation)" (Colombian Ministry of Labor, 1994) 3 [hereinafter GOC Memo].

³¹ Id. at 5.

³² Id. at 10.

³³ Id. at 1.

³⁴ Id. at 2.

³⁵ Id. at 3.

³⁶ Id. at 4.

³⁷ Id. at 5.

³⁸ Report of the Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations 1992 (Geneva: International Labor Organization, 1993).

³⁹ Salazar at Part 2.2, p. 11.

⁴⁰ Conditions of Work Digest, Volume 10 (Geneva: International Labor Organization, 1991) 35.

⁴¹ Salazar at Part 2.3, Annex 2.

⁴² Country Reports at 1403.

⁴³ GOC Memo at 5.

⁴⁴ List of Ratifications by Convention and by Country (as at December 1992) (Geneva: International Labor Organization, 1993) 8.

⁴⁵ American Embassy-Bogota, unclassified telegram no. 008939, June 14, 1994.

⁴⁶ Maria Cristina Salazar, "Child Labour Policies and Programmes in Colombia," in Combating Child Labor (Geneva: International Labor Organization, 1988) 217-218.