Virtually every country in the world has national laws that limit the extent to which children may be employed. Several international conventions bar children from performing work that is likely to be hazardous, that interferes with a child's education, or that harms a child's health, or physical, mental, spiritual, or moral development. Most countries have education laws that endorse the principle that the proper place for a child is the schoolroom, not the workplace.

Nevertheless, the use of illegal child labor is widespread. This report, the second of two Congressionally mandated reports by the U.S. Department of Labor on the exploitation of child labor, is about two widely practiced forms of child labor that have for the most part remained inexplicably beyond public scrutiny. These are (i) children working in commercial agriculture and fishing, and (ii) child slavery, in the form of forced and bonded labor.

Child agricultural laborers and child slaves are largely invisible. Their employment is rarely reported by their employers and only occasionally noted by government surveys and censuses. Often working in the shadows, where government and society rarely recognizes their existence, child agricultural workers and child slaves often work long hours, sometimes under inhuman conditions, for little or no pay.

Both child agricultural workers and child slaves are often the source of large profits for others. The exploitation of child labor may enable entire industries to profit, as child workers provide employers with a low-cost and easily subjugated labor force. In Brazil, an estimated 3 million children work on plantations that produce sugar cane, tea, tobacco, sisal, and other agricultural products. In the brick kiln industry in Pakistan, which is said to operate almost exclusively on the basis of debt bondage, over half the workers are children.

Work for these children often is harsh and dangerous. Repeated injuries to children who cut sugar cane usually incapacitate them at an early age and limit them to an average working life of 12 years. Children in glass factories in India work in unventilated factories where furnace temperatures reach 1,400 to 1,600 degrees celsius.

Child slavery is hidden because it is illegal. It exists because those who practice it are either able to evade the law, or because governments are either unwilling or unable to enforce the law. Child slaves mine gold in the jungle of Peru, knit carpets by hand in southern Asia, and work as prostitutes in Thai brothels. Millions of children -- mostly young girls -- work as domestic servants in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. The girls often work extended hours, suffer harsh physical and psychological treatment, and are sometimes sexually abused.

By the Sweat and Toil of Children (Volume II) identifies a number of countries and industries where children have been reported either to be working in commercial agriculture or as forced or bonded laborers. The situations reviewed are not necessarily the only such cases. The choice of which countries or industries and practices to highlight reflects access to credible information and does not necessarily indicate that any particular country is the "worst" child labor violator.

In certain regions facts about child labor have been documented for years, and thus more information is available to report. In other areas where it is believed that the exploitation of child labor in commercial agriculture -- or the use of forced or bonded child labor -- exists, access to credible information has been difficult to compile due to 1) governments which do not allow a free press or nongovernmental organizations to report on the issue; 2) the intimidation of persons investigating situations of child labor; and 3) a lack of attention given to the subject. Although this report brings together much of the available information on child labor in commercial agriculture and forced or bonded child labor, further research is often needed to thoroughly document individual cases mentioned in the report as well as patterns and trends of child labor exploitation throughout the world. In some instances, problems of access are a major barrier to research.

Children in Commercial Agriculture

More children work in agriculture than any other economic sector. Large numbers of children may be found toiling in the fields and fisheries from daybreak until dusk. Many of these children work for commercial farms and plantations or fishing operations. Plantations, which produce commodities exclusively for export, employ 20 million persons, or 2 percent of the persons working in the agricultural sector in developing countries. Children make up an estimated 7 to 12 percent of the work force on plantations.

Among the products produced by children are cocoa, coffee, coconuts, cotton, fruit and vegetables, jasmine, palm oil, rubber, sisal, sugar cane, tea, tobacco, and vanilla. Children also dive for fish, work on fishing platforms and boats, and work in factories that process the fish.

The great majority of children in agriculture work as part of a family unit. In lieu of paying workers on a salary basis, many plantations pay workers either by the weight or the quantity of the product collected. In some cases, minimum amounts of a product must be collected in order for any compensation to be paid. To ensure that this minimal amount is collected, or to maximize earnings, parents turn to their children.

Those children hired as full-time wage-laborers usually perform the same work as adult workers, but are typically paid one-half to one-third what is paid to adults doing comparable work.

Many children who work on farms and plantations attend school when they are not working, but the quality of rural schools is often low, the duration of children's attendance short, and the ability of children to concentrate and thrive in school, when they must perform arduous physical labor either before or after school, may be severely taxed.

Work days can be extremely long. Eleven hour days are reportedly the norm for children working on sisal plantations in Tanzania. Girls in one fish cleaning plant in India may work 12 hour days, while some children who shell shrimp in Thailand may work for 15 hours or longer, mostly squatting on the floor or sitting on a small bench.

Children in agriculture face many safety and health risks. Poisonous and disease-carrying insects and reptiles are constant threats to children on plantations. Fatigue is an ever present problem. Living conditions on plantations often include substandard hygienic conditions, unsafe drinking water, unclean sanitary facilities, and medical facilities that, if they exist at all, are often inadequate to treat the illnesses and injuries suffered by children.

Regular exposure to dangerous chemical fertilizers and pesticides pose another threat to children. In Brazil, children may be assigned to spread pesticides onto tea leaves. Children in South Africa have been seen spreading pesticides with their bare hands. In the Philippines, the use of pesticides and other toxic chemicals has been linked to retarded growth, disease, and malnutrition in children.

A large demand for cheap labor in agriculture, coupled with the availability of large numbers of children, accounts for the continued employment of minors. Employers opt for children because they can be hired for a fraction of what is paid to adult workers; they are plentiful in numbers in rural areas and already live on plantations; and they are considered to be more docile and more pliant than adult workers.

The large supply of available working children is a result of several economic and social factors, chief of which are: a real or perceived need on the part of families for additional income; a dearth of educational opportunities, an inability to pay for education, or a belief on the part of parents that education is of little value; and a belief, in some countries, that child labor is beneficial to the child, the family, and the society in general.

Government policies -- or lack thereof -- and societal indifference also contribute to the use of child labor in commercial agriculture. In many countries, a lack of surveillance, enforcement, and intervention on the part of governments allow child labor to thrive. Even when violators are caught, penalties are often too small to induce employers to change their practices. And few governments place a high priority on establishing free, universal, and compulsory primary education in rural areas.

Children in Forced and Bonded Labor

Forced labor -- the enslavement of workers through the threat or use of coercion -- is found primarily in informal, unregulated or illegal sectors of the economy. The victims of forced labor are usually the most economically vulnerable and least educated members of society, such as minority ethnic or religious groups, the lowest social classes, or "scheduled" castes.

Forced child laborers receive little or no pay and have no control over their daily lives. They are often forced to work beyond their physical capacity and under conditions that threaten their health, safety and development. In many cases their most basic rights, such as freedom of movement and expression, are suppressed. They are often subjected to extreme physical and verbal abuse.

Bonded labor -- or debt bondage -- is a form of forced labor in which children enter into servitude as a result of some initial financial transaction. This most frequently occurs when, having no other security to offer, parents pledge their own labor or that of their child in return for a money advance or credit. Often, a parent takes a loan knowing that the entire family will be forced to work in return. High interest charges, low wages and deductions for missed work, mistakes, meals and lodging often trap poor families for life and create a never-ending, intergenerational system of debt and servitude.

Landless and near-landless households, as well as migrant laborers, are the main victims of bonded labor. With few resources to meet daily needs, and no alternative sources of credit available, parents are often forced to pledge their children's labor as payment or collateral on a debt. While parents may assume their children will be able to repay the debt out of future earnings, a combination of low wages and usurious interest rates often make repayment impossible. The child becomes bonded indefinitely.

Forced and bonded child labor can be found in all sectors of the economy. Bonded children working in the carpet industries of India, Pakistan, and Nepal may work up to 20 hours per day, seven days a week. They often sleep, eat and work in the same small, damp room, and are sometimes locked in at night. Forced to work in cramped positions for long periods of time in poorly-ventilated sheds filled with wool fluff and dust particles, many of the children suffer from skin ailments, chronic colds, respiratory problems, spine deformities, and weakened eyesight.

In the jungle of south-eastern Peru, children recruited by contractors to work for nine months in golds mines find they must continue to work well beyond that period to pay off the difference between their wages and the larger amount they owe the contractors for transportation to the mines, food, and medication. In 1991, common graves of child workers were uncovered. The corpses revealed that the youths had died of disease, work accidents such as falls, and contusions.

Poor, landless peasants and tenant farmers in rural areas borrow money and food from their landlord to live through the year. Loans are taken to meet the cost of daily needs or for expenses occasioned by ceremonial events such as marriages and funerals. In return, the peasants offer their labor or that of their children.

The forced labor of children occurs in the fishing industries of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, India, and Pakistan. In Indonesia, boys aged 10-18, some of whom are kidnapped, work on fishing platforms off the coast of Sumatra where they are held as virtual prisoners for up to three months at a time.

Forced child labor is also widespread in the informal service sector, particularly in the employment of child domestic servants and in the sex industry. Sometimes parents knowingly "sell" their children into such work, while in other cases children are fraudulently recruited or abducted.

There are many paths by which children may end up as prostitutes. Frequently, they are tricked or kidnapped, and then sold into prostitution: estimates are that 10,000 Burmese women and girls are trafficked into Thailand each year. The price paid by brothel owners -- $400 to $800 -- must be paid off by the young women themselves.

Some children in the sex industry are knowingly sold by their parents to recruiters to augment family income. Others are offered jobs by recruiters in the restaurant, hotel or entertainment industry, and then forced to prostitute themselves. Sometimes children who run away are lured into prostitution to survive on the streets. No matter what the cause, the result is that they become prisoners of a large and profitable industry willing to sexually exploit children to satisfy a demand for child prostitutes.

Children forced to work as prostitutes are generally scarred for life. Occupational hazards such as AIDS, other sexually transmitted diseases, or brutal psychological and physical abuse often kill them before they reach adulthood.

Child domestic servants -- usually young girls -- are often hidden from public view. They are given or sold to families or distant relatives to serve as household help. They are recruited by brokers, placed by a friend or acquaintance, sent by their parents, offered by parents for a cash advance, adopted, or even kidnapped. Child domestic servants are often the first to rise in the morning and the last to go to sleep at night. They are sometimes treated harshly by their employers and subjected to beatings or sexual abuse.

Some child domestics are stolen outright. In Sudan, marauding "militias" from the north kidnap children while raiding tribal communities in the south of the country and transport the children to the north where the militias either keep them for their own use or sell them into domestic slavery.

A different form of child labor in the service sector is the use of young boys, usually kidnapped from southern Asia, as camel jockeys in Persian Gulf States. Sometimes glued or strapped to the camel's back, their cries of fright are perceived to propel the camel to run even faster. The boys are deliberately underfed to reduce their weight on the camel, and are sometimes subjected to sexual abuse and physical harassment.

Current Developments

Few major changes have occurred in the countries reviewed in the Department of Labor's 1994 report, By the Sweat and Toil of Children (Volume I):The Use of Child Labor in U.S. Manufactured and Mined Imports, which considered child labor in manufacturing and mining industries that export to the United States. Still, there are several positive developments to acknowledge. The issue of child labor is receiving heightened attention from the public, the media, academia, donor agencies, governments, NGOs, and international organizations such as the ILO and UNICEF. Interest in child labor has spawned action by consumers and industry worldwide and the subject is increasingly being debated by many governments and in various international fora. Some governments are introducing legislation to make primary education compulsory, while others are raising the number of years children are required to attend school. Numerous NGOs are developing and implementing programs to assist child workers and their families, including establishing small, non-formal education programs for the children.

Two recent events are particularly worthy of note. The first is a historic agreement in Bangladesh to phase children out of the garment factories and place them in school. This agreement, signed on July 4, 1995, joins the forces of industry, NGOs, and international organizations such as the ILO and UNICEF in a humanitarian effort to provide child workers with the opportunity to go to school, while adult relatives are given preference to fill jobs vacated by children. The U.S. Department of Labor will provide a portion of the funds for this project through its FY 1995 contribution to the ILO's International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labor (IPEC).

The second development is the public pledge of the Labor Ministers of Non-Aligned Countries to eliminate child labor. In their "Delhi Declaration" of January 1995, the Ministers resolved that, "we are aware and hold that the practice of exploitative child labour wherever it is practiced is a moral outrage and an affront to human dignity . . . [w]e too are pro-actively committed to eliminate this practice in terms of the International Labour Conference, 1979 . . . giving immediate priority for total and de facto elimination of child labour in hazardous employments."

Conclusion

The United Nations Children's Fund, in its testimony at the Department of Labor's hearings on child labor, stated that "we are now seeing growing commitment and increased action toward the goal of eliminating exploitative child labour -- although there is no question that progress remains uneven and we obviously have a very long way to go to win back childhood for the world's laboring children. It is morally unacceptable to even think of going into the 21st century with the shame of child labour still on humanity's list of unresolved social issues."

This second report on the exploitation of child labor, in addition to the Department of Labor's $2.1 million contribution to the ILO's IPEC program, reflects the high priority that the Department of Labor's Bureau of International Labor Affairs places on ending the shameful practice of child labor.