List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor

There are reports that children as young as age nine are forced to work in the production of rubber in Burma. According to reports by NGOs, villagers, including children, are forced to work cultivating rubber plants in nurseries and on plantations for the military camps. Local officials and the military enforce the work orders. The forced child laborers are not paid for their work, and endure physical violence or other punishment if they refuse to work. 

Burmese Translation

There is evidence that children ages 5 to 17 in Vietnam cultivate rubber. The results of the Government of Vietnam’s National Child Labor Survey 2012, published in 2014, show that an estimated 10,224 child laborers are involved in growing rubber. Approximately 42.5 percent, or 4,345, of these child laborers are under 15 years old, which is the minimum age for employment in Vietnam. Of the estimated 10,224 child laborers who grow rubber, 22.1 percent are 5-11 years old, 20.4 percent are 12-14 years old, and 57.5 percent are 15-17 years old. The survey considers a child to be engaged in child labor if the child is working an excessive number of hours per week for his or her age, or if the child is engaged in work that is prohibited for underage employees according to national legislation. 

Vietnamese Translation

There are reports that adults are forced to produce rubber gloves in Malaysia.  Forced labor predominately occurs among migrant laborers from Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, and Nepal working in more than 100 rubber glove factories throughout Malaysia.  Reports indicate that there are an estimated 42,500 migrant workers employed in the Malaysian rubber glove industry.  Workers are frequently subject to high recruitment fees to secure employment that often keeps them in debt bondage; forced to work overtime in excess of the time allowed by Malaysian law; and work in factories where temperatures can reach dangerous levels.  Additionally, laborers work under the threat of penalties, which include the withholding of wages, restricted movement, and the withholding of their identification documents.

Bahasa Melayu

ILAB has reason to believe that raw sugar, refined sugar, molasses, rum, bagasse, and furfural produced in the Dominican Republic (DR) are produced with an input produced with forced labor, specifically sugarcane produced in the DR. Sugarcane from the DR produced with forced labor was added to ILAB’s List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor in 2009. Numerous reports indicate the widespread presence of forced labor throughout the sugarcane sector of the DR, including in plantations owned by private companies, state-owned entities, and small independent producers (colonos). Sugarcane workers in the DR, particularly workers of Haitian origin or descent, work and live under conditions of forced labor. Sugarcane is used to produce a number of sugar-based products in the DR. The U.S. imports nearly all the raw sugar and the majority of the molasses exported from the DR, while the EU imports all of the produced furfural. In 2023, the U.S. imported over $131 million in raw sugar from the DR. Research suggests that further downstream products of sugarcane, such as beverages, alcoholic beverages, candy, baked goods, processed food products, animal feed, paper, pulp, construction materials, biofuels, industrial chemicals, medicines, and medicinal alcohol may be produced with an input produced with forced labor.

Spanish Translation

There are reports that children ages 8-17 produce salt in Afghanistan. According to media reports, hundreds of children work in salt mines, with one source confirming nearly 400 children found at the Taqcha Khana mine in the Namakab district of Takhar province. Some boys work up to 19-hour days. Children’s activities include extracting salt stones from underground tunnels as deep as 55 meters (180 feet), loading the stones onto donkeys, and carrying the stones distances over 1 mile. Child laborers are unable to attend school, work long days, and reportedly suffer from muscular and respiratory ailments.