Mark Muller’s personal account of his work with a farmer cooperative in Honduras that uses child labor points to the complexities of this issue. As Mark suggests, there are many factors contributing to child labor, some domestic, some related to free trade. These include, but are not limited to extreme poverty, reduction in public spending in rural sectors, gender discrimination and lack of political power within communities.
But, aside from the causes, child labor is a travesty and we must all be clear on this even as we seek to address the complexities before us. IATP has always opposed child labor - whether it is in Honduras, or historically among U.S. farmworkers and elsewhere.
Certainly, the recognition of international labor standards are part of the solution. But they are only the beginning, not the end to what needs to be done to promote social well-being, fair prices for farmers and fair wages for workers, and an end to hunger and extreme poverty. Labor standards do not address the fact that current trade and investment policies are purposefully designed to exploit cheap labor and hurt producers as a means to supply cheap goods to the global market. Labor standards do not address how small countries like Honduras are destabilized, in terms of trying to meet domestic development needs and compete in the global market. Cheap labor is considered the comparative advantage. No one is excluded in this post-colonial model of slave production. Not children, not old people, and not pregnant women sweating in the fields.
We need to move beyond the judgement and fairly simplistic notions from the North about how to address social alienation and injustice. It is in our commitment to one another and to our environment that we embrace comprehensive solutions, including advocating for international treaties that support basic human rights over the market. This includes garnering international support for the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the UN Declaration on Human Rights and the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women – to name a few.
I highly recommend materials posted on the web site for the International Labor Rights Forum. For many years, this organization has been doing participatory research and labor rights campaigns to lift up the rights of women and children in all parts of the world. They have looked at Honduras and taken positions on CAFTA. They are looking at abuse on the plantations and working with people on the ground. They and others have done some incredible work to highlight the complexities and to build the voices of those who are so marginalized.
The cover story on the latest issue of Forbes magazine outlines the scope of the problem: there are 218 million child laborers around the world and seven out of 10 are in agriculture. The article lists some of the challenges that communities, labor groups and corporations are facing in parts of the world where child labor is common.
IATP’s Sophia Murphy also recommends a recent report by the International Labor Organization on how to end child labor.
IATP has always embraced complexity in its broader analysis of food and farming. We can't forget the voices of children in identifying the problems as well as the solutions.
