END HUMAN TRAFFICKING
Is Ending Child Labor Worth the Shirt Off Your Back?
How far do you think child labor is from your life? If you're wearing a cotton shirt, skirt, pants, bra, underwear, or socks, then child labor might be right on top of you. That's because Uzbekistan, the second largest cotton exporter in the world, has children as young as seven yanked out of school to pick cotton. And that cotton floods the global marketplace in the form of everything from cheap t-shirts to designer pants to that one really embarrassing pair of underwear you own. You know the one. And all that cotton means child labor may be in the shirt on your back.
This fall, as American children grudgingly trudge back to school, over 1 million Uzbek children will be forced out of school and into the cotton fields. That's because the government of Uzbekistan forces children to work picking cotton by hand for the government. They work up to 12-hours a day, seven days a week, from September to December. Children as young as seven are assigned daily quotas between 40 and 80 pounds of cotton. Some children are paid 50 cents a day, even though their quota can sell for $75 dollars. Others are paid nothing at all. In the fields, they are given little food and water, and no medical care. And, of course, participation in the cotton harvest is mandatory.
Children who have refused to participate in the cotton harvest or asked to stay in school instead have been beaten and threatened with expulsion by teachers and school administrators. Parents who oppose their children's removal from school and application to hard, unpaid labor have received threats against their businesses and homes by the government. This is truly child labor sanctioned and enforced by the government, and almost inescapable for many Uzbek children.
Despite these serious human rights abuses, some of the biggest names in clothing, such as Abercrombie and Fitch, have refused to speak out against child labor in Uzbekistan and work to reform the Uzbek cotton industry. As long as companies buy Uzbek cotton, the government abuses will likely continue. And companies won't stop buying Uzbek cotton until consumers tell them that wearing clothing free of child labor is important to us.
You can take action against child labor in the Uzbek cotton industry here. If ending child labor isn't worth the shirt of your back, then maybe it is worth a few minutes of your time to write to companies that need to stand against abuses in the Uzbek cotton industry. And if it is worth the shirt off your back, then go topless with joy, my friend. Though maybe, not where there's a lot of traffic.
Photo credit: Erin Purcell
Amanda Kloer has been a full-time abolitionist for six years. She currently develops trainings and educational materials for civil attorneys representing victims of human trafficking and gender-based violence.
Is Ending Child Labor Worth the Shirt Off Your Back? | End Human Trafficking | Change.org
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