child labour - The African Mirror

Mar

2024

US court sides with Apple, Tesla, other tech companies over child labour in Africa

A federal appeals court refused to hold five major technology companies liable over their alleged support for the use of child labour in cobalt mining operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In a 3-0 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled in favour of Google parent Alphabet, Apple, Dell Technologies, Microsoft and Tesla rejecting an appeal by former child miners and their representatives. The plaintiffs accused the five companies of joining suppliers in a "forced labour" venture by purchasing cobalt, which is used to make lithium-ion batteries that are widely used in electronics. Nearly…

Apr

2023

By MICA ROSENBERG, JOSHUA SCHNEYER and KRISTINA COOKE

Special Report: How a fake ID let Hyundai suppliers use child labour in Alabama

WORLD

ON November 22, a team of state and federal labour officials conducted a surprise inspection and noticed a young-looking worker at a warehouse operated here by the logistics unit of Korean automaking giant Hyundai Motor Group. The inspectors, according to an Alabama Department of Labour field report reviewed by Reuters, had received a complaint from an unspecified tipster about "under-age children working" at the facility. During their visit to Hyundai Glovis Co Ltd, the report notes, the boy "was manually restacking large metal castings." Inspectors approached the boy, named in company paperwork as "Fernando Ramos," and questioned him about his…

Oct

2022

By The African Mirror

EXCLUSIVE Korean auto giant Hyundai investigating child labour in its U.S. supply chain

WORLD

JOSEPH WHITE and JOSHUA SCHNEYER HYUNDAI Motor Co, Korea's top automaker, is investigating child labour violations in its U.S. supply chain and plans to "sever ties" with Hyundai suppliers in Alabama found to have relied on underage workers, the company's global chief operating officer Jose Munoz told Reuters on Wednesday. A Reuters investigative report in July documented children, including a 12-year-old, working at a Hyundai-controlled metal stamping plant in rural Luverne, Alabama, called SMART Alabama, LLC. Following the Reuters report, in coordination with federal agencies, Alabama's state Department of Labor began investigating SMART Alabama. Authorities subsequently launched a child labour probe at…

Sep

2021

By The African Mirror

The children who run away to work: Ethiopia’s hidden weavers

HUMAN RIGHTS

EMELINE WUILBERCQ and YARED TSEGAYE FIVE barefoot young boys were walking to town to look for work when they were apprehended by the police, in a cat-and-mouse battle to stamp out child labour among traditional weavers who produce Ethiopia's famous, white 'shamma' shawls. The Gamo and Dorze people of southern Ethiopia have woven the soft, cotton cloth with its delicately embroidered edges for decades, proud of their heritage and of a valuable source of income in the impoverished Horn of Africa nation. Mathewos, a 13-year-old weaver, interweaves threads to create an intricate border on a headscarf at his relative’s home…

Jun

2021

By The African Mirror

OPINION: We must understand the context of cocoa farming to stop child labour in West Africa

HUMAN RIGHTS

MICHAEL EHIS ODIJIE IT is now two decades since reports of child slavery and child labour in cocoa cultivation in West Africa led to a global campaign against these practices. Numerous initiatives to combat child labour have been launched by groups such as chocolate manufacturers through sustainability schemes, standards organisations like Fairtrade, multi-stakeholder groups such as the International Cocoa Initiative, and NGOs. However, research suggests that child labour in cocoa farming in West Africa is still rampant. Although trafficking is difficult to study, media reports suggest that children are still being trafficked into cocoa farms in large numbers. Several factors explain the lack of success of these programmes…

Jun

2021

By The African Mirror

Child labour rises globally for the first time in decades

HUMAN RIGHTS

EMELINE WUILBERCQ CHILD labour has risen for the first time in 20 years, the United Nations has said, with one in 10 children in work worldwide and millions more at risk due to COVID-19. The number of child labourers has increased to 160 million from 152 million in 2016, with the greatest rise in Africa due to population growth, crises and poverty, said the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF). "We are losing ground in the fight against child labour, and the last year has not made that fight any easier," UNICEF's executive director Henrietta Fore…

May

2021

By The African Mirror

Governments urged to boost cash grants to end pandemic-fuelled child labour

HUMAN RIGHTS

KIM HARRISBERG FROM brick kilns to carpet factories, COVID-19 has pushed children as young as eight years old into dangerous and abusive jobs, rights groups have said, urging governments to roll out cash allowances to reduce child labour. Human Rights Watch and advocacy organisations in Ghana, Nepal and Uganda interviewed 81 children working in often risky settings, including gold mines, fisheries and construction sites, during the coronavirus pandemic. "The most shocking finding for me was the exploitation ... some children were paid in alcohol at stone quarries," said Angella Nabwowe Kasule, programmes director for the Ugandan charity Initiative for Social…

May

2021

By The African Mirror

Ivory Coast jails child traffickers

NEWS

TWENTY-two people accused of trafficking children to work on cocoa farms in Ivory Coast have received prison sentences of up to 20 years, prosecutors have announced. The case follows the rescue by police this month of 68 children working on cocoa farms, most of whom had been transported from neighbouring Burkina Faso, according to the Ivorian authorities. Ivory Coast is the world's top cocoa producer and is under pressure, including from the European Union, to crack down on practices that have led to nearly 1 million children working in the sector. The police operation was the first since 2014 to…

May

2021

By The African Mirror

Police rescue 68 children working on cocoa farms

NEWS

ANGE ABOA POLICE in Ivory Coast have rescued 68 children working on cocoa farms, most of whom were trafficked from neighbouring Burkina Faso, authorities said. The West African country is the world's top cocoa producer and has close to 1 million children working in the sector despite years of efforts to end child labour. At a care centre in the southwestern region of Soubre, one of the rescued children told Reuters his father had brought him from Burkina Faso at the age of 13 to work on his uncle's cocoa plantation and had left him there. "I've been working in…

Mar

2021

By The African Mirror

Better school quality encourages parents in Ghana to invest more in children

EDUCATION

PRIMARY school enrolment is now almost complete in developing countries and child labour is illegal in almost all countries. But the quality of education – especially in reading and mathematics – has not shown parallel improvement. GHADIR ASADI, Adjunct Professor, Department of Economics , Radford University Low education quality reduces the probability that children stay in school and attain any educational qualification. It also decreases the future return of any qualifications. In other words, low quality of education decreases the years of education and the returns to education. The outcome is inefficient education systems and less incentive for parents to…