The International Labor Organization (ILO) believes at least 250 million children, between the ages of fourteen and five, work in developing countries. 32% in Africa, 61% in Asia and 7% in Latin America.
Some are confined and beaten and used as slave labour. Many are denied the right to leave the workplace. Many have been abducted. They are deprived of an education and a normal childhood.
Nike displays a good public image by contributing to charity and providing equipment and likes to tell the public that it has set up stitching centers in places like as Sialkot, Pakistan. Nike however, has been blamed of applying child labour in the manufacture of its soccer balls in Pakistan.
Many children work in sweatshops in nations around the world, where they are subjected to severe and brutal working conditions, as they are exploited, abused and arbitrarily disciplined.
Just a few of the industries involved in this horrendous trade are:
• Shoes and Copy Handbags
The major problem is found with sneakers and athletic shoes, as the majority are manufactured in sweatshops in Asian countries, including Reebok shoes.
• Sporting Goods
From soccer balls to cricket balls, a great number are produced in Asian sweatshops
• Brassware and Base Metal Articles
Children take out molten metal from moulds in furnaces at approximately 2000 degrees Fahrenheit and are involved in nearly all the process of brassware production.
• Clothing
The majority of garment workers in the U.S. are immigrant women who work 60-80 hours a week. They are usually with no minimum wage or overtime pay. Overseas, children are pressurized into working in clothing sweatshops.
• Rugs
Nearly one million children are illegally employed creating hand-knotted rugs worldwide. Approximately 75% of Pakistan's carpet weavers are girls under 14.
• Toys
Toys manufactured in countries like Thailand, Vietnam, or China, regularly use child labour.
• Fireworks
Fireworks are manufactured in India using child labour.
• Chocolate
43 percent of cocoa beans come from the Ivory Coast where child labour is huge business, many being trafficked across the borders from neighbouring nations.
• Coffee
Coffee is the second largest United States import, after oil. Many small coffee farmers are forced to accept prices for their coffee that are under the cost of production, thrusting them into an endless cycle of debt and poverty, frequently using child labour.
Children are trafficked for camel races in the Middle East, the sex industry, used to pay off a debt, garbage collectors, in mines, to being made soldiers in bloody conflicts or being forced to maneuver as professional pickpockets in Romania. Many are engaged in drug trafficking and theft.
Other industries in which child labour is rampant are leather, wool cleaning, wood and cork glass, products furniture and fixtures and rubber products, printing, publishing and allied trades. Countless numbers of children are employed as domestic servants, workers in hotels, wayside shops, canteens, hawkers, restaurants, sweet and ice crème vendors and newspaper sellers.
The list looks endless, in spite of the legislation forbidding child labour.
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