The Child Slaves

The Reality of Child Slaves

According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), 276 million children between the ages of five and fourteen work worldwide, and 80 million of them under conditions of slavery. Although the majority of child laborers live in Third World countries, Asia, Africa and South America, many can also be found in Europe and North America .

•  In Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka, children who work in tea plantations earn so little that they often need to work over 14 hour days.

•  In Latin America , white families routinely “adopt” little Indian girls who, as soon as they turn 5 or 6 years old, are overburdened with work and treated as slaves.

•  72% of child servants start the workday by 7:00 am and do not go to bed before 11:00 pm . Their tasks include transporting water and firewood, doing laundry and housecleaning, preparing meals, and taking care of the families' children and elderly.

•  According to the ILO, close to 420,000 children in India work in the carpet industry. Child weavers are mainly between 6 and 10 years old, but some are as young as 4 or 5. They all work 10 to 12 hour days under horrible conditions, and if they fall asleep on the job, they are awakened by blows. The children are chained to their work to prevent them from escaping, deprived of food, and are fined for all mistakes. The fines are often so high that the children do not get paid for the work, further binding them to their “owners.”

•  The ILO estimates that a quarter of the world's agricultural workers are children. In Zimbabwe , children pick cotton and coffee beans 60 hours a week for only $1,00. In Brazil , close to 3 million children aged 10 to 14 years work full time in sisal, tea, tobacco, cotton and sugar cane plantations.

In the Dominican Republi , 8 to 15 year old children recruited in Haiti are sent to the sugar cane plantations where guards prevent them from fleeing. They work 12-hour days, 7 days a week, doing backbreaking work, without gloves or boots. They only get 1 meal of rice a day, and they sleep in huts without water, electricity and latrines