/DEVELOPMENT BULLETIN 10/ SOUTH ASIA: Pakistan Faces U.S. Penalties for Using Child Labour

By Haider Rizvi Reprint | | Print |

Haider Rizvi

WASHINGTON, Apr 6 1996 (IPS) - The Clinton administration is moving to cut trade benefits to Pakistan as it targets countries in South Asia for the use of bonded and child labour.

“I think child labour is now a recognised problem in many of the countries in South Asia in a way that it wasn’t just a few years ago,” John Shattuck, Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs told U.S. lawmakers recently.

Immense pressure from U.S.-based human rights groups has led the administration to consider trade sanctions against Pakistan for its failure to abolish bonded labour and child labour in certain export-oriented industries. The actions will likely lead to a suspension of Pakistan’s benefits under the generalised system of preferences (GSP) in three categories of goods.

Noting that Pakistan has failed to take “sufficient steps” to conform to internationally recognised workers’ rights, U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor recently recommended to Clinton that he suspend the benefits. That proposal is now awaiting Clinton’s signature.

The U.S. government last year suspended GSP benefits to the Maldives for the same reason. No petition has been filed as yet against other South Asian countries, such as India and Nepal, where child and bonded labour is also common. But it is likely they will face similar action, officials here say.

Though confined to three categories of goods, the GSP suspension will cause Pakistan to lose millions of dollars in exports to the United States.

The goods to be affected are hand-made carpets, surgical instruments and sporting goods. Export of these products to the United States last year earned Pakistan some 88 million dollars, according to U.S. officials. In 1994, the United States imported 48 million dollars of hand-made carpets from Pakistan.

In a recent press statement issued here, Kantor says he waited for three years in hopes that the Pakistan government would move to improve the lives of child workers. But “child and bonded labour remains persistent throughout Pakistan,” he says.

He said children were “still forced to do dangerous tasks and to work even when exhausted.” He also said he was “very disturbed” by the fact that government has exempted the export processing zone in Karachi from national labour laws.

In a report that documented several cases of child labour and slavery in Pakistan last year, the New York-based, non- governmental Human Rights Watch urged U.S. and European governments and corporations to stop importing carpets and other goods made by bonded labour.

Human Rights Watch also demanded that the United States and the European Union work out procedures for inspecting sites where bonded labour is used in the production of goods for export.

The U.S. Department of Labour estimates there are one million children working in the carpet industry in South Asia — 500,000 in Pakistan, 300,000 in India, and 200,000 in Nepal. Thousands of others are being held in debt bondage, in the areas of agriculture, brick making, mining, and handicrafts. In such cases, children work to pay off their parents’ debts.

An estimated 50 percent of all soccer balls made in Pakistan are sold in the United States. And child labourers make up about 25 percent of the work force in this industry.

According to a study by the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 80 percent of carpet weavers in Pakistan’s Punjab province are children under 15. The bondage of children in Pakistan’s carpet industry occurs mainly in rural areas. Some children working on household looms are bonded along with their entire family, while others are sent away from their families to weaving centres.

The same UNICEF study says that most of the children in the carpet industry do not receive pay directly, but get small sums for pocket money from their parents. They are frequently beaten if they work slowly or disobey, but local police often fail to prosecute loom holders for such abuses.

U.S.-based human rights groups praise Kantor’s decision to cut trade benefits to Pakistan.

“This is an appropriate decision,” says Patricia Gossman of the Human Rights Watch. “It can be a good pressure device to force the Pakistan government to enforce labour laws.”

But scholars and human rights activists from South Asia disagree.

“This is no way to solve the problem of child labour and bonded labour,” says Dr. Manzoor Ejaz, a Pakistan-born U.S. economist.

Ejaz and other scholars from the region describe the role of northern non-governmental organisations in addressing the issues as “over-simplistic” and “contradictory”.

“They don’t understand that banning imports from poor countries will add more to the miseries and problems of the poor over there,” says Ejaz, who stresses that without a fundamental change in the country’s socio-economic structure, “this problem is not going to end.”

Two years ago, India launched a carpet certification programme called “Rugmark” because of pressure from Germany. Under the programme, government monitors inspect exporters’ looms to certify that children are not employed. But human rights groups charge that officials often accept bribes from loom owners to certify that manufacturing did not involve child labour.

Others argue that pressure from the international financial institutions dominated by the rich nations is part of the problem.

They contend that the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) continue to exert pressure on developing countries for export-oriented economic growth. In turn, corrupt government leaders shrug off responsibility for workers’ rights.