Child Labor In The Gold Industry

“ Worldwide, there are an estimated 246 million children engaged in child labour. Some 180 million children aged 5–17 (or 73 percent of all child labourers) are believed to be engaged in the worst forms of child labour, including working in hazardous conditions such as in mines and with dangerous machinery. Of these children, 5.7 million are forced into debt bondage or other forms of slavery, 1.8 million are forced into prostitution or pornography and 600,000 are engaged in other illicit activities.”

The “Gilded Age” was a time between the Civil War and World War I. It was also a time of economic growth. During this time new discoveries were made of new technologies and products. It was the beginning of industrialization. With new discoveries of technology and products that led to a better life for the middle class and a jump in the economic success.

As immigrants gave up everything they had to come to America and start a new life that they characterized as the “ American Dream”. It was not all rainbows and sunshine, nor it was jumping into a field full of flowers and laying on the ground looking up to the sun thinking of the good life they finally had. Of course it did not turn out as they would have thought. Mainly immigrants came to America seeking greater economic opportunity and to become wealthy. “When the summer heats come with their suffering, they have meaning more terrible than words can tell.”(Riis).

“The right to a proper childhood is considered a human right, but it wasn’t always like that.” Child labor was a major problem during the Gilded Age. It was a disgrace seeing mostly all of the children from the United States working under very poor conditions. Children who were born into a second or third class family were subjected to work in very dangerous jobs, which included many health hazards. Most of these children looked way older than they really were because they were treated that way. All but the smallest babies worked. The children acted like adults instead of the children they were. They were forced to work because if they had the choice to go to school and learn they would’ve chosen that option instead of having to work all day.

Some children will work in very harsh conditions which could include drug trafficking, prostitution and sometimes in some countries the young children will work in types of military position for their country. A lot of children work in many types of commercial business if they can. You would never believe what these children work in and it is not safe at all for the these children to be working in it, cause it is not safe for adults sometimes also. What’s not safe for adults should not be safe for children you would think? A lot of the work that these children work in are extremely hazardous and the children that will work in these conditions come from extremely poor families and they may also live in a low economic state also. Sometimes these children will work with either no pay at all for their hard work or just little pay for the jobs that they complete. A lot of the commercial jobs that these children are involved have very extreme health risk and concerns to the children

Child labor is unfair and dangerous profession. From unsafe working conditions to their low pay to how their families depended on them.

Many of the products that are used and consumed in the United States are made in other countries. One of the main reasons for multinational corporations to produce goods in countries other than the United States is the cost of production. It is far cheaper to produce goods such as blue jeans, paper goods, and plastic toys to name a few. In recent years the conditions in sweatshops in China, Japan, and elsewhere have garnered public outcry from Countries like the U.S. and most of Europe. The main contention, child labor in dangerous and horrid conditions. However one often overlooked example of child labor in sweatshop-like conditions exists were many people never thought. The chocolate we eat. “From 2013 to 2014 more than 1.1 million children in the Ivory Coast were engaged in the most common Worst Forms of Child Labor as recognized by the United Nations… up from 791,181 children from 2008 to 2009” (Berman, 2015). The benefactors of this child labor are huge multinational enterprises such as Nestle, Mars Inc., and The Hershey Co.

The Gilded Age was a time where poor American citizens had to suffer with poor living standards while the rich part of the population thrived with money. The problems that occurred during the Gilded Age were mostly solved during the Progressive Era in the 1890s. By creating child labor laws, decreasing political corruption and improving the poor living standards of the lower class, many of the problems from the Gilded Age were solved.

Imagine sending your son or daughter to work just to stay out of poverty or just to get by. This is what some brave parents have to do to their children. The Fundamental reason many families in developing nations send children to work is for plain survival. Wages earned by these children can mean the difference between passable subsistence or being absolutely miserable. Although sending children way before the age of 15-16 may seem terrible looking at what children are working with dangerous tools, it's a way to stay out of poverty, and to continue on with life.

Children are less biologically mature and less physically strong, which makes them easier to get injured. Due to the danger and chemicals they face in sweatshops, children could develop many diseases as they grow up. The developmental risk factors for children who work in factories are, rapid skeletal growth, greater risk of hearing and vision loss, higher chemical absorption rates, lower heat tolerance. They also have no access to clean water, hand washing, and toilets, and they are exposed to pesticides and sharp tools. Children who work long hours on a regular basis could harm their social and education development. And the reason why injuries happen among the young workers then adults is the lack of experience. According to Clark, “ Children are more likely to trip or get caught in machinery, and their bodies have more trouble breaking down chemical toxins and excreting them “ ( 1996). Child labor has increased in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Around the world there are an estimation of 200 million child laborers ages 6-15. In pursuit of few dollars, children are being sacrificed, some of them are only five or six years old spending their days working in factories, mines, sweatshops, markets, and building sites or sorting through refuse heaps. Parents feel obligated to invest in their older children’s education expecting them they will help finance their younger brothers and sisters education who are already working. In most part of the world, child labor is illegal in most part of the world, and yet it is increasing in many countries believing children are profitable and are very easy to exploit Since,“ they can be paid less, are easily abused without provoking retaliation and are not organized like adults might be” ( Venter, Lancaster 2000). If people around the world get together to demand the rights of those poor

To further my argument I will use Ethiopia as a case study to show how globalization has provided the push for countries to acknowledge the problem of child labour and create actions to fix it. This paper will be divided as follows: firstly I will provide a brief background on child labour in the world; secondly I will provide the situation in Ethiopia; thirdly I will present the actions that the government has placed to combat child labour in accordance with my argument; lastly, I will give my recommendations regarding the implications of the actions of the Ethiopian government.

In the United States, child labor and sweatshops are illegal, and society frowns upon any business that exploits children in the production of goods. Though most would say that they would not support a company that uses child labor to produce its goods, almost everyone has, in fact, knowingly or unknowingly, supported these businesses in one way or another. Children are involved in the production of many of the everyday goods we import from overseas, including the manufacturing of clothes, shoes, toys, and sporting equipment, the farming of cocoa, cotton, sugarcane, and bananas, and the mining of coal, diamonds, and gold (The U.S. Dept. of Labor). Often, we are blinded to this fact.

There was a time when there was little child labor and people were forced to work all day for nothing more than a few dollars. Unfortunately, child labor has grown largely recently in the last years. Mainly in Africa and other poor countries, there is about one-fifth of the population of children working because they are poor and because people think it is free since they are children. Laboring children are working endlessly in many countries at toxic and dangerous gold mines. There is always a young child under eighteen that is working constantly to support his or her family in an underground gold mine. We may think that since we are living fine in our nice homes and eating great food that everybody is okay, but they are not and they get only a few dollars a day for working five times harder than you.

Groups of people that are against the issue of child labor, or child exploitation, cooperate and begin organizations. Founded by a few, to grow into a much more effective project was the way to let the rest of the world aware about the current situation of children being exploited. A well-known organization named International Labor Organization (ILO), has created a project to take action against child labor. The project is named International Program on the Elimination of Child Labor (IPEC), which was created in 1992. IPEC has reached milestones to be closer to eliminating child labor, according to ILO-IPEC (2013), “Global number of children in child labour has declined by one third since 2000, from 246 million to 168 million children. More than half of them, 85 million, are in hazardous work (down from 171 million in 2000).” It can be seen that progress and action has been made, a potential to making a difference in the issue. There may be an effect, but awareness alone cannot solve this issue. Using awareness like this need to think their strategies and improve

It is estimated that one in every seven children, worldwide, are used for child labor. Child labor is a serious issue in our society and needs to be solved immediately. There are thousands of children all over the world who have to work unbearable hours and complete dangerous jobs that expose them to toxic chemicals and these kids get paid less than an average person who makes minimum wage. Child labor is not only happening here in the United States of America but is also happening in places such as Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and in some parts of Africa. For example, in Ghana many kids are getting exposed to a toxic chemical named Mercury. Mercury is harmful to adults but it is extremely dangerous and potentially fatal if children are exposed to it. Mercury can cause attacks on the victims nervous system which can cause lifelong disabilities. “The United Nations (UN) defines child labour as any work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and which is harmful to their physical, moral, and mental development” (Awuku, Mabel D., and Ampomah Patience. "Child Labour is Harmful to the Physical, Moral and Mental.."SIRS Issues Researcher, 22 Jun, 2017, https://sks.sirs.com.) . The human rights violations in Ghana is a result of poverty, an unequal chance at education, and cannot be solved without strong implementations of child labor laws.