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In November President Clinton signed an amendment to the 1930 Tariff Act to ban the "importation into the USA of any good, ware article or merchandise mined, produced or manufactured by forced or indentured child labour" (Sanders Amendment).
The law is the result of lobbying from the US labour movement and public concern roused by publicity about the production of carpets, footballs and other goods by illegal child labour. Similar lobbying is taking place within the European Union, and all such regulations are closely related to the debate on ethical trading.
ASI is pleased that our demand for child labour to be given a much higher international priority is being met, that the law seeks to identify the most abusive forrns of child labour and also recognises the need to look at the individual circumstances in which children are working. However, the impact of the law will only become clear once the US Customs has agreed the rules for enforcement.
These need to be flexible enough to take account of ILO decisions on a new Convention against the most abusive forms of child labour.
ASI supports the moves to outlaw the most abusive forms of child labour, but is concerned at the concentration on child labour in the export industry. This brings the danger that children will be forced out of the export sector and into worse jobs in local industries. All such controls must be linked to other development initiatives, such as improved education and training schemes and interim arrangements to support children laid off by new rules. Speeches by government officials, industry representatives and the inter-governmental agencies have recognised this, but the implementation will not br easy. Initiatives such as the US-led agreement with garment manufacturers in Bangladesh, the World Federation of Sporting Goods Industry with exporters of footballs from Sialkot in Pakistan and the Rugmark in India and Nepal are moves in the right direction and should provide a model for the future.
Overall ASI belives the current moves are positive but will require careful monitoring by local NGOs.
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