FOR THE CREATION OF ORGANIZING COMMITTEES FOR THE INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNAL AGAINST CHILD LABOR TO BE HELD IN MEXICO CITY IN MARCH 1996
ISSUED BY ACTIVISTS AND TRADE UNIONISTS FROM MEXICO AND THE UNITED STATES
We - trade union activists, intellectuals, defenders of human rights, activists from various social and political organizations - have been informed of the results of the International Conference against Child Labor and Forced Labor, which was held in Dha ka, Bangladesh, on January 25-27, 1995.
Representatives from organizations in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, New Zealand, Thailand, and France participated in this conference, which was held in the region of the world most hard hit by child labor. The Dhaka Conference was also supported by activists and organizations in the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, and Bhutan. Sponsoring committees were set up in France,Germany, Great Britain, Belgium, and Switzerland.
Delegates present at the Dhaka Conference all agreed that the proliferation of child labor in economically underdeveloped countries and its resurgence on a broad scale in industrialized countries are part of the same overall process. They began to draw up an act of accusation against all the governments and international financial institutions responsible for child labor. They also decided to launch an international campaign to set up an International Tribunal Against Child Labor. To be in a position to i ssue a judgment, one must be independent. This is the reason why this Tribunal will be independent from all governments, as well as from the United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank and all the big international institutions.
Six weeks after the Dhaka Conference, on March 11-12, an international workersU conference called by the International Liaison Committee for a WorkersU International took place in Banska Bystrica, Slovakia. The Slovakia Conference voted to endorse the pro posal to convene an International Tribunal Against Child Labor. Delegates from 38 countries endorsed the final Dhaka declaration.
We, trade union and political activists from Mexico and the United States, hereby decide to answer the appeal issued by the conference in Bangladesh. We fully agree: There must be a Tribunal to identify and judge, in full independence, all those responsi ble for child labor. In this manner, we will be helping to define the most practical and efficient means for eradicating this scourge.
A group of Mexican and American trade unionists sent a message to the Dhaka Conference, which stated:
"The rampant increase of child labor in Mexico is the direct result of the imposition of the Structural Adjustment Plans by the IMF and World Bank. These plans have been responsible for the dramatic decline in real wages and in the overall standard of liv ing of Mexican working people, making it necessary for more family members to seek jobs to supplement the familyUs income. It is estimated that in Mexico, in 1990, more than half the children in the country (that is, more than 20 million children) lived i n conditions of extreme poverty; that is, they are undernourished, with little or no access to housing, basic services or schools, and they are subjected to high degrees of domestic violence (source: Mexican Center for ChildrenUs Rights). Today, five yea rs later, the situation is much worse.
"In the Valley of Mexicali, which is on the border with United States, child labor is rampant on the agricultural plantations producing export crops to the United States as well as to Europe and Japan. Children as young as 5 put in 12 hours of work seven days a week, but make less than $2 a day. Their parents work alongside them, but have no unions or collective-bargaining agreements to protect them. These children do not attend school. On the work site they are exposed to all sorts of hazardous chemicals , many of which have been banned in other countries. Large traces of agro-chemicals have been found in the maternal milk of these childrenUs mothers and in the umbilical cords of new-born babies. Also along the border, in the maquiladoras (sweat shops wh ere products are assembled for export), there have been numerous documented cases of children being born without brains (anancefalia) as a result of the proliferation of chemical waste along the border.
"In the United States itself, according to the International Labor Organization, it is estimated that half-a-million children work in the agricultural sector. They are mainly the sons and daughters of immigrant workers from Mexico and Central and South Am erica.
According to the United Farm Workers of America, the figure for this type of child labor is more than 1 million. As a result of the severe economic crisis in Mexico, it is estimated that 1000 Mexican children cross the border each day in search of work. In 1992 alone, more than 8000 children were deported to Mexico from the cities of Mexicali and Tijuana. With the recent passage of the racist anti-immigrant Proposition 187, the abuse of undocumented workers - particularly children - will become ag gravated.
"The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), by attacking the rights of all working people in Mexico - particularly trade union rights and the rights of cooperative land ownership - and by destroying Mexican industry, provides fertile ground for the proliferation of child labor."
It was established at the Dhaka Conference that the exploitation of child labor is lesser in countries where the labor movement is more developed and where the workersU movement has been able to wrest substantial gains. But with the pasage of NAFTA, work ersU rights and gains will be under growing attack.
In Mexico, to pave the way for the signing of the NAFTA agreement, the government set out to privatize the cooperative farms and modify the laws on national education. The new Economic Emergency Plan announced January 28, 1995, now calls for a 32% drop in the average family's purchasing power and a 10% reduction in public expenditures. At the same time, taxes will continue to increase while collective-bargaining agreements are overturned. In the United States, the threats of delocalization (that is, facto ries closing shop and moving abroad) and actual delocalizations are used to whip-saw workers against each other. Workers and their unions are blackmailed and forced to accept lower wages and worse working conditions. We can assert already that NAFTA will mean an increase in child labor. The International Tribunal Against Child Labor will seek to establish and document this fact, on the basis of precise data and expert testimony.
As U.S. activists, we say forthrightly that a government which attacks workersU rights has no legitimate right to seek to "ban from the ranks of civilized nations" all those countries dismantled by the IMF's Structural Adjustment Plans, as U.S. Labor Secr etary Robert Reich declared, referring to those countries where child labor exists. We assert here - and we will prove before world public opinion - that the Harkins Law is nothing but sheer hypocrisy. The Harkins Law authorizes the U.S. government to boy cott specific - not all - products from countries where child labor exists. This is nothing but a trade weapon in the hands of the U.S. government, to be used selectively to defend its own economic interests. We assert here that in spite of all the decei tful propaganda, child labor is, in fact, developing in the United States itself.
As Mexican activists, we say that the Mexican and U.S. governments, supported by European governments, are destroying our national sovereignty. Under the pretext of bailing out the Mexican economy, they are in fact moving to take control of Mexican oil e xports and Mexican industry. They want to wring out of the Mexican people the billions of dollars lost through speculation on the peso in December 1994. They want the Mexican people to pay for the "crisis of the Mexican peso." And they are already moving to drive Mexican labor costs even lower - and the least expensive labor force, as everyone knows, is child labor.
We - Mexican and U.S. trade union and political activists - declare that workers and peoples, beyond the borders that separate them, need to assemble all the facts concerning child labor worldwide so as to identify clearly those who are responsible for th is situation and so as to be in a better position to organize the fightback against child labor.
WE ADDRESS EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU
We endorse the decisions of the Dhaka Conference Against Child Labor and Forced Labor.
We support the proposal to hold an International Tribunal Against Child Labor that will be independent from all international institutions and governments so as to judge those who are responsible for child labor.
We call upon all those who are engaged in this campaign throughout the world, and all who are interested in joining us, with our proposal that this Tribunal be organized in the heart of the American continent, in Mexico. We pledge to do everything necessa ry to permit this Tribunal to be held in Mexico City in March 1996.
LET US UNITE INTERNATIONALLY IN A COMMON STRUGGLE TO ERADICATE CHILD LABOR!